(Part 2) Tip-toeing Through Van Til’s Apologetic

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today we are doing a part two on tiptoeing through Van Til's Apologetic.

So if you guys remember a while back I had a gentleman by the name of John Kaus on my show and he gave a wonderful PowerPoint presentation of the intricacies of Van Til's Transcendental Argument and so for those who want to kind of be reacquainted with that presentation

I did put a link to part one of this discussion in the description of this of this particular episode so I highly recommend you guys check that out and I'm not sure how people typically listen to my channel whether you listen to it in the background or you wait for it to come on podcast and you know you listen to it that episode

I had with John the part one I highly recommend that you actually watch because his PowerPoint presentation is very useful in helping you follow the line of argumentation that that he makes so I highly recommend and you will be entertained as my opinion

I have kind of like a top five people who have awesome presentations John is definitely in the top five really really well done you know even if I was a classical apologist listening to John teach presuppositionalism

I would still be impressed with I'm like I disagree with you man but those are awesome

PowerPoint slides so I highly recommend that you guys check out part one all right but for today we're gonna be talking about part two of this talk so he's gonna kind of continue

I know I hear I hear people I see people kind of coming in in the chat welcome

Mark Farnham who is also a guest and author of the book every believer confident highly recommend you check that out got the other

Paul who have had a few times he'll be coming back on on Friday so welcome welcome but real quick before I introduce

John and allow more people to trickle on in I want to remind people of this upcoming conference the epic online

Calvinism conference it is on January 21st so we're in January 23 right here at the beginning but it's gonna be coming up fast we already have a bunch of people who have signed up you can sign up for this and RSVP your spot right now by going to revealed apologetics comm click on the presup you drop down menu and you could

RSVP right there for the epic online Calvinism conference I will be speaking on the topic of Calvinism versus Molinism James White will be covering problem texts within the whole

Calvinism debate Guillaume is going to be talking about the importance of analogies when critiquing

Calvinism oftentimes people use analogies to kind of critique the Calvinist position he's going to be speaking about the proper use of that Scott Christensen will be defending compatibilism and sites and Bruggen Kate will be talking about defending

Calvinism at the street level you know when people bring objections kind of the everyday sorts of objections how do we interact with that so he'll be covering that so I'm really excited

I think it's gonna be an excellent opportunity for folks to learn and it is epic it will be from 1030 in the morning to 430 in the afternoon and each speaker will be have a scheduled time with some brief breaks in between and at the end there will be a panel where you can actually interact with each of our guests you can literally will be sharing a zoom screen and you can ask your question to each of the speakers we did this for the the epic online precept conference and it was it was awesome we had a lot of people sign up and it was very fruitful and beneficial so highly recommend you guys check that out remember

January 21st is when it happens you can sign up from now until shortly before that all right okay well without further ado let me introduce

John Kaus here who's going to be presenting part two of tiptoeing through Vantill's apologetic how are you doing

John I'm doing well thanks for having me back well thank you for being willing to come on I absolutely loved your first presentation and I was just reminding folks to check that that discussion out so yeah so I'm looking forward to having you on more in the future where can people find you if they want to check out other stuff other than the thing that you that you did on my show earlier so all of my teachings that I do in there

I do a lot of I'm doing a lot of creating right now and but it takes a while to create the content so I'm trying to make presentations every six months and then posting them online and trying to make them unique so I'll have a younger creation presentation coming here in April but you can go to Christ Church Twin Cities YouTube page

Christ Church Twin Cities just put it into YouTube it'll come up and then their

YouTube page I post all my videos there just not yours I guess

I don't grab yours but they'd be the only ones that are okay excellent now you would identify as a

Vantillian presuppositionalist that again presuppositionalism is kind of like an interesting word in that different people pop into your head when you hear the term so like when

I think of classicalism I there are a couple of apologies that pop in my head when I think of presuppositionalism there are people who pop in my head and there's debate as to whether some of those people are quote -unquote truly presuppositional within the

