Presuppositionalism & The Problem of the One and the Many

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today

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I have a special guest with me, Dr. Brant Bosterman. Those who have expressed interest in this episode, a lot of people have reached out expressing how excited they were that I was having

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Dr. Bosterman back on. He is the author of a very, very awesome book entitled

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The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox, An Interpretation and Refinement of the

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Theological Apologetic of Cornelius Van Til. Now if you're not big into apologetics but you're, you know, you're interested in some of the things that that I talk about on this show, you do know that we place a great emphasis upon apologetic methodology, presuppositionalism more specifically.

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So if you're interested in presuppositional apologetics, transcendental argumentation, and the doctrine of the

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Trinity and how it relates to all of those things, you are in for a treat. This is my second time having

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Dr. Bosterman on. I had him on a while back when the

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YouTube channel was pretty small, and we've grown a lot since then, and so I really wanted to expose people to the work of Dr.

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Bosterman, who perhaps have never heard of him, and since the channel has grown a little bit, hopefully we can give his book a little bit more exposure.

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It's a tough read at times but terribly fascinating, especially if you're interested in presuppositionalism and the philosophical problem of the one and the many and how how all these things work together.

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Dr. Bosterman will also be taking questions. If you have any questions at the back end like we normally do, you can send them in and preface your question with the letter

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Q or the word question so I can differentiate it from the rest of the comments. All right.

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Well, without further ado, we're gonna jump right in, and I'd like to welcome Dr. Brant Bosterman on the screen with me.

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How are you doing, brother? Well, thanks for having me, Eli. Well, thanks for agreeing to come on. To be perfectly honest, the last discussion we had, which was, it was your first appearance on a

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YouTube channel in a long time, and it ended up being like a two -hour discussion. Is that correct?

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Sure did, man. I came prepared tonight. Yes, that's right. So when I invited

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Dr. Bosterman on, he asked me if I can get some questions prepared so that we can kind of be somewhere in the ballpark of like the direction that we wanted the conversation to go, and I've been so busy that I haven't,

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I wasn't able to do that, but he's prepared some talking points that I think you guys will find very, very fascinating, educating, and definitely will be very thought -provoking.

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So why don't you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do? Well, I am,

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I'm a pastor, so I've been ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America since 2012, and church planted in 2013, and I did that shortly after I completed my

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PhD thesis. So it was literally April of 2013 that I gave my oral defense, and it was

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May of 2013 that we were gathering a church plant full of folks, and so it was kind of a whirlwind, went straight into the ministry.

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Shortly thereafter, I think in 2014 or 15, I published my book. You asked me to have a copy, I'm not that vain, but here it is.

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And yeah, I don't even remember the exact publication date, but since then, yeah,

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I've been preaching, I've been on and off adjunct, you know, professoring, if you will, in philosophy courses, logic, intro to philosophy, things like that.

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And when I get spare time, writing. But progress is slow, so yeah.

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The key word there is when you get spare time. That's right, that's exactly right. Now, folks might find it interesting,

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I kind of rushed here and just got here at the last second from my youth group. I had a pretty long day, been up since 4 .30

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in the morning, and I'm a full -time teacher, so I was working and doing things in the afternoon. So I just sat down here, and I was looking frantically for Dr.

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Bosterman's book, and I was like, I don't know where I put the book. And so, Brant, why don't you tell folks why you have your book accessible, especially given where you are?

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Why don't you tell folks where you are right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, okay, that's a good question.

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So I've been going to the same cafe house for over a decade, and so I have, in the course of time, really gotten to know the management.

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In the course of time, the owner received Christ on a

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Good Friday, right before a Good Friday service, and I ended up being involved in performing the wedding for him and his wife.

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And so they eventually just gave me a key to this place. So I'm in this Viennese, Austrian -themed cafe house, where there's actually a plaque behind me with my name on it that says,

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Here, Dr. Bosterman resides in quiet repose. And they actually have my book right above it.

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So I didn't do any of that, but I suppose anytime I have a meeting here at the cafe house,

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I've got my book on hand. So that's why I had a copy. Yeah, he said that there was a shrine that was dedicated to it.

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Like, where's a shrine? Is there some pagan temple or something? It's pretty accurate. It's pretty accurate.

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That's how it is. That's awesome. Well, let's jump right into the main topic. Again, folks who have expressed interest in this topic,

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I would imagine they have some background in the topic, but why don't we kind of walk through some of the talking points that you mentioned?

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You have a point here. I have it in front of me. You were interested in describing the one in the many problem in just a general sense.

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First, what is the what is the problem? Why is it a problem? And why is it even important to discuss in relation to like, apologetics and things like that?

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Right. So the one many problem is, is arguably one of if not the most pervasive problems in philosophy spanning really all of the sub disciplines from what is real to how do we know to how should we live?

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And, you know, when we asked the question about the one in the many, I mean, all of us need a certain amount of consistency and regularity in reality to even exist.

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I mean, to make plans, we have to have an idea of what's coming at the same time.

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In order for reality to be livable, there must be a refreshing and healthy sort of diversity just the same.

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And so, you know, let me put it this way, this dovetailing with what I must do pastorally, you know, when you meet someone who's depressed, yes, there are sometimes, you know, chemical bases for that.

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But there are also all sorts of other grounds of depression. And what you'll discover is that reality being monotonous is a source of depression, things not being refreshing, things not changing, not moving, not having sufficient variety.

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At the very same time, reality or life being chaotic with all sorts of violent turns and unexpected changes can also be hopelessly depressing.

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So in a certain respect, we're all trying to search out and find some sort of equilibrium between a refreshing variety and change, as well as a restful consistency.

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And this raises the question, you know, you might say this problem in its most practical form raises the question of what is ultimate reality?

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Is it even the sort of place where I should expect for there to be consistency? Or is it all just chaos?

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Is it even the sort of place where I should expect for there to be ever more refreshing changes, turns and variations?

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Or is it a big ball of monotony? So in one respect, it is, it's just, it's about as practical a question, you know, the one in the many, and can

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I relate these two things? How do I relate these things? But it really comes to bear, I think, classically, in the history of philosophy at the very beginning, with the pre

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Socratic says to what is real? Okay, reality, ultimately, one and unitary, and maybe even unchanging, such that all change is illusory?

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Or is it ultimately something that's always changing, maybe even passing from contradiction to contradiction, such that unity is really just kind of a mirage.

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And so in the course of our talk, I will talk a lot about the pre Socratic for a variety of reasons.

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And I actually, I think a it's helpful sometimes to discuss this topic in a more unfamiliar realm.

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And then on top of that, I actually think in discussing the pre Socratic, you know,

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I know we have the majority of your audience, Christian listeners, I think it will actually help us to shed some light on the

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Old Testament scriptures, okay, which were roughly contemporaneous with the, though,

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I mean, the latter part of it. So okay, so that that's excellent. So that would be good if you went through, because you described what the one in the many problem is, maybe you can kind of define it more specifically, like, what is what is the problem?

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What is it trying to solve? Right? Walk us through how some of the pre Socratic philosophers tried to answer that question, and then move into the

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Old Testament, you're going to and then eventually, I want to culminate into how this applies to say, presuppositionalism.

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But before we get into that, I want to ask a question. You know, a lot of people who do presuppositional apologetics, and they'll use something like the transcendental argument, you'll hear presuppositionalists say things along the line that the triune

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God provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge or intelligible experience, you know, the triune

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God can account for the one in the many, many critics of presuppositionalism, especially online think that this is a problem that was like, it was like made up by presuppositionalists, so that we can, you know, create this disease and claim to have the cure for it.

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Without before you go into the presocratics, why is that completely wrongheaded?

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I mean, is it the case that presuppositionalists just made up this issue? It seems, you know, I've had a classical apologist friend of mine, he says,

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No one never discusses this in the literature. You know, it's you just you presuppositionalists that bring it up.

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Why don't you speak to that? Yeah, well, I mean, it's almost unbelievable that someone would think of, you know, a such a relatively small group of people, which are, you know, presuppositionalists,

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I mean, a niche group of people from the 20th century, and after creating this problem only so they could solve it.

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I mean, first of all, I mean, this is a widely recognized problem in philosophy that predates, you know, presuppositionalists, even if it isn't called by that name.

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But, but I mean, so it's just, it's frankly unbelievable to hear that that folks would speak that way.

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I educated people, I've heard the practice of the person who told me this, I won't mention their name.

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But yeah, the PhD. Yeah, apologetics and things. Yeah, no one talks about this sort of thing.

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It's not that important. Yeah, well, I mean, so I don't know who said it. And I don't know how or in what context they said it.

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But I can only say that I find it baffling that somebody would say it who was white, well acquainted with philosophy.

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You know, when it comes to the problem, and just to discuss it more broadly than just, you know, what is real, it really it comes to bear on, you know, virtually every aspect of philosophy.

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You know, one form in which the question has been expressed is how do universals relate to particulars, we both know that when

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I'm, you know, recalling a dog, I'm not actually bringing a tangible dog into my mind, that's not what's happening.

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I have some sort of concept of a dog. And it's not even just the physical outline of the dog, although that might be evoked in my mind as well.

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But it's also all sorts of characteristics that just literally can't be pictured like animal, animal being, you know, a genus is not, it's not a specific thing.

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And, and so they're, they're rationally think things about that dog in my mind, that differs from a dog in reality.

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And so, you know, one expression of, you know, the one many problem is how do universals, you know, universal forms relate to material reality?

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Do they relate to material realities? Is that concept of dog in my mind, you know, strictly artificial, a creation of my own subjective mind?

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Or does it have independent reality? If so, how does it come to express itself in a material thing?

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Here, again, we have the issue of the one in the many, we have a universal, an idea of dog, you might say, which somehow can apply to truly a multitude of specific animals that are dogs.

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And, you know, how does that come to be? How is that possible?

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Obviously, ideas, and, you know, physical reality are very different things. Sure. You know, so what, what, what gives me the assurance that my idea of dog is true to the reality that it's intended to describe, which came first, the idea or the particular, you know, those are the sorts of questions among so many others that arise when we talk about the one many problem.

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So, so when you're talking about dog, animal, you're, you're, in essence, talking about an abstraction, right?

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Yeah. So there's, there's no such thing as like, like, there's a dog, a particular physical dog, but the concept of dog is this abstraction.

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So you have this universal concept. And there are these individual particular dogs.

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And we're asked the question, which came first, what is more ultimate in reality, this abstract universal, or these individual particulars?

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Is that, is that what you're asking? Absolutely, absolutely. And then you might say, which one gives rise to the other?

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Did I just form the idea of dog because I saw many four footed creatures who, you know, roughly the same size and had certain, you know, attributes that were the same.

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And I created that artificial category, such that that's all that it is.

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It's just a name that I've given to things that, you know, I've arbitrarily grouped together, or is there an actual essence of dog that limits the possible ways that any dog could be in which case, there's a sort of logical priority to the, to the universal or concept that is somehow, you know, defining and determining what every dog ever, ever will be, or, or may or may not be.

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So, so that's, that's another permutation of the problem. I mean, it arises in ethics as well, are there universal ethical obligations that come to bear on everybody, or all ethics, you know, in all, you know, moral systems, relative, you know, the products that, you know, societal, you know, needs and differences.

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You know, once again, we have the question, is there one right, or are there many? You know, and what is the source of, you know, our, our ethical convictions?

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And, you know, comes into politics, you know, what has priority the whole of society?

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I mean, this is right in our face with all things. I think last time we met, we were actually talking about Coronavirus restrictions,

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I mentioned in passing, I mean, we're still in it. So, so.

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We're supposed to be gone by the summer. That's right. You know, society and artificial creation of a conglomeration of individuals, or are individuals the product of a society, such that, you know, we could have no, you know, self conception without the selves who birth us and things like that.

