Presuppositionalism Reexamined

We are live now on the conversations that matter podcast. I'm your host John Harris as always Here to talk about at least what I think are important topics and specifically for Christians. We're gonna talk about apologetics today and a lot of my Motivation in even having this podcast.

I suppose you could say is an apologetics focus. When I first went to college I was involved in a college career group. I eventually Became a leader in that group and I've been involved in several other college career groups since that time and on college campuses.

Obviously, there's a lot of questions about the Bible and the truth of Christianity and especially today the ethics of Christianity and so all of these questions are what propelled me into trying to understand the best approach to Witness to unbelievers because that really is the end goal.

I want them to know the gospel. I want them to know the God that created them. But I also want them to know that Jesus's commands are actually moral and better for living and and and this applies to Christians as well.

But when Christians, you know after you're born again when they're living life They should adopt the ways of Christ and the ways of Scripture. And so it's really a defense of God's Word and so in that vein though, I.

I.

Obviously have this channel, which I think was built primarily off of people wanting answers on social justice. So that's been my specific focus for a few years but in focusing on that one thing I noticed is.

That a.

Lot of the attacks on Christianity aren't necessarily Specifically just against Christianity. They're against the natural order. And I've talked about this many times a good example of that is masculinity and femininity and this has driven me to ask some questions publicly about the role of presuppositional apologetics versus natural law and.

And that's opened a whole can of worms over the last week. I've had a lot of messages from some of you but more presuppositional folks messaging me saying John let me explain this to you or this person can explain this to you and and I think that's great.

I appreciate that what some people might not understand is I probably read more on presuppositional apologetics at least ventilian presuppositional Apologetics than almost anything else. There's there's a few subjects.

I probably have read more on but not many and It's something that I really Care about. I don't want to cast the whole thing overboard. But I I think there's some weaknesses potentially and so with that long intro in that vein.

I want to Introduce to you for the first time on the the I was gonna say the presuppositional apologetics podcast. That's not what this is the Conversations that matter podcast is what this is, but I want to introduce for you Chris bolt Who is a pastor at the village church in Dallas?

I mean Richmond, Virginia. He's not with Matt Chandler and he teaches at reform Baptist comm it's the reform Baptist Institute and you can go check out His teachings there and Chris, thank you for coming on the podcast.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you very much for having me. John is my audio is still good because I just changed the setting. Perfect.

Yeah, all right. All right. Good for me. Good anyone out there thinks otherwise, let me know in the comments. That's where you can also let me know if you have a question for the discussion today. We are gonna be discussing presuppositional apologetics and the reason I just want to let everyone know the reason I wanted Chris bolts on the podcast is because Chris teaches presuppositional apologetics.

Well, I don't. Do you call it that Chris or is it just apologetics?

Uh, I've taught it in every label in every way. So yeah I have a general apologetics course that I do as an introductory level and I go from presupp to reformed epistemology all the way through classical and evidentialism and all of that so.

But yeah, and there was a brief period of time where I caught a covenantal apologetics, but I've changed that too. So oh.

You call presupp a covenantal for a while. I've never heard anyone do that. Is that unique to you or that's from K Scott Olyphant.

He tried to make that that shift and of course, there's some things I disagree with with his methodology. So went back to the old didn't stick.

Yeah, most people when they hear presupp or presuppositional apologetics, they think they until yeah I've had a few Clark Ian's that really give me a hard time for that. Like what about us? Well, I mean, I know you're out there I see you but it's it is not the prevalence perspective when it comes to presuppositional ism.

But you know, I forgot to mention this I think too. So if people want to follow you also go on. X CL bolt is your Twitter handle. So anyway with that out of the way, let's start the discussion here. You are familiar with some of my teaching on this subject because I have a few courses I did years ago trying to Let people know about presuppositional apologetics and you're also very familiar with the current political battles or Theological political battles that are out there on this whole thing, you know, whether it's It's Thomistic or Scholastic or it's it's too natural law focused.

Just give me like from a 30 ,000 foot view. Where you think things are at? Apologetically like do you see because there was I think a time during the New Atheist where Presuppositional apologetics became the apologetic methodology.

I think that was around. I was a little before that I adopted this right before that and then I remember everyone's reading the books that I had read a few years before and And it it was it's skyrocketed.

I see a ship. Do you see that or I do?