Vantillian tradition where would you kind of place yourself amongst kind of you know folks like Greg Bonson, John Frame, James Anderson, Scott Oliphant who would you say you are more in line with a

Vantill students not so much Vantill I guess all of them somewhat yeah I am 100 % a disciple of Bonson okay yeah so what is the primary way that you learned of Bonson was it through his audio or through his writings no it's actually through I was 2009 and I bought the book

The Ultimate Proof of Creation by Jason Lyle and in I love that book it was a it's how

I became a Vantillian yeah it's great yeah it was a really I enjoy it and in the beginning the preface

I think it was he mentions Bonson and who is this crazy guy and so I actually ordered

I think Vantill's apologetic and just started with it you know it's tough slutting through it but then but I just I loved it so much and then

I've gone through it now a number of times just over the years and and then I would jump into you know philosophy so when it when that happened with I knew so I read

Geisler's book on apologetics the green one the introduction to apologetics

Christian apologetics and I think he has I think it's that book where he has a quick thing on presuppositionalism and I remember reading it and thinking how this sounds right even his bad presentation of it sounded correct and then he critiqued it and everything oh well

I guess that's not right and I just you know moved on so I was my heart was in it even before I knew it and then when a lot when that happened with Lyle I just I dove into it and I knew because up until that point

I was deeply into Young Earth Creation first evolution God used that topic to bring me into the faith hmm

I've always loved that topic was my first love and apologetics but then when you were you became a Christian because of issues of Young Earth Creationism yeah yeah so that's funny that you say that because a lot of people think that Young Earth Creationism is so anti intellectual it moves people away from the faith it's interesting that those issues are actually what brought you into the faith yeah

I think a lot of that's just academic flexing okay I think that's actually true okay

I think I think Young Earth Creationism is very intuitive to the average man and I remember laughing at descriptions of evolution when

I was an unbeliever in like seventh grade talking about you know how life started from this primordial ooze of lightning hitting this such and such and people us talking about as friends at 2 in the morning and I was an a

Christian and just laughing at it thinking this is ridiculous how could you believe such a thing but it when

I was a junior in high school I had a football coach who witnessed to me in a weight room because I liked rap music and I was trying to play it you were about that thug life back in the day all right

I was a huge Tupac guy and and so we started shouting at each other and I stormed out of the weight room well he came and apologized to me about two weeks later not for the content but for the tone hmm and I kind of blew him off and walked away but in that moment the

Holy Spirit grabbed me and pulled me pulled me and so I over the next few months I would go to him with questions and then on Sunday morning channel 13

I think it was in my hometown Mankato there was a young earth creation presentation happening and and I would watch it and think through the evidences that were given and God used that to show me that he is my creator

I have broken his law and I am helpless without Jesus and it all it all changed from there and I so I and I'm very compulsive and when

I study in my interest so I dove into young earth creation for a number of years and I love it so I'm glad to present on it here in April but then when

I met band when I met Van Til's work through Bonson and both of those equally reading both of them when that happened

I knew that I wanted to I wanted to make my life's work and apologetics furthering that work sure

I wanted to make it a a it may be this wouldn't happen but I wanted to try to have a significant advance on what

Bonson did I didn't know if it could happen but that was my goal that's still my goal today hey there's nothing wrong with dreaming large yeah we gotta be very careful how we view some of these like big apologists we sometimes have such a big view of them that we think well

I can't possibly contribute more than this person and that's not necessarily true if we work hard and we study they were human beings we're human beings they put in hard work we can put in hard work and hopefully by God's grace we can build on a foundation that many of them kind of you know put down before us so that that's awesome so I encourage you man keep up keep up the good work and that's awesome dude well well let's jump right in so this is part two of tiptoeing through Van Til's apologetic

