An Argument for Classical Apologetics

Can you show me because we're gonna use some hermeneutics Can you show me anywhere in the

Old Testament where that word perpetual is not perpetual because again, I understand you're appealing again

Sure Wait a minute, I thought

I was gonna get to have a talk. You asked a question. Hang on a second, sir Be quiet. Okay. Well, there you go.

I will mute you because it's not your show you asked a question I'm gonna give you the answer Jet Genesis 6 for the word

Olam is used referring to those who are of old Deuteronomy, I'll get just rattle off all the ones where it's used not referring to perpetual

Genesis 6 for Deuteronomy 32 7 Joshua 24 to 1st

Samuel 27 8 Job 22 15 Psalm 24 24 7 24 9 25 6 41 13 77 9 90 verse 2 103 verse 17 106 verse 48 119 52 1 faith of 43 3rd verse 3

Proverbs 8 23 Proverbs 22 28 Proverbs 23 10 and Ecclesiastes 110 should

I go on for more? Bob blah blah blah blah To answer your questions your host from striving for eternity ministries

You know, you must have a great argument when the answer is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah actually kind of sounds like some of the

Presidential debates we've had recently anyway, welcome to apologetics live I am your host Andrew rap report and here we can answer any question you have about God and the

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Click on that. Join me. Ask me your most difficult Challenging question just remember one thing when you do so I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

That's right I said I can answer anyone. I didn't say it'd be satisfactory So tonight we're going to be discussing

Classical apologetics what it is and I'll point out all of the problems with no no

No, I'll let our guest speak and he's gonna try to convince all of us that we're that you know

We're all wrong if we don't agree with it, you know, we'll see how good of a job he does know but we

But before we bring him in so topic tonight will be an argument for classical apologetics each week of this month

We're gonna have a different View of apologetics that we're gonna look at and so We were we're gonna start off with classical and it was just the dates that you know where people could could fit in so we will get to Matt soon and let him introduce himself, but you know, my regular co -host couldn't be here.

I asked him Hey you you coming on tonight? And and he said I you know, no, I I can't make it

But I hope to be watching and I figured he better have a really good excuse and all he did was send me this

Yeah, that's right a picture of his newborn baby. Like that's a good excuse. Really? Really?

But I guess he thinks it is and so he won't be here tonight So with with that is his reason

We are gonna bring in a different Well kind of a different co -host someone that you guys don't know

Let me bring in Adam Parker. Adam is the host of the gold apology podcast

And you go well Andrew. This is a new face for for a co -host Who is this guy and what is he doing here replacing drew?

Well, the reason is is because Adam had me on his podcast Along with Matt and some others that we all got together in a round table discussion on the different camps of Apologetics it was it was kind of fun

He gave us a bunch of questions more than we were ever gonna answer in the show And he basically wanted to see if we would have a throw throw down you know free -for -all type of argument with one another and instead we were all super cordial with one another and got along well and and and showed both the positives and negatives of each our

Views had a lot of fun joking with one another and I just said, you know Each of the guys here were we're just so good

I asked Adam if he would come in and help kind of help me to to maybe co -host this or and Lee, you know with some of the discussion since these are men he knew personally and or at least knew of to invite on and And then we're gonna you know, so each week we're gonna have a different guy

So we're Adam only gave us what like it like an an hour or two for all four of these views

We're gonna give two hours Yeah, you two hours for four views we're gonna give two hours for each view

So, you know just saying guy for each of the guys, you know realize, you know here at the politics live

We're giving you more time. We're not gonna criticize So Adam first off introduce yourself to our audience

Let them know a little bit about your podcast what you do And I will say for anyone who might have seen that and watched it on yours

It's it's nice to see you with two two eyes because you were wearing an eyepatch when I saw you, you know

Yep. Yep. I am no longer patched the Pirates. I I have given that life up.

But yes Ken Hey, I can see great. I can see no, can you sing?

Can you sing like? You just you just must have given yourself away as being a fundamental you know this

Dispensational Baptist, you know that you know who you know patch the pirate is I'm just saying

Yourself hey, give me some slack because I got that joke from Donald Williams.

So But yes, I'm the host of the bold apology a podcast and I've been doing this podcast for almost two years now and my goal with this podcast is to really make a case for the

Lord and The gospel of Jesus Christ for Jesus through apologetics theology culture church issues

You name it week. I cover a lot of different subjects. It could be different apologetic arguments

It could also be church issue related. I have spent some time talking about church hurt just different different discussions

I even have a podcast on addiction recovery So just different things that may come up that that really as a as a church as the

Church of God we should have an answer for and so and then that's really my hope is to Present an answer for the hope that is in me and do it in Relation to some of the topics that I bring up on the podcast and so that's really the goal and mission of it myself

I serve as the youth pastor of The church that I'm at and have been in youth ministry for about five years have enjoyed that and love my family have a beautiful wife two wonderful children my wife

Laurie and My five -year -old daughter Rosalyn and hope is too.

She's hit the terrible two So we're getting to see some of the sin nature come out of her. But uh, but no just kidding.

She's wonderful most of the time Love both my kids to two pieces.

So anyway, that's a little bit about me All right and before we bring that in I do need to just do some housekeeping folks who were here last week you noticed that we are supposed to have four of the

ACBC counselors talking about the issues of money and sexual sins and we only ended up with my pastor

I mentioned his wife Was she works as a schoolteacher so she had back -to -school night couldn't be here

But the other two guys both Aaron and Anthony who are speakers at striving fraternity could not be here both because of the hurricane

Anthony had no power and Anthony had far or sorry Anthony had no power and Aaron had far worse

And so with that I want to mention I'm gonna put this up for you guys to check out

We set up a campaign for him it's called if you go to give send go comm slash

S F E S F E stands for striving fraternity, so give Send go comm slash

SFE and what I'd like to do if I could is just share with you

What will we put up there I just want to I really want to do it just because of the picture that we

That he sent me If I can find the page, there we go, so here's the camping

That we did or that I set up for him. And this is this is being with striving fraternity

So we're going to be raising the money for him and sending it to him He worked he's part of our ministry.

So it will be a tax donation tax deductible As long as we have your name and contact we can send you a thing

So but if you're looking at the picture right there that thing in the center is his mailbox

That's how high the water came up to it is covering his mailbox. It is Basically he had so much water his his the cars are

One is completely gone. I think there's two others He lives by the way with his parents he is because he's in ministry he really wants to keep things as as Low as he can as far as his expenses because his income is not very high.

And so he lives with his parents He doesn't have doesn't have much and with this he he his parents and he have no flood insurance

He lives with his wife and daughter inside the house. His son was living in an RV Which is basically a complete trashed the water got all the way up to the steering wheel in the

RV So his son's room, which was the RV Is pretty much gone. So And he was doing a lot of You know, he had storage and everything else that's been destroyed.

So he's got a lot of expenses So if you guys can give anything and support him,

I'd greatly appreciate it It would be a real help just go to Give send go comm slash

SFA. I'll mention again later in the show But if you can help Aaron Brewster out the

Brewsters are really struggling he was without he basically was going to one neighbor had had

Star link and that was the only way they could communicate like all the neighbors would come to there

Because of his his father's health he they couldn't evacuate his father And so the father his father mother and he stayed and he his wife and daughter

They evacuated them. His son happens to be in Washington DC right now.

He's performing in the Pilgrims Progress Performance that's being done at the Museum of the

Bible. And so his son was not there and so so that you understand

How bad it is I got this not from Aaron But I'm not gonna mention who because of what

I'm gonna say I don't want his name being given to protect him but basically a friend of mine who is in that area as well said that FEMA has come in and they are

Preventing because their FEMA hasn't been delivering support and people have been basically

Refusing P FEMA is saying that they they're they're confiscating goods as people are trying to bring goods to people

They're confiscating them and then they are said they're saying it for it's for the for the well -being of the community they're gonna give it to the people in need and FEMA is actually arresting people

That refuse to just let FEMA be the ones to designate where things should go

You have people that are they're going in on their own personally trying to help people out and FEMA will is not allowing that Why I have no idea

I of course think maybe it's just because of this administration, but I think I had something to do with the election

They're they got something up their sleeve. It's October. We should expect a surprise so there's really a lot of difficulty getting help right now out there and Much of their food supply was you know was gone not all of it, but it's hard to get food right now

It's hard to get in and out of there from where they are So if you can help the Brewsters, we're gonna try to send what we can

Through the Ministry of striving fraternity. So just go to go it is give send go

SFE. All right with that out of the way, let me Let's see,

I see Drew is watching and so he's saying

Sawyer says hello on his first day in the world So people are saying congratulations to Drew and we will do that as well here

Even though I personally claim that's a lame excuse. Just having a newborn is the reason give me a break

Congrats drew that's awesome All right, so let's bring

Matt in Matt welcome to the show Wouldn't you mind introducing yourself your ministry and and then we'll get into discussing

And I should mention your your and do mention the the website that you're part of Yeah, my name is

Matt Marino, and I'm a pastor here in Winter Springs, Florida for an ARP Church It's called

Grace Presbyterian Church just finishing up my PhD at Puritan and Also what they call an instructor of theology sometimes use the word synonym for professor of Theology at the new

New Aberdeen College and that's going to start classes in the fall of next year in Charlotte, North Carolina So there'll be a full plate once all that kicks in and So That's pretty much what

I'm doing right now Have wife Emily and four kids as I was mentioning to you guys earlier two are already out of the house two are still in the house and so we've got our hands full and Yeah, and oh, yeah, and you see it on the screen there that reform classicalist calm

That's the name of the website the teaching website. I do have a YouTube channel as well Same, you know, you could just look it up reform classicalist on YouTube and find it.

But yeah, that's that's the ministry Yeah, and and you're very tech savvy we discovered that yeah

The reason he was mentioning that Two kids are out of the house and to her left is because his kids help him with the tech

Can't do anything. I just show up in front of the camera and talk Yes, but you do that well, so Try.

All right. So I I see some comments before we get started on on classical

Apologetics our brother a regular brother here John is saying that he's here to learn more about Calvinism and cessation ism

The cessation of the Holy Spirit and and I love John, but no one believes that the

Holy Spirit ceased So John is a cessationist

And and I bust on him and and and we have Jesse Heller saying awesome brother

I would contend and later. He said, you know contend not Contend with not contend against the cessation of Holy Spirit, but glad you're on here

He said I would still contend with cessation ism But if you came here you came to the right place to learn about cessation ism.

Well, I appreciate that Jesse and I think it would be a good place and I'm still trying to get

John on here So we could actually have that discussion But anyone that wants to disagree with me on my view of cessation ism

I would love for you to come on because it would really help me in my sermon in my a debate prep for Michael Brown So the better the arguments

I've just listened to I think it was about a hundred hours Or no a 75 hours of the remnant radio.

I have 200 hours Lined up of dr. Michael Brown to that.

I've been listening to so 200 hours I should get his argument down pretty well, but hey if you guys want to challenge me

Look, I don't mind if you're wrong for a little while and you'll be right in heaven that's kind of like a joke

Matt because you already heard that on when we did the the show on Adam show with your your view of classicalist, but We have another apologist who just popped in backstage.

He's one of the newer speakers of striving for attorney the very very short small

Dan craft Okay, the seven -foot apologist And you could go some foot about him

So Dan is an evidentialist Sorry, Dan, I mean a recovering evidentialist

Dan is the biblical presuppositional list And Adam I don't know you hosted it.

I don't even know what what is your position out of the four that you hosted? You know, that's one of the best compliments that I could receive.

That means I did my job Well, yeah, not not giving up my position. I would actually fall in the same camp as dr.

Williams I'd fall in with a cumulative case. So so I'm I'm happy to agree with all of you.

I Think you all agreed with me because you're all fell back to that eventually but so so Matt a good question that came in and be a

Good start You know first is what what is classical

Apologetics, but this question came in from Doug. He just said what is the difference between classical and presuppositional?

so if you wouldn't mind giving us just a Overview of what is the classical?

view and then You know and then you know after that what would be the difference maybe that you would see between Classical I'm gonna expand

Doug's question. How do you see it different between presuppositional and an evidential?