The landscape has changed considerably, right? So I was writing on this back in like 2000. I mean I was using presuppositional apologetics so-called as Early as like 2004. So it's been what? 21 years or so.

So.

Yeah, there there was not a lot out there back then at all. And I was writing a blog trying to break down the presuppositional methodology. For people just on the common level as it were make things easier.

And then yes since then things have really taken off. You've got a lot of pop I think you referred to them in an ex post as pop. Presuppositionalists who are out there and and that's really taken off.

You know, I've got to mention my friend Eli Ayala who's on revealed apologetics. He's doing good work I believe in an introductory level to presuppositional apologetics. He's actually doing apologetics in debates and things like that as well as teaching them.

And so I'm thankful for You know venues like that. But yeah the what we are responding to has changed as well so the new atheism I believe was a republication essentially of logical positivism on a very naive type level right on a popular Type level and I didn't expect the new atheism to survive very long and I don't think it did.

You know, you had the four horsemen and I mean a guy like Richard Dawkins is just he's a terrible philosopher. It just didn't last very long. And what you have instead and I didn't follow this so much because I was in the thick of the Lead pastor role at a church at this time, but the intellectual dark web starts taking off, right?

And so then you've got you know The Manosphere and all of that with you know guys like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan and you know. All of them start taking off. And I think you've mentioned, you know, some of that with regard to masculinity and the concerns there as pertains to what we might call natural law.

Obviously, I think that's Stephen. So first I saw Thomas Aquinas start being promoted in a lot of reformed circles a lot more than he once was now. People take issue with me saying that but that's that was just my perspective.

It seems to me as though a lot more people are reading him. Especially since Bob Inc was translated by John Bolt not long ago his reformed dogmatics. So you get reformed tomism start mixing around and then along comes Stephen Wolf, right?

And so Stephen writes the case for Christian nationalism. And it stirs a lot of controversy up. I'm gonna go on record as saying I'm not sure why I read his book and Now I am a philosopher by training and Stephen is too to some extent, right?

And so as I read his book, it just seems to me like good reformed contextual Political philosophy and it seems rather mild. Yes. There are little, you know punches. He'll take here and there especially on social media, but that's a different animal as we all know.

So I'm not sure what exactly all the stir is over with regard to that. But this has caused especially because a traditionally theonomic Publishing house published case for Christian nationalism. This has caused quite the dust up with regard to how theonomy and by that I mean Reconstructionist theonomy relates to the natural law tradition.

Magisterial Protestantism and then of course you can take that all the way back into presuppositionalism so I think that my thesis would be something to the effect of Presuppositionalism as an apologetic methodology does not necessarily commit one.

To the rejection of natural law. And so I think that's where I land on all of this.

Yeah, yeah, and I'm very interested in that. Hey out of curiosity and all this. Did you ever call yourself a theonomist or think of yourself that way? I have yeah.

In various contexts again, and I think that's an important thing to mention while we're there. I might as well mention it.

Yeah, you know.

Van Til is not a Reconstructionist theonomist. No, he he he did famously say there is no alternative But that of theonomy and autonomy. But we have to remember what Van Til's project was in the main and we have to remember that with respect both to the Theonomic issue by which I mean Reconstructionism non-legislative theonomy and all that sort of thing.

But we also have to remember his project in relation to natural law. Because as I look through Van Til for some semblance of natural law There's not a lot there there's precious little there. Why he's not writing on that.

That's just not his his area that he's he's addressing but as Van Til is Claimed by the theonomist for saying that quote that I just mentioned. Here's one from Stephen Wolfe. I affirm a form of theonomy.

Civil law ought to be in accordance with God's law and civil law ought to order man to both earthly and heavenly ends and that is from his case for Christian nationalism Somewhere between 269 and 271.

So if Van Til's a theonomist by virtue of that quote Then I'm gonna say that Stephen Wolfe is a theonomist by virtue of that quote. We obviously all as Christians are in some form or fashion Theonomist but even within reconstructionist theonomy there are different schools of thought.

Yeah.

Well, the etymology of the word is pretty broad, right? So When people say theonomy, I mean you you hear, you know. Like JD Hall guys like that say that theonomists are just rebranding themselves by saying they're general equity theonomists and that's not the pure form that Preceded them by guys like Rush Dooney and Greg Bonson and Gary North others, so.

So there's it's a problem with a lot of the terms that we talked about and I don't know if the media has just escalated this and social media in particular, but You spend sometimes at least I feel like I do half an episode Trying to just define terms.