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So the one many problem is, again, it's a pervasive problem. It comes to bear in every every realm of philosophy from political philosophy to ethics to epistemology.

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Now, would it only be a problem, though, if the person asking this question presupposes the reality of universal?

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So you have folks like nominalists, someone, you know, you know, we're debating, you know, what's more ultimate, the universal or particular and the nominalist over there,

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Amelia, you guys are weird, you know, these are just names, we, we apply to these things that are they're not actually these universal categories.

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How would you speak to the to the nominalist? Sure. So so the nominalist has taken one side of the one many problem, they haven't discarded it by any means, they've taken their stand on the side of the many.

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And then, you know, one has to answer the question, if everything is fundamentally individual and diverse, there are no essences that things share in common, where did we ever get the idea?

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Where did we ever get the idea to name things as generalities? Why? Why isn't all of reality?

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Why isn't our language like all of reality, an infinite number of words that only have one application and one correspondence?

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And, you know, but we're going to talk about these actually, in the course of discussing the

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Socratics, but maybe we do jump to the Trinity and the sense in which we bring it to bear as, you know, yeah.

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Okay, so, so real quick, who were the pre Socratics for someone who's just popping in and be like, what are they talking about?

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Yeah, pre Socratics, and what questions were they asking? And then maybe you can kind of walk us through how the pre

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Socratics dealt with this issue of what was more metaphysically ultimate unity, or morality.

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And I really want to eventually, when we get into more of the apologetic application, maybe you can clearly define the problem with taking metaphysical ultimate reality as primarily unity, and taking metaphysical reality as primarily many.

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So when you when you go from one extreme to the other, why does that I'm saying this early, and we can talk about it later.

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But why does that undermine the preconditions of intelligibility? And maybe we've got to talk about how the

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Trinity answer. So that's where I want to go. My questions are kind of ill formed right now. But why don't you walk? Who are the pre

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Socratics? And what questions were they asking? And perhaps you can kind of unfold that for us. Right.

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So the pre Socratics are philosophers, roughly contemporaneous with the Prophet Jeremiah.

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So we'd be talking 6th century BC, 7th, 6th century

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BC. And they are primarily living in, you know, modern day Turkey.

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But at the time, Ionia, Melissus, in particular, which is close to Ephesus, and in roughly that region.

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And, you know, and then the other center of it would be, you know, in modern day

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Italy, and, you know, arising from them as if a synthesis are the, you know, the great

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Socratic philosophers, and there are some Greeks in that time period is I mean, really, Ionia is Greek at this point.

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But, of course, the great schools of philosophy of Plato and Aristotle are well, they're the

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Socratic philosophers, Socrates being, you know, the philosophical father of Plato and Plato of Aristotle.

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So that's who these folks are. And they're, they're dealing with these, these questions about unity and diversity in the one of the many, almost primarily.

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Okay, so then they're asking, okay, so if they're asking, what is metaphysically ultimate unity or plurality?

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Why don't you walk us through some noted pre Socratic philosophers? And what they how do they answer that question?

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And what's wrong with their answer? Well, okay, so that's what we're gonna do. And I'm gonna do one thing first, though.

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Okay, I want to say about this whole question is that the challenging thing about discussing ultimate matters is that we all already have an answer to these questions.

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Even before we try to get better answers to these questions, we all begin with a conception of ourselves in the world around us, as being in certain respects, one and in certain respects, many were to even raise the question, we're already coming with an experience and with an idea about how we even begin to, to investigate whether reality was more the one or the other, or what is that principle that's whole, which holds to disparate things like unity and diversity together.

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And that's what one really challenging thing for people when we talk about this, when we talk about our ultimate commitments.

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And when we talk about the Trinity, and I would say this from the get go, because this is important for us as we, as we go into investigating the pre

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Socratic answers to this question, we have to be clear in our own minds as Christians that we already have a specific answer to these questions.

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And so here's what we mean when we talk about the Trinity as the absolute one and many.

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Every definition that we know, everything that we know, we know with certain contrasts and parameters and differentiations in it and around it, try to define something without reference to, you know, a multiplicity of words and concepts.

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Well, part of what we're saying when we say that the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the solution to the one and the many is that God has his own relationships and contrasts in himself in the life of the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This means that God is not subject to the problem of the one in the many as we experience it.

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God does not live in time such that the freshness and the life of the

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Trinity is supplied by his collision with something outside of himself or his victory over something outside of himself.

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All of his life and definition is in and through himself. This is what the

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Trinity points us to, that one divine being is three co -eternal persons.

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Their unity is so deep and profound that it is a unity of one and the very same being, that they share one will together.

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And yet, they are three distinct persons who give perfect expression to that divine being in one another.

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God, therefore, needs nothing outside of himself to unify himself.

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He has nothing outside of himself that he needs to look at or contrast with to have definition and life in himself.

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And so, in that respect, we speak of God as the absolute. He's perfectly self -sufficient and wonderfully in a way that we can know him truly but never exhaustively.

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This is what Calvin is touching on, both the aseity of God and the incomprehensibility of God.

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That's right. And it's important. So we're saying incomprehensible, but we're not saying that he's indescribable or inapprehensible.

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Calvin makes the point that unless we know God as Trinity, nothing but the name of God flutters about in our brain.

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Sorry. Because so frequently in human history, God has been defined just negatively.

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He's just not like this world. And when he's so defined, he's also unpredictable for the very same reason as to what we can expect from him.

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And of course, in Islam, assurance of salvation. When you just have a one God with no personal relationship, love, faithfulness definition in himself, he becomes an arbitrary sort of a will.

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And your capacity to be assured of salvation correlates with the ultimate unknowability of God.

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So that's what we're getting at, that God is absolutely self -sufficient and in a way that to us as persons, we can know him meaningfully.

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And to call him the solution to the one of many problem is a, to say he's not subject to it in the way we are.

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He doesn't have an unknown future in front of him, which is one of the great problems. Nor does he have any sort of subjection to any sort of power above himself.

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And this renders him the solution to the one in the many problem. And this might sound strange in an ethical way.

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Okay. What this means is all unity and diversity that we have in this reality around us was created by the

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Trinity. The reason we have unity and diversity on a creative level is because all of creation reveals the

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God in whom those two things are equally ultimate. This means that we're first of all taught to never try to find some unitary source of everything else within the creation.

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That's the source of all other parts of the creation. That would be to give unity, ultimacy, nor are we ever to look at creation as comprised of such unique and individual parts that the only sort of unity in it is a, an artificial, you know, a subjective, you know, product.

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No, there's real unity and diversity in this reality. And if we want to navigate it in such a way that we can find both a sort of restful consistency and refreshing diversity, we have to listen to the one who made it and we have to follow his direction through it.

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That's our solution to the one many problem. It's not us finding in created categories, the one thing that explains everything else.

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The only one who knows and understands and perfectly comprehends everything else is the absolutely self -sufficient

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God who knows it just by knowing himself. And that's the important element within the Christian worldview of revelation, right?

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And if you were to think, if people were to think in terms of like platonic categories of say, like you have the particulars and the universals, you know, these kind of the ideal realm, what connects the ideal realm to the particular realm?

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How can we have access to that without the thread of a revelation? That's right.

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That's right. And so exactly what we have is we have, you know, a Genesis one account that says God created, you know, the various creatures according to their kind.

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And apparently there is some sort of ideal or universal, which they share in common, that resides in the mind of God.

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And he, as the absolute one in the many, has the power and the prerogative to produce a one in many that is subject to him in every way.

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And if we want to navigate that, we need to carry on in submission to him. And he speaks to us in a variety of ways.

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You know, first off, we should note that on this view, all of reality reveals

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God absolutely immediately. Just as soon as anything appears itself, it immediately testifies to God because it is a unity of one in many, right then and there.

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And the only reason we don't intuitively give credit to the God who resides above created universals and created particulars is because we have been living our lives, suppressing the truth of God and unrighteousness.

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And this is a supremely subversive claim. Which shouldn't surprise us because all of the answers to the one many problem have really subversive claims as we're going to see in a moment.

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But what we're saying as Christians is that it's not just that we could look at creation and reason our way to God.

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It's that we are always in the very atmosphere of divine revelation.

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In him we live and move and have our being. And as we see this sort of equilibrium in our experience, there's sufficient unity and sufficient diversity to get about in the world and to make sense of things that all it's always immediately bearing witness to the

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God who resides above them both. And then we also have verbal revelation.

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We had it from the very beginning. Adam and Eve had that verbal revelation guiding them for how they should live and how they could arrive at places of deeper and more meaningful unity and diversity as we'll take

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Adam and Eve. He begins as an individual. His bride is created from his side and they are to be one flesh together as they carry on in submission and obedience to God a more profound sort of existence than the relatively unitary existence that Adam had prior to his wife.

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And it would get more profound when they had children and there would be unity and diversity in society.

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When you mention Adam and Eve, I've been asked this question a lot. If the triune

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God is needed to justify knowledge, we assume folks who are listening have background on the transcendental argument and how we argue that the

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Christian God who supplies these foundations for unity and diversity, how could knowledge ever be justified without knowledge of the trinity?

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So did God reveal himself as a trinity in the garden? What about people, pagan nations when they were doing philosophy, were they never in a position to justify knowledge because they didn't have a concept of the trinity?

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How would you address that question? I'm sure a lot of people have asked it. Yeah, that question is universally birthed from the idea that we're treating the trinity as some sort of deductive premise without which you can't arrive at certain conclusions.

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That's just a fundamentally problematic way to think about knowledge or knowing something or knowing someone at all.

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The way I tend to describe it is, yes, we need the trinity to justify knowledge. We don't need to necessarily acknowledge the trinity as a trinity to justify knowledge at every point in redemptive history.

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Part of the whole matter of the one in the many problem is, the fact is somehow every one of us as individuals and as a human race, we develop through time.

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Our understanding of the same thing can develop, and it doesn't mean that we didn't know it at the beginning because it develops into something much more profound at the end.

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What we do know about the trinity is that Adam and Eve knew the trinity, knew the triune God, even though at that point, the development of their language and conception and understanding was not in a place to articulate their tacit knowledge of the trinity as exactly that, him being triune.

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I just compare it to a children's knowledge of their parents. You know, do my kids know me?

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I mean, what kind of fool would say they didn't? Of course they know me. But in the course of time, the way that they know me, my girls at 13 now, is something very different than how they knew me when they were infants.

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The fact of the matter is, is that they didn't have words for hands. They didn't have words for a voice.

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Whatever sort of knowledge they had of those sorts of things, it wasn't the sort of thing that they could articulate it, maybe even differentiate it.

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But did they know that their dad had hands and had a voice? Did they know their dad's hands?

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And did they know their dad's voice? They surely did, in some infantile sense appropriate to their age.

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And we'd say something similar about Adam and Eve. But I do fear if I go on like this, we will never get to the pre -Socratics.

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That's a great question. But at the end of the day, what I want to mention is the subversive story that we're going to tell as Christians is that the only reason why people do not immediately acknowledge this

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God, who is the supreme source of unity and diversity in all of our experience, is because we're sinners.

33:59

And we chose in the fall to quit reasoning and thinking about ourselves in the world in terms of divine guidance.

34:08

What we chose to do when we ate the fruit and we elected to be, as it were, our own gods in pursuit of our own deity, is we began to treat ourselves as the ultimate standard.

34:23

And this is a fundamentally corrupt, fundamentally confused, and wrongheaded way to go at life and reality.

34:30

You could say it's like we chose to be drunk. We drank some alcohol. And this is 2

34:35

Timothy 2 .25 says, repentant, you know, pray that God may grant them repentance. They may come back to their senses.

34:40

It really says become sober. We elected to do something insane.

