Always Ready: Chap. 16 Worldviews In Collision

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All right, we're in the book Always Ready by Greg Bonson. We've concluded sections one and two, and we're in section three.

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The main title of the whole section is How to Defend the Faith. We've looked at chapters 13,

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The Foolishness of Unbelief, chapter 14, A Two -Fold Apologetic Method, 15 was

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Answering a Fool, and then tonight we're going to pick up chapter 16, Worldviews in Collision.

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Okay, Worldviews in Collision. This is the opening paragraph to the book.

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In terms of theoretical principle and eventual outworking, the unbeliever opposes the

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Christian faith with a whole antithetical system of thought. I just want to pause there for a minute.

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Notice what he's saying. This is nothing new. He's been saying this right through the whole book, but when the unbeliever comes, he's not necessarily just picking up piecemeal, you know, like this abortion or creation or evolution.

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They're coming with a whole system of thought, all right? And notice how he describes it, a whole antithetical system of thought.

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It's completely antithetical to the Christian worldview. Not simply piecemeal criticisms.

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His attack is aimed not merely at certain random points of Christian teaching, but at its foundation, okay?

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And that's why I don't know if you've ever seen Ken Ham do one of his lectures.

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He's always talking about the shooting at the foundations. You know, that's why he always says, well, you have to go back to Genesis, all right?

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And we would agree wholeheartedly with him on that. The particular criticism utilized by the unbeliever rests upon basic key assumptions which unify and inform his thinking.

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It is this presuppositional route which the apologist must aim to eradicate if his defense of the faith is to be effective.

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Notice what he's saying. The nonbeliever also has presuppositions, and they are using presuppositional apologetics from their perspective.

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And if we abandon that, that puts us on an uneven footing, okay?

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So he says, because the unbeliever has such an implicit system of thought, and notice it is, it's a whole system of thought, all right?

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Directing his attack on the faith, the Christian can never be satisfied to defend the hope that is in him by merely stringing together isolated evidences which offer a slight probability of the

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Bible's veracity. You follow what he's saying? In other words, if the nonbeliever is coming at us or our antagonist, whoever it happens to be, it might even be just liberal

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Christians, if they're coming at us with a system of thought, we have to do the same thing, because if we just string together isolated evidences, as Bonson puts it, they offer a slight probability of the

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Bible's veracity. You're never going to be able to do it, and that's one of the reasons why we don't put forth, you know, there's all sorts of proofs for the existence of God, for example.

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The ontological, the teleological, the cosmological, you know, all of those type of things, they can be useful in certain argumentation, but they can't be the basis for what we do, and they can't be the starting point, right?

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Slight probability. Each particular item of evidence will be evaluated as to both its truthfulness and degree of probability by the unbeliever's tacit assumptions.

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Notice, no matter what you string, if you're putting together isolated pieces of evidence, the nonbeliever is going to evaluate that based upon what?

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His own assumptions, his presuppositions, his general world and life view will provide the context in which the evidential claim is understood and weighed, and this is exactly what you see, and in most cases, when you hear an atheist offering proof like Bertrand Russell, he says,

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I can prove that the Bible isn't true, that Christianity is a false religion, and then he defines the universe in such a way that we live in a closed system.

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In a closed system, there's no supernatural. Therefore, if there's no supernatural, miracles don't exist.

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If miracles don't exist, then the Bible is false. What did he do?

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Did he offer any proof? No, he just merely defined it out of existence, and this is why we have to be careful and not allow the person that we're dealing with to define the terms, because if they get to define the terms, then you're playing in their field, and notice again, context will provide a context.

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Every argument has a context, and that's what we have to do. We have to make sure that we're in the right context.

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What one presupposes as to possibility will even determine how he rates probability, and that's getting back to Bertrand Russell.

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If there is no supernatural, then anything that claims to be supernatural is false, and he'll have some other type of explanation for it, but you can't let him have that as a premise.