I'm gonna put your your PowerPoints up and you can kind of jump off right where you think we need to given the content of our previous previous talk all right all right let's put this up on the screen for you all right and can you control that yourself or do you need me to yeah yeah it's working okay great all right go for it you can begin whenever you're ready okay so this the second part is cleanup work

I title it cleanup work it's mainly the stuff that I found as hindrances to finding

I wanted to lay bare Van Til's apologetic which I think

I did in part one but that took years to unpack and to like go through dead ends and try to figure out how to how to prove this to make it plain people could see and there are a number of barriers that came up from within the literature of just Van Til and Bonson that were

I think think now looking back on it things that need to be cleaned up that if you you want to advance

Van Til and Bonson you have to get past these like you have to clean this stuff up to real

I in my opinion to actually go and make contributions sure and not not just popularize what they did nothing wrong with popularizing what they did but if you want to advance it in some way that they didn't these things are

I think are roadblocks that would keep you from doing that okay so this is all in the spirit of advancing the two scholars that I probably the two that I most adore and would die defending so this is all pure love and respect and admiration all right all right so the first thing and this is probably most commonly committed by my fellow

Van Tilians who I love is there are actually two different ways to present Van Til's apologetic they do not overlap they're distinct they do not overlap they're there they don't go together but even with Bonson they're they're often put together and and not the whole argument parts of each are put are put together sometimes the whole of one and parts of another are put together so what

I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna show you both distinct ways and I'm gonna use two terms that I'm gonna use them differently than Van Til and Bonson did

I think I think for good reason I think they'll bring clarity but then we'll get we'll get through how they used it so the first way

I call the direct way and this is what we saw in the last presentation and that is where we go right to God's truth and then from there we infer that Christianity is true a deductively so this is so this is proving it with certainty starting with God's truth most of the axioms that we talked about last time were what scripture taught or what it would it teaches plainly all right so that's the direct method

I think that's the right term to use because you're going directly to God's you're going right to proving Christianity you're not going through some other

Avenue it's direct now the ender oh sorry and so this would be the the diagram that we worked through last time okay and so theorem 5 is that Christianity is true and this is showing you the structure of how you get there and and the a1 a2 is axiom 1 axiom 2 axiom 3 correct yep so axioms a1 through 4 lead to theorem 1 and then you look at theorem 1 and then so let's see here read my own thing here so axiom 5 would lead to theorem 2 okay and I go through this individually so it's easier to follow instead of just doing all at once here but then but then theorem 2 and axiom 4 would lead to see a theorem 3 so just follow the follow the coloring and then theorem 1 and axiom 6 would lead to theorem 4 then axiom 7 and theorem 4 would lead to theorem 5 and so it's a purely deductive argument

I think from us from God's assumptions these are not neutral assumptions these are God's truth that we can then that you that are that are true like there's no there's no argument against them sure and and so then it it's an argument that proves

Christianity is true with certainty and yet it's not neutral and then we talked about that last time right all right so that would be the direct way the indirect way which this has not been proven no one's done this to to my knowledge

I'm actually I don't know probably 75 % of the way through finishing this so we'll see if God blesses that this year to finish but now we don't need the indirect right because if you have one argument you don't need another right so it's but but I think it'd be good to I think you can do it so I think it should be should be done but the indirect way is you start with the unbelieving position you go right to it and bento would define this as autonomy like what is the unique or the uniting feature of all unbelief it's autonomy an autonomous attitude so let's just call it autonomy and what you would do then is you would from autonomy you would infer or to do it's a falsehood well through modus tollens then because no truth can imply a falsehood you would then infer that the autonomy is false would this be a form of a reductio ad absurdum yeah yeah standard reductio so let's assume autonomy is true we reduce the falsehood and then we then conclude autonomy is false okay well then we'd have to assume or prove that there are only two positions