Yeah, so the classical view is called classical For roughly the same reason as that adjective functions and a lot of other things

It's the position that would claim to be the most historic position and I think for the most part even proponents of the other views would not contest that and sometimes the criticism will be of the the

Greek speculative philosophy that came into the early church and therefore that polluted that That kind of apologetics to begin with so a lot of times even the critics won't contest that point

So that's the first reason it's called classical because ever since the early church and this is even before Augustine the early apologists

They were even called Justin Martyr Tatian a lot of people in the second century

Utilized this method and that brings up the second reason. It's called classical and the method itself

Essentially has a two -step approach and the first step is to establish theism monotheism rational monotheism it goes by many names depending on who the apologist is but the idea is to establish that God exists and That that has implications for things about his relationship to the world the immortality of the soul

Various things like that once you establish that by a philosophical demonstration

Then the second step becomes moving on to the evidence once you get to the second step

Classicalism really looks a lot like evidentialism and I think that's one of the reasons why it's often joined at the hip of evidentialism

Sometimes there's other reasons, but it is a mistake just to confuse classicalism with evidentialism as a whole

Once it gets to that second step Where you start to get into now for the early apologists what that would mean

They didn't do evidential apologetics the way modern Christians do because we're so focused on science

And so dealing with the empirical issues of science, but even when you talk about history you talk about it sometimes in Scientific terms that language started to be used in 19th century whether it was about textual criticism or whatever else

So it looks different than it did in the early church The early church you would focus on it was sort of a two -pronged approach miracles and prophecy

The prophecy about Jesus Christ and how he fulfilled all those prophecies and then the miracles in particular

What does that say when Jesus Christ is who he is and he? Testifies to the scripture the way he does and then there'd be some comparative

Religion that you call it in the modern world between Christianity Judaism and Islam and so that's the way those apologists would

Now that would become more systematized once you get to the Middle Ages most famously in Thomas Aquinas But then in the modern world things started to shift a little bit more toward Evidentialism by the time the

Enlightenment came around and classical apologetic apologetics waned in influence Partly because of the

Criticisms made against natural theology by David Hume and Immanuel Kant and a lot of people who were in the church there were arguments against them, but those arguments didn't win the day in terms of the university and in Popular culture and so I would argue that classical apologetics and the use of natural theology did not lose because it lost in the actual battleground of ideas, but it basically lost a

PR war and Because of that you had a waning influence of classical apologetics in the 20th century and of course mostly in in the

Reformed Church especially you saw that because of the Of the view of the rise of presuppositionalism whether it was the brand of Gordon Clark or the brand of Cornelius Van Till but So anyway now last part of your question was the differences between classicalism and presuppositionalism

Much like evidentialism this will surprise people Classicalism has some things in common with presuppositionalism

So for example the whole one -two approach thing well We wouldn't have the same order that a presuppositionalist would

But there is an emphasis or at least there used to be on worldview thinking so the things we try to do in natural theology

Oftentimes presuppositionalists try to do that negatively or Van Till would call it indirect proof the use of reductio ad absurdum

Even when on a popular level when you say things like by what standard you know when you're talking about morality

Or when you're talking about logic and so forth But the presuppositionalist and the classicalist in some ways are trying to do the same thing they're establishing the big picture

Whereas the evidentialist is starting from inductively from the facts of history whether it be the resurrection you know the empty tomb evidence for it, and then you construct a cumulative case so That's what they have in common, but that's not the paper over of course you know the things that we differ about and obviously presuppositionalists starting with Van Till have a have a very different idea of historic theology even what

Augustine meant what Thomas Aquinas meant And how disastrous it would be if we to use

Van Till's language if we followed a Romanist or an Arminian Apologetic he would call it anytime you started from premises outside of the scripture to argue for either the

Christian God or For scripture and so we would disagree with Van Till and Van Tillians about the propriety of starting outside of scripture

To establish things about the Christian worldview, so that would be the general synopsis of the difference how about How will be a difference with as far as evidential?

Evidentialists Yeah, they're they're split in my experience in terms of the propriety of using natural theology

Even someone like John Warwick Montgomery who was probably in my mind when the most brilliant Evidentialists of the past you know 50 60 years.

He just passed away actually this week he would always say that He didn't say that it was inappropriate to use

Arguments for God's existence like the classical arguments, but in his mind it left people Light -years away from the

God of the Bible and so I in my experience half evidentialists are fine using those arguments

But they come second if you need them at all a lot of people I think if they're already Theists or they already claim to believe in God and they may need a lot of correction on what they mean by that But then you can go right to the resurrection or you can go right to comparing the

Bible to the Quran You know why waste time on the existence of God if they already believe in the existence of God Well, that's fine as a strategy.

That's fine But I think that would be the main difference is that evidentialists will tend to want to start with the scriptures

Who Jesus is and then the empty tomb? All right so As we go through let me see there was this comment

Fatima put up which I think is good. She said Great explanation of classical apologetics now.

I understand better why RC Sproul approaches apologetics the way he does Always starting with the existence of God So, you know,

I see what other Well, there's a question for the second hour so okay

Just check. So so let's discuss. I mean what what brought you did you ever hold to any different other views other than classical?

Not really, although I because I started with a lot of CS Lewis's writings I was probably

I Don't want to say I was ever a cumulative case person, but when I was new to it I didn't really take a stance one way or the other however before I became a

Christian I was already reading Augustine and Aquinas and So and then some CS Lewis and so when

I came to Christianity it was probably my second year as a believer when I discovered RC Sproul's writings and so the rest was history after that And then

I started reading Well, I started listening to Montgomery's lectures and he was not friendly toward presuppositionalism either so it is true that I did have a filtered a lens that I Understood presuppositionalist in the first couple years.

However, I did start to read Ben Till and frame directly Not too long after that.

So I got to see both sides at least Okay. Yeah, cuz I was gonna ask if you went from one one to the other, you know, what you you know, what your

Path was. What do you think? I mean we had that discussion on an Adams program

You know bold apology at podcast You know One of what do you think would be the the strongest argument for your position?

Classical apologetics over the the others that were presented there over the other different views

Well, they my argument would be different against all the other views than it would against the cumulative view.

I Had to I had to be nitpicky basically because that my sympathies are already with it and I think everybody would agree that from a practical level you want to start where people are at and I think that's what it

The strong suit is and so my only It wasn't a complaint. It was just a question that I asked.

Dr. Williams and I said, you know When you're out there, is there at least maybe the danger that if you start where they start?

That You won't be defining the terms for them enough They'll be taking you where they want to go.

And of course, I totally agree with his answer, which was well That danger is already there for every view But I would say that the classical view

If you if you do it, right and if you understand it, right, I would say as a philosopher You actually have built into it

That teaching mechanism where you train people to not do that because you're already starting that one -two approach by by teaching people

No, actually God is is more real than everything else God's existence is necessary.

If I demonstrate that then everything else you don't have any more wiggle room. You can't go back to Well, can we even know truth or maybe

God is like this and not like that? Can't really go back to that because we've already established that so you kind of train people to go in that one -two direction

Down toward the contingent matters of history. So I'd say that classicalism has maybe a different way to get to that same

Point of So I would say that's a that's a strong point to classicalism So let me announce the flip side of the question out comparing to the others

What would you what would you say would be the strongest weakness of classicalism compared to the other views?

You do have to You do have to I use the word loosely master, but you you do have to master

Philosophy frankly, especially classical philosophy I don't think that's hard though.

If you go right to you know, Plato Aristotle Augustine and Aquinas to just Live a season in those four

So I don't think it's an impossible task really the evidentialist has to do the same thing with evidence He has to study things that are just as rigorous to study just very different kinds of things.

So It's a you can say it's a weakness in that sense There's difficulties that come with it, maybe another one would be that people are simply not we live in a post -metaphysical age

It's not just that people don't read philosophers. It's that even when they do They've been told from all different quarters not to read those philosophers.

They're the most irrelevant ones They're talking about pie -in -the -sky kind of stuff. And so there's a built -in bias against metaphysical thinking in general so you really have to persuade people

To focus on the immaterial as if that is the most real thing. What a shocking thing

I think it's Christian Theism. We kind of all have that burden anyway, but I think that's a an extra burden

So I see a comment in the chats, I don't know if this is a supposed to be a compliment or an insult I don't quite get it.

But the but Padma says strongest weakness is a term only Andrew could come up with I I Guess I didn't think about that Padma.

Thank you. I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that Hey, you know,

I guess I'm just I'm now ready to debate one of the Republican president or vice president, you know

I can create my own words and All right Before I toss it to Adam to to me ask some questions and I should

I should let you know Matt Dan craft is gonna be on next week talking about presuppositional apologetics although he came from the evidential to to free sup, so he might not be as much against you as as as you have an intro we'll see but Before I ask

Adam and then I'll ask Dan to you know, sue questions we'd have I Want to ask if you if you would consider this to be a fair assessment.

This has been my view of the different approaches Cumulative doesn't kind of well, okay.

I think I could figure out how to get cumulative to fit in but I've always viewed that classical apologetics is more of a

Philosophical approach so it's more geared toward philosophy philosophers evidential apologetics is more geared towards sciences and scientific types and then

Presuppositional I believe is more of the theologians approach the the coming to it with scripture, you know from from like a scripture alone print present presentation or the from a theological view,

I guess I'm gonna be Adam put cumulative in I'll just say Just they couldn't pick so they just kind of threw everything into a big pot and stirred it up Okay, or the cumulative guys are a little bit of each, you know

Mix it up. So do you think that'd be a fair a fair description of the different approaches?

Think that personally I think that's pretty fair. I Think that there is definitely overlap with each one.

You don't have to be a you know come from a presuppositional perspective

You know mixing that with being a theologian, but you know there a lot of the guys I run into Who are presuppositional in their framework for you know, very pointedly or specifically?

They are theologians, you know whether that be formally a theologian or they dig into theology and Just think back to our our pal

Daniel McAdams who took the evidentialist approach He's very much into the evidences.

He's got that science sciency kind of brain he was a paranormal investigator for ten years and They are they actually view that as a science so, you know, you get your evidences and all of that He's not anymore.

He's left that but you know that kind of ties in there and and Matt You're obviously quite the philosopher.

So well, it kind of makes sense to me Daniel just commented here. He's watching He said

I'll just say this evidence plays an essential role in all the different methods

Well, we will who we'll see when he comes on Matt what do you think was do you think that's a fair assessment what

I had how I described it? I know Dan Dan has a an issue with what I said, and he and I are in the same camp

Yeah, I mean there may be overlap And I think maybe that's what Daniel's getting at is that it

But I know I think it's fair. I think it's right. I think Classicalists like myself would say well, we could be philosophical theologians and some people might say well

Well, that's your problem is that you're mixing too much philosophy in your theology In general.

Yeah, I think that's I think that's true. And I think I've seen that I think I see it with I think

I say with someone like Van Til when the things that he was concerned about we're largely driven by purity of reform doctrine and The things he was railing against in many cases were things that he thought would would harm that purity

So I I'd get that and I think that's I think that's the case about all the different the views that you mentioned

That's that's been my experience. It takes a certain personality, I think That to gravitate toward one interest or another

And you you you mentioned in private chat there that you'd have you take a slight exception with what I said

What's your view? Yes, I object One of the so I think

The the attraction that I have to presuppositional apologetics is its foundation as a

Bible first apologetic however When I started reading particularly

Bonson I Was kind of struck and kind of put off by how quickly it got philosophical

It's very easy to take I think the foundations of presuppositional apologetics are Are spot -on

I that really resonates with me But what I where I kind of start start saying

I'm not really following this anymore is when you know Bonson starts talking about things like, you know the preconditions of intelligibility and the problem of the one of the many and all these philosophical terms and my eyes just kind of glaze over and I just like okay,

I'm ready to be done with this now because You know the Apostle Paul says follow me as I follow

Christ and I look at the look at the book of Acts and I don't see The Apostle Paul arguing like this, right?