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Who says that there's no such thing as supernatural? And once you get familiar with the presuppositional approach, that's really pretty easy to do, your knife illustration, your butter knife.

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Well, even just the word probability. He's using the word probability, which is based on mathematics, which is immaterial, which can't exist in a purely naturalistic world.

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So his own criteria for proof fails because he can't prove probability in naturalistic ways.

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Yeah. Because we do not live in just a material world.

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Well, never mind. I was going to quote Madonna, but forget me. It's bad enough

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I'm quoting nonbelievers. I quoted Mike Tyson last week. I'm not going to quote Madonna this week.

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For this reason, the apologetic strategy we see illustrated in Scripture calls for argumentation at the presuppositional level.

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Notice, because of how we have to approach this, we have to come and make sure that our argumentation is at the presuppositional level.

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What are your presuppositions? And that's where you have to start your argument. For instance, when

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Paul stood before Agrippa and offered his defense for the hope in him, and there you have some references, he declared the public fact of Christ's resurrection.

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Notice, historical fact. For somebody to try to say that the resurrection didn't occur, they're actually arguing against the facts.

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Don't ever be intimidated when somebody says, well, you can't prove the resurrection. You can prove it just as much as I can prove that there was

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War of 1812. And in fact, do you know that there's actually more proof for the resurrection than there is for the existence of Plato?

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And yet, people say all the time, well, we quote Plato, but if you want to quote

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Jesus, well, we don't even know he exists. More proof for the existence of Jesus. Just an

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FYI, there's no bonafide scholar who's teaching in any university in the world that believes that Jesus didn't exist.

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Sounds good. However, one must note the presuppositional groundwork, all right, and context which

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Paul provided for this appeal to fact. He gets a little apologetic here in the middle of this.

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Towards the end of this, at the end of the book, we're going to actually go through a whole apologetic from the

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Scripture. Oh, the other thing I just want to note. Notice what Bonson does.

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This presuppositional approach is not something that he has invented. In other words, what's the basis?

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Well, let me ask you, what's the basis for Bonson's presuppositional approach that he's putting forth in this book?

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Where did you get it from? Scripture. Scripture. So it's coming right from Scripture.

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Just like when we went through hermeneutics, where does our hermeneutic come from? Scripture. It's not rules and regulations that we've made up.

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It's coming right from Scripture. We see how to handle Scripture from Scripture itself. The very first point

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Paul endeavored to make in his defense of the faith was a pre -observational transcendental matter.

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What is possible? In other words, that's where he started to make his defense.

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When he stood before Agrippa, he's showing

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Agrippa that first he's got to answer the question, what is in fact possible?

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And then you can put in the resurrection. All right? In other words, here's the logic to what he's doing.

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And the main question is that he's asking him, even though he doesn't ask it in these words, what is possible?

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And that's getting back to Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell says miracles are impossible. Why? What makes you say, what is the basis for you saying that miracles are impossible?

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And then I just briefly took the clip of Acts 26. This is

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Paul standing before Agrippa. And now I am standing trial for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers.

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Notice how he begins. This is the promise of God to the fathers. The promise to which our 12 tribes hope to attain as they earnestly serve

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God night and day, and for this hope, O King, I am being accused by Jews. Why is it considered incredible among you people if God does raise the dead?

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Notice this is the basic presupposition. And the rest of his argument is based upon his presupposition.

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Why would you say it's impossible that God raised the dead? And you can go with all kinds of apologetic on that.

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Okay? God was taken as the sovereign determiner of what can and cannot happen.

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See the presupposition again, the sovereignty of God. God is sovereign.

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God can do what he pleases. Can God raise the dead? Of course, God can raise the dead. Paul then proceeded to explain that determination of hostility to the message of the resurrection requires submission to the lordship of Christ.

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Paul went on to explain that the message he declared called for a radical change of mind, which is, in fact, repentance.

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Turning from darkness to true light and from the dominion of Satan to God. I want you to keep in mind as we're going through this the point that he made last week, and that is that you can have the best apologetic in the world.

