Theology Precedes and Determines Apologetics

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now. It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll-free across the United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five. Three three three four one and now with today's topic.

Here is James white.

Theology Shapes Apologetic Methodology

And good morning. Welcome to the dividing line on a Thursday morning. We often beat the drum around here of the need for Consistency and I think one of the reasons that we remain a small ministry is Because we haven't learned to stop beating that drum and specifically There has been many times when with a fair amount of righteous indignation.

I have been able to Respond to someone and say look we have for a long long time Pointed out the inconsistencies in those that we were critiquing we have Point out the inconsistencies of those who oppose the Christian faith those who pervert the Christian faith those who present a sub-biblical view of the Christian faith and In so doing we have likewise criticized those on what might be called our side of the fence we have criticized evangelicals.

We have done so by name and That's why We'll never be up there with the big boys because to do that to be the big boys you have to sort of Become politically correct. You have to stop naming names. You have to avoid issues like that and that's why that's probably never gonna happen to us.

So we don't do that and this is gonna shock a few people, but I Don't criticize people because I like arguments and I like Controversy, I really that's not why I really hope that the primary reason that I would respond to someone or even criticize a fellow believer person I believe as a Christian disagree with their methodology disagree with their presentation Is for the betterment of the people of God and especially because I'm concerned that on an apologetic level in some way the truth is either being compromised or If not being compromised the methodology of the proclamation of the truth is obscuring the truth and there are different levels at which this takes place, obviously and So one of the things we've done over the years is we have contrasted the approach of a Consistently reformed apologetic with that which is consistently non reformed.

Obviously as a person who embraces the reformed faith despite the fact that there are some people who say I shouldn't even use that term myself given the fact that I believe in the absolute sovereignty of God his self-glorification in Redeeming a particular people in and through Jesus Christ in him alone.

The fact that those beliefs have an impact on all of life. That the way we think the way we act the way we worship Should all be informed by this central affirmation that God is Glorifying himself all things will to be to the praise of his glorious grace.

The fact that I am reformed in my soteriology in my worldview Impacts my apologetics it has to. I have said many times that Apologetics flows from your theology not the other way around. Too many times for those who wander into the field of apologetics They learn certain forms of arguments and then when pressed for consistency Create a theology to fit their arguments.

That's absolutely backwards. When you tell a great general to defend he's going to first ask you defend what? You have to know what you're defending before you can then devise a plan for defending it and In the same way we have to know what we believe before we can consistently develop a methodology for defending that belief.

So I have emphasized this many many times along with the idea that and again this puts us in a very small minority, but along with the idea that Inconsistency is not glorifying to God. Muddled thinking is not glorifying to God.

We are called to love the Lord our God with our heart soul mind and strength that is a that is a way of describing the entirety of our created being is to be involved in our love of God, and I do not believe that leaving a part of that out and being through Sloth through apathy being inconsistent in Our views of God in our understanding of his word is glorifying to him so putting all that together.

Over the years I have rather clearly differentiated myself from the apologetic methodologies of others and The dividing line has normally been on this issue of whether you have a God-centered theology obviously I believe Reformed theology is God-centered.

It is theocentric. I believe Arminianism is man-centered. It's anthropocentric and As you are a more or less consistent Arminian you will have a more or less man-centered or God-centered theology and.

So when that comes to the issue of apologetics then We have clearly differentiate ourselves. From those who would for example make as the key element of their Theological presentation and their apologetic presentation an appeal to an autonomous man to an autonomous human will.

Because we don't believe an autonomous human will exists the autonomous will that exists as God's Man's is a created will and a fallen will and an enslaved will the will of man exists. But as Jesus said he who commits sin is the slave of sin so to appeal to the enemy of God as If the enemy of God has the right the power and the ability To sit in judgment over the existence of his creator to grant to the pots the right to weigh in the balance the existence of the Potter is from a consistently biblical presentation and position utterly Absurd.

You do not grant to that which is created. The right to determine whether he or she is created the Bible tells us. We know we are created. We know the God who exists, but what does mankind do he suppresses that knowledge katakana tone the active act of? holding down the knowledge of God.

As I have taught the Subject of apologetics especially on the seminary level the methodology I do I Developed over the years was to in teaching a class called Christian philosophy of religion as I would play Not all of the second debate, but I play all the first debate.

I would compare and contrast the classic debate between Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein With a debate that I think I was just given actually by a student at Golden Gate when I was up there teaching one summer and It's available on YouTube.