34:47

We know ourselves not to be ultimate. There's nothing more obvious than that. We know ourselves to have not created ourselves.

34:55

Nothing could be more obvious than that. Which is as much as to say that we know ourselves to be utterly dependent, not just on some other, but on some other wiser and greater than ourselves.

35:06

We know this immediately. Every thought we think already presupposes that. And the only reason we don't admit that is because we're angry at the

35:15

Lord. And that's a very subversive thing to tell the world. That's the condition that we're in.

35:22

But you'd say that the proof of it is that we can never justify our knowledge when we try to navigate the world, much less actually obtain the sort of harmony that we're all after.

35:34

And then we all have some idea of, even though it's never manifested itself. We're all trying to get somewhere better.

35:41

You know, where did we get the idea of a better harmony of the one in many than the one we currently exist in?

35:48

I like what you said. You affirmed the biblical truth that all men know

35:53

God and we are angry with him, right? We're suppressing our sin. But you didn't stop there because I would know that unbelievers who are listening, they'd be like, well,

36:04

Brant, that's a nice claim. But then you qualified it with, but we know this because, right?

36:12

When you operate on the assumption of not the triune God, you lack those, the ability to justify, you know,

36:20

A, B, and C. So it's not just an authority claim. It's an authority claim that you believe can actually be justified and demonstrated, uh, as we kind of, uh, interact with the unbeliever and kind of, uh, internally critique and draw out that knowledge of God that we were saying is, is present in all men.

36:37

Right. And, you know, it's, it's just funny when you really think about it. Why isn't it immediately obvious that it's just as subversive a claim to go about telling people that, you know, if you're ever going to find truth, you're going to have to do it on your own, using your own rational faculties as totally unguided by any divine authority or, or, or source of guidance.

36:56

Like, why, why is that obvious? Why is that the neutral or natural position?

37:01

I maintain it's not neutral and natural. It's, it's filled with so many assumptions and it's, it's just as much asserting a story about you and I and what we are and what we should expect to be able to do.

37:14

So we both have these presuppositions. I just simply, you know, maintain, you know, what Proverbs 8 36, that when we reject

37:20

God from the beginning, we reject wisdom from the beginning. It says that he who sins against me injures himself and all those who hate me love death.

37:28

We end up in confusion. And so the last thing I'll just say about the one in the many and the solvency of the

37:33

Trinity is that of course, most importantly, is that the only way out of this confusion and this drunken stupor in which we are, is that there is a

37:43

God who is one in three, such that the second person in the Trinity can assume human flesh, you know, satisfy

37:51

God's justice, giving him the obedience of which we've deprived him, die the death that we deserve, the eternal, infinite wrath of God and do so in a way that only the

38:00

God man could in a finite lapse of time. And that the third person of the Trinity would open our hearts and regenerate our very souls so that we can begin to walk on the right course again and enjoy communion and fellowship with God.

38:16

And so obviously the Trinity comes in at the front end and the back end, but let's, let's jump into the pre -Socratics.

38:23

So generally. Yeah, let's do that. Just once again, folks, I know there are a bunch of people watching now who are just popping in.

38:31

I'm speaking with Grant Bosterman, Dr. Bosterman. He is the author of the, I just had the title, your title.

38:38

You see, it was originally a dissertation. It was Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox. And interpretation and refinement of the theological apologetic of Cornelius Van Til.

38:49

So that's, that's who we're speaking with. We're about to jump into the pre -Socratics. And so hopefully you guys are, you have your seat belts on and we're, we're moving along, going through a bunch of stuff here that I think is going to be super helpful.

39:01

If you guys are finding this conversation interesting, be sure to like subscribe if you haven't, and share the video for crying out loud.

39:09

Let other people know about Dr. Bosterman's work, especially his book. And, and yeah, so let's jump in.

39:17

So let's talk a little bit about the pre -Socratics and don't worry, Corey, I see that awesome and super generous, super chat.

39:24

Thank you so much. I really do appreciate it. We'll be getting to questions and definitely super chats at the back end of the episode, but thank you so much.

39:31

Go for it, Dr. Bosterman. Good. Yeah, we'll, we'll see how far we can get. I will begin with Thales, who is generally regarded to be the first philosopher, surely within the

39:43

Greek context. Well, Thales advances a theory that ultimate reality is water.

39:50

All of reality is really water. Now this is again, you know, a subversive claim and it implicitly comes as a critique of the way that so many of us like to think about reality.

40:02

We tend to think of the real, you might say as that which is stable and enduring.

40:08

And so, you know, so I think sometimes the naive, you know, answer to, to a philosophical question, what's real is someone to pick up something solid and be like, well, this is real.

40:19

You know, I can touch it and it, you know, here it is, it's tangible and all of those things. And you think about it and you ask, you know, why, what would compel someone like Thales to the conclusion that, that reality is ultimately fluid?

40:34

And what it, what it requires presumably is someone taking a deeper look at everything than just your immediate experience.

40:43

So you have a person who's beginning like Adam autonomously after the fall with his experience and saying, yet upon investigation, my conclusions about what is ultimately real must change.

40:58

And this is because in fact, when you look at reality, everything changes, things break, things erode, they crumble, rivers redirect, things grow.

41:11

And you ask yourself, you know, what then is the ultimate character of reality?

41:16

It's, it's far less like a rock, says Thales, which would be, you know, what are the, the four classical elements, you know, earth and, you know, air and fire and water.

41:27

And it's much more like water and ever fluid something. And, you know, you also, you know, consider, you had asked earlier, you know, why do we even suppose there are universals?

41:40

Why do you suppose there even, you know, there is unity in reality? Well, in order for things to interact, to collide, to, to have any sort of interaction, it appears they must have something in common.

41:55

That's how it looks when you look at it, you know, from just the mere experience of man reasoning under the sun, you know, why is it the water can erode a rock?

42:03

Well, they're both physical and water can exert a force on that rock. So I guess, you know, the ball goes into the court of a pure nominalist to say, you know, why wouldn't we say that these things all share a common property of physicality?

42:19

And these, these pre -Socratics really are working in a world where the idea that ultimate reality is physical, it's one of the more immediate sorts of conclusions one might draw simply based on experience unreflective, and then even into deeper points of reflection.

42:37

And, you know, you might ask other questions, why did he come up with this, this idea? I mean, water is one of the, you know, elements that in nature, we can actually watch transition from a liquid state to a solid state to a, you know, to a vaporous state.

42:53

And not only that, but there are other curiosities. I mean, if you have the conception that clouds are, you know, rain, or water and contain water, and then you note that they lightning bolts proceed from them, you might say by empirical observation that water somehow, you know, the permutation of it is, you know, just that fire, and you might see a tree get caught on fire from that, where you might observe that, you know, water comes out of especially, you know, living bodies, living agents.

43:23

And, you know, this worldview that all is in fluid motion, it carries with it an implicit ethic, just the same.

43:33

If this is the case, then you would leave going, I should not grow to attach to anything.

43:40

Everything's changing. By the same right, you probably leave saying I actually shouldn't worry too much about losing anything, because it will be back again.

43:51

Sure. And so, you know, we have a guy trying to explain what is the ultimate reality that I can count on.

44:01

And his conclusion is the thing that doesn't change is change itself. Change is always happening.

44:06

That's what you can count on. That's a very this worldly perspective. Sure. And you could say change itself is a one which gives rise to all of the diversity around us.

44:19

And in fact, the diversity that we see is not more real than change itself or the fluid nature of reality.

44:28

You follow me there, Eli? Yeah, I'm familiar with. Here's the thing with Thales.

44:34

It's very easy as kind of modern thinkers to look at Thales, who said all is water and be like, well, that's dumb.

44:41

Well, he was actually onto something, even though we don't agree with his conclusion. He's really grappling with, you know, these kind of deep metaphysical questions based upon his observation and the limited knowledge that he had.

44:54

So I'm following you. So water seems to be kind of insufficient, as you see some other philosophers come along the line and start suggesting other things.

45:03

So why don't we kind of go through a couple of other options? Thales said all is water, and that was a little problematic.

45:12

What were some other things that folks were saying? If I may, Eli, I might even suggest a slightly more complex course in saying, you know, and I kind of want to actually revive a conception of presuppositionalism in relation to philosophy as all we do is we point out their presuppositions are wrong and move on.

45:31

Quite to the contrary, we have already asserted that in our worldview, absolutely everything reveals

45:38

God indirectly. Everything testifies to the true God, and the same is true of mistaken philosophies.

45:46

In fact, even as insane as it sounds to say that, you know, all is water, you know, current atomic theory has, you know, electrons constantly moving.

45:56

In fact, their definition is more like a mathematical function, a fluid constant function.

46:02

You know, to say that energy is what matter is, it isn't that far from what we're talking about.

46:08

And I'm just saying there really isn't anything new under the sun, and there's a sense in which that's false, but one in which it's true.

46:15

So let me get at this. There's actually some solid biblical agreement with Thales that we need to take into account.

46:22

The earth and created reality under the heavens is especially fluid.

46:28

In fact, when it's first made, what do we read? We read in Genesis 1 through 2 that in the beginning,

46:35

God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

46:42

The idea that the world in which we live is especially fluid in time is at the very essence of what we believe about the creation in contrast to the creator.

47:00

And notably, from the very beginning, there is a part of this reality that God's made that is full, apparently luminescent, and not without form.

47:12

Heaven is a contrast. And I would argue in Genesis 1 when we're talking about the heavens in which the angelic beings are, and which

47:20

God is in a more direct sense than on the earth. I could go into reasons why, but I won't here.

47:26

But the contrasting reality in which we find ourselves is in regular change and constant motion.

47:33

And so in that respect, Thales wasn't insane. Where he went wrong is supposing that that reality is or could be sufficient to itself.

47:46

The insight that all things change is only meaningful against some absolute.

47:52

We wouldn't even be able to gauge change without there being some sort of absolute.

47:58

And so what we're trying to get at here is that Thales assigning ultimate reality to change itself, and calling that the one thing that explains everything else.

48:09

We're going to say that is Thales having an undeniable knowledge of the

48:15

I Am, the God who absolutely is the one who brings unity to everything else.

48:21

And frankly, Thales had eternity in his heart, just like Ecclesiastes 3 .11 says. And the closest he felt like he could get to that as an autonomous man was to name that one thing which is eternal, which is change.

48:35

And it's a pretty sad solution to our longing and desire for eternity.

48:42

And you know, Wenzel had this phrase, or this aphorism, I don't know. He describes a man this way.

48:48

He says, fallen humanity is, and I'm paraphrasing, is like a man made of water standing in a glass of water trying to climb out on a ladder made of water.

48:59

You know, Thales calling change the one thing that really is, is the man in the glass of water trying to step out of that change, and have something that endures.

49:16

And all he has is the name of change itself. And that's the sad and hopeless position in which men are.

49:25

Because here's the thing, pure change is actually unchanging monotony.

49:32

If everything that is, has already been, and everything that, you know, is, will be again, what you're actually in is a very depressing place.

49:44

This is where Ecclesiastes is in chapter one, five to nine, where it says, you know, the sun rises and sets, it hastens to its place, and there, it rises there again, blowing toward the south and toward the north.

49:56

The wind continues swirling long, and on its circular course, the wind returns. And he says, all things are wearisome.

50:02

That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So there's nothing new under the sun.

50:09

Sure. You know, this is what we mean when we talk about the self -defeating sorts of conclusions. And here, we're not talking about an epistemic self -defeat, but we are talking about a very practical one.

50:21

That's a depressing place to be. Things aren't going anywhere. Things are just always recycling.

50:31

So real change, we would say to Thales, you know, nice try, but real change actually requires a purpose.

50:38

It requires a teleology that actually leaves things behind, and is going somewhere definite.