Christianity or autonomy and assuming that we could make good on that then we've already proven that autonomy is false and so we can conclude with certainty that Christianity is true and if you listen to Bonson most most of what he did was in this indirect he was brilliant at refuting examples of autonomy he never refuted autonomy as a category all of it he would do it kind of broadly but a lot of it was with the specific examples especially in debates which he did it brilliantly but no one's actually done the argument like this now notice if you do it and you succeed here

I never went into issues in Christianity I'd have to define Christianity but I never got into what you know go

I'd have to go through axioms of what the Bible teaches because it's indirect it's it because indirect okay

I think this is that this is these are the terms we should be using for the two different forms now often what people will do is

I'll talk about well first we you know we go in the unbelieving position and we knock that down but if you knock that down you're done because if you could if you assuming that there was only two positions then you've won we have to get into that Christianity is that is can account for intelligibility it has to there are only two you knock down the one of them the other one is true so all right so you don't need you don't need both of them but often what will happen is we'll knock down the unbelieving position and then we'll say now we'll go on to come on to our position we'll show how our position can account for it and and that's there's nothing wrong with that but that's not even the whole direct position right because the direct position is not just that you can account for it is that you're the only one that can account for it that's really the only home in which only home for knowledge is the

Christian view of the world it's the only one now since there is knowledge then it's true okay that's that's in summary very quickly that's the direct argument okay all right but but bringing these two things together though and thinking you have to do both of them together is very

I know for me it was it's very confusing and how do I actually deductively put this thing down because it pulls you in two different directions and it's because they're two different arguments and so you think that people have been inappropriately mixing these so like when they present their present their transcendental argument they're mixing inappropriately a form of the direct argument and indirect argument yes correct they're not saying false things about the direct or about you know they're just but it's it's unclear like it's not and I think

I think if they just clean that up it would greatly improve it that's not gonna radically change what they're doing it's just clarifying how certain words are used and pulling some things apart you know in the in the rhetoric okay all right so then let's show show how this plays out in Van Til and Bonson so he says the method of reasoning by presupposition may be said to be indirect rather than direct the issue now

Van Til here is going to use indirect as his entire argument or as I made it one of the arguments right one of the two different ways he's gonna use it for the whole argument and he's gonna use direct in a way that's more like autonomy like autonomous neutral reasoning that's how he's using the term okay he says the issue between believers and non -believers in Christian theism cannot be settled by a direct appeal to facts or laws whose nature and significance is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate okay neutrality the question is rather as to what is the final reference point required to make the facts and laws intelligible the question is as to what the facts and laws really are are they what the non -christian methodology assumes that they are are they what they're not are what the

Christian theistic methodology presupposes they are Bonson then says sorry until Roman Catholics and Arminians are bound to use the direct method of approach to the natural man the method that assumes the essential correctness of a non -christian and non -theistic conception of reality

Bonson thus there can be no direct proof for the truth of either perspective the argument between believer and unbeliever must then be indirect in meeting the impossibility of a neutral approach to reasoning and facts and seeking to follow the example of Paul reform apologetics needs above all else to make clear from the beginning okay so so that's how they use the terms which

I think is confusing because when you're going to scripture right away that you're doing it direct like that's what it is it's a direct you know argument to Christianity so I think

I think we should we should change how those two teams those two terms are used but that's how they use them now notice though when they unpack the indirect they are taking those two that I talked about and they're mixing the two so in this one he's talking about now this would be the second form of argument that I talked about the indirect he says in seeking to follow the example of Paul reformed apologetics needs above all else to make clear from the beginning that it is challenging the wisdom of the natural man on the authority of the self -attesting

Christ speaking in scripture so that would be the critique of unbelief doing this reform apologists must place himself on the position of his opponent the natural man in order to show him that on the presupposition of human autonomy human predication cannot even get underway so that would be the internal that's the internal critique yeah yeah internal critique and if you can do that for all of autonomy or for all non -christian worldviews is to show that they're all autonomous in nature if you could do that then you've proven