You can go watch the whole thing yourself you wish to. I don't know that it's overly edifying to do so. But you can a debate that took place at Willow Creek between William Lane Craig and Frank Zindler now I remember corresponding briefly with Zindler back in the 80s at some point Many many moons ago.

It was not a very good debate not because of Anything wrong with William Lane Craig at that point Frank Zindler is just not a good speaker and his arguments are really really poor. So no matter what you do you're stuck with a situation like that when you engage that kind of of a debate, but anyway what I do is I compare and contrast The two positions that are presented and the methodologies because the approach used by William Lane Craig Who is a mullinist?

His theology I would identify as sub-biblical With some very serious problems, and I I really detest mullinism on a theological level. I think it's just a you know given where it came from is little more than a Philosophical attempt to get around the plain teaching of the scriptures concerning the sovereignty of God and his freedom and as such to see Protestants since it came out of Roman Catholicism to see Protestants promoting it today is extremely troubling to me and and Just indicative of again why theology matters and how theology is determinative to one's apologetic methodology.

William Lane Craig cannot argue as I argue I cannot argue as William Lane Craig argues and those who follow Craig's perspective likewise there is going to be a fundamental difference in the way that we approach the Highest level of Christian revelation and purpose and therefore epistemology as well, so what I do is I play at least William Lane Craig's opening statement, and I'm just gonna play a portion of that very opening statement.

I pulled it off of YouTube this morning. It's it's so neat now. I've got I can convert anything now. I've got about 25 converters on my computer now but one of them just catches whatever you bring up on the screen, and it has a Extract mp3 so just there's mp3 saved it to this here is I want you to hear The the claim this is this is the target see what we need.

What I'm gonna get to here is we're gonna be listening to the Mike Licona Bart Ehrman debate not all of it but a portion of it and That's relevant because I'm gonna be debating Bart Ehrman in in January on not on the exact same issue but they're all related to one another and The issue is the target that you set up one of the perspectives is you you basically make your target as small as possible so that the other side has trouble hitting the target and You make it as low as possible so you can actually in the confines of a debate accomplish what you're trying to accomplish in that period of time in essence and so I want you to hear what William Lane Craig says here and Listen to the the definition that he uses and we will then compare that with the Bonson Stein debate.

Now the question before us tonight is when you weigh the evidence for atheism Against the evidence for Christianity which way on balance does the evidence point?

There now did you hear that when you compare the evidence for atheism against the evidence for Christianity which direction on balance does the information. Does the data point. And later on he's gonna basically say the preponderance of the evidence.

The Majority of the evidence how much the majority we don't know but the majority of the evidence points to the greater Probability of the existence of a God. Okay so that's the kind of argumentation most people use and it's sort of incrementalist in its thinking.

If we can get folks the idea of and Of course all along you want to make sure they think they're making these decisions in of themselves. So they you don't you know challenge that free will thing. But if you can get them to agree with your argument so that well, you know there's about a 55 chance that God exists and Then you go, okay now that there's a 55 chance that God exists.

What about this next step and then what about this next step? Now the problem is if you really step back from that if there's a 55 chance that God exists and Then there's another 55 chance that he's revealed himself in Jesus.

What's 55 times 55 It's less than 50 You see the total Probability keeps going down as you only play the probability game. But I just step back from all this and say is this how the Apostles preached.

Now some might say oh they weren't debating. They were preaching. Not quite true. When Paul preaches in Ephesus for three years, what's he doing during that time. He is disputing publicly. He is demonstrating the scriptures of Jesus the Christ.

He is engaging in disputation. He clearly does know what the philosophers believe and he understands how Christianity interfaces with that. I don't see the Apostle saying there is a really good probability that God exists and within that probability.

There's a really good probability. He's revealed himself in Jesus and within that there's a really really good probability that Jesus rose from the dead. That's not the Apostolic Proclamation. Go to Acts chapter 17 where Paul's right there amongst the pagans.

And he doesn't say it is highly probable. If if I had the time to develop my arguments. You would see that there's a 55 chance that I'm right here. And there's only a 45 chance that you are no he proclaimed the absolute Certainty that God would judge all men.

By his gospel the gospel that proclaims that Jesus Christ is The one who died and who rose from the dead. They did not proclaim the resurrection as the end product of a lengthy presentation of probabilities they presented the resurrection as a reality upon which all men themselves would eventually be judged and so in light of that I then played the Bonson-Stein debate and the Bonson-Stein debate took place 1985 quality is not real good and I again, I'm just playing little portions of this.