So that's that's where I would draw the line I'd say the I think the way that you and I do

Presuppositional apologetics, I would call that like precept light The way the way

I described it to Jason Lyle was that like if if Vantil and and Bonson are presuppositional apologetics proper then

Like someone like Jason Lyle would be like diet Presuppose a diet presuppositional apologetics, right?

It kind of strips away a lot of the philosophy and makes it easier for people to grasp right and focuses on the essentials

Whereas when you get down to like answers in Genesis since they cater to a much younger audience I would call that caffeine free diet presuppositional apologetics.

So they strip it back even even further and So yeah, Jason Jason says, yeah,

I think I can agree with that analysis. So yeah, that's where I would I would differ with you Would it be fair then to say that presupp isn't the apologetics for theologians and just say it's good apologetics for dummies then or I don't know that anybody who would call himself a dummy

I mean, I don't want to give away. I mean, I've got I'll have a whole I'll have a whole Focus on a classical so don't get too far.

Oh, yeah. Good point. Good point Yeah, but but I think you know the you know,

I had the way I was introduced Matt to classical was Someone explained it this way and I don't

I really don't think this is a fair representation But this is what one apologist explained it as That evidential you look at the evidences first and you start with evidence to try to prove

God exists Presuppositional is you you start with the Bible you know and accepting that You know to prove

God exists and classical is a mix of the both and I I've never found classical to really be the mix of the both in that way, but more as you explain more of a philosophical argument

Yeah, how would you how would you argue if someone made that argument with you

Because you're in that camp. I wasn't I didn't think it fair I'd want to ask them a little bit more what they mean by it

I think I can kind of get I think it might just be a sloppy Attempt to describe it.

That's not accurate I think your instinct is right because I wouldn't describe it like that because there is a fundamental difference

I've already explained sort of the difference between classical and evidential in terms of order The differences between classicalism and presuppositional ism are not quite as simple as just an order difference

It's more of a propriety difference in terms of where you start so there's order issues going on there, but the issue of Both camps will will believe about Romans 1 19 and 20 that it justifies their view because God's revelation is so clear and Then how do you in that sentence?

Well a presuppositional is going to end that sentence by saying because it's so clear your demonstrations cannot be probabilistic they have to be certain and different preceptors will say that in different ways and Classicalists will say that well because the evidence because God's revelation is so clear

Everybody not only gets the message which both sides will agree to that, but it's actual real knowledge

We can't twist knowledge and suppress knowledge that we don't in fact have and so it is appropriate to see common notions that the believer and the unbeliever share and can form the foundation of our of our

Conversation with each other, of course Presuppositionalist is gonna say that well, no, we don't we don't deny common ground though.

Van Til didn't deny common ground He made a big deal about how he wasn't denying that but there is sort of a

Line there, but we're always asking like where is that line then between what an unbeliever?

Can understand versus what he can't understand if it's inappropriate for us to form positive

Demonstrations for God's existence or for scripture because of the noetic effects of sin because they they need to be regenerated first Well, if that's true,

I would ask how How does the presuppositionalists? Attack against their foundations the unbelievers foundations.

How does that fare any better if the unbeliever doesn't know or sorry If the unbeliever doesn't mean the same thing by cause or by goodness or something that we do

Then we're kind of at this Deadlock with the unbeliever.

Where do we proceed from there? So they were just gonna take a different approach to that. Yeah I'll ask

Dan. Do you would you want to? Answer that at all. I mean you got next week. I know but he kind of posed it so I didn't know if you want to To be honest with you

I'm struggling with a cold over here. So I wasn't really listening with the intent of answering questions I Think I think

Matt I would answer I guess this way is to say and I and then I have done this with I'll deal with an unbeliever who tells me

I don't believe in God and I would just go to scripture and say well, have you have you ever been wrong?

They'll say yes I say, okay. God can't be wrong. And he says you do know God exists So who should

I trust someone who can't lie and can't be wrong and knows everything or? Someone who doesn't know everything can be wrong and can actually lie and deceive themselves right, so I End up appealing to the scripture in that and I just continue on with the conversation and Sometimes, you know you get interesting results

If you go back a few episodes, we're gonna be bringing up Godless grandma again and maybe even tonight but in a few weeks, but you go back to the episode we had with her and you could see what happens when

She gets very offended when you know, I actually believed and now I don't he doesn't agree. Okay. Well, you know but you get that so But but I always go back to you know, a friend of mine and I were in California and I remember just sitting there this

Guy, he's he's walking his bike He had a book in the in the basket and my my friend size talking to him and just goes

You know, he just the guy says why don't I don't really believe in God? And psychos, yes, you do and literally the guy just puts his head down shakes and goes, yeah,

I do It was just it was just like we both looked each other laughed like he just he's cave so quickly like we knew you did

But okay. Thanks So, yeah

I've got a little bit of a line of questioning that I could hit Matt with here. Don't don't hit him.

He's a nice guy Okay, okay, I'll keep the violence that's the pirate in me one to come out, you know

Careful nowadays, you know Democrats take everything. So literally they don't know how to take a joint, you know I mean

I said on Facebook to it someone else who understands jujitsu That hey, you be careful.

I'm gonna choke you out and Facebook removed it for for violence Like you see the smiley face you get get the context like okay liberals to have no sense of humor anymore

No, no, they're not. They're not so funny. So so Matt Some questions

I have for you Would you say that? Typically most of those who object to your form of apologetics they tend to be presuppositional

In in more entrenched theological circles, which I've been in the last 10 years Yes, when

I was a new believer, not so much. It was more just a more general fideism

I was giving a talk one time at Boise State and after I did my whole talk and And there's were mostly

Christians None of the atheist professors were man enough to come to the darn thing, even though we invite them.

But anyway this guy In the front row stands up afterwards weird at Q &A time and He's a

Christian and he starts objecting To pretty much everything. I just said and he said why are we getting into this philosophy?

Why are we doing this philosophy philosophy philosophy? And I thought to myself, I don't know verse that's exactly how he said it, but I thought to myself why?

Why are you here? That's what this was gonna be on apologetics and and stuff like that So I think there there's another group of people and I don't want to conflate them all together

There's a general and you see this outside of Calvinistic circles. Mostly it is more of a general anti -intellectualism

So the first 10 years as I was a believer, it was more that it was more people just acting to the life of the intellect

In general, okay. Okay, and in more of your inner circles as you know, the the deeper thinkers

It tends to be you tend to run into Presuppositionalists who who make some arguments against your your way of doing apologetics

Would you that's kind of what you said in that regard, right? Yeah, and it's and of course there's a spectrum there, too

I mean, yeah, and I promise I'm not gonna pick on priests up people I think priests up is great, but I want to hit you a four four

Presuppositionalist objections to the classical argument. I just want to give you an opportunity to respond to four

Arguments against your approach and just for watching or listening just recognize It's not the pre suppers that are saying that they're gonna hit him with these four

It's it's the cumulative guy that wants to mix everything together Just if there's any Facebook moderators listening,

I don't actually mean I'm gonna hit him. Yes, so So so the first objection that you probably have heard and probably responded to is probably the

Neutrality fallacy the assertion that classical apologetics assumes

Neutrality and reasoning and this is why they reject, you know reject it

They claim that all reasoning is rooted in one's worldview

Either in submission to or in rebellion against God and so the issue with your perspective is that you come from the

Idea really that that reasoning has this neutral state a

Preceptor would say no Those who don't know God are in rebellion against him.

And so is their reasoning? What would your response to that be? Well, there's there's two ways you can mean that one is you can identify somebody in this case a classicalist who's actually guilty of Suggesting that people's reason is either not affected by the fall in any serious way or that we don't have worldview lenses at all

And we don't have any biases, etc all that stuff and there's plenty of people floating around, you know in all camps that will fall into that or some that take that on as their whole well, certainly the

Enlightenment was the Ground zero of people that believe that so if that's what somebody means by that.

I would say to them. Can you produce? Examples of real representatives of classical apologetics that are in fact guilty of that and for a long time

Thomas Aquinas was the the whipping boy for that and what's happened in the last 10 years is that there's been a massive reassessment of Aquinas's writings and a lot of Evidence that a lot of people that were making those assertions for a hundred years hadn't actually read

Aquinas in any serious way so my first response would be I agree.

That's a bad thing Can you produce some examples of somebody who's actually guilty of it? The second thing you can mean by that though is more of the worldview

Aspect to the objection and I want to say that's a very ironic objection and it's one of the first things that turned me off from presuppositionalism and that is the idea that If you reason autonomously and what is meant by that are that you have logical antecedents

Premises presuppositions that come outside of Scripture in nature Whether they're philosophical arguments elements of science, whatever it is

That you're arguing from that to God God is your conclusion or Scripture is your conclusion based on evidence, whatever else

The irony of that is that you're saying that what's out there is neutral now again if you say no

No, I'm not saying that I'm saying the classicalist is the one saying that but that just goes back to the First variation

I would say produce for me somebody who's actually guilty of that if that's not what you're doing and you're saying simply by virtue of arguing outside of worldview bubbles

That the unbeliever has a worldview bubble the regenerate believer has a worldview bubble the

Christian has one The Muslim has one and they're all gonna argue on the basis of their own presuppositions the

Muslim on the basis of the Quran the empiricist on the basis of empirical evidence, etc, etc, and If we can't argue from outside of that In other words, if there's no common sphere that holds some truth that stands over us all that we can appeal to Then I don't know what else to call that but relativism the irony here.

Is that that's actually neutrality. I would say science textbooks language

Logic these aren't neutral. These are all God's property I thought that we all wanted to affirm that and so I would just say that if it's that second variation

It's pretty ironic because it really concedes truth outside of the scripture to some neutral territory as if it's not

God's property so would you say that a classical apologist Such as yourself you would respond

By really saying that reason itself is a gift from God and it's designed and used

Actually to recognize his existence and so engaging in a rational discussion with unbelievers actually can be a great tool to reveal their like inconsistencies of rejecting

God While also using the faculties that he gave them is essentially where you would respond to that yeah, and using reason and even pointing to reason is not the same thing as Allowing them to define what reason is so we're just as able to and we would applaud the presuppositionalist

In saying well, but he's got a faulty definition of what reason is or the laws of logic. Sure Well, let's correct them then and how are we going to correct them?

Except on the basis of those very things in their nature if we correct an unbeliever about logic

Well, we're not going to be specifically just regurgitating the data of scripture because scripture and this is no defect in scripture

But scripture is not a logic textbook. It assumes it it uses it, but it doesn't teach it

It doesn't teach the law. So how else do we correct the unbeliever about those things in nature or about reason?

Except by those very words and the tools in nature and right using logic and reason

You kind of stole my thunder a little bit because you brought up autonomous Reasoning or the autonomy of human reason and so maybe we can touch up on that a little bit.

So Presuppositionalist they'll argue that classical apologetic place apologetics places too much trust in human reasoning human reasoning and evidence and really makes a human judgment the final authority of God's rather than God's Word and so You kind of touched up on that.

Is there anything you'd like to throw in there? Just to kind of add to what you've already said I know that there is a general rebuttal that that goes to that but what do you guys say there anything else?

Two things and they're both about revelation and the concept of revelation The first is that There's nothing in general revelation or in our our bad ideas about general revelation that special revelation can't correct so if we start in general revelation in a particular line of reasoning, we're not saying that Scripture does not function as a corrective lens over our views of general revelation

Of course when it does that the Bible is not really correcting nature The Bible is correcting our faulty views of nature and if somebody says well, we don't have that problem with scripture

Well, I've got that problem everywhere. I move I make mistakes about nature and scripture So I make

I have the same problem with scripture namely me and so scripture is going to be correcting me

About nature and scripture and so the answer is not to pit nature against scripture

The second thing I'd say about revelation is the idea of autonomous reason and by the way Preceptors are not the only ones that talk like this

Even some of the best Roman Catholic authors or evangelical reformed authors will use this phrase for a long time long before van

Til Unaided reason I hate that phrase Unaided reason because the context of it is always so -and -so whether it's

Aquinas or whoever else is Trying to show you something about God or scripture

Apart from and what they mean to say is apart from special revelation But they say by unaided reason in other words apart from any revelation from God And I think classicalists and preceptors should join together and say what that hold on a minute there general revelation is

Revelation, so it's not apart from revelation. It is apart from special revelation

Special revelation can correct our faulty views of general revelation. So I put all that together as a corrective

Okay, so I heard I think I heard someone scream into their you know Device that they're watching or listening and saying did you just compare presuppositionalistic

Roman Catholics? Clarify We know that someone's good.