Christianity okay all right so then Bonson says in order to display this truth to the unbeliever the presupposition list is willing to think things through in terms of what the unbeliever claims are his basic assumptions and then for the sake of comparison so that's where we put the two together he invites the unbeliever to think through in terms of the

Christians basic assumptions there's something wrong with that rhetorically in fact you might do this where you you critique unbelief and let's say you could demonstrate that that was false and then you could you could tell the unbeliever well there are only two options the

Christian or the non Christian the non -christian is false the Christian has to be true and and then but if he says but what about Christian but tell me about Christianity well sure look look it makes sense of this world right but that but now you've are but you've already finished the argument now you're just teaching him about Christianity you don't have any more burden to does that make sense yeah what if someone says it's a false dichotomy to say it's either

Christianity or autonomy well you have to you'd have to prove that so the so they would say you're saying that there's only two options but it seems like there are other

I mean there there is how can you show that every non -christian position is autonomous yeah whatever person holds to a

God that they believe is necessary that we have to depend on that God to make sense out of things it's a great question this is the one

I'm actually working on right now in this argument so okay but yeah I when I finish the argument

I'll have a I think it gets into how Christianity defines itself so it there can be no third option okay given it but I have not worked that out plainly so I don't want to sure that's okay all right and that's part of the reason why

I worked on the direct argument first because if you can make good on the direct argument then you can prove that all contrary ones are false right because it is true and if someone else wants to say that there's a third option but I haven't accounted for will you know produce it and we can we can and if it's consistent with Christianity I don't think it's hurt really hard to talk through how you have to be either for Christ or against Christ because it what anyway but so if I finish the indirect argument we can we can unpack that okay no great clarity okay it clearly okay so then and then

Bonson talks here about a paper van Til one of the early papers van Til wrote I think it was on Whitehead and Whitehead's metaphysics and he's talking about the salient lines of van

Til's presubstantial approach and he lists four of them but notice these four locating the opponent's crucial presuppositions criticizing the autonomous attitude that arises from a failure to honor the creator creature distinction exposing the eternal and destructive philosophical tensions that attend autonomy well those three together are the indirect method right right that's what you're that all those are all and if you could do those you're good it's over now

D is then and setting forth the only viable alternative biblical Christianity that's the direct well yes that's the direct and if you can do that you don't need a through C hmm but I think practically speaking it's it gives it clarity to say okay your worldview doesn't work because here's why and I think setting forth the biblical

Christian position actually adds content and context so that the person you're refuting understands why your position is the case so in other words

I think it's so I think there is value in setting in setting out the direct case even though you've also made an indirect case

I think they complement each other rather nicely oh yes yes very much so but it's important to understand though if you make good in the indirect not just refute remember the person in front of you but unbelief in general right like as you can refute and Hindu in front of you but you have proven

Christianity by doing it's right so let's say you would just prove all unbelief in front of someone well you should talk about Christianity and talk about how see but Christian Christianity can make good of this but just understand though you don't have to unpack this for the unbeliever in front of it but understanding your own mind though that's just now you're just doing rhetorical work mm -hmm right you just this is more

I mean you're evangelizing to the whole argument but the argument has been finished it's been right okay but in our minds though I don't think that's what's going on it's that oh

I'm not done right like I think I think if you asked a Vantillian if he made good on that without talking through the these distinctions he would agree that no

I got to keep going right but you don't you may rhetorically have to keep going you know to be winsome but not for the argument itself you've already established what you know okay okay this is a synopsis of the indirect or two -step this is again a call it two -step apologetical procedure that pre -substantial apologetics advocates the first test it's not it's not two different ones there's two steps right either one you can do first but there are two steps to it the first step is to lay out the

Christian worldview in terms of which human experience is intelligible and the objections the unbeliever can be contextually defeated and notice even in this one this first steps he bonds is a little sloppy here this is not the full direct method this is just it's sufficient not that it's necessary okay okay so this isn't even the full direct he's saying now the second step is to show that within the unbelievers worldview nothing is intelligible well that is the entire basically it's the entire indirect right as long as you had the there are only two options okay not even objections to the