This is right at the end of Greg Bonson's opening statement He made this statement over and over again, but I just wanted to play this. I'll expand it out so we can get the whole thing. But here is what Greg Bonson said at the end of his opening statement against Gordon Stein in the 1985.

When we go to look at the different worldviews that atheist and theist how I Suggest that we can prove the existence of God from the impossibility of the contrary. The transcendental proof for God's existence is that without him it is impossible to prove anything.

The atheist world view is Irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience science logic or morality. The atheist world you cannot allow for laws of logic the uniformity of nature The ability for the mind to understand the world and moral absolutes and in that sense the atheist world.

You cannot account for our debate tonight.

Thank you, dr. Bonson. Now he had already said that he was only going to defend the existence of the Christian God that he finds no other view of God to be consistent. Internally consistent with itself.

And so he when he says what he says here. He has already laid the foundation of saying. I am saying that without the Christian God we cannot even give a rational reason for our encounter in our debate this evening.

And. So his claim throughout this debate was that without the Christian God? There can be no knowledge. There can be no rationality. There can be no reasoning. There can be no argumentation. And that in point of fact without the Christian God you can prove nothing.

Now two very different approaches. One says without the Christian God you got nothing. You have to have the Christian God. The Christian God of Necessity exists as the Christian God. The other side says well.

The preponderance of the evidence taken in balance points toward the greater Probability of the existence of a God. Much much lower level of proof much much lower claim. And. Who in essence are you appealing to in both these methodologies?

You are in essence appealing to an autonomous creature. And. While God can do wonderful things with less than consistently biblical presentations. The fact the matter is at some point in time you got to fix these problems.

You got it. You know maybe you say well, it's better to do it as part of sanctification. Well again. What is what what methodology do we think actually brings people to conversion to Christ and? Should not our ultimate desire and our ultimate goal always be since the Holy Spirit is a spirit of truth.

To be absolutely truthful and absolutely consistent. Are any of us absolutely consistent. No. Am I absolutely consistent. No. Have I made mistakes. Yes? I had a Muslim right in today, and he finally just got around to what I mentioned on the dividing line.

The first dividing line after the debate was Shabir Ali. I misread us a reference. I was quickly trying to find a reference to a particular statement. Had HTML file sitting on my screen that wasn't converted.

There's tags everywhere, and I read the wrong footnote. Oh, I made an error. There was the proper footnote, and there's the information's there. But oh I made an error as any of us perfectly consistent to any of us make mistakes.

Obviously we all do but our goal our desire should be to be as consistent as we possibly can and especially when that comes to the application of a Christian worldview to apologetics and. So here you have a major difference between these two perspectives.

And I hope you hear where that that difference is because it comes out in the debate. Between Mike Lycona and Bart Ehrman that took place recently at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary now. Let me start off by saying Mike Lycona has done lots of great work.

I'm sure it's someday. We're gonna meet in May in almost almost everything we would say would would be very very similar to one another but Mike Lycona clearly follows the William Lane Craig perspective, and I as reformed theologians simply can't do that and having listened to William Lane Craig's debates with people like Shabir Ali and Mike Lycona's the Shabir Ali and.

And also having listened to William Lane Craig's debate with Bart Ehrman and now Mike Lycona's one thing that is fascinating is That Bart Ehrman's presentation didn't change one way in fact I think he just got out the same notes and repeated everything once again and He's not gonna be able to have the debate in January for the simple reason that I've never heard him debate this subject that we're doing in January so that's good and bad depending on how you're looking at it, but Presentation you know where he's coming from.

You know exactly what he's gonna say and pretty much exactly how he's going to say it and how he's gonna present things poor Mike Didn't have a voice it is so it was painful to listen to Mike Lycona you can.

You just know I don't have a video of it, but you just know he's sitting over there while Bart Ehrman speaking swimming in chloroceptic. You know gallons of it going down just trying to find some voice in there and a couple times It just goes away, and it's almost the point of literally whispering.

Which which could not have been easy for him. I've been there done that got the t-shirt never had a voice that bad. But I remember with one of the debates with Mitch Pacwa. I was I was really feeling horrible.

It's coughing my head off. I was eating Cough drops right and left and I was sick as a dog for the Stafford debate, too I mean it was just coming out at that point. But I was getting really sick at that point got even sicker on the cruise.

