Interview: What is Presuppositional Apologetics?

How would you describe your YouTube channel what you're trying to accomplish with it? Yeah.

Well, I'm trying to promote two things one more broadly and one more with more specificity, so I try to promote apologetics in general and Presuppositional apologetics more specifically, so I'm very interested in like apologetic methodology

So that's kind of the main focus, but I do cover other areas of philosophy and theology you know soteriology and Determinism and You know the

Calvinism Arminianism debate we have Resources and interviews that relate to those topics as well

Yeah If someone is is watching and and had no idea of what presuppositional apologetics was it was had no reference point

Even just kind of your common churchgoing person never heard that term. How would you describe that in simple terms?

Yeah Yeah, there are different ways you can describe it Just very simply if I'm talking to a

Christian and I am kind of going through the various views of apologetics It is a method of apologetics that just places a great emphasis upon one's starting assumptions like their ultimate starting points and then also when

I'm speaking with Christians about apologetic methodology, I like to define presuppositional ism as number one a top -down approach in which we start with the authority of God in his word and The implications of that when we apply it to say

People who don't start with that authority, right? We often make the biblical example of the difference between starting on a foundation of rock

Versus starting on a foundation of sand and so rock and sand can kind of be likened to Philosophical perspectives what foundation are we starting on are we starting on the foundation of human autonomy?

Human philosophy or is our foundation grounded upon the shore rock of God's Word now just real briefly

I like to summarize the methodology like this and because it sounds I'm using biblical categories here.

I think makes sense It is an apologetic methodology that seeks to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ Even the thoughts of the unbeliever

So there's not something that we just do as Christians where we want to submit our thinking to God But we also want to show that unless the unbeliever does that there's some intellectual problems with this position

Excellent. So I'm gonna function the assumption that you didn't always think that way Over the course of your life, you know,

I don't know your conversion story or whatever But there's a reason that you became passionate about that Specifically like there's a lot of different topics out there that a lot of people are interested in What made you passionate about that?

What were pivot points in your life that said this is me and this is this has done something for me so much so I want to go out and share that with other people

Yeah, well, I was very sensitive to the fact as to whether what I was doing was

Consistent with certain principles that I saw in Scripture and so I'm an issue of consistency is very important to me

I've listened to a lot of debates from people who come from different apologetic traditions And I remember listening to William Lane Craig when

I when I first started I greatly appreciate dr. Craig's work But I remember listening to a debate

Against dr. Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein now Gordon Stein was an atheist who's probably not the best representative of atheism

But the argument that was being used in the in that debate was very different to me it really stood out as an argument that had strength and had a very firm biblical foundation that spoke about God and the truth of Christianity in a way that I wasn't really

Hearing from some of those other approaches and so for me it seemed like one it was an approach that I think flowed out of the concepts the consistent application of Scripture and it had a

Philosophical robustness to it. That was in my estimation a very powerful argument in favor of the Christian worldview Yeah, is that is that debate?

It is a classic I have listened to it more than once and so is it available on YouTube? Well, there is something and I kind of give a shameless plug here

There is something called the Bonson project all of Bonson's lectures There's hundreds of them were behind a paywall that was owned by Covenant Media And I think it was dr

Bonson's son and a group of other people wanted to make that information accessible And so they purchased the rights for all of those lectures and now they're all available for free on Sermon audio.

So if anyone's interested, even if you're not interested in presuppositionalism per se, but you want to kind of understand

Well, what's this all about? All those lectures are available. There's debates There's lectures on specific topics that cover, you know

Various criticisms of the approach and the biblical foundations for the approach folks will find that to be a great resource yeah, but if he yeah go to the

Gordon Stein Bonson debate if you're interested in even knowing what presuppositional is because you can hear it in Action in a context it was at a college and the crowd responds and it's it's it's fascinating.

Listen So what the role of apologetics in your life is that one of the primary reasons you came to Christ period or did you grow up in church and you just kind of Drifted into it or what's your story behind your passion there?

Yeah, my earliest memories have been in church So I have a really good memory when it comes to like things from a long time ago

But I forget everything my wife tells me he's like, is that what you said? I'm so sorry. I don't remember I remember the color of socks.

I was wearing on the first day of school, but I can't remember some things My earliest memory is of church.

And so I grew up in a a Spanish Pentecostal church. It's a very small church And I remember always really being interested in the bible

Now the funny thing is growing up in a spanish church. I never caught on to spanish. I don't speak spanish to this day

I understand. Um I understand a lot of it. So if you're going to say something behind my back I could hear you

I'll understand what you're saying But we had church tuesdays thursdays and sundays two Two services on sunday in the morning and the evening and each of them were about two and a half hours long

And so I would I would joke around you're in. I would joke around that like jesus would leave before the service was over He'd be like i'll see it next sunday

Um, but the interesting thing about that is while I was sitting there as a little kid not understanding what was being said

I would take the time to open up my niv bible and I would just read And I remember as since I was a little kid

I would do that from when I was a kid all the way up until like my 20s And most of my biblical knowledge comes from just sitting and reading my bible and it was through that process

That I fell in love with theology. I fell in love with history. I fell in love with the scriptures And so I often had conversations and arguments with my family on various theological topics

But it wasn't until my first year in in community college where I took a course called.

Um The literature of the bible and I was like that's gonna be an easy one. I know my bible I've read it since I was a little kid.

I'm going to take that class It's going to be easy and the first 20 to 20 minutes to a half hour was the professor just Spewing all this information as to why he thought the bible was just like false

And with my limited knowledge I was able to give some kickback But it was like an uphill battle and for the first time

I was exposed to Questions and issues that made me have to think outside my own bubble

And so I did a little experiment with myself. I pretended for a short time to be an atheist and did some research

From an atheistic perspective and looked at criticisms of the bible and then I sat back and said, okay Christianity has been around for 2 000 years.

Surely this isn't new and through some investigation. I was exposed to Christian apologetics and that I mean just long story short that opened up a whole new world

To me in terms of understanding the foundation, uh for the things that I was raised to believe

No, that's excellent because you pretend to be an atheist in your mind. Yeah, that's uh, too often people probably don't

Go about, you know examining different even their own thoughts about I wish Uh, you know some atheists would do that with christianity at least pretend to be that for a while and try to see it from That vantage point.

So you've got a youtube channel. Tell us how to find you and where people can go Yeah, well i'm the founder of revealed apologetics.

You can find my website at revealedapologetics .com I have a youtube channel called revealed apologetics as well.

I'm on instagram I'm on tiktok and if anyone's wondering about the name revealed apologetics

Um, the name is based on the idea that not only are we biblically commanded to do apologetics I'm, actually convinced that the bible as divine revelation actually gives us the method that we should

Uh that we should use in a way that's faithful and consistent to the the very scriptures Thanks for answering a question.