50:45

That's what real change looks like. And the only one who could ever tell us that any such real change existed, that we were going somewhere that left the past behind, would be the triune

50:57

God who resides above time, who has real life and meaning and definition in himself.

51:03

He's a one and a many, and therefore, can be the director and our sure guide in time.

51:12

So that's where we want to look at these things, and we want to say, you know, they're getting at something every time.

51:17

They have to be, because this is God's creation. We can't even talk about it without getting at something true.

51:25

So we're always taking philosophies, Van Til says, and setting them right side up. Now, I'm just going to say one more thing here, you know, just to really, you know, delve into the depths of, you know, honestly, how much

51:38

Thales got right. Okay. You know, life, it really is best described as fluid in Scripture.

51:49

You know, water is one of the only elements that, you know, in nature is naturally moving all the time, whether it be the state of sea, or whether it be rivers and things like that.

51:59

And so therefore, we have a phrase in the Bible, it talks about living water frequently. And when it talks about man in the sacrificial system, you know, what we have to offer to God as, you know, expressive of our life is blood.

52:15

You know, you think about people walking around, you know, the cadence and the rhythm with which we move the fluidity of our movements is much more like water than it is like a rock.

52:26

And so what does the Scripture say? It says that the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I've given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.

52:39

We would do well to understand what a profound insight this is. And I think, you know, the

52:45

Bible, being as it was in a world where such elemental theory was prominent, we would actually say it has to correct, you know, has to, the biblical system is actually gives the true meaning to that elemental theory.

53:03

And what do we do with that life? That life doesn't keep cycling.

53:10

That life has an end to which it must be brought in God's house, God's temple, where it will be accepted or rejected.

53:19

It is going somewhere. And that living water isn't just going back into a cycle of, you know, condensation and all of these things.

53:28

That living water has an end and a purpose to bring life to living things.

53:35

And so I would submit that Leviticus 17, 11, and what it says about blood being brought to a definite end is stated more directly and ethically in Ecclesiastes 12, that the conclusion when all has been said and heard is fear

53:49

God and keep his commandments because this applies to every person for God will bring every act to judgment.

53:55

Everything which is hidden, whether good or evil, that is what everything is flowing to.

54:03

And Thales very sadly did not know that. So you would say, so Thales and what are a couple of others?

54:11

Who is the person that said that all is fire, all is air? Are you saying all of these philosophers are touching on something that is true -ish, but because of the suppression, because of, you know, all these things, they're not capturing the full picture.

54:31

Well, they can't. It's not even just that they're not capturing the full picture, but they have an outrightly contradictory picture.

54:38

It is a self -defeating picture. So this is, you know, the matter of self -deception of which we speak that, you know, in our actual thoughts, we can believe contradictions, even though contradictions are not real, we can hold to beliefs, you know, that are at odds with one another.

54:54

And that's what all of these philosophers are doing there. They're actually stealing from our worldview.

55:00

They're always taking from our worldview. It's borrowed capital and it's, you know, the biblical scriptures and divine guidance that that that's the foundation.

55:10

That is the thing we're all standing on the world made by God. So all we can do is manipulate it if we're not willing to submit to him in it.

55:19

And yet even those manipulations must still bring indirect, you know, glory to God by providing deeper insights that when turned right side up are well worth considering.

55:35

So, well, let's go to the next one, because, you know, the best critiques of all of the pre -Socratics are actually delivered by other pre -Socratics.

55:45

They're masterful at, you know, pointing out the contradictions and the, you know, the problems with one another.

55:52

And so we turned to Anaximander, who was the pupil of Thales. And here's what he concluded.

56:00

His theory was that ultimate reality is the boundless, what he called

56:06

Aperon. And there's a critique of Thales in this claim. If Thales is going to say that everything is water, why would we say that water as we know it, the liquid substance, is the more apt definition of all of reality than rock or than air or than fire?

56:30

If they're all water, how do you freeze the frame at what we think of as, you know, oceanic water and say, well, that's what it all is.

56:39

Why isn't it all just any one of those? Why do you say it's all rock? That would be just as true because rock is just as fluid at the end of the day as water is.

56:48

And, you know, there's something just painfully arbitrary about this. And beyond being arbitrary, it appears that Anaximander also understood that these different states of matter contradict one another.

57:02

He understood that it isn't just water, you know, smoothly transitions into being a solid and into being fire.

57:09

Fire actually destroys water. And if it's in greater abundance, and then water actually destroys fire if it's in greater abundance.

57:17

These qualities are contraries. So here's what Anaximander is saying.

57:25

They have to have some sameness because they interact. But that one thing, that sameness that they all have cannot be tied to any of the qualities, specific qualities of each, because they can't conflict with one another.

57:43

Therefore, there must be a stuff underneath all that we observe that holds it all together and does not in itself have to be defined by any of the qualities of the others.

57:57

And he divided the qualities up into wet and cold, which is water, wet and warm, which is air, dry and cold, which is earth and dry and hot, which is fire.

58:07

The thing bearing all those qualities cannot itself be hot or never be cold.

58:12

It cannot itself be dry or never be wet. You have to transcend those categories. That's right.

58:18

And he understood that, you know, qualities themselves are, you know, limitations of some sort. And therefore, it mustn't be any one of those qualities.

58:28

And so that, you know, he's actually a very interesting figure because his theory of the boundless really, he expounds it.

58:38

Well, we actually, we don't have so much of what these guys wrote, but we have some idea of what he held.

58:44

And this idea of the boundless, this thing that precedes all qualities, it really is the beginning of what you might think of as a negative theology.

58:55

Negative theology is that God is just not like any of the limitations of the world around us, about us.

59:02

Go ahead. Oh, well, that's different. Okay. So you're not talking about like apophatic theology, right? Sure.

59:08

Absolutely. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And so his boundless, you could say is kind of the beginning of that sort of thinking.

59:17

And he actually develops an intense cosmogony that essentially the boundless, and this all sounds so strange, somehow divides itself into two contrary expressions, one sphere of fire around a great big ball of water.

59:36

And then because the fire, you know, is over the water, it creates steam and it produces air. And then the things which are closer, you know, to the water itself, you know, produce earth as something that is, you know, dry, but not wet.

59:50

And you end up with this big sort of drum like disc, which is the earth in this theory.

59:56

Then you have different rings of thickness of cloud. It's so interesting that like someone, as they're thinking about this, they're developing these, it's just...

01:00:06

Absolutely. It's fascinating. And his theory about what the sun and the moon are, and the stars, is that these different layers of concentric circles of cloud, they have holes in them.

01:00:19

And there's actually just a big hole in one of these layers of cloud, which you can see that aboriginal fire through in a disc -like form.

01:00:28

And that's what the sun is. It's just like a hole in the cloud. That's what all the stars are at different layers.

01:00:35

And then his theory, you know, he's also a proponent of evolution. He's the, you know, it's not a new theory, but he had the belief that essentially sea creatures eventually birth land creatures and eventually birth man.

01:00:48

And what's happening is this cycle, you begin with the boundless, it goes down into these different forms of material, then animals, then man.

01:00:58

And there's going to be some sort of resolution back up at the top where everything goes back to being boundless, qualitative -less reality, at least qualitative -less in terms of any quality we know of.

01:01:11

But you can see here what he's trying to do. He's trying to explain how there can be unity in this world that has such diversity between things like fire and water and earth and animals and human creatures.

01:01:26

And so once again, we have to look at this, you know, from a biblical perspective and see where there's a sort of truth in this and where there's just a fundamental problem and disagreement that we're going to have to have.

01:01:40

We do have a conception of the boundless in our conception of God.

01:01:46

God is unbounded by creation. And in that sense, he's not dependent on it.

01:01:54

Nothing in creation is exactly like him. He's rather self -contained.

01:02:01

He's not creation -contained. And in that respect, we can talk about a

01:02:07

God who in the beginning, which has to mean before the beginning as we know it, there's this

01:02:14

God who is unlike the creation in certain fundamental ways.

01:02:20

We can talk about before time eternal in Titus 1 -2. Just the same, we can talk about a

01:02:26

God who is before space as we know it. And of course, that's deep in the Hebrew conception. Solomon built a house and says that even the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this house which

01:02:38

I have built. You know, that's interesting. You know, seeing as Anaxagoras is talking about these levels of heaven, and the sun is just that highest element of fire closest to the

01:02:53

Aviron shining through. Well, we're saying even more than that.

01:02:59

He is beyond the sun itself, beyond all of these things. And he's never ever to be confused with them.

01:03:08

Just the same, you know, our God reveals himself in Judges 13 -18 to Manoah, Samson's father, and says, you know, why do you ask my name?

01:03:14

My name is incomprehensible. And yet at the very same time, this is so important.

01:03:21

A theophany, the angel of the Lord is the one speaking that. We have a different kind of incomprehensible as Christians than non -Christians.

01:03:32

What is incomprehensible to us is absolutely comprehended by God.

01:03:38

And just the same, when we speak of a God as incomprehensible, we don't mean he has no qualities whatsoever.

01:03:46

We mean whatever qualities we ascribe to him, we're doing so analogically, knowing that they must be different from the qualities that we see here and there.

01:03:55

And that's related to Van Til's conception of analogical thinking. Is that connected there? That's right.

01:04:01

That's right. Absolutely. So here's the thing. We might say that Anaximander's boundless, his reality, is both more and less boundless than the

01:04:14

Trinity, and in terrible ways at that, self -defeating ways at that. His totally boundless infinite state resists all definition.

01:04:26

None at all. In fact, the only way we can give a definition is against bounded finite reality, which we experience here.

01:04:34

That's what we mean when we talk about negative theology. And here's the thing. His boundless is so boundless and incomprehensible that his whole theory has the idea that it can realize contradictions.

01:04:48

The boundless can become fire and water, two contradictories.

01:04:55

It can express itself in its opposite. In fact, precisely because it's boundless, you might say, it realizes these contradictions.

01:05:04

Forgive me for hearing Karl Barth's doctrine of the Word of God in what I'm saying right now. But it's exactly that.

01:05:12

There's this word that it's constantly revealing itself, and immediately its revelation is fossilized, and you can't use it to limit

01:05:19

God. What this means, though, then, is that, in fact, the boundless is really not boundless at all, you might say.

01:05:30

It is actually totally dependent on instability, and it actually looks more like instability than anything else.

01:05:40

We are in a different position as Trinitarians. We believe in the ontological Trinity, the

01:05:45

God not bounded by creation. He is never finite. He is full of personal relationship in himself, and he doesn't mark out his boundlessness by becoming his opposite ever.

01:06:00

And it's rather that he has an immutable and infinite character in himself that is loving and faithful that gives us all the peace in the world.

01:06:10

And so we would just note at the very core, uh,

01:06:17

Anaximander. It's hard to remember all their names, right? Yeah, exactly. Anaximander, he really doesn't have any ground for claiming that he knows anything.

01:06:30

Ultimate reality is a boundless something that can realize contradictions. And we would say that sort of boundless is a negative infinite.

01:06:40

It is something that, if it is true that that's what ultimate reality is, you really can't, it actually undermines your ability to know anything.

01:06:51

Knowledge, at least having some sort of, you know, conception that we can rule certain things out of court as impossible.

01:06:59

How can you say of the boundless who realizes contradictions that anything is impossible? How can you say that you know that reality is in a cycle on its way back up to him?

01:07:08

Um, these sorts of things, uh, are unknowable when you accept that presupposition.

01:07:15

So, okay. So now, now, unfortunately we won't be able to go through all of the presocratics because we're, we're at the top of the hour.

01:07:22

Um, but again, I would imagine all of them are going to have similar issues. They're not going to be able to kind of ground, uh, this one in the many, uh, issue.

01:07:31

I want to now make a transition, uh, cause there are a lot of questions coming in, uh, that are apologetics related and some of them philosophical.