I remember speaking once on the cruise. And and it looked like I had run into the room and then run back out of the room once I got done I was so soaked with sweat even while speaking. It was it was not a not a pretty thing, but anyway.

So you got to give props to Mike Lycona for even surviving this particular thing but the I Really think that this encounter with Bart Ehrman illustrates why Theology matters to apologetics and People gonna say well, how dare you criticize someone look we criticize the Muslims for silencing Debate and dialogue.

I believe that we should be open to hearing what somebody else has to say and Unfortunately, I'm Not alone, but I'm in a minority Amongst Christian apologists in that I say your theology must absolutely must it must determine your apologetic methodology and That's where you've got to go we that's that's just just absolutely necessary that we start there because if we don't we have all sorts of problems, so I want to play portions of this debate and I want to interact and I Want to do so with the greatest respect for Mike Lycona.

But also show greater respect for God's truth by disagreeing with some of the answers that he gives to the things that Bart Ehrman says and obviously, it's very consistent to be reviewing Bart Ehrman because How many John Dominic Crossan?

Discussions did you hear before my debate with John Dominic Crossan and how many times I play John Shelby's spong before the debate was spong. You can always tell who I knew some of the people I'm gonna be debating next at least the big major debates because you're going to be hearing things on the dividing line and All you gotta do is look at my iPod list and you'll know exactly Exactly where we're going there.

So I would like to start with Let's see. Let's let's start with something Bart Ehrman says here, but I think it's it's it's very important.

This is actually in his opening statement. Let's let's start listening. This is that historians would rely upon for historical information. I Would argue that in fact, these are not the kinds of sources that can be relied upon by historians.

Now he's talking about the Gospels and I would like to take the time a little bit later on to refute. Every single one of and I've actually we did this in the divining line once at least went through some of them.

But I'd like to go through it's it's his favorite list. He uses it all the time. He goes through the crucifixion story and the resurrection story and he tries to put the the Gospels Crosswise with one another and he only has one of these arguments is even semi solid.

You have to do a semi decent amount of research to figure out. The rest of them. I'm sorry just are really not good arguments at all. But I I've got some research to do on on a recent historical event to illustrate this it take me a little while to do that.

Aside from you know, the fact that the second edition for the King James only controversy is doing less than a month and I and stuff like that and I've got the Cottonwood thing. I'm going to Alaska at Anchorage, etc, etc.

So I don't know if I'm you know, you know let done but it's always good not to be bored. Anyway, he's talking about the Gospels. He's saying these are not the kind of resources historians want to depend upon.

Well, I disagree with that, but we'll see why in a moment. Now, let me emphasize something.

Because I do want to get out of here alive. I am NOT. This might sound weird to you. I I actually am NOT disputing the theological value of the Gospels. I'm asking about their historical merit.

Here is the fundamental problem and Michael Icona does touch on a little bit but again I think it's one of the areas where because of the the epistemological approach He can't he can't hit it the way that a reformed theologian or apologist can.

And that is in essence Bart Ehrman Presuppositionally Draws a a line builds a wall that cannot be crossed between the historical and the theological. So he can affirm the theological value of the Gospels as long as you don't say it actually happened see.

So what you're doing here is very common in liberal theology and in agnosticism and atheism is to say Oh, you can you can say all the theology you want. There's one big problem the Christian faith Does not allow you to make that distinction because God has acted in history.

That's why you have an Old Testament for crying out loud. That's why you have all that stuff that people find so boring about this king did this and in the third year of this person's reign and when this person marched upon this city and this City is south of this city.

This isn't a bunch of theological mumbo-jumbo where people are making it up as they're going along. Christianity says that God has acted in history and Bart Ehrman's presuppositional assumption is history can say nothing about God acting.

God doesn't act in history and So you run smack up against a presuppositional Presuppositional Assumption on the part of airmen that you can have something that's historically false, but theologically true and Christianity says no.

And Christianity says God has acted in history. In fact, he's guided all of history and Ehrman's whole point is history is atheistic. History cannot allow for the existence of God or the Activity of God and if you want to say God exists fine.

But don't say he's acted in history and any evidence that he has must be viewed atheistically, it must be presuppositionally rejected and taken off the table and that is of course clearly a Presuppositional assumption as part and that must be challenged just as I challenged John done John Dominic Crossan on the exact same thing when the first question that I asked him is How do you explain.