Because you say something and you're like, well this group thinks of it this way and then so I already have questions coming in asking me to define terms and maybe the best thing to do is to Not get too deep into the weeds.

But just to quickly if you're capable of doing this give a definition and then we will proceed with the discussion here but the first one is can you briefly define or distinguish between Clark Ian and Vantillian.

I'll give you a crack. I know I could but it probably take me too long. Could you give a short crack at that?

So I.

Will confess that I've not read a great deal of Clark. Okay, Clark was and this is Gordon H Clark. He was a legitimate philosopher. He published Articles in the realm of philosophy. He's very very good at looking at the failures of Non-christian systems of thought and philosophies.

He had strong followers like Ron Nash. Ronald Nash was a Clarkian. You know Robbins. John Robbins wrote what's probably the best criticism or critique of Ayn Rand and the philosophy of objectivism. One of the only ones really nobody seems to bother with it much but for whatever reason, but I would think of Clarkianism is being more scripturalist and I'm afraid that a lot of the pop Vantillians are actually going that route to where we are unnecessarily pitting special revelation.

Against natural revelation when they come from one in the same source, which is God, right? And so Clarkians will and I even saw this in some of your mentions. John Clarkians will argue against science and the scientific endeavor.

Because and this is my take on it. They're taking deductive standards of logic and applying them because they are rationalist. They are applying them to the scientific realm now. I would agree that science is not deductive in nature.

There is some deduction in it, but it's not deductive in nature on the whole it's inductive in nature. And so yes, if you try to think of it deductively then it's fallacious. That does not mean that we cannot have knowledge through science and I would actually go to scripture.

To point that out that there is such a thing as empirical knowledge that we gain through the senses and our reasoning. That's portrayed in scripture itself.

Yeah, well, this is good because this gets into so many areas including even biblical counseling right verse Christian counseling and whether or not you are capable as a human being of looking at the world and noticing patterns and seeing make you know making observations about human conduct and behavior and then Using those things to To induce principles or to apply principles or you know interacting with them in a way that's you know, interpretive and rational.

And I see debates going on in so many different realms. But they fundamentally seem to come down to this and I think you just described it this. Is it special revelation? Is it natural revelation? Is there a synthesis and I'm very interested of course in what you just said of taking.

Or I don't know if you would frame it this way but reconciling Some of I think what we can find that's good in presuppositional apologetics reconciling that with also a healthy good form of natural law that's.

And I used to hate that word natural law. I would always say natural revelation. In fact that I have coming out. I think I try to say natural order because I was afraid of Being lopped in with Aquinas, you know, I have you read Aquinas.

I have I read.

Mostly back in like 2007 or 8 so it's been a while. But I've been refreshing some of my knowledge. In fact, I was reading him yesterday.

The read him and I Confess it is so boring to me it's so boring because it's like here's the six objections to what I just said and I'm like They're all the same objection, but they're not because they're slightly different Very weeds on it.

But I I don't get my understanding directly from Aquinas on a lot of this stuff at least at this point. But I'm glad that you've read it. One of us has read it. Here's another question about definitions.

Can you define terms pre sub natural law? Well, all right, I would say let's just let's just continue the discussion I think that will become evident as we go. Alright, I have more questions, but we're gonna save those and we're just gonna proceed With I think of the narrow the focus here another question I asked this on X right before we started podcasting here, but I asked people what the divide was in Natural law and presuppositional ism.

Is it autonomy or in theonomy? Which is how I hear a lot of presuppositional is presented like you're either gonna be autonomous or you're gonna be theonomic and they don't mean Necessarily theonomy in the government sense, but just you're not going to be That you're gonna be dependent on Some kind of a interpretive grid that comes directly from God in the form of special revelations.

So so is that the difference or is this a battle between idealism and realism and in the pop form? I think it's. You know, are you going to be biblical is the question that's often asked like is this biblical which of course has broad meanings?

And so forth, but I think those two things are really the way it's framed is important here. So what do you think is this? Like if you're engaging in natural law or using natural law, are you being autonomous?

And then you know, this is obviously. You could take this any direction you want. This is a bigger question, but if you're Engaging in presuppositional apologetics. Are you then by definition engaging in idealism?

Yeah. Okay good.

So if I forget to address some of this Please feel free to like correct me and bring me back in. Because I'm I tend to go all the way around something.