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You can be the most eloquent apologist in the world, the most formidable debater, and yet the person sitting across the table from you is not going to come to faith unless God does the work.

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That's why we keep emphasizing we're not called to success. When you sit down to apologetically confront somebody, just because they don't turn to Christ while you're sitting there does not mean that you failed, if, in fact, you're being faithful to the word.

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All right? Because it's ultimately God's decision. And you don't know, as Paul said, you know, some plant, some water, but it's always

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God that gives the increase. And I just want to, that's something that we need to keep in mind, especially in our evangelism, but it holds also true in apologetics.

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Paul could go on to the facts, then only in terms of undergirding philosophy of fact and in accordance with the foundational axiom of biblical epistemology.

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Okay? In other words, you've got to lay the foundation. If you've got to start at the presupposition level, then you can come up and start introducing your facts.

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But, all right, let me ask you, why? Why must we lay that foundation first before we start getting into the facts?

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Yeah. And if you don't convince the person that his own presuppositions are wrong, he's going to look at your facts based upon his view of reality instead of God's view of reality.

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Consequently, the apologist needs to recognize that the debate between believer and unbeliever is fundamentally a dispute or clash between two complete worldviews.

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Finally, in the church now, we're starting to get literature that reflect this, a clash of worldviews or worldviews in collision, and we're seeing things come out like that.

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But for years, I know when I was growing up, I grew up in a church and never even heard of a worldview, didn't know that I was being indoctrinated into public school, and then when

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I went to the secular university, the same thing. When I got saved, I thought that I was a

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Christian thinker because I grew up in the church, and yet when

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I finally was saved in my adult life, I realized I was a humanist to the core in the way

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I thought. It's two complete worldviews between ultimate commitments and assumptions which are contrary to each other.

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Remember, there's a complete antithesis between the biblical worldview and the secular humanistic worldview.

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Yes? It's that word ultimate that you really have to press the unbeliever to tell you.

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What is ultimate on your worldview? Because that's going to unravel everything that he's going to say.

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That's what he's going to point to. He's ultimately going to say that he's ultimate because he's the one who's the arbiter of truth and falsity.

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That's going to be every single unbeliever. They're going to be ultimate. Sure. You hear what he's saying?

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That's a crucial point. An unbeliever is not simply an unbeliever at separate points.

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His antagonism is rooted in an overall philosophy which is according to the world's tradition.

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In other words, he's thinking. Everything that he sees in this world is going to be filtered through his lens of his worldview.

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And so if you have a nonbeliever who says, there's no such thing as the supernatural, then before you can even start talking about something supernatural, you have to show him the folly of that worldview.

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Thus, he is an enemy of God in his mind and uses his mind to nullify or obviate

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God's word. Notice again, over and over again, if you're a friend of the world, you're at enmity with God.

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There's only two ways, his way or the world's way, the way which is ultimately, of course, satanic.

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Because he cannot receive or know the things of the spirit, the unbeliever suppresses the truth, exalts his reasoning against the knowledge of God.

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Now notice the wording here again. He cannot receive.

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This is why you find most presuppositionists are all Calvinists, because we understand that God has to do the work.

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And because he cannot, that's what I mean. You can be the most eloquent in the world, but unless his worldview changes.

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How is his worldview going to change? Only through repentance. That's why when you're involved in any type of argumentation or debate and you're using the presuppositional apologetic method, you always have to have in the back of your mind, this is evangelism, because that's your only hope of converting that person to your way of thinking.

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Two philosophies or systems of thought are in collision. In collision, there's no way around it.

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They're not on parallel paths. They're in collision, and at some point, they're going to collide.

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One submits to the authority of God's word as a matter of presuppositional commitment, and one does not.

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And so of necessity, there's an antithesis. Appeals to fact will be arbitrated in terms of conflicting presuppositions held by the two philosophies.