You know, could you be given any data any evidence that would convince you that a miracle took place in the first century? Well, of course not he says of course not and then we expand upon that to demonstrate the presuppositional nature of that kind of Assertion that's what we did then that's what we'd have to do here.

Let's listen a little bit more of airmen.

There's a difference between having a book that is theologically useful and a book that is historically accurate. Theology and history are not the same thing and what I'm going to be maintaining in this debate is that claims about Jesus Resurrection are theological claims.

They are not historical claims. So the Resurrection.

Takes place in history. It takes place in an identifiable place and identifiable time with identifiable witnesses identifiable parties that that are that have Something to do with it Jews and Romans and the disciples and the women and so on so forth.

So while all of that is historical from his presuppositional perspective That has to be dismissed because theology has to be atheist. I'm sorry history has to be atheistic. You just have to dismiss that you cannot allow the Christian claim of history to exist on the table.

That's what has to be challenged, but it has to be challenged presuppositionally.

That's where you've got to go with it and the Gospels are theological documents.

They're not historically accurate document. There you go theological documents not historically accurate documents. They're both. Like I said, he's gone through this list. It's a I feel it's a very poor shallow list of accusations.

But the Christian claim has always been and he certainly must know this that the Gospels are Both theological and historical from his perspective. They can't be both. They have to be one or the other that of course is the primary thing that has to be challenged here.

So here's Ahriman's error. Ahriman's error. It's a presupposition. It's a presuppositional in nature. And it dismisses from the start any evidence of God's activity in history so Presuppositional at the start if God has ever acted in history.

There can be no evidence of it. That's Ahriman's error right at the beginning. Now the problem is that I don't think that gets challenged. Let's let's go to this next clip. This is from Mike Laicona. Explain why I.

Did not build my case for the resurrection this evening on biblical inerrancy. I didn't build it on the trustworthiness of the Gospels a particular dating of them or who wrote them. One of the things I did in my investigation to minimize my own bias Was to go with the facts and only those facts that were virtually indisputed by historians.

That's what I built my case on and professor Ahriman agrees with these facts. So for example fact number one Jesus death by crucifixion. He says one of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect of Judea.

Fact number two the appearances to the disciples. It is a historical fact that some of Jesus followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution. We know some of these believers by name.

He goes on and explains Paul and he also says these others Also claim to have seen him alive afterward. Fact number three the appearance to Paul. There is no doubt that Paul believed that he saw Jesus real but glorified body raised from the dead.

Paul taught that resurrection met the total transformation of his body. So we can see that professor Ahriman agrees with these three facts and rightly so virtually every scholar in the world who studied the subject Agrees on these including skeptical ones so.

What I'm saying is the case that I've built for the resurrection despite Bart's hesitancies about the Gospels. There's my case has been built upon three facts that are virtually indisputable and just as Survivors of the Titanic Contradicted one another and whether the ship broke in two prior to sinking or whether she went down and tagged.

No one therefore concluded that the Titanic didn't sink. They just said that there were peripheral details that we just don't know the answer to. And I would I would love to discuss some of these in the Q &A period.

I just don't think that they're pertinent for tonight's debate and so what professor Herman's going to have to do is attack my. The method that I've applied my approach to these three facts rather than the sources.

Themselves because he still thinks that they're reliable enough to get these three facts.

So there in essence is the presentation and that is exactly what Craig did in his debate with Bart Ahriman as well. Pretty much on the same subject is hey, look, I'm not going to address these peripheral issues.

I'm not going to address this inerrancy stuff. I'm not going to address these allegations of Problems in the accounts of how many angels there were or What timing and and who saw Jesus first? I'm not going to get into all that because hey, you know, what a Titanic split in half or not doesn't change the fact Titanic sank.

Minimalist approach, you know, I'm not sure you know, what what then happens, you know, do you end up like an Anthony flu? God doesn't exist. Well, okay, maybe there might be some kind of a god. And everybody starts getting all excited.

I mean, honestly, there are people who think that's how you do apologetics. There are major major major schools that follow this incrementalist approach and I say I don't see it in the New Testament. That's not proclaiming the gospel.

You don't call people to repent of a part of their idolatry. You call them to repent of their idolatry. You don't say well worship a little bit less hideous of a false God you say worship the true God.