Christians viewpoint the order in which these two steps in the argument are taken it's not important so now bounce it would obviously if you asked him to clarify that he would agree completely that you'd have to show it's necessary you know not just that it's sufficient and he talks about that you know all the time but even in this presentation though you can think that oh

I've done it as long as I've done both steps well there are two different arguments in the first step isn't even the whole argument of the direct all right since there are only two options at the most fundamental level the reputation of the unbelieving one is an indirect proof of the other so he affirms the direct the indirect method you know that I mean his book preceptional apologetics which

I'm not I don't think it's actually known when this was pen probably maybe when he was at reform either late 70s early early 80s but he said and he admits yet no human not even a

Christian apologist has the omniscience to know all possible rival hypotheses nor the eternity needed in which to test them all so he knew that you can't know all possible options right so you'd have to you'd have to refute it as a as a category right and but he never did that so the indirect

I've never seen someone do it indirect I don't believe has been done well he had he did explain how one is to do it yeah

I don't know if he gave the details of what it looks like correct because you can because I think he talks about this in his lecture series on transcendental arguments yeah he talks about if Christianity is a does provide the preconditions for intelligibility then it must be the only view that can because you can't have two sufficient transcendent that would be the direct the direct argument that he in that in that presentation he talks about that the necessity follows from the sufficiency yes yes yes yes okay but let's see that's still direct though okay all right and that's actually that that sounds right right when you hear that well yeah that makes sense but actually making it happen is very difficult just to actually

I'll make the argument itself yes yes very difficult right but I think I think that's what happened in our part one okay all right so the next one that these next two will go quicker and then we'll get in some some deeper stuff all right so one mom is and this isn't a big deal but I do

I just want to clarify because it can get people again just on paths that aren't essential so the topic of self -deception this is my opinion is not central to Vantil's apologetic

Bonson's dissertation at USC was on you know self -deception yeah the apologetic implication and that was an article he wrote that dumbed down his dissertation sure but I forget the actual the exact title

I have the dissertation of the library but okay so there is no question that scripture teaches this complex view of the unbeliever he does not know

God being an unbeliever who repudiates the truth of God's revelation nevertheless he does in fact know

God very well so if you're a Vantillian this is pretty common to you are reading of Romans 1 God knows

God God knows God an unbeliever knows God he suppresses that truth and unrighteousness and so he does not know

God right he rejects God so he does not know God as a as a believer but he does know

God as an unbeliever and how do we unpack that epistemologically and also in our philosophy of beliefs

Bonson does that very well in his dissertation all right but he says because both sides of this complex situation are biblically based

Vantill is to be commended for incorporating them into the heart of his apologetic and Vantill thought this was the biggest obstacle actually for his apologetic and so Bonson it's a faithful student of his set out to to solve it and it was great and it's a it's a great resource in that objection but notice though when

I went through the argument I never talked about this sure and the indirect argument you don't have to talk about this this is not a central objection in fact

I can talk intelligibly about or meaningfully about someone knowing

God and yet not knowing God or believing in God and yet not believing in God and I don't have to be able to unpack that precisely for it to be acceptable because the unbeliever cannot take that and make it a contradiction so if he can't make it a contradiction

I could just say you know what I don't really know how this actually works sure like I can't set it out well and and that's as long as he can't make it a contradiction right it's fine right it doesn't it's not a problem yeah yeah

John I usually say that in some profound way man has a sufficient knowledge of God that makes him culpable that's all

I say is well what well what is the nature of that now well I don't know the details I can read you Romans 1 and so we can talk a little bit about that but the

Bible does teach that in some way without working all of the metaphysical details man has a knowledge of him and that's sufficient how are you gonna make that a contradiction yeah you really couldn't you know and you can't right so and I really bring this up it's not to you know attack