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And again, just to point out one more time, I know I say this over and over again, but everybody's a presuppositionalist.

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Just a question of what are those presuppositions. The debate between the two perspectives will thus eventually work down to the level of one's ultimate authority.

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Here's what Anthony was talking about later. What is your ultimate authority? And for us, what is our ultimate authority?

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The word of God. That's where we stand. Does this bring the argument to end in a stalemate?

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Legitimate question. Each person arbitrarily choosing his starting point to his own subjective liking.

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Well, if you're not presuppositional, the answer is yes. But if you are, the answer is not at all.

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Rather, the situation points up the great need for a presuppositional method. And this is important.

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We're holding on to a system and fostering a system here that even from a pragmatic point of view, and I use the word hesitatingly,

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I'm not a pragmatist, but from a pragmatic point of view, it's the only system that works.

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So, I mean, from that point alone, you can see the need for it. The presuppositionist realizes that every argument chain must end in a self -authenticating starting point.

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Every worldview has its unquestioned and unquestionable assumption, its primitive commitments.

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Notice what he says. Every argument chain ultimately will end in a self -authenticating starting point.

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And that's good news for us. Because for us, what is that self -authenticating starting point?

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The Bible. For the unbeliever, what's his self -authenticating starting point?

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Himself. See why that's good news. And that's true.

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Don't ever let somebody convince you that, oh, no, I'm not the arbiter of all things. I don't take the

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Bible. If they're not taking the Bible as the arbiter of all things, they ultimately come down to themselves.

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All religious debate will develop into a question of ultimate authority. He repeats it because it's worth repeating.

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In principle, the two options will stand in full stark contrast to each other.

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Again, no contrast, not parallel tracks, but ultimately in collision.

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At this point, only a presuppositional argument can resolve the tension. Only a presuppositional argument.

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We have a lot of Christian brothers out there who just died in the world evidentious, but they can never get that far.

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Some of them who claim to be evidentious wind up being presuppositional in their methodology even though they don't admit it.

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If this goes out such, you get some letters and cards coming in, right? As discussed in recent studies in this series, the presuppositional procedure has been seen to involve two steps.

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And here we're just going to rehearse again the two -fold methodology, remember? One, an internal critique of the unbeliever's system demonstrating that his outlook is a foolish destruction of knowledge.

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Remember, answer a fool according to his folly. Don't answer a fool according to his folly. The first way is an internal critique.

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Say, okay, this is the point you're going to start at. Let's presume that you're right. Where does that take us?

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And you just take them right down the path. Talk about a reductio ad absurdum and see where it ends up.

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That's the one method. Second is a humble yet bold presentation of the reason for the hope in us communicated in terms of the believer's presuppositional commitment to God's true word.

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Once you destroy his, you then build it up on our presupposition and show how the natural cohesiveness and logic and rationality of the biblical system.

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Everybody realizes that, right? You realize that the Bible is the only consistent, rational, and logical book ever written.

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And it's only the Christian worldview that makes any sense of this world. Why do you think we have—you know what one of the largest businesses in this country is?

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Psychotherapy. Counseling, or not necessarily psychotherapy, but counseling in any one sense.

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Why do you think that is? Because apart from the presuppositional biblical apologetic, this world makes no sense.

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I mean, if we just spontaneously existed and, you know, my uncle is a monkey, you know, how do

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I assign some sort of purpose, you know?

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I still crave bananas, you know? But it makes no sense.

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That's why you have so many people in therapy, so many people going for counseling, because they can't make any sense out of it.

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That's why—what's the answer? The answer is Scripture. The answer is conversion. It's repentance. So you're standing—what

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I'm saying is, if you understand this, you're standing in the superior position whenever you come against a nonbeliever.

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The key is we have to learn what the Scripture says and be able to use it. Far too often the

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Christian gets stymied because he doesn't know the Word of God well enough. Such a procedure can resolve the tension between competing authorities and conflicting starting points because it asks which position provides the preconditions for observation, reasoning, and meaningful discourse.