01:07:41

Um, yeah, I was ready to talk about so many presocratics. No, I, I, I was way too prepared.

01:07:47

This is that I teach, uh, uh, I don't mind. I can listen to it all night, but, um,

01:07:53

I, I, here's what I want to do. I'm gonna let people know too, cause I know a lot of people want their specific questions answered that have some apologetic application more than kind of asking some of those more interesting historical questions.

01:08:06

Uh, what I'm going to do is, uh, in a couple of days, I'm actually going to, um, cut out the questions and make that a separate video.

01:08:15

So you can come and listen to this whole thing with the questions included, but also release another video where it just addresses questions just for people who want to kind of jump ahead and get those things.

01:08:24

But this historical discussion I think is so important because it shows that the problem, again, is not, uh, uh, an invention ex nihilo by presuppositionalists who are trying to, you know, argue this point when they're using the transcendental argument.

01:08:36

This is, this is a long and rich history that goes, uh, way, way back. So, so I want to kind of, uh, hijack the discussion and, and ask a question that's related to, uh, those who have been critical of presuppositionalism, transcendental argumentation, and our use, uh, uh, of the problem of the one in the many suggesting that the

01:08:56

Trinity solves this issue. Uh, so for example, Dr. Richard Howe, who is, um, awesome guy, by the way.

01:09:03

Um, I love Dr. Howe. He's got some great stuff. Obviously we come from a different perspective apologetically and philosophically.

01:09:10

Um, but in a discussion, uh, on apologetic methodology, he was on with a number of apologists from different apologetic traditions.

01:09:18

Uh, one of which was Dr. James White, who was defending the presuppositional perspective. Um, and, uh,

01:09:25

Dr. White brought up the problem of the one in the many, as a necessary kind of precondition for intelligible experience and knowledge.

01:09:32

And Dr. Howe said that the problem of the one in the many has already been solved.

01:09:38

And he suggested that Aristotle already solved the problem. Now that's interesting because I know

01:09:44

Dr. Howe is, is Thomistic in his, in his philosophical and, uh, his philosophical orientation.

01:09:51

And so I know Thomism has a very strong relationship with Aristotelianism and things like that.

01:09:57

Are you familiar with the attempted solution of the one in the many from Aristotle?

01:10:02

And if so, why does Aristotle fail to actually answer this problem? Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, anyone who is acquainted with the history of philosophy would have some conception of what

01:10:15

Aristotle's, you know, solution to the, to the one many problem is. Um, you know, uh, wherein lies, you know, some of the problem that problematic elements to it.

01:10:25

I mean, so Aristotle has to posit a conception of matter that is, uh, in many respects, like, well, we just talked about Anaximander's, uh, uh, boundless.

01:10:39

He has to deposit a sort of matter that underlies everything that is, is close to nothing or non being is, is anything possibly could be, which can actually receive any, any of the various qualities that it, uh, that it turns into.

01:11:00

It has a passive potency to become these different qualities. Um, the concept of something that is pure potentiality, um, unknowable it's, it's well, it's undefinable in itself.

01:11:13

It doesn't have an amount. It doesn't have a number. It doesn't have any, all of those are qualities that it could have.

01:11:20

It doesn't have a size. That's also a quality that it could have. And then, you know, so that's like the bottom of, of errors.

01:11:27

That's where, you know, the source of many -ness for Aristotle, you might say it, the highest end of unity in, in Aristotle's worldview is that it's really an abstract ideal of thought thinking itself.

01:11:41

And the stars are trying to be like that. They're semi sentient beings. Their circular motion is, you know, the closest thing in visible form to, you know, what thought thinking itself would be like.

01:11:53

And, you know, what you basically have Aristotle saying is that by the collision of these two unknowable things, pure, pure, impersonal reason and, uh, immaterial, uh, almost nothing, that's how you produce the entire reality of everything from sentient beings to, to gods, to stars, to animals, you name it.

01:12:22

Um, how you could conceive of that as the solution to the problem of the one in the many is, uh, somewhat baffling, you know, for, for Aristotle, he's not even claiming that he can, you know, prove these things definitively.

01:12:37

Uh, they're sort of, it's, it's like a man saying my experience must be real.

01:12:43

I'm starting there. My experience must, must have truth, uh, truth bearing property to it and moving out from there and saying, uh, what can validate my experiences?

01:12:57

I currently know it. And he's going to appeal to these two, uh, deeply, well, frankly, esoteric things at the end of the day.

01:13:04

Um, he can tell you how or why those things ever came together. Um, he can tell you if any being in all of reality knows how or why those things are together.

01:13:16

There's, there's no being sufficient for that task in his worldview. And so in a certain sense, you could say it's all provisional.

01:13:23

It's all the best effort of a man doing the best that he can with what he has. It reeks of autonomy from the get -go and, uh, it begs for a solution as to what is responsible for all of this.

01:13:38

And so in that respect, we'd go, no, I mean, it doesn't even, if you're, if you're talking about a solution to the problem of the one in the many that breeds certainty, that's certainly not what an

01:13:51

Aristotelian philosophy can do. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Now, uh, because of limitations of time,

01:13:58

I do want to kind of transition into some questions. There's a lot of them and I want to make sure we get to some of them.

01:14:05

So I do apologize that we weren't able to cover, which I'm sure you can give three, four hour lecture on.

01:14:12

And I'd be happy to listen to all of it. Um, but, um, I think people got a flavor of what the problem is, how some people have tried to kind of grapple with what is more ultimate and why it doesn't work.

01:14:26

And that can have many permutations in terms of like how to apply that to modern philosophical conceptions that try to kind of, uh, understand unity and plurality.

01:14:36

So, um, so I think that if people want to go back and listen to that, I think that you can get a nice little lesson in history of, of this idea.

01:14:44

Um, but let's move to the questions here and perhaps it'll touch on some stuff that you've already done and maybe take us in areas that perhaps we haven't discussed, but are interesting nonetheless.

01:14:53

Is that okay? Sure. All right. Thank you so much, by the way, you've done excellent. I didn't expect you to not do excellent.

01:14:59

Uh, it's just such a fascinating topic, but first I'd like to say thank you to Corey, uh, for his $20 super chat.

01:15:06

Thank you so much. That's a very generous. I very much appreciate it. Uh, but here's Corey's question. You say that the

01:15:12

Holy Spirit is the infinitesimal unity through whom all created things are related. Who renders all things indefinitely divisible is the spirit, the smallest metaphysical unit, or only analogically.

01:15:27

So, okay. So God renders all things, uh, in indefinitely divisible and synthesizable, we would say as well.

01:15:37

Um, so, so answer to the first part, um, is the spirit, spirit, spirit, the smallest metaphysical unit?

01:15:46

Well, here's the thing. Uh, the spirit is not himself a spatial being.

01:15:52

So if you're using spot, well, at least not as, as regards spaces, we know it. Um, we could at best speak of there being an sort of analogical space when we speak of God.

01:16:04

Um, and as it, as it is, of course, you know, the Lord himself, uh, is contained by himself and he is infinitely contained by himself.

01:16:14

And so I guess there's a sense in which, and I think I discussed this in the book, there's a sense in which we can speak of each person of the

01:16:21

Trinity is infinitesimal, uh, in, in themselves and, and in, in, in, in the

01:16:26

Trinity, but we wouldn't want it to ever confuse that with, with space as we know it, as if the spirit were limited on his left and his right by, uh, you know, any, any physical creative reality.

01:16:40

Sure. All right. Excellent. Thank you for that. Um, thank you, Corey, Scott, Terry, thank you so much for your $20 super chat.

01:16:46

Once again, very much appreciated. Thank you so much. Uh, here's a Scott's question. Many apologists defend necessary being theology where questions like, why is

01:16:56

God a Trinity? Are inherently wrong since God has all his properties necessarily.

01:17:02

Is this helpful for us as Vantillians? Uh, to describe God as a necessary being, um, okay.

01:17:10

I mean, yes, it is helpful in a variety of ways. Um, but we'd want to always be clear about what sort of necessity we're talking about.

01:17:20

Um, the creation necessarily needs the Trinity, not only for its existence, but its intelligibility.

01:17:28

And therefore the Trinity is necessary to the creation, but we would want to make sure we were never attempting to say that there's some supervening necessity outside of, or beyond God explaining why he is the way he is.

01:17:43

Even when we talk about the one many problem, we're not starting with the problem and going, Oh, you know,

01:17:48

God necessarily must be triune or something like that. We're actually starting with the revelation that God is triune.

01:17:55

And we're seeing the whole problem through the lens of that truth in that reality. And so the only necessity that we would ever want to ascribe to God and to his attributes, um, is a necessity that is

01:18:08

God himself. God is who he is. He is what he is. Um, the minute we start looking for a necessity outside of that, which is the sort of thing you really get when

01:18:18

Leibniz is talking about, um, you know, uh, God creating the greatest of all possible worlds.

01:18:25

There's an objective necessity outside of and beyond God that, that is just like reason itself that is requiring

01:18:33

God to create the way that he does almost like there's this mansion and God is inside of it.

01:18:39

And there's like an infinite number of rooms and the best room. And why wouldn't God go into that room? I mean, you'd have to go to that room.

01:18:46

Um, that's not the sort of necessity we could ever, uh, we could ever, um, credit to a self contained

01:18:53

God. He would be an other contained God in that context. All right. Excellent. Thank you so much, Scott, for your question.

01:18:59

And thank you for your super chat. Um, Chris says, I've asked Dr. Bosterman about this before.

01:19:05

I don't know if you know who that is, but he's asked before, uh, but it might be helpful for some, uh, for him to explain is of identity versus is of predication with regards to the

01:19:16

Trinity. Okay. So there's a sort of is that, you know, we would, uh, predicate to an individual where we only predicate of them, uh, their name.

01:19:26

So, you know, I am Brant. Um, that's a rather unique, uh, thing to predicate.

01:19:33

There's only one Brant or at least, uh, um, Brant as I'm using it non -equivocally that can apply, um, to that particular eye.

01:19:43

And, um, that's the sort of, uh, is of identity there. Um, something being the special, unique sort of thing that only it is.

01:19:54

Um, then there's, you know, the is of, um, uh, whereas, uh, uh, predicating a category to something.

01:20:06

And this is where the one many problem arises. You know, what are those categories? It's, it's goes back to, you know, uh, me, you know, calling

01:20:14

Eli a man, um, there Eli and I share something in common. And, uh, the reason why we can predicate that of the both of us is that there is a, um, uh, it, well, it's an abstraction.

01:20:27

Man sheds many of the details of Eli. You know, you look at the two of us here, um, we could list all sorts of things from slightly different skin tones to being different heights to you name it.

01:20:39

And man doesn't contain any of those things as a, a category or, um, as a class.

01:20:46

And so let me, I'm reading the question again. So, um, the, the unique thing about when we talk about God is, is this, the three persons of the

01:20:57

Trinity are all that God is, uh, they are the whole divine being.

01:21:03

They have all of the divine attributes exhausted and fully expressed in themselves.

01:21:09

Um, and yet they are three persons, uh, co -eternal in relationship with one another.

01:21:17

And here's the thing. There's nothing else like that in all of reality round about us. The Trinity is absolutely unique in that respect.

01:21:25

So God is God and the son is God in a wonderfully different way.

01:21:31

Um, then I am a man and Eli is a man. We don't absolutely exhaust humanity.

01:21:40

Neither one of us does, but each person or the Trinity does. And this speaks to the fact again, that God is not reliant on anything outside of himself to be himself.

01:21:51

It's not as though the three persons of Trinity came together and made a God who is one between them as a sort of a group or agreement that would make

01:22:01

God himself kind of a chance product and chance would be bigger than God. Sure. Nor are the three persons of the

01:22:07

Trinity. Um, God, you know, what happened after God divided himself or rarefied himself into, you know, more and less concentrated portions of deity.