Which is fine because I've given you such a broad you could like literally, you know, you could talk about. I don't know Trump buying Greenland and it would somehow apply. I don't know so.

So I want to address the Thomas Aquinas thing. First of all, there is a sense in which Thomas Aquinas I mean we need to read and we need to understand him as he is. And this is not with your question per se but what you said right before it.

We have to remember when it comes to Cornelius Van Till. He is reading Thomas Aquinas through his interpreters during Van Till's day. And so he's he's actually reading he's looking at the lens of Bellarmine, which Stephen Wolfe has recently been taking to task and so there is certainly what I would consider an abuse of some of these natural theological and natural law categories among those contemporary Roman Catholics of Van Till's day.

That's analogous by the way to how some natural law arguments that may have been abused even within the reformed Camp, and so those are the types of things that Van Till is trying to correct. Context matters a great deal.

And so that leads into that first question there context matters a great deal. When we're thinking about what somebody like Greg Bonson is addressing in the 70s the 80s of the 90s sorry, it wasn't quite as far as that but.

No, he died in the 90s, right?

Yeah, but a lot a lot of his his works are coming out. You know, of course his THM thesis is the theonomy and Christian ethics, right? And then later on he had no other standard which which does serve to clarify some of these things and there is certainly a sense in.

Which.

Bonson does regard natural law as Autonomous in that negative even apologetic sense. So for example in in theonomy and Christian ethics and this is a 387 to 388. He's talking about the allegations of civil magistrates to perform their official functions in accord with God's law.

Okay, and so he says here's the deal. The magistrates are going to be judged by God and he writes now since this is true There must be criteria or a standard for this judgment a law that the magistrate is responsible to obey.

If this law is not God's law, so we're talking about Hypothetical here where the magistrate may be judged by something that is not God's law. Okay, then it must be one of five alternatives now. I'm not gonna go through all five, but one of the alternatives he mentions is natural law.

He says it might be natural law, but this is simply a projection of autonomy and Satisfaction with the status quo. So understand how Bonson just defined natural law. There is over against God's law.

It is a.

Projection of autonomy. In other words from man's nature we can come up with a law whereby will be judged and it is Satisfaction with the status quo because we see all men everywhere in some form or fashion doing this thing.

But then he goes on with another alternative. Later he says others have gone on to maintain that natural revelation Will be the standard of judgment. However, this either amounts to preferring a sin obscured addition of the same law of God or to Denying the unity of natural and special revelation and being willing to pit the one against the other.

Not only this but in fact natural revelation is suppressed in unrighteousness by the sinner. And this should dissuade us from thinking that it can be the recognized functional measure of his ethical obligation.

So.

Bonson is defining natural theology natural law there over against divine law and He is defining it as autonomous and he is defining it over against natural revelation, which we would understand to be Divine law, but he's saying it's less clear in nature than it is in Scripture.

It's nevertheless in union with it, right. The two you don't put them against each other special revelation and natural revelation. But there are other places.

Where.

Bonson more fully develops this idea of natural revelation To mean something closer to or akin to what we might mean by natural law insofar as the debate Is concerned so for example in no other standard and I'll just read this and I'll Bring it back to you so we can stay on track here.

He says God's Word is of course found not only in special revelation but also in natural revelation and to whatever degree unbelievers do civic good and Whenever there has been anything like a reasonably just government in non-christian lands It is to be credited to common grace and natural revelation.

Scripture is nonetheless our final authority. Now interestingly Vantill writes this in his defense of the faith page 194. He says men cannot be wholly insensitive to the goodness of God. Their hostility is curbed in some manner.

They cannot but love that which is honest and noble and true. They may have many virtues that often make them better neighbors than Christians Themselves are. And quoting him one more time from the Protestant doctrine of Scripture Vantill says.

But until the Judgment Day the revelation of God to man is a Revelation of grace as well as wrath of long-suffering endurance as well as a punishment of sinners that they might come to repentance. So in addition to knowing the truth and the difference between good and evil Men respond favorably to it in a casual fashion.

They have a certain love of the truth and a certain respect for the good in distinction from evil. They do works which for the matter of them are things which God commands and are in themselves praiseworthy and useful.

They do the civil and moral good. Without these good works of unregenerate men Civilization could not long endure. By the way, this comes from Calvin. It comes straight out of Calvin and so both Bonson and Vantill understand what we would propose as some sort of consent of the nations or Natural law in the way it's being used in Wolfe and others.