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That's just a more eloquent way of saying what I just said. Okay. In other words, what you do is you just show them how only the

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Christian worldview gives the answer to all of life's questions. And you know me. I like to break life's questions into three.

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You know, who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? There's a lot of other questions, but they're all subheadings of that.

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Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Answer those three questions and you'll be happy. At least you should be happy.

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What? Hopefully. I mean, not that there's not problems along the way, but at least you have purpose.

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The apologetic discussion does not end in a stalemate because the Christian, by placing himself on the unbeliever's position, can show how it results in the destruction of intelligible experience and discursive thought.

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Discursive simply means that it's logic that goes across different courses.

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It can be placed upon all different series of thoughts. And it's true.

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It's only our apologetic method. And it does not end in stalemate. It may for the non -believer when you back him into a corner and he doesn't know which way to go.

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If the unbeliever were correct in his presuppositions, then nothing whatsoever could be understood or known.

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That's one taking him down his own rabbit hole. Take him down and when you get to a certain point, you're going to show him that based upon his worldview, there's no such thing as knowledge, no such thing as logic.

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And so therefore, well, if there's no such thing as logic, no such thing as intelligence, so to speak, then where are you left?

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You're left with nothing. And that's where you want him. The philosophy of the unbeliever has been afflicted with vanity, so that his knowledge is in terms of his own assumptions, falsely so -called, and he opposes himself.

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Again, once you practice it a little bit, you can actually get the person speaking against himself, saying certain things that go against what he had said originally.

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By putting the foolish thinking in the name of wisdom against the wisdom of the gospel, which he labels foolish, the unbeliever must be unmasked of his pretensions.

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If I keep looking funny, the yellow looks better up there than it does here.

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So my eyes aren't that great anyway. And shown that he has no apologetic for his viewpoint.

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There is no apologetic for his viewpoint, but has been left with a vain, darkened, ignorant mind, which needs renewal.

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I wouldn't use those words to describe him when you're talking to him. You can be a little bit more gentle than that.

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Remember, humble, boldly, you want to say that, but say it in nicer terms. Kiss him on the cheek first, and then you let him have it.

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The Christian can then teach the unbeliever that all wisdom and knowledge must take Jesus Christ as its reference point.

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I mean, that's just so crucial. Don't ever yield on these points.

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The believer's thinking, just as the unbeliever's, is grounded in a self -validating starting point.

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I mentioned that before, he mentions it again here, but it's true. And our self -validating starting point is

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Jesus Christ. It's the scriptures. The ultimate truth must be an expression of God's mind.

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He alone speaks with unquestionable authority and self -attesting veracity. And that's the point that you want to get him to, to show that that's the only argument that makes any sense logically and rationally.

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Does Jesus categorically claim to be the truth? There is no standard higher than his divine person and word.

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And then we're getting ready to wrap it up with the closing paragraphs. Christ demonstrated that God and his word must be self -authenticating, indisputable starting point for all thought.

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When he, unlike Adam, refused to put the Lord to a test, rendering implicit obedience to God's authoritative law.

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The Christian starting point, it should then be observed, provides the precondition for intelligible experience and meaningful thought rather than destroying the epistemological enterprise.

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Notice that, and it's only the Christian worldview that can do that. For it teaches that man was created to think

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God's thoughts after him and thereby know the truth. Why are we rational, logical beings?

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Because it's a gift from God, we're made in his image. So this is closing paragraph.

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We have briefly seen that the apologetics must eventually bring in presuppositional argumentation.

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The destruction of the unbeliever's philosophy is epistemological base and the presentation of the only workable foundation for knowledge.

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God's self -attesting authoritative revelation. I have a comment.

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What we need to realize is that the root of all sin is because Eve left the presupposition of God's truth and went on her own and decided to be the arbiter of truth and falsity herself.

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So abandoning God's word is the root of all sin.

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And that's still the case today. We follow after our great -great -grandparents.