01:22:17

Once again, that we would have a situation where God is evidently contained by something space.

01:22:23

I don't know where he could parcel himself out into other things and something impersonal would be ultimate.

01:22:29

Rather the personal God contains himself, comprehends himself, is himself perfectly and absolutely in a diversity of persons, unlike anything else.

01:22:40

Excellent. Thank you so much for that. Uh, yet I think it's Viet. My says

01:22:46

Dr. Bosterman in your Trinity book, you mentioned that two persons in the Trinity relate to each other in the personal context of the other person.

01:22:55

Could you help me understand what you mean by personal context? Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well just relationships, uh, relationships are somewhere in, in the persons of the

01:23:07

Trinity are, uh, they have relations with one another and those cannot be happening.

01:23:13

Uh, it's somewhere that's impersonal or again, we'd have an ultimate reality that was impersonal that no mind fully comprehends.

01:23:22

And so it's vital importance that, you know, the son can say I am in the father and the father is in me.

01:23:28

And if we try to consider where and how the father relate to one another, you know, the amount of transfiguration where they're, you know, at least the voice of the father and, and the son are engulfed in the glory cloud, you know, or content frequently associated with the spirit of God.

01:23:44

Um, that is where the persons are, uh, they, their relationships are, and that which makes their relationships possible is not a reality outside of God.

01:23:55

I mean, going back to Aristotle, if you say that the fundamental element under which everything that resides under everything is, is ultimately unknowable and indefiable, definable, except in the way that Aristotle says, you know, it, it, it lacks, um, any actuality in itself that has to be supplied by forms that, um, are imposed on it and exist in it.

01:24:21

Um, how can Aristotle say what that matter can or cannot do? Is there any mind that knows that?

01:24:29

Is there any mind that knows bare, uh, uh, huet, uh, matter?

01:24:35

And if no one knows, how can Aristotle be so certain about his entire metaphysical system that, um, uh, that things might not get mucked up by this thing that he totally doesn't understand that's in everything?

01:24:47

Sure. This, this is where the problem resides when we talk about having an impersonal ultimate.

01:24:54

And, you know, in, in the case of the Trinity, the key is that, that the God's relationship to the world is facilitated by one of the three persons of the

01:25:03

Trinity. And even his relationship to himself is, uh, in the context of the three persons.

01:25:08

Each, each person of the Trinity is always encapsulated within a fully comprehensive relational context with the other persons.

01:25:16

So there is no there in this, uh, in the one person being encapsulated by the conceptual relationship between say father, son, and vice versa, there is no abstract impersonality.

01:25:31

They are fully immersed and it's kind of where you get into the doctrine of perichoresis or the interpenetration of the persons.

01:25:38

Right. And, and, you know, the reason we're able to talk right now, Eli, and we're able to, you know, have these listeners pay attention is because the context in which we're talking is not just space.

01:25:48

It's not just time. It's not just our civil government. It's not just our linguistic system.

01:25:54

None of those things can ultimately tell us with certainty that we're really making contact with one another.

01:26:00

Sure. We live and move and have our being in the context of the Trinity who speaks to us everywhere. And the real reason we all have confidence that we can speak right now and arrive at interesting conclusions and you is because before we ever drew one conclusion about anything else, we had literally been in the atmosphere.

01:26:19

And I don't want that to sound pantheistic of God's revelation, inviting us, assuring us, telling us that we're made in his image and that this world was made for us to be understood, that we're made to be understood by one another.

01:26:32

And we've only been suppressing that all of our lives and not giving

01:26:38

God thanks for it as Romans one says. And we need to be to be doing that. All right.

01:26:43

Very good. Thank you so much. The sire says, what would you say about divine conceptualism?

01:26:49

Do you hold to it? Do you think it's problematic? What are your thoughts on that? I'm not familiar with that phrase.

01:26:55

Okay. That's all right. No worry. You can write back and just tell me what you mean by that. Sure. Thank you for that.

01:27:01

Wilder Adventures asks, what is a dog, if not the abstraction of the essence of dog from particular dogs?

01:27:09

In your book, you mentioned that abstract thinking is sinful thinking. Yeah. Well, what we mean when we call that sinful thinking is suggesting that there is just this impersonal abstract dog somewhere in some form or fashion, or maybe just only ever embodied in particular dogs, but that is somehow holding it together as a dog and placing limitations on it as a dog.

01:27:35

We're going to say as Trinitarians, that the only sense in which there is that form is that the

01:27:43

God who made these things knew all things before he made them.

01:27:48

He made them in a way that they would have these resemblances. And that definition is the power of God working and operating in his creation.

01:28:00

And so in that sense, we're not engaging in abstract, I'm just reading your question, abstract thinking, and suggesting that an impersonal something is ultimately responsible for the dogness of dogs.

01:28:13

It's the personal God who imposes that on them. And of course, yes, for us, yeah, when we form an idea of dog, our idea is only true to the degree that it corresponds with God's idea of dog.

01:28:28

And frankly, it never does absolutely, but it does truly. All right. Thank you for that.

01:28:34

Chris asks, could we argue that a Unitarian God wouldn't be able to ontically ground its own thoughts?

01:28:41

I ask because some people try to say a uni -God's thoughts could account for the one and the many.

01:28:49

Why? In other words, why, if I can reform the question, why doesn't a Unitarian God cut it?

01:28:56

How does a Unitarian God undermine the preconditions of knowledge, intelligible experience and so forth?

01:29:03

Yeah. I mean, well, already when you talk about a Unitarian God and his thoughts, you have a multiplicity in that Unitarian God.

01:29:10

And so I would want to be asking, are those, is the Unitarian God's thoughts identical with himself or are they of something less than himself?

01:29:22

Is he thinking himself when he goes, thinks about himself as God with reference to a platonic form of deity that he happens to instantiate?

01:29:34

What is he thinking about himself with reference to? Because for us as Trinitarians, we have the eternal logos, the eternal son of God, God, the father knows himself in the face of the son.

01:29:47

So in that sense, that, you know, with reference to which he knows himself is not less than himself.

01:29:53

It's not an abstraction of himself. It isn't something that precedes himself. And so that's what we're getting at when we talk about God being self -contained.

01:30:03

When you're talking about a Unitarian deity who does not have a living personal son as the, you know, the reference point or as his logos, what is his logos?

01:30:16

What is his wisdom? Is it something less than the personal God himself? And that's where we would point out that really

01:30:24

Unitarian Gods are, you know, I mean, if we're talking about the deistic version of a

01:30:29

Unitarian God, or we're talking about Plato's Demiurge, those are definitely finite gods.

01:30:37

That's all they ever were supposed to be. They're in a universe that precedes themselves. They aren't the absolute stuff that makes everything happen.

01:30:47

They're subject to a reality beyond. The universe is eternal on those views. It's the universe that's more ultimate.

01:30:54

It's this ultimate impersonal context in which these deities dwell. Right. And the fact that we're talking about him having thoughts is the sort of negative projection of man onto just a much more powerful being.

01:31:12

It lacks the revelational divinity of the doctrine of the

01:31:18

Trinity, where we're being smacked upside the head with the sort of God who is radically different from us, but in the specific ways that undergird his aseity.

01:31:28

And so that's what places the Trinity and his knowledge in a different category.

01:31:34

All right, excellent. Jeff Chavez asks, how can we answer atheists who would say that those philosophers like Thales cannot be borrowing from the

01:31:44

Christian worldview because Christianity came after him? Right. So as we discussed earlier, the

01:31:50

Christian worldview is the name for that revelational worldview now in the present time that's been on earth from the very beginning.

01:31:59

We talked about how the whole point of the problem of the one in the many is that things can develop over time and can be the same and yet differ in wonderful ways of an outgrowth of what they were originally.

01:32:13

We talked about the knowledge a child has of their parents in infancy that grows seamlessly into what it will be when they become parents and understand their parents in ever deeper way.

01:32:25

So we're talking about Christianity and the Christian worldview. There's a sense in which that was the worldview of Adam.

01:32:31

That's what we're claiming. And the fact that it has a Christian element at this point, specifically a savior dying for people's sins and things like that, that's the solution to our plight of sin.

01:32:45

But there are features of that worldview that were present from the beginning, namely the personalism and the ethical personalism.

01:32:53

You might say man was never intended to live a day or to think one thought outside of submission to God.

01:33:01

That's a core element of that worldview. And in fact, man can never erase his knowledge of God.

01:33:07

The reason why Thales goes looking for a one amidst the many is because he already knows that there is a unity that persists through this diversity.

01:33:16

He already knows it. It's the same with Aristotle. He already knows that there must be something which validates this intuition that I am made for the world and the world is made for me.

01:33:30

But the problem is because they don't submit their minds to God like a person in a drunken condition.

01:33:36

They always come up with answers which undermine their ultimate claims about themselves rather than undergirds it.

01:33:45

Very good. Awesome. You're doing an excellent job, man. I hope these questions aren't too much of a curveball here.

01:33:50

No, I just keep trying to read them on my screen and it's really small. Okay, I'll make sure I read them to you very slowly.

01:33:56

No, no, it's fine. It's fine. So here's a question. Precept has come to be used as kind of like a verb, right?

01:34:05

If precept isn't a methodology, it's what you do to someone when you're doing apologetics. So how would you precept a

01:34:12

Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox person? And you don't have to give us a full refutation of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but just in general principles, what would be the procedure that a presuppositionalist could engage, say, a someone who holds to like Eastern Orthodoxy?

01:34:30

Yeah. I'll just give some generalities here. First off, you know, in a

01:34:35

Roman system, A, the lack of finality in revelation is problematic when we talk about the one -many problem.

01:34:45

The idea that God could speak with finality in his written word in a manner that would be sufficient to guide us in all the diverse circumstances that would come is exactly an expression of the sort of one -many problem that we're talking about.

01:35:03

We have a completed one in the way of revelation that is sufficient to guide us in all the many different circumstances that time will have until the end.

01:35:15

That is what we would expect from the Trinitarian God, who can have a, again, sorry for bumping the table so much, that is sufficient for the many.

01:35:27

Romanism has wedded, as it is in so many instances, to a

01:35:34

Thomistic and back of it Aristotelian philosophy, gives too much to the unknown.

01:35:40

The reason why you need this ex -cathedra capacity, which births new doctrines like the

01:35:46

Marian dogmas, is because there's no way to speak with finality into this world of diversity.

01:35:55

You're working too much with an unruly tendency of reality to slip into non -being, whatever that means in an

01:36:04

Aristotelian sort of a system. That's why they're always needing more revelation. It's not sufficient in itself.

01:36:12

So that's the first problem. The relative autonomy that it ascribes to mankind in salvation is an additional problem.

01:36:20

Every particular reality has back of it the sovereign preordination of God.

01:36:27

Romanism wants for there to be an element of the autonomous in the very process of salvation itself, and the most consequential things about reality.

01:36:38

And in that respect, it allows that unruly something into reality that is just not compatible with a

01:36:45

God who is absolutely sovereign, knows the end from the beginning just by knowing himself, and not because he's receiving anything from the creation as a moviegoer would watching a show, but because he is the transcendental source of the story itself.

01:37:03

Those are the sorts of things that I would be interested in discussing. Excellent. Thank you so much for that.

01:37:09

I've just got a couple more here. So a question. RJ Rushdooney wrote a book about the one in the many.

01:37:16

I have both that and Brandt's book, but I don't get to read either, which is normally the case, right?

01:37:23

We get a bunch of books and we'd be like, I just got your book last year. Haven't opened it up yet, but no, I'm just kidding.