I I'm trying to save the email that I'm gonna get well I I jump in I jump in to to mass defense there, you know

Catholics there are Catholics who probably like a good plate of spaghetti and there's preceptors that like a good plate of spaghetti

Doesn't mean that he's saying that you know Catholics and preceptors are the same. It's just he's noticed

Instances where they've done a similar a similar thing. Is that what you're trying to say there? Yeah, and some of my favorite authors to some of my favorite authors will do this and it's just a it's a pet peeve

Apparently only I have apparently nobody else But I just hate that expression unaided reason

That people will use all the time I just think it clouds the issue and I I like to be more clear about you know

Both of those forms of revelation being revelation to tag on to your response though. Would would you also?

even affirm this sort of response as a classical apologist By affirming that reason and evidence are actually tools that God himself uses to bring people to faith

Yeah, you see that in Scripture itself. I mean the historical case for the resurrection We have

Paul, you know reverting back to hey, we've got witnesses That's a form of evidential apologetics right there but also that's something that classicalists themselves use once they

Establish that God exists. There's a favorite text that evidentials will use is

John 20 where Jesus says to Thomas you know because Thomas said unless I put my hands in the wound

I will not believe and Jesus and by the way, I don't think that the moral of the story is that Jesus Jesus didn't say go read the

Bible Yeah, no, he didn't he didn't say that or you should already meet you. He was standing right there I think

I think evidentialist can overreach in their use of that text however, there is one important point that I think they score on and that is that even if we say that Thomas was

Partly sinful. I mean Jesus affirmed his his use of the evidence, but somebody could say well

There's tons of scriptures where demands for signs are treated as sinful By scripture.

Well, I think demands versus I think they're contextual differences. You can you can tease out but also

Let's let's assume that for the sake of argument Let's assume that the point of the text is not to make Thomas out to be virtuous or his method of seeking out to be

Virtuous, let's just say for the sake of argument. He was sinning We can do that with Thomas, but we can't do it with Jesus Jesus does

Condescend to his level and he allows him to to touch and he does in other places

Say believe me is also in John's gospel chapter 14 believe me on account of my words and and my works or on account of the works that I do and Somebody could say well, but that's in Scripture and there's a bunch of cases like this and that's true

But I think it would miss the point that you still have God appealing to people's

Senses toward empirical evidence even about fulfilled prophecies before they happen He's testing certain things by reason and by evidence.

There's a there's a great chapter at the beginning. There's a book called Without excuse it's

David Haynes Edited it that Davinot puts it out the first chapter a guy named

M Dan Kemp. Yeah, that's his name. He writes a Chapter where he goes through a couple of Old Testament verses in Exodus Deuteronomy and elsewhere where God appeals to people's

Reason and evidence as a means of validating the prophecy or validating the prophet in the case of Deuteronomy 18

Again Evidentialist can stretch that too far, but I think it's still worth noting that Scripture does exemplify that Okay, and so so as a classicalist you'd affirm that Reason and evidence they're helpful tools, but they don't necessarily replace divine revelation and that's the issue that the

Presuppositional is taking with you on that and and I do have a third thing

I want to I don't know. What's a better word Andrew not hit him with I guess Before you get that one

Let me I want to see if Dan has any questions because Dan is gonna have to go at the pretty soon Okay, and do you have any questions that you want to ask of Matt No, I'm just I'm I'm kind of in listening mode.

The one the one Minor objection I would I would have is that I wouldn't say that presuppositionalists are opposed to using evidence

But we would say that it's it's how the evidence is used is the key factor, right?

So I've got a presentation Called apologetics is not what you think and I have another one called.

Why should anyone believe the Bible? but in the in the former presentation, I really kind of drive home the fact that you know, there's a lot of Whenever evidence

I think the proper role of evidence is to one to refute bad objections

Faulty objections to the Bible, right? It's to tear down the every argument that sets itself up up against the knowledge of God Another another use a proper proper in my perspective

Use of evidences would be to to bolster the faith of those who already believe in the in the prime case there would be

John the Baptist, you know when John the Baptist was doubting in prison, you know, what did

Jesus say says, you know Go tell John what you've seen You know, the dead are the dead are raised to life. The lepers are healed, you know, the blind receive their sight, etc

But I'll just a little quick footnote on that one even with that that was really a veiled

Appeal to scripture. So I'd say, you know, it's not it's not a matter of you know, we don't you know

You do we don't use evidences at all No, it's just how you use them is right is the key objection and that's actually a really good segue to my third point

But Andrew, is there anything you want to jump into before I get to that? Yeah, I'll put this up here because this is just kind of funny is

Michael the Canadian atheist says Strong attorney. I I enjoy talking to Christians Speaking to a pre supper.

That is just a waste of time Why there's no use speaking with someone who starts with their conclusion now first off Michael you've come in here before with both myself and Matt slick and talked with both of us and we're

Pre -suppers and you kept coming back. We we miss you You can always come back in but I will admit Michael it is kind of funny because an atheist usually takes the position of there is no supernatural and That's their starting point and then they try to make sense of this whole world from their conclusions, so Is this the pot calling the kettle black

Michael? I was just thinking I'm just asking I bought this is kettle.

Yeah Um, so he's saying Matt was on our podcast recently, okay

Well, you know, I don't think you ever had me on your podcast recently I know that we haven't but you're welcome to come back in here

Michael. We like having you To the point that you were making

Matt Drew or our co -host here said the resurrection Evidence wasn't enough to persuade the guards outside the tomb to believe.

How would you respond to that? I agree, and I agree with where he's going to it's like at the end of the

Luke 16 31 even if somebody rises from the dead You won't believe and so obviously

Well, all of us. I don't know all of us, but all of us here We're all Calvinist and so we would believe that you have to be regenerated in order for that to happen

Yes, you might have you might jump to conclusions there. Oh, are we not all Calvinist? okay, I am

NOT a Calvinist but I have sincere love and appreciation for my Calvinist brothers and Appreciate their positions.

So what do you mean what he means by that is he doesn't understand what Calvinism is He just doesn't understand it but the application

Here is that the whether it's the person that Jesus was talking about in Luke 16 or whether it's the guards at the tomb

The reason they don't believe is because they're dead so even though the dead men just got up and and started to live their problem is that they have a

Heart of stone and they need a heart of flesh that can see God properly So the classicalist who's reformed and that's another problem here

Is that a lot of people under the banner of classical that are not reformed and so not only do they not get this part?

But it starts to affect the rest of their apologetics and theology too. And I have in mind people like William Lane Craig And people like that.

So it's it's not always as simple as to say So and so as a classicalist, I would say if they're not a reformed classicalist and they live long enough

They're not going to be a classicalist for very long because it's gonna start to affect other things in their worldview But speaking for me

I would say that we would handle the situation where you see unbelief in spite of Evidence in spite of you could put an infinity of evidence up there and it wouldn't regenerate them so but the assumption there might be that classicalism

Has a burden to use reason and evidence to do that Which only the Holy Spirit can do and we would say no, that's that's not the case at all

They still need to be regenerated. So then the question is well, why use or how use?

Positive data of any kind really to an unbeliever which kind of gets to my my point earlier so Because this is a question

I was gonna bring up after You know Adam got to his four, but this works in really well a question

I was gonna ask of you is are there different camps of classical so knows when people

Right. We talk about Presuppositional we've already kind of point out. There's there's like the Ventilian and Bonson and and then there's others that you know differing views

So do you have different camps within classical apologetics? I mean, I was gonna ask it afterwards, but it fits in Well now with what you said, so Yeah, it depends who's getting to call everybody a classicalist

Especially in Britain, you'll have people calling Richard Swinburne and and even

Alistair McGrath Classicalists, but when you look at what they mean by classicalism, it's a spattering of evidentialism and classicalism or that's that's

Swinburne but in In McGrath's case, it's it's nothing of the sort that that gets in the whole thing

But then more famously for us in America, you'd have the Biola camp Moreland I Like his stuff more.

There's some things that Craig does you think well He's he he advocates middle knowledge and stuff like that That's true and but that affects his apologetics because if you look at his version of the cosmological argument as opposed to a

Thomistic version There are some at least Craig's version you have this idea of this infinite series that can't happen

But it's more because of why that can't happen in a linear process where you have this the impossibility of Infinite regress is more of a linear thing than it is

About efficient cause that there has to be a cause outside the whole series of ordered events

So a Thomist is going to answer that different than someone like Craig who kind of believes that God and it's not just Molin ism

It's he's to the point where he he has this idea of God once he creates That he is bound to time and in time and so there is a synergy between somebody's

Doctrine and their view of God and their apologetics and that creates camps Well one more thing on the camps the free will defense creates this as well

So I was just mentioning Craig, but you got guys like Alvin planninga who just puts philosophical sophistication on Cs -lewis's

Lewis was really the one that that popularized the idea of the free will defense in his book the problem of pain

And I love Lewis and I accept most of all his stuff in apologetics, but that argument is horrible

It's it's unnecessary and it doesn't answer the question and it affects negatively big chunks of Christian doctrine

Which maybe wasn't Lewis's forte. But anyway, those people are considered classical that will use that defense sometimes even though Lewis and planning it or not considered that and I would say that those people are increasingly

I Don't think this should be considered classical Would it be?

All right, if I jump in and switch gears, I'd really like to affirm where Dan was going with with his points that he brought up because I think the point of where Dan was headed is

Presuppositionalists, they don't actually have an issue with evidence. The issue is the starting point Yeah, and and that's what they would that is actually my my third question

So that's why I said it was a really good said segue there Dan because presuppositionalists will claim

Against the classicalists that they start with human reasoning You know instead of God's revelation, whereas they believe

God's existence in the truth of the Bible those things got a Be the starting point and so that would be what they would hit you guys with so to speak

So, what do you got to say to that I'd say it's partly true and partly not necessarily true

The part that's true is that we do start outside of Scripture I would say when we do that like I was saying before we it's not that we would start with reason in terms of our

Subjective reasoning reasons not the judge there. We would start with general revelation

Sure, it's our reason doing it. But of course our reason is what's active when we're interpreting Scripture as well now

I would also say that I have a great amount of sympathy for the idea in smaller circles of worldview reasoning and interpreting

Miracles on the basis of what the whole Bible says part of that's inevitable. We have to do it Anyway, you know if somebody starts if we talk about the empty tomb and somebody says well, you know dead men don't rise or You know or or we find out that somebody that has trouble with the virgin birth

But the same person has no problem with creation. And what do we say? We usually say something like okay, wait, you've got no problem with God speaking the universe into existence

But you've got a problem with him doing this on the DNA level What are we doing there? We're kind of doing what presuppositionalists are saying there

We're starting from a certain grid a certain way of interpreting evidence And in this case miracles and saying well you have to understand miracles in light of that I would say though that when presuppositionalists or really any of us do that Even there we're using

Abstract logical reasoning we're borrowing from general revelation in the use of logic in the connection between those things

So I agree with the presuppositionalist that we do do that and should I think that I think though that even there you see reason and nature

Pressing in God's revelation not our own interpretation of it, but you see the use of those

Extra biblical tools that God's given us, right? So essentially you're saying that starting with reason and evidence does not exclude

God's revelation Like we're not antithetical to each other, right? yeah, and so Rather than that, would you say that they kind of lay a foundation for why faith in God's revelation is actually intellectually

Sound and consistent like that's what you would say, right? I would even people on my team get nervous about the word foundation

I've even had to clean it out of my doctoral dissertation interesting because You can see what it can miscommunicate the idea that well

We can't move on as Christians until we satisfy some standard that some atheist gives me

So anyway, so and and of course, I want to say no He doesn't get to decide that that really would put that really would put

God in the dock if we did that So I would use I would use different language to talk about I use the words now

Logical antecedents rather than foundations or some alternative authority. It's not that reason is an authority over Scripture It's that very often our

Premises are something outside of Scripture and our conclusions something in Scripture That's a really good way to edge things out for your argument there.