You don't do it in increments. I see no evidence that the Apostles ever did it that way and if you'd like to try to prove it fine. You know, I'll ask you to explain Paul's words and Galatians. But that's that's another issue.

So that's where we've got to go with that. So you have the minimalist approach here and I just the whole idea is that what you're trying to do is you're trying to demonstrate a Supernatural event an event that that from the biblical perspective is the Means by which God says this is my son.

I have vindicated him by raising him from the dead. But you're going to do that without raising issues of inspiration without raising issues of of the preservation of Scripture anything along those lines.

Does your found is your foundation big enough and strong enough to? Substantiate the claims you're making. Now here's another really really problematic Section here for me and I disagree I think and That's really not quite.

To go with evidently, let's just do it this way.

Hypothesis not historical and I disagree. I think that what he's doing is he's confusing a Historical conclusion with his theological implications. So I think he's doing history backwards. I think what he's saying is listen if Jesus rose from the dead We can do all kinds of logic chopping.

But I think we all realize that God is the best candidate for the for the task and he's saying well. But historians can't get the God at least as historians and so that eliminates and makes his whole Practice of analyzing the resurrection as illegitimate.

Now, what should the criticism be there?

It should be to attack the presuppositional nature of airman statement that historians by nature have to dismiss any evidence of God's activity in history because the Christian God By definition is active in history all of history is a part of his divine decree to reveal himself and It's all gonna end up to the result.

The praise is glorious grace but a there seems to be on the part of many and unwillingness to openly present a Christian view of history over against an Atheistic view of history as if somehow well, that's just not as acceptable.

Well, of course, it's not as acceptable. It's a scandal the cross. That's that's the way it is, but you can't de-scandalize the cross just to make the world like you.

I don't think so. I think what historians can do is analyze the data.

Way high now. Listen listen at this point. I Was like no you're not saying this but this is your what you're hearing is exactly what I think. Inconsistently Mike Laicona has to say and.

Hypotheses and come up with a historical conclusion. If the resurrection Hypothesis is the one that has the greatest explanatory scope power and less ad hoc. Then it should be the best explanation the most probable explanation.

And the one that we can be confident is what occurred in the past. But that leads then. You say well then. But if Jesus rose that means God raised him. Well, that is a theological implication and we can divorce the historical conclusion with the theological implication.

So we could conclude as historians that Jesus rose from the dead. Without going on to the second question and saying God raised Jesus from the dead. He didn't say we can't divorce. He said we can.

Divorce. The historical conclusion from the theological ramifications we can say. Yep. Jesus rose from the dead. Don't know how. Don't know who is involved. It just weird things happen. And remember I remember Greg Bonson talking about someone in Southern, California.

It was USC UCLA forget where it was a professor there who had come to conclusion. You know what? I think Jesus rose from the dead. But I'm still an atheist because strange things happen weird things happen.

And you just go. Whoa, wait a minute. How you know, this is a complete capitulation to airmen's atheistic history. Because that it's not being approached. Presuppositionally, you're not challenging the presupposition that airmen is bringing that history can be viewed apart from the Christian God.

And I know it's radical to be a Christian. I know it's radical to believe that Jesus Christ created all things and that there is no fact. That is not a God fact and every fact that is a fact is a fact because God made it to be that fact.

I know that's radical and I know that's scandalous to the world, but that's what the New Testament teaches and You can't get people to believe that by well, let's take a little baby steps, you know. And and you know and and you're autonomous and all this how do you get them to the point of abandoning their autonomy and Embracing the autonomy of God and seeing that all things have been done by God when you're constantly pandering to their humanistic tendencies, I.

You can't do it that way. Here's where theology matters. It determines the very approach you're gonna take to answering questions like this again.

I think we could all admit that God's probably the best candidate, but we're not going to get there as a historian. We can get that Jesus rose from the dead without saying God raised him from the dead.

And you know historians do similar things like this like in the case of Charlemagne in the 8th century Charlemagne and his brother co-ruled the Roman Empire. And they hated each other and three years into Charlemagne's and his brother's reign his brother died.

Historians conclude That Charlemagne's brother died in 717. But they don't have to conclude because it's indeterminate whether he died of natural causes or Charlemagne had him killed. So in the same way again, I'd say we can conclude that Jesus rose from the dead While leaving a question mark of who raised him all right if the evidence points to that.

Okay. How do you define what evidence is how can you how can you produce any kind of meaningful? theory of history. How can a Christian take this kind. See this is what happens again? What is the point of contact?