So when you read common grace when you read consent of the nations when you read Natural law when you read natural revelation, these are often being used synonymously, but Bonson for his part in his context is often most often talking about natural law in terms of Rejecting something like the secularist would present something like a purist Aristotelian would present Something like David Van Drunen and the radical two kingdoms guys would present and so we have to define those terms carefully.

But certainly Vantill, Bonson, Calvin and I can read passages from there if we need to Would affirm this goodness this goodness toward a civil end.

Yeah, no, this is really really good and I want to frame things in simple terms as much as I can for those who are Not as familiar with the debate that is happening online over some of these things. The question really comes down to I think this that you have unbelievers who are and this is Very much for the reform community.

They are lost in their sin and there's something called the noetic effects of sin. Which means that sin affects your knowledge. And so the the question I think is can unbelievers do good things. Are they capable of actually doing righteousness and You know, I would I have my own answers for all of this and so forth but I think the debate you could even start it there and say There are unbelievers who feed their children.

Jesus acknowledged this right and you're worse than an unbeliever. If you don't take care of your children and that kind of thing. So there's this these instinctual it seems like at least the scripture assumes there's these instinctual things.

Unbelievers know and can do like when Paul says act like men. He doesn't have to define exactly what that means it was understood in a natural way what that might mean and so there's some knowledge that we have based upon the way God's made us and based upon Being you know in his image and looking at the world around us and making observations.

The book of Proverbs has obviously so many observations about the natural world, right? And so the question then becomes how do these unbelievers that function in these ways? How do they justify it? We share a society with them we Share all kinds of things we work with them.

We might be very close. It might be best friends, you know, or at least very close friends with unbelievers. They're in our families, right and We have to organize with them. For the common good at times, there's no other alternative that's just how things operate so how how does this happen?

How do we think about this as believers and and and so that I think that's one of the the ways or the areas in which this discussion emerges is there are those who will say that the unbelievers can't justify or can't they don't have the capacity to do any of these things apart from some interpretive grid and.

And and that would be the Christian worldview and it's a very holistic thing. It's it actually I think I have I have several quotes from van Tillen Bonson. Which I won't bore you with unless you want me to Chris.

But you've are probably read all of them where you know they essentially say that on every point the Christian there's this antithesis between the Christian worldview and the pagan worldview and or the anti-christian and that You can't have knowledge.

You can't have meaning you can't have interpretation. Bonson calls these the preconditions of intelligibility unless you start off with the Christian worldview and. And then there are those who say no there.

There's these shared.

I.

Don't I don't know if instincts is the word. What's the word Chris for that the shared you shared?

I think that's part of the debate really. I mean there are common notions or common ground and that sort of thing. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, there's these common notions. That's a thank you. That's a better term. So that the unbeliever and the believer have and that we can work together and so I think that van Till and Bonson try to use common ground as there if you want to.

Like parallel what like what they're trying to say with what natural law theorists are trying to say. They say there's no neutral ground, but there's this common ground. But I think what Bonson and van Till at least in my readings have done is they will say that this is like The the fact that unbelievers actually do have the Christian worldview because they're doing orderly things they just suppress the knowledge of that.

And a famously fan till uses the example of a child on his father's lap slapping the father. And the only reason he can do it is because he's on the father's lap. So he's supported by this Christian worldview and so epistemology and presuppositions are very heavily focused on in that system.

Whereas I think in natural law theory It's not so much epistemology. They focus on as much as it is metaphysics.

And.

The kinds of things that can be known and they just assume that we're made in God's image. And so we come pre-programmed in a certain sense and we can justify certain things without having to adopt The whole Christian worldview.

How am I doing so far? Am I explaining this accurately?

No, I think that's good. And I mean, I think this brings us back to the idealism. Yeah, you're it good that's good. Okay, so because I'd I had forgotten that so. Yeah, I mean I'm gonna I'm gonna use JV Fesco as a as a foil on this because I think that he is The primary person promoting some of this idea right now.

Vance Hill wrote a book called so let's go all the way back. Jay Gresham ation writes Christianity and liberalism and Implicit in that title is this concept of Christianity and liberalism being two different things, right?

They're not the same thing. Liberalism as he was talking about is not Christianity. So along comes Van Til. Van Til wrote Christianity and Bartean ism. Van Til was able to read Bart in his original language the Kierkegaard Madoka before it was translated into English and Wrote that response to Bart and to neo-orthodox theology.