I like the way you put that another thing that a pre -supper may hit you with Is that you use ask you?

Hey, just stop beating the guy up All right. All right Right for him and I'm out right now so They'll say you're that actually you use circular reasoning they may accuse you of Allowing non -christians to judge

God by using autonomous logic thus falling into circular reasoning

What's your response to that? Well, it's kind of a mishmash of two issues. One is the circular issue to begin with I think a presupposition list that I've heard of frame

Explains this the clearest but when he does so and you can find this in his book doctrine of the knowledge of God most drawn -out

This is where he'll say look everybody reasons circularly The empiricist is only going to subject the data to empirical starting points

The Muslim is only going to reason from the Quran and so on and so on and so on Well, our ultimate presuppositions are scripture, but that's no different than anybody else

Well, I don't disagree with frame that we all do have ultimate commitments and it's gonna take some real

Defeaters to get somebody to change their ultimate commitments. So nobody disagrees with that I think at that point he's taking some license and this will be the fallacy of equivocation in How he's using the word circular because when when classicalists say that presuppositional ism engages in the fallacy of?

Circular reasoning we mean by that The form of somebody's argument assuming in their premise what they need to conclude in their conclusion

So that's never a good thing to do is to just to argue in a circle formally So frame is using and I think a lot of presuppositional is do they'll they'll use the idea of circular reasoning to mean something that we wouldn't disagree with but they're using it in a way that's

Doesn't mean the same thing as the fallacy of circular reasoning And so I'd said but then the other issue there is again

I kind of addressed already is that I would just say no, we're not necessarily Starting from the same place, you know

If I if I meet an unbeliever where he is and I try to explain to him what he what he thinks He believes is actually shows something else in a sense.

I am I'm meeting him where he is That doesn't mean I can't correct him. That doesn't mean I can't say okay when you use the word good

You don't mean the same thing I do and in fact, it's it's deficient You can't mean something objective by it unless you know, so you can start the process of correcting them, right?

and in everyone Including presuppositional is need to use some form of reason to engage with the claim of the

Bible and the claims of the Bible in the first place right, and so well now you're making a presuppositional argument, right is that the

That immaterial ability to reason first exists, right? Well, and I think that's where the classical apologists they respond to that particular question by saying they're not placing

Reason above God, but they're actually showing that logic and reason when used properly Leads to acknowledging

God's truth. That's where I joked on your show that you know All the all the guys ended up in, you know, essentially saying well, yeah, you know

Land on presuppositional because we always are gonna go actually, you know put this up now a question

I was asked much earlier from our co -host drew. He said At the end of the day if your goal isn't to get to the gospel.

You don't need to engage in apologetics Yeah, well we you say duh, but you know, the reality is there's a lot of people who

If you watch how they do Their apologetics Slash gospel.

That's actually a good point though All they're doing is arguing over evidences or philosophy or whatever and they're never actually getting to the gospel

So how important is it? There's one guy in particular

I'm not gonna mention any names you might know who he is, but One of his his his mantras is that he doesn't he's not concerned about getting to the gospel

He just wants to put a stone in somebody's shoe and cause him to walk around on it And I think there's there's some value to that, you know to get people to think about what they truly believe

Because oftentimes we don't really self -analyze what we believe until somebody asks us, you know, oftentimes very simple questions

But to pull up short and say I'm not concerned with getting to the gospel Seems incredibly deficient to me and this is from a major ministry leader who says this right?

So I love his work One of his books changed my life and it's it's been it's been great, but I think it's a real mistake

That often gets made And when I when I listen to There's a there's a conference that goes on annually here in the in the

People's Republic of Washington, Estan Called the worldview apologetics conference.

It's the longest -running apologetics conference in the United States And I attend before I was invited to speak there.

I attended I think 15 out of 17 years the that the conference had been running and I can't think of one time where there was a clear presentation of the gospel or There was a call to repentance on the behalf of anybody, right?

It was all just you know, anyway So there I think there's that that's that is actually quite prevalent in Modern -day apologetics is the gospel is neglected and there is no call to repentance

It becomes purely an academic exercise and that's the danger from all camps.

I Feel compelled to defend a friend But and by the way, he doesn't say he says to put a stone in their shoe

You know, he doesn't say to walk around on it that I know of at least but but yeah And and he and I've talked about this over dinner many times

Because we and I have very different approaches right his he like he says he he wants to get the conversation started

He wants to get people just to start thinking about things of God and and he really does hold to that God will will you know, he may be the one just planting the seed and God will bring someone else along to You know to water it and to to you know produce, you know to pick the fruit

I think Dan you and I have a very different approach and and you know, he recognizes that He'll like he'll say it even when

I was, you know in radio station with him I Remember an atheist call a guy called in and said he was an atheist

Greg missed that you didn't hear that part. He heard the question Sorry and so So what ended up at it was he goes well

See, that's the evangelist in you you're you like because we go into a break and I'm like Why didn't you share the gospel with him?

he missed the part where the guy said he was an atheist because he was focused on the question and answering the question and Like he said, yeah, if I if I would have heard that I would have answered differently

But he pointed out like that's the difference with he and I he's like you're you're looking for gospel conversations

You know, but I think that To take you know to kind of defend him in a sense.

I think he he wouldn't say he's avoiding the gospel He would I wouldn't say I wouldn't say he was avoiding it either

I'm just saying it's not a goal of his to get to the gospel. He doesn't feel compelled to go there What you guys are the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, right?

Yeah, not our clever mental machinations but he also recognizes and I'm trying to even though I agree with what you're saying and I you know he and I've discussed this and I disagree with him on it on how he says it sometimes but He would say that you know, he has no problem getting into the gospel conversation

But his intent is not to make every like he's gonna just trust God is gonna work it out He just wants to push them a little bit further.

I would want to say let's get to the gospel Adam What were you saying? Well, I think this kind of in a way ties in with Actually our discussion with Daniel over on my podcast when he was trying to explain the point of evidential

Apologetics from his perspective. I asked him this question. I said is your goal to Try to coax coax them out of their delusion and I think even for pre suppers,

I think with apologetics We're often playing the long game

That we may not get a conversion Through one conversation.

The goal should always be to get to the gospel and I think

I Would have probably worded whoever this gentleman, you know this apologist

I would have worded his comment a little differently I would have said my goal is my first goal is to get to the gospel and if I don't get there

I at least want you know, I at least want to Make a solid attempt at coaxing them out of their delusion or at least

I guess put a rock in their shoe Yeah They put up some comments here quickly first is

Michaels. He said striving fraternity good point now remember This is Michael the Canadian atheist saying this.

Okay. So for some of you folks recognize this is this is an atheist Perspective.

Okay. I spoke with someone on Clubhouse an hour an hour and a half in I Asked him if he wanted to share the gospel and he never got there

Okay, so I Would contend them. What are you doing now? You mentioned

Daniel so we might as well put up his comment Daniel Did you mention Daniel McAdams will be in here in a few weeks says far too many quote social media keyboard apologist unquote are more concerned with proving their opponent wrong and Themselves correct and never get to preaching the gospel and and I would agree with that Let me we do this because I know we got

Chuck backstage And I know Dan you got to as you say jet You know

You don't have to leave out. You're flying somewhere. I guess you know, that's what all the cool kids say these days, you know

Yeah, I got the jet yo Maybe that was just back in the 90s.

I'm just 30 years back Yeah, all kinds of weird stuff Well before you take off late.

They just I want to announce a couple things Quickly again and folks feel free to share this view if you're enjoying the conversation if you are learning something from it

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Anthony Russo was affected by it But he had no financial Need so if you guys wouldn't mind praying for Anthony, I think he's he's he's kind of getting power back

It's kind of in and out. But like I said earlier just remember you mean it's it's really sad, but I don't know why but I've heard several reports actually,

I mean it was on the news, but person people I I've heard from personally that said in their area

FEMA is is people are trying to bring stuff in and help people out FEMA is taking the the food and things like that and Saying they have to be the ones to distribute it.

They're actually arresting people who are getting in their way and so You know one person told me that it's it's there's a lot of violence that it's now coming at things

Society is is breaking down there You know politically I would just say when it was

Katrina the argument was that that Bush hates white beer doesn't care about black people Because you know mostly black society.

Can we now say Kamala Harris doesn't like care about white people because they're Doing even worse than Bush did

I mean Bush didn't get in the way Bush didn't arrest people for trying to help people

He encouraged it. I Don't know what the government going on with the government here, but I you got to wonder what this is about that they're there

They there was a delay in reporting of of the the strength of the hurricane

It surprised people So yeah, I don't quite know what's going on But you know one thing

I do know is I know that You know if if like say Dan wanted to get himself a good night of sleep

He would go and get himself on my pillow. That's what I know for sure And and Dan would Dan wouldn't go with like the standard size the

Queen said Dan would need a king -sized my pillow you know and so For his his

California King bed that he has you would need an egg long sized pillow. Yes They probably have it there because they got not just pillows they got towels sheets they even got mattresses

I personally love their Mattress topper if you want to if we had we had a guest on my apologetics live show that he said

They couldn't afford a new mattress So they went to my pillow got their three -inch mattress topper and it was like getting a whole new bed

At a third of the price. So if you consider doing that go to my third of a bed.

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SFE to get your discounts It also lets them know you heard about them here. So they continue supporting us and after a good night of sleep

I I'm just gonna guess that you know you know Matt wakes up in the morning and wants a good cup of coffee and I'm just just son about Matt and that makes me think that and so what

Matt should be drinking Is squirrelly Joe's coffee because not only would he get a great cup of coffee he'd be supporting a fellow

Christian brother and so squirrelly Joe's coffee is We're glad to have them as sponsors have their coffee every morning and you will get 20 % off your first order if you use the promo code

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I don't know which I will say that our webmaster does buy his coffee He's gets it from squirrelly

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Like if you're if your church was so boring that you needed a five -pound bag of coffee to get you through the service

I was about to say man. You got other issues Well, you know there was a conference you and I spoke at with Aaron Brewster, and he doesn't drink coffee

He took a bag of squirrelly Joe's coffee home for his wife But I did see him when I was preaching with a my pillow

I don't know how to take that like maybe if he had the coffee. He wouldn't have needed the pillow during my message

I don't know But anyway We do appreciate our sponsors.

Let me bring Chuck in quickly. He's been he's been backstage since the beginning of the show Chuck welcome to to the show and and Dan's on his way out.

Thanks Dan for coming in We'll see you will have Dan for two hours next week, and he's gonna talk presuppositional apologetics

I'm gonna try to Matt I'll come in and talk to him with tough questions, maybe Take care guys

Thanks Dan Chuck, how are you? I'm doing great this evening. How are y 'all doing? Good good you

I watched your video you had with godless grandma And we're gonna have you come in would we say it was sometime in November, right?

Yeah, I think November 14th, maybe yeah, I mean I'm gonna look and see and See ya

November 14th, we're gonna we'll talk in detail about that exchange I'll just say this

I had a theory at the end of the show when she came in with me and I think watching your show with you.

I was right that she could be really kind of nice and and kind of gentle and Then she wants to play the victim for her audience

And it was it was just kind of interesting how? She you know

She's got a nice tactic. I will have to pull some examples up from the two shows and we could play that but yeah

How did you think that that conversation went just briefly? Yeah, I've got a funny story to tell so she ended the stream

Right, and so she and I are still They're seeing each other and talking to each other and she goes your religion is vile

And then so I go back into my standard question by what ultimate authority do you declare that by that by the time?

I got to the word what she clicked out and tucked her tail between her legs She did longer with you then with than us because as soon as we ended the stream she left

She bought it immediately and I will I will I haven't gotten around to it I will make a clip of the ending of that show where For Matt and Adam or others who haven't seen the one with godless grandma.