01:37:29

I know how that goes. Sometimes you get caught up, it's hard to sit down and plow through them. But are these books, yours and Rushdooney's complimentary in any way, or are they taking different approaches to the question?

01:37:41

Well, they're definitely taking different approaches. I mean, I would say they're complimentary. They're taking different approaches to the question.

01:37:47

Rushdooney is particularly interested in how the one in many issue comes to bear on the proper organization of the state relative citizens, which you wouldn't be surprised to hear if you know anything about Rushdooney.

01:38:03

But it's one expression of the one many problem, and he doesn't neglect the metaphysical aspect of it either.

01:38:09

So I would say they're complimentary. I would say, I tend to think that Rushdooney's book on the one in the many is one of the better ones out there for explaining just how the problem comes to bear on so many different things.

01:38:25

And I'd say it's actually one of Rushdooney's better books. It might be one of his best books.

01:38:31

So the thing is, okay, so I'm teaching an online class. I teach an apologetics online class.

01:38:37

I call it PresupU. It's just a course that outlines presuppositional apologetics.

01:38:43

And I meet with the students, and you get people from all walks of life, people who are very sophisticated and know the ins and outs of this stuff, and they want to go deeper.

01:38:52

And then there are people who say, hey, I've heard about the one in the many. I've maybe read it somewhere in Van Till or something, but how would you unpack the concept of the one in the many to a person who is into apologetics, but doesn't have kind of that deep background in philosophy?

01:39:09

I mean, how can this idea? So for example, we say the Trinity accounts for unity and diversity. How can the everyday person defending their faith use this concept within an apologetics context?

01:39:22

So if they're arguing along the lines of, say, the Christian worldview can account for knowledge, and then you get into a spat with the unbelievers, like, well, wait a minute, but our doctrine of the

01:39:32

Trinity is very important to this because how can they then explain it in the most simplest terms possible?

01:39:39

And I know you're going to have to probably sacrifice some accuracy in doing so, but how would you speak to someone who's asking questions along those lines?

01:39:48

Man. Well, I probably would tell someone that you don't ever go up to the unbeliever and tell them that the

01:39:54

Trinity solves the one in the many problem. I've never done that, if that's what you're wondering.

01:40:04

If you're asking me, like, how do we make relevant these sorts of matters, here's the thing.

01:40:15

Let me think how to put this. To go full presuppositional on someone is most useful when you're dealing with someone who is just the most supreme skeptic at anything you might say.

01:40:33

Okay. The way I found presuppositionalism, the way I ended up at it is I have a big brother who left the faith when he was 18,

01:40:40

I was 17, and I would try to evangelize him all of the time. And I would, for years and years and years, do the evidence that commands a verdict and all of the sorts of classical and evidentialist methods.

01:40:55

And here's the thing, if you meet a hardened unbeliever, it doesn't matter what evidence you show him, he's going to take that and he's going to toss it over his shoulder every single time and just discount it on the basis of a prior worldview.

01:41:13

Presuppositionalism is really, really valuable when you're talking to that guy. Because they've never been critical of their own presuppositions.

01:41:22

They've never thought, hey, I actually have to defend, like, if I'm going to say that the Bible isn't true,

01:41:29

I must have some conception of truth that I'm working with such that I'm denying it to the

01:41:36

Bible. And what is that? And it's in that context that presuppositionalism is so valuable.

01:41:42

So how might I use some sort of one -many argument with someone? Well, I might just, in that context, say to someone, before I try to prove to you that what happened in the

01:41:54

Bible or the Bible says happened in history, let me just ask you something. How do you suppose that you know any fact outside of yourself?

01:42:04

And I would, you know, proceed down this course of, like, what could give you certainty that your rational faculties are actually reaching reality outside of yourself?

01:42:17

Because the only thing you could ever do, like, if you were to study yourself, you'd be still using those rational faculties or to use a

01:42:24

Plantinga sort of phrase. How would you ever know that you were properly functioning? Like, if you're not properly functioning,

01:42:31

I mean, that's, and the answer would seem to be that only someone who resides outside of yourself and has a sovereign power to communicate to yourself in spite of your defects, only that sort of a being can actually provide you with the very sort of certainty that actually you're carrying on with every darn day, so confident, in fact, that you're going to turn around and tell me that the

01:42:57

Bible can't be true because it doesn't meet the criteria of knowledge. And that's how sure you are that you do know things.

01:43:04

And I would say that relation of you yourself as an individual to a reality full of multiplicity can only, the idea that the two match, such different things match, your unified experience in a world of multiplicity outside of yourself is by that of an absolute authority who doesn't suffer from the same problem that you do, that he knows himself and knows reality, not with the use of impersonal tools, not with the use of pure rational forms, but his own relationship to reality and to himself is mediated through himself.

01:43:45

And he's absolutely, that might be the sort of way in which I would go down that path with somebody to bring to bear one many sort of a deal.

01:43:54

Sorry, that was a long answer, but... No, no worries. Well, out of respect for time, I'm going to ask you one last question, and it's a greedy question that I want to ask.

01:44:02

So I apologize if I skipped over anyone's questions. I did want to kind of move along here.

01:44:08

We're already at an hour and 44 minutes, and Dr. Bosserman has been so generous with his time.

01:44:15

And so this is going to be the last question. Okay. So I have heard folks say that presuppositionalism doesn't work.

01:44:25

The transcendental argument doesn't work. You don't need the Christian worldview to ground knowledge because I have an argument from direct acquaintance.

01:44:35

I can be directly acquainted with certain experiences that I have. This is undeniable.

01:44:42

And so I don't need to presuppose the truth of Christian theism. These are things that I know immediately.

01:44:48

And so transcendental argument, presuppositionalism doesn't deliver on what it says it delivers, and I don't need it anyway.

01:44:57

So how would you respond to an argument from direct acquaintance that we can be directly acquainted with things and cannot be wrong about it?

01:45:04

So there you go. I don't need any Christian presuppositions. I don't need circularity in my arguing.

01:45:09

I know these things. I'm directly acquainted with them. Okay. So a few things.

01:45:17

You know, what people are usually speaking about there, I mean, they probably don't know Johann Fichte. I mean, no one reads him anymore.

01:45:24

But essentially, you know, feelings and states of states of feeling are things that are immediately known or more immediately known or things like that.

01:45:36

I would, first of all, ask them, you know, what they mean by know? A feeling is not knowledge.

01:45:43

If you give a name to that state or to that condition, and you even say that those states are alike, you know, even the way you're describing it,

01:45:51

I have immediate knowledge of states. What is the universality or the generality of those states?

01:46:01

And how are you able to predicate that thing to multiple things?

01:46:07

You don't have an immediate knowledge of that. In fact, what that means is you don't have an immediate knowledge of those states.

01:46:13

You have a mediated knowledge of those states, wherein you're applying a universal descriptor to that state, even as you're reflecting on it or knowing it or recalling it, which you're not just telling me you're having an immediate state right now.

01:46:29

You're remembering a state. And so, in fact, every time you're having a state, you're remembering a state of feeling slightly thereafter, at least in terms of your cognitive process.

01:46:41

So, to call that unmediated is a grave mistake. It is mediated. It's mediated even in that rational, subjective realm in which you name it, speak of it, recall it, all of it.

01:46:53

And then you ask yourself, how can you be certain that you had any of those states?

01:47:00

And again, we would answer the only being who could speak with authority is that being who resides outside of you, who knows himself and knows all things by himself.

01:47:10

And that's why we'd say you have to know the God who knows everything to know anything. And these more immediate states are themselves immediately bearing witness to the

01:47:21

God who made you, the God who created you. So, when someone says, I am currently having a sensation of pain, that statement is in the past.

01:47:35

I just said it. But isn't it the case that even the statements in the past,

01:47:41

I'm still experiencing the pain immediately? No, you're experiencing it through time.

01:47:47

You're experiencing that through space. You're experiencing that through the very names and language that you can ascribe to it.

01:47:56

You're experiencing that with reference to a multitude of other things. In fact, when you speak of,

01:48:02

I'm immediately experiencing pain, that right there has a reference to what you're not experiencing, evidently pleasure.

01:48:11

There's a whole cognitive world that's married to. And this is what we talk about when we talk about description and definition themselves requiring multiplicity.

01:48:24

And so, you're still in a place of saying, how do you unify the one and the many?

01:48:30

I mean, Hume is ready to contemplate that. He would say that there's surely no proof that your cognitive state is one unified solar being who could say that you weren't like a string of chasing

01:48:45

Christmas lights going on and off your consciousness itself being totally discontinuous with prior states of being.

01:48:54

So even when you say I am experiencing pain, you're already referring to a one in many, an

01:49:00

I that maintains unity through a diversity of things. And again, you would say, yeah, what can facilitate that?

01:49:09

What can facilitate this unity through diversity? And the answer is nothing in creation suffices.

01:49:16

And the answer is that, again, that's why everything bears witness to the

01:49:22

God who's an absolute one in many and has made a created one in many to bear witness to him.

01:49:29

That was an excellent answer. Once again, folks, I am speaking with Dr.

01:49:36

Brant Fosterman, the author of The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox and Interpretation and Refinement of the

01:49:41

Theological Apologetic of Cornelius Van Till. Brant, I'm not going to call you

01:49:48

Brant. I'm going to break the formalities all the way at the end here and say I greatly appreciate you giving me one hour and in just a couple of seconds, 50 minutes of your time.

01:50:00

There are some excellent comments here. People are really enjoying and finding what you have to say very, very useful.

01:50:07

Again, it's pretty deep stuff. But a lot of the people who watch the channel are kind of they already kind of have some background on this topic.

01:50:15

So you're just adding some, you know, whipped cream and sprinkles and cherries on top for them to kind of,

01:50:20

OK, I made that connection there. That was super helpful. So and every question that I'm asking actually has a context from stuff

01:50:27

I've heard before that other people who are critical of presuppositionalism and how we use this kind of argumentation and reasoning, they've asked these questions.

01:50:36

So I asked them so as to be helpful to the side of the fence that are saying, yeah, how would

01:50:42

I respond to that? So, yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe next time I'll get through the other seven presocratics that I was going to talk about, because, you know, here's the thing.

01:50:51

I mean, I feel like and I appreciate all these questions, but I feel like presuppositionalists need to spend more time doing exactly the work of saying, you know, the intel can say all day long, unbelieving philosophies inevitably bear witness to the truth.

01:51:11

They just need to be turned right side up. And we can repeat that as presuppositionalists all we want. But I would actually say that to those who are so interested in presuppositional apologetics, we actually just need to do that more often.

01:51:24

We actually need to spend more time looking at a philosopher, not just go, he has the wrong, you know, self -defeating, you know, presuppositions.

01:51:32

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to go there. But that's only half the story.

01:51:38

And in some ways, it's kind of like just the most depressing half of the story, just that, like, they're wrong.

01:51:45

There has to be something in every, you know, distinct idea that bears witness to the truth.

01:51:53

And let me just put it this way. You're going to have a lot more fun reading philosophy, engaging with people.

01:52:00

If you've thought hard about their worldview, you're going to be much more engaging. Sure. There's a sort of presuppositionalism that is just it's so quick to get to the punch that almost every other virtue that you could bring to the table that might be winsome has gone out the window.

01:52:22

Hey, I need to stop you. I need to stop you right there. Yeah. You just struck a chord.

01:52:29

Like this is very important because we go straight to the punch. A lot of presuppositionalists, especially online, are seen as disingenuous.

01:52:39

It's like, you don't really want to kind of hear me unpack my view. You just want to get to the point where you can yell, by what standard, right?

01:52:48

And so I think what you said is vitally important. If you'd be okay with it, how about I have you on again in the near future where you can just walk through the presocratics in detail?

01:53:01

As a matter of fact, there was a comment here where someone says, so when is the series on the presocratics coming?