This pits Van Til against Bart. Sometimes people read Karl Bart and they claim that he is in the reformed tradition and he's in a reformed tradition of the reformed Objection to natural theology and so then they lump Van Til in with him.

That is far from the truth.

That's good guys. What's that? That's go is one of those guys that lumps them in. Yes.

Yeah, yes, and he does so through you know Van Til's comments about interpreting everything through Christ and that sort of thing and there are some answers to that I may or may not get to here, but My point here is though to say that Van Til saw himself as pitted against Bart for sure.

A lot of people complained when Van Til's book came out because these seminary students are reading Bart when he's translated into English and they're thinking How could this Van Til guy already respond to him and give him, you know a fair hearing.

But Van Til also wrote Christianity and idealism.

Same.

Implicit idea in the title Christianity is not idealism. They are in fact what he would say Antithetical and so Van Til was it was a PhD in philosophy from Princeton. He wrote his dissertation against idealism and pragmatism which he saw as equal and opposite errors and.

And so yes, there are times when Van Til is writing into that idealist context. There are times when he uses the rhetoric or language of idealism, but is reading in other meanings to them. There are times when he is addressing idealism as a complete type of system as representative of what he sees as an absolute antithesis of a Christian view which he would just defined as you know, Reformed Christianity expressed to the Greeks and confessions and this sort of thing.

So When Van Til says something like oh, well, we didn't have this until Kant comes along Immanuel Kant. He's not saying that Kant is his friend. He is saying this is a clear example of what I'm talking about with all would-be autonomous reasoning.

This sort of thing reasoning as though there is no God as though God's law doesn't matter and this sort of thing and so Van Til in general views every Unbelieving example of thought that the way that they err is that they absolutize their system.

You do see this in John Frame a great deal in the way for example. Especially in the doctrine of the Christian life, which is his massive ethics book. He he basically says don't silo these different positions.

So he might address I Apologize for all the words. I'm about to use but he'll address the deontological view of metaethical theory. He'll address teleology, you know utilitarian ethics that sort of thing.

He addresses existentialism and he points out that each of these taken in and of themselves contradicts the other viewpoints and they also fail to account for Metaethical theory as a whole but when you approach them from a biblical Standpoint you can see that there are in fact truths in each of these different systems.

They've just taken those borrowed capital right that barred capital those borrowed truths and absolutize them Into these philosophies whereby they're trying to reject God's revelation to man and by the way Van Til is is mighty loose on this as well.

Because he actually does at one point praise idealism only in this form. Van Til basically following almost an Aristotelian view of ethics in his book on Christian ethics. He believes that self-realization is kind of this end in our quest for the the son of Bonham the the you know the highest good in this sort of thing.

Because.

What God is after in us is for us to use our mind or intellects and our will and all of that grace-given Freedom to be directed toward God. That sort of thing. I'm speaking in colloquial terms here, but my point here is that he recognizes that there is.

Here's the quote actually from Christian theistic ethics page 71. The only way in which we can account for the lofty character of idealist ethics is by saying that the gift of God's common grace Has in a particular manner restrained what would be the ordinary operation of sin? When it allowed men to conceive of a relatively speaking very high conceptual self-realization.

Now I can hear Fesco's fans saying aha. See he's an idealist.

No.

If you're going to argue that we can borrow from all of these non-christian views and whatnot Then don't critique Van Til for doing the very same thing. You can't then say oh see clearly. He's an idealist.

Van Til also says In that same work that he finds much truth in Aristotle's doctrine of the golden mean in ethics. Even though Van Til goes on to critique the problems with that view for example If the virtue is found in between these two means Then in some form or fashion and this may or may not be a good understanding of Aristotle.

I'm just putting that out there. There's always evil present and the good is some like path between between the two. Which is not gonna work christianly speaking because we're not dualist. We don't believe that good and evil are Necessary to doing the good.

Also, he would criticize Aristotle as does frame. Because you have to be virtuous in order to do virtuous acts. Well, how can you be virtuous you do virtuous acts? It makes this circle right and that's dependent upon a view of free will that Calvin goes into great detail in the Christian Institutes.

To reject.

This is not a view that holds up to the Christian understanding of divine providence and decree and that sort of thing. Okay, so getting back to Fesco quickly Fesco just seems to go well out of his way to try to prove these things with regard To Van Til and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.