We had a pretty cordial conversation throughout At the end She brought up project 2025 because she was she basically was trying to argue

Christians are trying to force everyone To believe, you know, they're trying to force everyone to be

Christians and I said who's trying to force you to go to church Name that what legislation she goes have you have you read project 2025?

So I just quickly turned I said, well, have you seen act blue 2025 and she was like,

I don't know what that is That's the Democrat version of it They're like they're all the think -tanks think -tanks Every four years try to come up with things for both their sides to to say here's what we want you to do when you get in so act blue, which is a

Money laundering operation for the Democrats. I'm being very I'm not mincing words in that They it's been exposed that way like basically if you give money say you give five dollars to act blue To you know to support a

Democrat They then have other because there's a limit on how much you can give and there's people who are giving like five dollar donations every minute for hours and People have gone to their homes and said have you know,

I'd only donated once and that was years ago And so what they're they're actually now they have all the names of people they're doing it in their name

So, you know to stay under records and that's how they're raising, you know this some of this money so But it was really funny where she got so upset

I said what didn't what in project 2025 is forcing you to go to church or forcing you to believe

Christianity and She just she is the one that turned and we just made an issue She goes what you don't you people just you were killing people you weren't getting vaccinated and you know people, you know there was kovat in order, you know, so I started to explain some issues with kovat and She wasn't ready for for a counter -argument with it and he was the one that brought it up with the yeah with the vaccines

And so she gets real upset with me and goes, you know Yeah and then

Drew was going off my co -host was going off on a whole different tangent and she Her whole demeanor changed and she just got really rigid and I'm just like Kelly What happened here like I mean

I could see there's a difference and My co -host told me afterwards. He thought when I asked that she was gonna say him and she goes you and I'm like me

What did I do? She goes you brought up kovat. I didn't come on here to talk about kovat I wasn't ready to talk about that.

That wasn't what you brought me up. I'm like Kelly you brought it up She goes well, you know if you if you want me to discuss like that I should

You brought it up I wasn't prepared to talk about it either but I could and I did But you shouldn't bring it up if you don't want to talk about it and she oh, oh, maybe you're right, you know

That I just noticed that pattern where she just like and and she she did tell me before we started

She was gonna take the episode and put that on her channel when the corpus of your

Preparation for something like that is soundbites from CNN. You aren't gonna be very prepared for a discussion like no not an honest discussion

She would hate to get into a discussion on January 6th with me Daniel McAdams says this as a lover of Coffee who has had squirrely

Joe's coffee I can say the evidence and he's the guy that's gonna come in and talk about evidential

Apologetics folks so you can get the joke. I can say the evidence all shows that squirrely Joe's coffee is the best

Well, you know That may be the only place that you know, Daniel you can use

Evidences with your coffee now other places just not with the Bible So, uh, so yeah

So Chuck any questions that you would have maybe for for Matt here Yeah, I think

I only have one question is if you're dealing with an unbeliever who is just more open to hear the message versus Dealing with someone who is very anti Christian or anti God anti Theist do you approach those two differently or is it basically the same way?

No, I approach it differently In some of the same ways that the cumulative approach has been expressed you just meet them where they're at if they're ready to hear

Well, first of all, if they're ready to hear the gospel I go right to that and you can flesh that out with some of the things we talked about use of Scripture or simply saying no you already believe and and if you get a good response like the one that you had shared earlier and You know that'll happen.

Then you go right to the gospel if their readiness is not so much about the gospel But maybe it's about Scripture.

They'll say well, I grew up in church and I believe there's a God but And they'll bring up whatever whether it's the problem of the evil or not sure if Jesus is

God. They've been hearing stuff from progressive Christianity then the arguments gonna go more in the lines of well

Hold on if you believe in Jesus, but you don't believe in the scripture or if you believe in Jesus But that he's not divine.

Let's look at some things here. Here's where he claimed that he was divine You know, here's what he claims about Scripture then then you can make more of a beeline to some of those things

It's just to me. It's a matter of feeling them out and seeing where they're at. Okay?

Yeah I'm gonna put this you have more question or no. No, that's it. Okay, we're just gonna put this up Because we're talking about it, but KT says

I believe the guy who shot Trump gave Gave to act blue, right? Actually More than that.

Not only did both of them were they donators tack blue, but they were also doing commercials for organizations that were tied tack blue, so You know, there is that all right.

So let's get to some of The other questions that came up Oh Michael had said

He's he left but he when he a while ago He said a striving attorney to what he to what

I said and is referring to earlier in the conversation as I don't start with No, God Atheism is my conclusion.

Not my starting point Chuck I think you were you were having lots of fun with him about that.

But yeah, that was me in the end I know was yeah, I mean it is his starting point materialism

He he denies supernatural and I think years ago when he used to come in here regularly that was where a lot of our discussion was that he would say that there is no supernatural and So every time we'd give him son from the

Bible Or even give him the Bible. He wanted to throw it out because it is supernatural and And and so yeah, he may think he's not doing that.

But in fact he is He's a priest upper All right something for the wrong side, right yeah

Uh, well one of the things you said Chuck earlier that I highlighted was Facts are interpreted and judged through the lens of one one's own worldview

I think that's important for us to remember. I you know, I think that as we Look at some of this

Everyone has the same facts It's the interpretation of those facts And that's why

I would rather appeal to scripture and say like look we we know the rules of interpretation

We just apply it we're not having to sit here and take like if we look at and we'll get into this with this this evidential, you know,

I'm sure but You know, you look at a fossil one person looks at and says well my starting point is millions of years so that's proof of it and a young earth creationist look at that and say

It was created by the flood so there's proof of it right two different views same evidence It's a fossil, right?

So I think I think there's something to challenge there though. Yes everyone has the same facts and Everyone may have a different worldview, you know, let's take

Muslims. Let's take Christians and let's take atheists there's a number of Factual pieces of evidence that will all come to the same conclusion on and so that's where I'd side with the classicalists on this particular piece of debate is that logic and reason when done right is going to lead to God and so and so There's you know for example two plus two is four

That's logic, you know, that's that's reason that's logic I suspect I could be wrong that a

Christian a Muslim and an atheist will agree on that and We use the same

Logical reasoning to come to that conclusion. And so I think we're Matt's coming in with this is that when it's done, right?

You know these things are expressions. They're actually gifts of God logic and reason and As a result we should if it's done, right?

Let's say the atheist is willing to set aside his materialist presuppositions let's say the

Muslim is willing to set aside his presuppositions and Really really allow the facts to be the facts they should come to the conclusion that God's truth is well, you know the truth so I Would I am

I wrong on that Matt in any way or would you say that I'd say it's right

But I think we would I'd want to make a stronger argument. That's less focused on what?

People will tend to do because it goes back to the whole Luke 1631 even if they see someone rise from the dead

It won't believe The issue for me is more of propriety and and inevitability in other words

So let's say that the Christian and the Muslim are both arguing from the perspective of their book or at least their

Particular idea that they have of God or in the Muslims case Allah So now we're at this point

We're at the stalemate where we're all saying you see Everybody argues from within their circle or they interpret facts in light of their worldview

Okay, I think we can all agree that that's a phenomenon that we live with but then what no matter what apologetic?

Tact we take to move on from that stalemate We're going to be appealing to things outside of those two circles

Of course If you're a Christian and you believe in general revelation Then really there's no such thing as our circle anyway

Because everybody else's circle is inside of our circle if we really believe that they're borrowing from God's revelation

And anything that's outside of their circles is simply just part of reality that we want to point to so I'm not so much concerned at that point to say well, man if I just Cast my line out there they'll bite.

I don't know if they'll bite or not. Obviously the Holy Spirit has to do a work I do know one thing. There's only one place for me to cast my my line and that's in reality

And so if they have if their problem is the fantasy of their own circle. I don't want to stay in my circle

I don't want us all to stay in our circles I want us to point to this common field called reality and say to a

Muslim something like Well compare Jesus versus Muhammad in terms of their

Their life that they lived compare the text of the Bible Can be subjected to all this scrutiny versus the

Quran and its textual history and so on when I do that I'm appealing to certain things that are that are common

But they're not they're not neutral and they're certainly not the property of the secularist or whatever else.

So I Think I think it's right. We want to be out there in that common field It's really the only thing that makes apologetics what it is in any method

But it's it's more about that's where reality is than it is any expectation that I have of the unbeliever.

I Think something that kind of came into my mind as you were talking is just you're talking about the

Muslims and I absolutely believe in the effectual call of the

Holy Spirit in Conversion But I believe that the

Holy Spirit uses Things to achieve his work means so so in this case we have a

Muslim who has a Muslim worldview if the

Muslim is going to interpret truth through the presuppositions of a

Muslim and That's just how it is then how in avoiding the

Soteriological things that we can jump into there if if we're using apologetics if the

Holy Spirit is using apologetics to achieve a Conversion, how did that Muslim get to that place?

There had to have been some sort of realization that their presuppositions aren't right and so if it's if it's always going to be

Your presuppositions You're gonna interpret facts through those presuppositions

How is the conversion even possible in the sense that why even use apologetics?

To try to win that Muslim over right at a point that's fair to make

I Think that's the point that a classicalist and an evidentialist would make toward presuppositional ism and I think even when you start to get on the method level with someone like Van Til or whoever else and they and they say

No, we we make arguments. We even use evidence like like we talked about before we make arguments, but we make more indirect arguments

That's that whole by what standard where we attack the presuppositions of the unbelieving worldview

I would I would say to a presuppositionalist at that point What's the genuine difference between how the unbeliever if the unbeliever does not see things the way we do?

What is the effectual difference or the decisive difference between an indirect approach that the presuppositional is takes

Showing them why their presuppositions are inconsistent Versus us making a positive demonstration whether it's a natural theological argument or a use of evidence if they don't understand in general

Wouldn't that cut both ways to either of those forms of argument? That's why

I would say Yeah, and let me just based on time like we got some questions that are back for that We got backstage may not be on topic and I don't know if you guys are gonna want to answer or not.

So but I Do want to I do want to just say one last question before I go to some of these ones that are may not

Be off topic Matt. Do you have any good resources that you could recommend? For people that want to start studying about classical apologetics

Yeah The easiest most up -to -date ones would be the ones that have been put out by Davinot press

David Haynes put out one called natural theology that's much more concise and then there's that one that I briefly mentioned without excuse, which is a

Compilation different authors contribute chapters But then I'd also go back to the one that was co -authored by Sproul Gerstner and Lindsley called classical apologetics and then there's a new one coming out and and this is and this by Keith Matheson This is actually more of as far as I understand it.

He's gonna be more of a critique of presuppositional ism And I think it's called toward a reformed apologetic

One more by JV Fesco this came out in 2019 called reforming Apologetics, which is kind of also in the line of critique of Vantill So anyway, those are sort of a collection of ones

I would look at okay good Well, let's see. We got some questions that were backstage

Let me start with this one first and this is from Fatima And for you guys

Fatima it for Fatima it's morning there where she is she's from the Philippines So so you guys just reached all around the world quite literally

We got Canada. We got you know, actually with two people Canada at least that I know of in Australia and Philippines that I saw so Fatima asks, how can

I assess which school of apologetics is best for me and I guess I would say

Fatima that that is the reason we're doing these episodes Adam has his you know podcast that we mentioned earlier and I guess

Adam maybe it would be good I I forgot the title for the episode and that for folks.

It's bold Apologia podcast. Yes, I forget the episode

Yes, and so it is apologetics dash What is the best apologetic methodology and You know panel and so you can go on Spotify.

I've got Apple podcasts. It's also on iHeartRadio and Amazon music you can find bold apology a podcast.

It's one of the most recent podcasts It's actually just at just before a podcast

I did on the theology of youth ministry So and anyone who's part of the

Christian podcast community knows Obviously Adam is not part of the Christian podcast community because he broke the cardinal rule

You mentioned your website so that they could just follow from there. Not all the like we will work on him folks

We'll work on him We will disciple him to a better podcaster Yeah, help me.