01:53:10

So people are interested. So if you want to come back on in the future, we can set it up. I would love to just sit here and listen to you walk through the presocratics in more detail.

01:53:20

We can kind of give a quick little intro that you've spoken about it partially here, and then just walk through as much as you think would be useful for presuppositionalists to kind of listen to and benefit from.

01:53:32

Does that sound okay? Yeah, I think we can do something like that. And I'll say to that questioner, the rest of the series is at Northwest University when they let the adjuncts teach history of philosophy, ancient session one.

01:53:46

But I do want to continue on with this practical guys. There's a difference between always talking about something and actually doing that something.

01:54:02

And again, there's a sort of just always talking about presuppositionalism that in the quickest way to get there and the simplest way to get there, and honestly, the most monotonous imaginable way to get there.

01:54:18

And you always get to the punch in the point that in a way, we're actually reflecting this sort of just like painful monotony that the whole concept of the

01:54:32

Trinity and the fact that we can have unity in history means to undermine. And so I would compel guys to be practitioners of this in their reading of ideas, difficult philosophies, and working through, again, exactly what it is that has potentially much value when turned right side up in an unbelieving worldview or form of thought.

01:55:00

Really, that's the sort of thing I had to do in writing my thesis. And certain philosophers are going to resonate with you more than others.

01:55:07

To say that Hegel resonates with me more than a most modern analytic philosophers would be a bit of an understatement.

01:55:16

It's not to say that there's nothing valuable in those guys. The fact is, I'm not as well read in terms of 20th century analytic philosophers as I am of British American idealists and post -Kantian

01:55:34

German philosophy. But that engagement, I would say, is actually what kind of strengthens my appreciation for presuppositionalism, whereas if you're just always only looking at the transcendental argument, and you're not actually ever seeing these philosophies that at once bear witness to the truth and are sown with the seeds of self -defeat,

01:55:59

I guess I'm just saying that it might actually undermine the whole project.

01:56:06

And when I meet guys who knew the transcendental argument and employed it and now aren't believers, yeah,

01:56:13

I do often think, were you ever really eating and living and breathing a

01:56:20

Christian worldview that really does see God's revelation everywhere, even in spite of themselves in unbelieving thought?

01:56:29

Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I had a friend, well, I have a friend, I haven't spoken to him in a while, but Pastor Bill Shishko was an

01:56:36

OPC pastor on Long Island, where I used to live. I'm in North Carolina now, and he was a mentor of mine.

01:56:43

I kind of bragged to folks, he knew Van Till personally and knew Dr. Bonson, and I was able to, every time

01:56:50

I'd go to his office, I'd leave his office with like a box of books. He'd always give me books, and I was able to con him out of a

01:56:56

Van Till autographed copy of Defense of the Faith. Nice. But I used to have these great conversations with him, and it's kind of made me think about it based upon what you said, are we living in a

01:57:08

Christian worldview and seeing the world through that lens? I asked my friend,

01:57:13

Pastor Shishko, what kind of person was Van Till? And I thought he was going to give me this huge intellectual, like, well, he's this deep philosophical.

01:57:23

He stopped for a second, he paused and really thought about it. He says, you know, Van Till, if I can describe him in this phrase,

01:57:32

I would describe Van Till as a child living in his father's world. And just in a very basic sense.

01:57:39

Yes, he was a very intelligent man, but all of you get past all of the difficult language that Van Till used is, right, you get past that and simplify him.

01:57:50

He just sought to live in a world where he believed what his father said.

01:57:57

It's like, he read his Bible, he believed it. And all that philosophical jargon and all that language was just his way of communicating what, you know, what he believed about God and scriptures to the world of the philosophers and things like that.

01:58:12

Absolutely. Or just that simple core, I think it touches right on the aspect of, are we just arguing about this stuff or are we living in a world that is just trusting

01:58:22

God in everything that we do? Well, you're nailing it, man. And I'll just say, you know, to those interested in defending the faith, man, do not engage in that business if you are not faithfully defending your own faith by worshiping the

01:58:40

Lord every Lord's day, being under the actual formal leadership of a church, being in relationship with other believers where, frankly, the church has a unity and diversity that no other community on planet

01:58:57

Earth has, period. Period. No other community on the entire planet.

01:59:03

Go live it. Go be a part of it. Don't just sit in your college dorm room and, you know, talk about these ideas because the mechanisms and the modes of defending our faith as something vital that the

01:59:19

Lord has given to us are the means of grace. And I just, you know, it just destroys me when

01:59:27

I encounter people who love presuppositionalism but have no manifest love for the church. You know, 1

01:59:33

John 3 says that the difference between the church and the world with our brotherly love, which what is that but a unity in diversity, is manifest.

01:59:46

It's manifest. It's not clear to the world because as we've discussed, there's a drunken perspective there. They don't see it.

01:59:52

Right. But it is clear to us if we're regenerate and in Christ that we can see in the church a real brotherly love and unity and difference that the world lacks a genuine love for one another.

02:00:08

And when people, you know, again, I just like that's our bread and butter. That's the reality of it.

02:00:14

We're trying to get people there in that, you know, living organism of the church that is, again, utterly unique in all of creation.

02:00:24

And if you want to maintain a deep and rich and robust presuppositionalism, you're abandoning your presupposition every day so long as you neglect the church, you neglect that place where we're supposed to live and taste these things.

02:00:44

Yeah. I have a brother who's trying to get back into the things of the Lord and he tells me every now and then, he's like, man,

02:00:51

I'm reading my Bible and, you know, I was just really encouraged and I want to live in the word. And I said, so, you know, so how are you doing that?

02:01:00

How you live in the word? He's like, well, I'm reading my Bible. I'm like, why are you reading your Bible? Because that's what

02:01:06

I'm supposed to do. Like, how do you know that's what you're supposed to do? Because that's what the Bible says I should be in his word.

02:01:11

Oh, so when the Bible commands us to do something, we should obey it. And he's like, yeah.

02:01:16

You know, the Bible also says that we should not forsake coming together with the saints. Yeah.

02:01:22

How can you be living in the word when you're simply reading the word, but avoiding meeting with the saints?

02:01:27

And so I had to encourage him. Yes, it's great that you're reading your Bible, but you need to get connected with a local body.

02:01:34

And he understood that because he was reading and he wanted to kind of, you know, fill his mind with scripture and feel like he's going on the right track.

02:01:41

But really we're disobedient to the Lord when we read the scriptures, but we're not actually obeying the scriptures.

02:01:48

And the scripture commands us to gather together. It's a very important feature of the...

02:01:53

Submit to those who rule over you. I mean, how are you ever going to engage in the process of church discipline with a brother when you actually have no church in Matthew 18?

02:02:03

How are you ever actually going to maintain this unity and diversity that we're supposed to have as believers?

02:02:10

You are living the life of a pure individual. You might as well be Democritus' Adam, just this, you know, individual, you know, floating round about.

02:02:20

That's not what we are. That's never what we were. It wasn't what we were from the beginning. And so, no,

02:02:25

I mean, this is one of those things where, you know, as presuppositionalists, what we have to understand is that our presupposition is a whole worldview and way of life to which we are committed.

02:02:38

And again, when people are just defending, you know, just Trinity, it just strikes that you're just defending an idea.

02:02:45

Sure. If it is not something where there's a real living submission to him in a context that is the most like him, which is the one body of the church that actually has spiritual...

02:02:57

Are we living a life of ultimate oneness or manyness or are unity and plurality our lives?

02:03:05

The individual believer saved by grace and living within the context of the many, the multiple that make up the body.

02:03:11

We are, our Christian life is a manifestation of unity and plurality as we reflect the

02:03:16

Trinity in our relationship to God and to the broader body as well. It has so much application.

02:03:22

It's an amazing, amazing concept, but, oh man, this is good stuff, man.

02:03:28

I'm listening. I'm reading some of the comments here. People are really encouraged, you know, by your words here.

02:03:35

And look at this. I mean, you would think people wouldn't be interested. I'd love to see him back on finishing going through the

02:03:42

Presocratics. Another one says, I love his pastoral heart. I think that's what drew me to you.

02:03:48

When I first met you, you gave me some really encouraging, you know, pastoral encouragement and I didn't expect it because my mind was, all right, we're going to talk about this problem of the one and the many, and you just were able to kind of draw these intellectual concepts to really the like life application.

02:04:04

And so I very much appreciate that, brother. This is awesome. Absolutely. Well, I'm glad to bring that to bear and, you know,

02:04:13

I could come on and talk about how Presbyterianism is the perfect expression of the one and the many in church government.

02:04:23

All right. All right. Slow down there, brother. I'm just kidding. Right, right.

02:04:29

But partially not. All right. Well, this was excellent.

02:04:36

Thank you so much, Wilder. Such kind words there. Wilder says, thank you, Eli and Pastor Brandt. Both of you brothers have had a profound influence on my life so far.

02:04:44

Well, praise God. We thank you so much. I appreciate listeners and people who support.

02:04:51

And I love doing this because I know I started doing this sort of stuff because I remember when

02:04:56

I had questions about theology, apologetics and practical stuff, I would call people and I would have these like awesome conversations.

02:05:02

I'm like, man, like this would be so cool if I kind of like recorded these conversations and other people can listen.

02:05:07

And hopefully the questions I'm asking, other people are asking, and it just so happens to be that that's the case.

02:05:14

And so I hope this content is beneficial and useful and edifying to people. And I just appreciate everyone's support.

02:05:21

Thank you so much. And thank you, Pastor Bosterman, for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. This was excellent.

02:05:27

Maybe close with prayer. Absolutely. Let's close with prayer. Would you like to lead? Yeah, I'd be happy to.

02:05:32

All right. Mighty God, I just thank you so much for the privilege that we have here to discuss these things at a distance on opposite sides of the country.

02:05:42

Lord, here we are experiencing just some of the wonders of the unity that we have over distance and the fact that such a diverse group of people are listening and God, we're all meditating on one truth and leaving with slightly different impressions of it and our own directions that we want to go with it.

02:06:04

And yet at the same time, we're all knowing you, Lord God, is our savior and our king. And I pray for the many who are listening that,

02:06:13

Lord, that they would have a deep and genuine love for you as their ultimate.

02:06:21

Lord, a sort of love for you and a sort of devotion to you and trust in you that persists through times or frankly, they just don't see it.

02:06:29

They don't see the solvency of the transcendental argument. They don't even understand maybe something that in the past they understood better, whether it be because of the troubles of life or whether it be because of just the practical burdens that they bear.

02:06:45

Lord, I pray that you'd be our presupposition then just as well as when we feel like things were articulated so well.

02:06:53

And I pray, Lord, that you would accomplish greater things from this conversation than what

02:06:59

I intended or what I was capable of. Lord, you teach us in the

02:07:04

Lord's supper that you didn't just come to inform us, but to touch us and to change us and to operate on us supernaturally.

02:07:14

And Lord, I pray for the many who are listening that they would go out praying for that same supernatural regeneration to come about in whoever they might be witnessing to or doing apologetics with.

02:07:29

And Lord God, we pray that your mighty hand would keep us. In Jesus' name we pray by your spirit. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for that, brother.

02:07:37

Well, that concludes our episode here, guys. It's a long one. Look at that.

02:07:42

Let's go to the questions so we don't go too much over. Hey, it's all right.

02:07:47

It's been so much fun, man. Well, that's it for this episode, guys. Thank you so much for listening in.

02:07:53

And if you like the content, be sure to share it and press the little like button. Subscribe if you want to get future notifications.

02:08:01

I think I may be having Dr. James White back on to kind of give a little debriefing on his debate with Tim Stratton on the question of whether Molinism is biblical.

02:08:14

And so if I get that nailed in, I'll let you guys know and post it on Facebook and YouTube.