Okay, but really Fatima. That's why we're doing this That's why you know, I thought what Adam did on bold apology a podcast was good

It was a great discussion as a panel discussion, but I really felt I wanted to let all of the views

Have more air time shall we say? And and have more time to be able to discuss and engage with with their view then we had on just the panel and so that's why we're doing that this here so that you would be able to To get you know more in -depth than you would

I suggest you go to Adams podcast But that's why we're doing that So she says right now she says

I think that's why classical Classics probably get it right because they appeal to the conscience, which is their

Regardless of the worldview and presuppositions Well, see I'm gonna say that the presuppositions do that too, but we'll talk about that next week

She also says Matt is a very good resource person on the topic

SFE has Got a great radar for selecting great guests for their show

Fatima. I cannot take any credit for this guest That all goes to Adam Parker he is the one who

I was on his show and And And and I you know, basically

I'm stealing his great guests, so I don't want to take blame or credit I mean where it's not do

Matt belongs to the Lord it all goes to him But I well, I wouldn't know Matt if it wasn't for you

So and but I am glad that you introduced this because I really have in the two shows we've done together learned a lot

Even then as a Calvinist you have to Define Providence. Oh, sorry.

Sorry. Go ahead Chuck. Okay. Thank you. So Yeah, no matter which of these three schools of thought that you're into My great concern is that we don't have enough

Christians engaged in evangelism and apologetics And I think that's because like I said of these any of these three schools

For someone coming in from the beginning It just seems overwhelming. It's like where do

I start? What do I do? And so I am starting developing my own

Version of apologetics. I call it simplified apologetics and And and that's it's still in the works, but you can see a sample of that I've developed some gospel tracks for our church website.

If you go to five solas net slash evangelism you'll see gospel tracks that deal with the the false and Pseudo -christian religions that claim the

Bible is the basis for their for their religion and We'll go from there

But you know we can talk about that more at another time and people can see there your Twitter is atheist nightmares

So you can go and follow follow him on Twitter there Alright, so let's get to a couple

Questions here wrap things up Brother John had asked the question Can you give a definition of heresy or heretic, thank you,

I would say anyone that holds the classical apologetic No, I think

I think you know when we talk about heresy and heretic We got to be careful Heresy in a very broad sense is any false teaching

Okay and so People get into this thing of well, you know, they're a heretic and what some others mean is a more specific definition which

You know a heresy That we often think of is one that changes the message of the gospel and so The you know,

I like how Matt slick will refer to it as a hard, you know and a soft heresy

So hard heresy is okay. You've you've changed the gospel message. You're out of the kingdom hard line gone where soft is is

You got some bad teaching you're you got a wrong teaching there, but you're not condemned to hell over it

You're not changing the gospel message over it. So Hopefully that helps if I could jump in it's it

I would just say it's a Person who persistently rejects or teaches doctrines that fundamentally contradict core

Biblical truths, you know or Orthodox Christian beliefs. So that's a another good way to put it.

I think yeah Yeah, I mean and and you bring up the aspect of the knowing that there will it's a willful thing

When they're doing that and and that that becomes a camp again so you have the very broad and it and it tapers into a very specific and so Everyone on social media throws out the word heretic all the time

I mean, you know, we're Matt and I are joking about it. He hasn't called me a heretic yet But I think I've done three times on the show

But but we're doing in a joking sense, but there are people like wait you disagree with me you heretic.

Yeah Take a step back not not everyone in the world agrees with you. In fact, God doesn't agree with you and I say that because We're all wrong in our theology and our apologetics.

Okay, we don't know where otherwise if we're being honest with ourselves we would change Some do know and they just don't care.

But the reality is that If you're holding so tightly to your views, there's a problem.

They put this way Matt slick and I have debated each other more than I think we've debated anyone else

We're good friends, but we disagree in her theology and and views a lot right? He's Presbyterian.

I'm biblical Baptist. Um, You know about this. Sorry He's he is, you know, he is a continuationist.

I'm a cessationist He is you know, he would be very much in favor of infant baptism

I wouldn't be you know covenant theology dispensational theology all these different things. We've debated like We've done formal debates informal debates plenty of times and we were on an apologetics cruise and We're debating cabinet covenant theology versus dispensational ism.

And one of the ladies asked the question She she goes, you know I noticed that each of you are defending the straw man arguments that your own side makes against the other side

Why do you do that now, I'm gonna give you my answer first because I think Matt was Matt's was better but Matt answered first I basically said

I think it's because you know, I'm gonna you know a fellow dispensationalist

Will receive better from me hearing that their argument they often make is a straw man

Matt had a much better argument Matt Matt just said this Because Andrew and I both know we're wrong in our theology

We don't know where otherwise we would change but when we sit at the feet of Christ Andrew and I will be in complete agreement because correct

Christ will correct both of us and we'll be happy for it That's a really good answer.

And I think that's probably a big reason why Matt and I can be such good friends debate theology

Hold strongly to our views and it doesn't affect our friendship It's because of the fact that we know we could be wrong

We're not making an idol of our of our theology or our apologetic style when you do that I think it's a problem.

Mm -hmm I think that's when it when it gets to the idolatry level and you're you're no longer able to receive

Correction or be teachable. It's a problem. Is it okay to just throw out there a lot of you know, heresy?

Heresy isn't you know, you disagree with me on a minor issue or or whatever or I think you have an unbiblical view of a minor issue

But there's core things for example Salvation has to be based on core biblical truth the nature of God.

That's huge So open theists, I would argue that they are heretics because they have a false view of God's Omniscience among many other things and then there's also

Christ's work. That's another huge one a lot of Things need to be fleshed out in the early church as a result of bad

Theology with regard to what people believed about the work that Jesus did so those are just three areas where you can really pinpoint and and and really hone in and focus on Could this be heresy that sort of thing anyway, let me try to get to one more question in a comment

So brother John asks question Andrew. Do you think we are on the verge of World War three?

Well, that's a good time to end the show Yeah, do

I think we're on the world on the verge I I don't know I mean look

I Don't want to put any of these other brothers in in a position of having a feel to answer sound like this, but I Those who are regular here, you know my views

You know, I I have very strong views with with when it comes to politics with Israel what's going on?

I Think that right now The world is taking advantage of the fact that You know right now in America We have a commander -in -chief that you know can only be he only has two meetings a day for about an hour and a half

One in the morning one in the afternoon. That's about all he can handle Is three hours of work a day?

It's this is not I mean it's known because his schedule the president's schedule is always out for public record, okay, so The reality is they know that he's there's no one gonna stop them from doing it.

Whatever they want to do Putin knew that so he took advantage of it. China is for folks that don't know right now

China has been not I mean they've always had their eyes set on Taiwan But they've suddenly gone after Vietnam and you know

They I think they're going after some of the smaller ones that they could take a little bit easier But they're they're taking some actions out in the sea outside out, you know outside of Vietnam right now threatening

Taiwan So there is there's a lot going on there you have Israel right now

And with Iran, I mean, it's it's expanded now beyond just Gaza, you know about Hamas and Hezbollah, but now really the one funding them all is

Iran. I Would say that we're we're we on the verge we could be because people are taking advantage of the weakness of Joe Biden and Democrats.

I mean, I think that Israel right now decided hey, you know, there's a chance Kamala Harris may steal this thing and if she does

He knows that she is going to not she I mean she has made it really clear She is going to defend the terrorists in this situation

She has Hezbollah and and Hamas are terrorist organizations

According to this country and she supports them so that right there disqualifies her from public, you know from from public service and so You know like someone should remove her just for that, but you politically no one wants to do that So I think that Netanyahu is being wise and realizing he better end this thing before the election

And I think that's why they've they've probably ramped some things up I Think it was brilliant.

Anyone that doesn't listen to Ben Shapiro. He did one I think Tuesday would be good one to listen to a history of What happened with Israel and Netanyahu was amazing in you know?

He knew the weakness of Joe Biden when when he told Joe Biden the plans he was gonna do the last time

Joe Biden decided to make it public and tell You know Hamas what?

Netanyahu was planning So Netanyahu says, oh, okay, he's gonna plan an attack in Lebanon so what does he do?

He comes to America making himself look weak so that everyone just thinks he's here begging for money while as he's speaking in the

UN They are you know doing very targeted attacks and and wiping out

Hezbollah leaders. Okay Are we on the verge? Yeah, we could always be on the verge.

I Personally think that we need strong leadership in America to bring peace around the world and Trump would provide that You know as JD van said in the debate, it's what

Reagan used to say, you know, it's it's strength. It's peace through strength look

Putin and these others would would say they just never knew what Trump would do They were just scared because he's a loose cannon.

They never know if he really would send bombs. So because of that they'd go We better just not do anything

Kamala Harris, I don't think they're gonna fear her at all They know that she will side with America's enemies at every time so I If any of you guys have different political views,

I'm sorry, I'm just gonna give the views of this show But I you know, so I do think that we are very close

Do any of you do any of you guys want to comment on that or no? You don't have to No, I agree.

I think I think that is a very volatile situation and I also think they could Possibly if you want to get really conspiratorial that using those the kind of things to destabilize things around the election

Some people would even go as far to say that to prevent the election from happening They wouldn't put it past this group of people to start wars for that purpose

Well, there's that's a good reason to vote early. I mean look that you just had this Verizon outage

You had you know, look look at Arizona look as a case in point. Look what happened in Arizona this last election the machine like the person who is in charge of elections and all the machines in the most conservative counties

Had no electricity that day and so they were told I'll go over here go over there but they they had no opportunity to vote and They just were like well, sorry days over you can't vote

Okay There will be something. I mean, they're already warning that there could be power outages that like I I am just saying vote early go and do absentee ballot then go do a provisional, you know on the day of so at least if Something happens, you know your early ballot got in and if you're worried

Hey, maybe this didn't it didn't make it you could do a provisional ballot and that way you're guaranteed your vote went in One way or the other and as a as a youth pastor,

I'm actually actively looking for resources just to Know how to counsel young men

Who are who have been drafted for war because I think for a lot of youth ministers out there they've we've never they've never had to do that and I do see that as a

Strong possibility if anyone has any good resources to share. I am I'm actually in the hunt

I've been in the hunt for resources like that for some time because I do see myself as needing to be prepared to be youth pastoring young men who are just about to Hit it hit it to the battlefield, you know

Well, you better you let's correct that right off the bat for you because you said young men and it won't be just young men

Young men and women that's right. I just don't want to think about that part. Yeah All right, so the last comment that we have here is from KT She is saying

Kind of in long lines with the other thing. I'm gonna have a comment on but she said feet. She says FEMA I believe is offering seven hundred and seven hundred fifty dollars for people affected by the storm

So, mr. Brewster should apply for that not much but dot dot dot And so yes, that's the reason

I would say go to give send go Comm slash SFE to donate to Aaron Brewster because yes,

FEMA is giving a whopping $750 to people and the reason they're giving such a low amount to help in an area that doesn't typically have storms

And flooding and that's why so many people don't have flood insurance there and are going to be hit with this Usually FEMA would come in using government resources to fund this

Well, unfortunately FEMA used their money to pay for illegal immigrants in this country to have housing so that they would be able to have housing

Coming to this country illegally. So again, you see that the current administration cares more about People who do not care about this country who are not part of this country than those who are

So they help those Who are not coming in supporting this country?

They came in maybe for a better life But they came in because they were gonna get the welfare system not to work

Many of them are not working In fact, many of them can't work because they're because of the laws right when they come in they don't have citizenship they don't have a visa they so Some can't work

The reality is that the money that could have gone to all these people

American citizens who are suffering went to people who came here breaking our laws

Let that sink in especially when you go to the voting booth or when you do your early voting by absentee ballot, which so So KT is saying can mr.

Brewster identify as an illegal immigrant just joking No, but I do know many people that my pastor's my pastor's

Daughter -in -law Came to this country. She's a Filipino She had all kinds of process to come in to be able to get a green card.

Let alone. She still hasn't gotten citizenship married to an American she had to first get her green card to be able to work and And Here these people are just come on in now keep in mind.

What's the real plan? What was the goal of it? It's really quite simple that you can see this in the fact that the

Democrats are suing states to allow Illegals to vote now at the same time that they the the

Republicans Had to prevent a shutdown of the government There was only one thing the

Democrats wanted removed from the bill from the budget bill and that was they in there was a bill a thing to say that illegals could not vote and They said that's that's not needed because the illegals can't vote now.

Well if they can't vote now What's the problem with creating a law that says they can't vote?

I mean, isn't that the argument they say with with gun control? We've all these rules for gun control, but every time there's that they say we need a new law for gun control

But if it's illegal to do that stuff now, why do you need another law? well

They think it's oh they need those laws We think it should be to really what they want is they don't want people to be able to vote.

I think it was Arizona was it removed almost a million and like nine hundred some thousand

People off the voter rolls that were not citizens dead not in Arizona a million votes can sway that the

Electoral College for a state like that and You're seeing states after state that are trying to clean up the rolls and not allowing it out in California Newsom just passed a bill because there was a one

County that said that they were going to That the county wanted Verification of citizenship and The governor did an executive order so that it is

Illegal in California to ask for any kind of idea of any form to show whether you're a citizen or anything else

So, you know just see the RFK comes out and supports Joe Donald Trump and The result that they have is they turn around and are trying to keep

RFK on The ballot when he has pulled his he's no longer a candidate.

They are suing in the same states where they're suing to keep RFK on the ballot who's not running they're suing to get the

Democrat. That's not Harris off the ballot Hmm and he is running

So if you need to see what's really going on folks just watch what the Democrats are doing They clearly are wanting to steal the elections and you know

Unfortunately watching them at the I mean we should have at every ballot box. There should be like People standing there because as if you if you need go watch 2000 mules you'll see what they did is just sat there and they knew exactly which ballot boxes didn't have working cameras and You can see from the cell phone activity where people kept visiting those those ones over and over again after going to Democrat areas to pick up ballots

Well now it's been exposed that well, you could just print up your own ballot You could buy the paper.

You could read there's nothing illegal about printing it It's you I mean, you know, what should be on it

You have all the sample ballots people can eat print them up and just it's illegal to submit them under a name

But now all of a sudden they have all these names of people in a state that are here illegally hmm

So it's gonna be a thing. They don't have to go do ballot harvesting anymore They just can print them up and they just need people to mules to drop them off So yeah,

I think that we're in dangerous times. And so For that reason, I think FEMA is gonna be helping out the

Brewsters or anyone else there So I want to encourage you and I'm gonna I am gonna say

I want to thank the folks I was I did take a look and I'm gonna just take a look again several have shared it and and donated and so want to thank those who already did that hope that others will go to give send go .com

slash SFE and And help the Brewsters out. It would be a big help to them

Matt I'm gonna actually I'll give you the last word Matt. So Adam anything you'd like to mention or promote

You have to unmute yourself, it's one of the things as a podcaster my bad my bad

Yes, actually tomorrow I'm gonna be pre recording a Kind of a formal debate between actually someone that you'll be having on the podcast here soon

We've mentioned him a few times Daniel McAdams and a guy by the name of Matthew McGuire.

The debate is Specifically focused on the paranormal and the debate question is can some

Ghosts be the spirits of human beings? So that should be a really fun discussion on there.

The goal is to get a biblical Answer out there for why are there why is there paranormal activity that takes place in a world that is getting increasingly?

More interested in the supernatural outside of Scripture We want to provide some answers for why people may be running into some of these things because it does happen

And so we've got Daniel ten years of experience in Paranormal investigation repented from that and is now a

Christian apologist and then Matthew McGuire very well researched in his position he is arguing for the affirmative that some ghosts can be the spirits of human beings and Daniel has the position that no ghosts can be the spirit of human being the spirits of human beings

So it should be a fun podcast. That'll be coming out sometime within the week. Please be

Keeping an eye on that. You can follow bold apology a podcast on Facebook and Instagram.

Thank you All right, Matt anything that you want to Just share.

Yeah, I just said my youtube page. You just go to reform classicalist You can find that on YouTube. Also, my website is reform classicalist comm

I'd also say I've got the old t -shirt here for New Aberdeen College so if you are a

Christian classical homeschooler or part of the Christian classical movement or if you are just somebody thinks you should be if you're a young Person that college is starting in the fall of 2025 and their website is

New Aberdeen College comm so check that out and we've got a new promo video that's on there that which is is pretty well done

That's a dot -com or dot edu. Yeah, that's a dot -com. Okay Okay, good and so folks

For the next few shows as we said next week, we'll have Dan craft the seven -foot apologist talking about presuppositional apologetics

The week after that on the 17th the men the person we've been mentioning quite a bit Daniel McAdams Will be on to talk about evidential apologetics

Unless drew can make it there will be no show on the 24th unless he can plan something we will see

With a newborn. We know he won't be sleeping for quite some time So we'll see what we could do on the 24th, but I will be away

I'll be in Ohio and then on the 31st We will have dr.

Donald Williams to talk about the cumulative Apologetics approach and I will admit that the first time

I ever heard of that was on the show with With Adam, you know in his podcast, so I thought it very interesting

And so I do want to encourage you to go check out Adams podcast where we are all on that that will help to give

An overview really of all of them and I really think what was really good about that show

The panel discussion was because I think Adam really chose you've got the right people to have the discussion people who are knowledgeable on the subject and yet nobody, you know, like he you know, he was kind of nervous with people like fighting it out and yet We all got along cordially.

We we really I think we're able to see the positives in each of the points that others were making so You know,

I so I do want to encourage you to guys check that out and Then also coming into November We got some fun ones coming up.

All right, so on November 7th will be my friend Rob Solberg He may know him as RL Solberg the author of Torah ism

The only person I know that has a book out dealing with Hebrew roots movement and it's ilk

So it will be we're gonna get into a good discussion he and I usually do

Me being from a Jewish background and him having researched us for so long. And so We'll probably discuss the fact that he got the privilege of debating a man that has run scared from me

And that is rabbi Tovia Singer Tovia heard that I was willing to I have publicly said

I will debate Tovia Singer without any preparation anywhere any time

He heard that he was thrilled to debate a Christian pastor Then he found out more about me he even created a poster for it put it on his thing saying that he was there we were gonna do this debate when

I agreed to it and Yeah, he had someone call up pretend He got guy calls up saying he he used to be a

Christian pastor And then I found out he was actually a follower and supporter of rabbi

Tovia Singer. Oh interesting He was doing some research. He wanted to help me with debate prep Tovia ghosted me after that and so if I would have thought about it in time

I didn't realize Tovia moved to Israel when I was in Israel. I probably would have tried to set up a debate there in Israel That would have been fun.

But Rob got to do a debate on the 14th of November Chuck who is down here just underneath me in the in the box there.

He'll come on We're gonna have a discussion of his his talk and my talk with godless. Grandma Then on the 21st, this is gonna be fun

On the 21st. We have a someone coming in. I forget their name That wants to debate and folks.

I this is what I offered the discussion to be on the discussion would be Did Jesus claim to be

God or not This guy wants to he said no. He wants it to be did

Jesus claim to be God or the Son of God? To which I said, are you sure about that?

Because the the title Son of God is a title of deity and So you're gonna lose either way and he says

I'm fine with that as the argument. Okay, so I guess I'm gonna just show how the term

Son of God in a Jewish mindset would mean that he's God and Then for some fun in December You know, we talked a little bit about Calvinism and you know,

Adam is you know on the fence? Well, well we could have that discussion I'll help them realize he is but you know, one of the biggest proponents against Calvinism these days is a friend of mine

Layton flowers and so Layton will come in Layton and I are friends, even though we disagree.

I seem to have a lot of my friend I don't agree a lot with my friends. Hmm, but I think it makes me a better theologian apologist

Because I get into more iron sharpening iron relationships. I would encourage more of you to maybe have relationships like that that You don't always get along with folks it'll help it will help to improve your theology it will help to improve your apologetics

I mean a lot of my apologetics is sharpened by talking to people that aren't believers You know hearing arguments going.

Oh, okay. I got I got to think of that one through So I want to thank Adam for coming in Matt for coming in Adam I'm hoping you'll be able to make for more of these and help co -host these with me because it was really your brainchild

This came out of I'll be there the 31st for sure for sure. Okay. He wants to avoid next week

He just saw Dan and realized, you know, he doesn't want to be Squashed by a seven -foot apologist. He didn't look that tall

Okay No, no you you you you force the the issue let me uh, this will just be fun for folks

Give me one moment to try to find this

I Just got to find the picture So we were recently at a conference and in Arizona and so Here, I'll just do this and share this quickly so that you can get an idea of His how short he really is

I mean he goes by the name seven foot of Apollo apologist, but you know, is he really that tall?

Well, here you go That's that's Dan You say well that's only because he's standing closer to the camera, right?

Well, okay here here he is with all of us Yeah, the tallest of us which is

Aaron Brewster only comes up to his shoulder Like five

Davids and one Goliath, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that is

That is Dan so he is seven foot and if you go back to previous episodes that he's been on we've asked him about his his you know the time he played basketball

Shaq O 'Neal and Stuffed Shaq. I think it was like seven times

When basically Shaq said to him their parting words were, you know, because Shaq just doesn't get stuffed

And that's what he basically said to me and I don't think he said this on the show But Shaq basically, you know when he was leaving saying goodbye, he said

I'll see you in the pro in the pro game so Dan didn't make it to her pros.

But yeah So, you know, I get it yeah, and you'll probably want to be here for your buddy because the only the only guy in my series is

I replaced the pre sup guy You know, I really want to be here next week and the following week

Unfortunately next week around the time you're doing the podcast I'll be our church has a prayer meeting that we do and then the week after that We're bringing some kiddos out to a youth retreats.

So okay. Yeah, I Wish I would love to be there. I would love to be there.

I'll end with this give your youth pastor So here's the thing. I encourage all youth pastors What we did was we when we were renting us

Southern Baptist Church We would have to do church from like 1 o 'clock to 5 o 'clock and we didn't couldn't do

Wednesday night So Tuesday nights, we had a prayer meeting So instead of doing a Juana and all the youth group and all that we did it on Friday night

People think oh well Friday nights not gonna work because everyone's so busy actually No, everyone wants to drop their kids off on A Friday night because save it there they want to do that.

First off they could stay out late We then added the adult Sunday school adult

Bible study on Friday nights And we found that to be great because all the kids the adults no one had to people didn't have to leave early for work they're not rushing and You know, like most of the the friends with their parents would be like well, okay

You want to go to church on a Friday night? It's better than the mall Okay, and so yeah, we my encouragement to you try it out see if see what you think

I'll put some serious thought into that. I've never thought of that. So yeah, we found it to be great because I mean

No one was rushing to go home People stuck around, you know the now you do get this if you don't do the adult things

What we'd have a lot of parents do is drop all the kids off then they went out for a date night You know, so we were their babysitters

So we would have a lot of we actually had a lot of unsaved parents that saw us as their free babysitters

And so they would drop their kids off while they go for a date And we're like, okay, they're getting the gospel

So that's that's a that's a that's interesting and Actually just did a podcast recently with with a mentor of mine

Called the theology of youth ministry kind of going through actually talked about youth ministry and babysitters

So that's kind of unique that you bring it up We have one of our podcasts

And now I'm drawn a complete blank on the name So I'm gonna go to Christian podcast community org and look it up.

We have one of our podcasts which is dedicated to youth ministry So, let's see

Christian podcast community org go to shows. I just got to scroll down. There's only like 50 plus podcasts on here

I Say that but you got to understand we like thoroughly that the like we don't we were we only accept like 30 40 percent of The podcast so most get rejected

So student student ministries matter podcast is

With Dan Carson and Chris Vines, so I feel bad that I forgot the name of their podcast

But with 50 of them, it's it got it's getting to be so big I Don't know them all as well.

So But yeah, that's one for you So folks, I hope that this has been helpful as I've saw in some of the comments people appreciated this

And so with that folks We're gonna encourage you to come back next week share this with with others

Text it out, you know, hey if you want when you know, the podcast version comes out later on tonight, but grab it

Listen text it out whether it's the video form the podcast form text it out to five friends especially if they're they're you know friends that want to learn about apologetics to share it out with folks and Until next week remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.