Bonson here but just just to it's important for people who are following Bonson let's say a hundred years from now in Bantill and trying to advance the method to think through this is why we need to get the argument down think through what is essential and then from there build out things that haven't been answered which so just right now we've seen the indirect has not been answered right so we can prove prove the indirect all right the next one and this is more just a comment here in apologetics in general but Bonson mentions it so I use him as the quote but it's not particularly to him it's to all apologetics sure and that is we should welcome the burden of proof

I think I think it's a it weakens our position when we try to quibble over whose burden it is to prove you know do

I have to prove God's is it my burden to prove God's existence or is it your burden to disprove it and so he says in this special case the burden of proof and the argument between a theist and anti -theist would shift to the person denying

God's existence now if you if you have a proof you should welcome the burden that's how proofs work mm -hmm right

I have a proof we'll stand up and give it right and then people will try to attack it and it's and if you have a proof an actual proof one there shouldn't be there shouldn't be ambiguity term should be clearly defined so your definition should be fairly clear your axioms will be clearly listed your rule your inferences from the axioms to the theorems will be clearly displayed and so if someone wants to refute you there isn't this gymnastics of trying to unpack your natural language and like like the political debates or even some apologetics debates where you're like throwing all these things at the wall you got to try to piece together the person's argument just to refute it and often you it's just this back and forth of not really getting at the heart of it well if you have a proof just present it and the person can critique your definitions critique your axioms or say it's illogical right that the inference didn't work and and that's it and and if they don't do that they're just avoiding the argument it's fairly straightforward if you have an actual proof a few but few arguments that we give are actually proofs

I think that's why we quibble over these things about burden of proof but I think we need to put that we need to get our proofs for Christianity and use them and welcome the burden let the unbeliever sit back but force him to interact with the argument don't let him get off into why he hates

God sure yeah I think that's that that's a big deal especially with a lot of presuppositional list debates where they'll say hey prove to me your

God and when we ask for their worldview to provide an illustration as to why their worldview can't account for these things and ours can they don't want to talk about their worldview so they're not really participating in the debate they just want to disagree with you without actually exposing their own position to engage the actual conversation if you have some a few exceptions or people are like hey well here's my worldview and here's how

I think I could account for these things but in my experience I've seen a lot of people just not want to put their worldview out there they just want to sit back and critique the presuppers argument mm -hmm but it but if the argument though if we understand the argument well and we present it well this should bother us yeah because because one it is a critique of that person because if I prove

Christianity is true then what you're saying is false yes right so what you're saying is false sir and if you disagree with me well there are only a couple of ways you can do that so tell me where you disagree yeah it keeps all of the bantering to a minimum sure you really have to stick with the argument or you're off topic and we should just end the top we should just end the conversation now

John I ask you so have you ever have you done debates before yeah yeah so I can someone see what this argument looks like in the context of like a debate and all my debates are prior to so my first debate it was on creation evolution this was in like night 2009 okay and it was

I remember I remember reading I read Lyle's book like two weeks before the debate and I realized

I was an evidentialist I can't change it and so I tried to make best

I could of it and it was a great learning experience and anyway so I did that debate the next debate

I mean I just jumped in I got out of college and I just jumped in and I debated Dan Barker okay pretty little school here in st.

Peter this is I think 2010 how do you think he did um it was okay

I mean I was like 24 he was he had done 200 debates or whatever right so Dan Barker which you know you would wish that at anyone to throw him at you because he's not there to reason he's there to trick you yes that's the point of Dan Barker's method and so yeah so that was fun and I I was on morality is who is your daddy was a title of the debate morality but it was good like I I've always gotten positive feedback when

I do debates and unbelievers have come up to me and said they were intrigued by what I presented so sure yeah they've all been used well but looking back on it

I wouldn't you know present that way and I wouldn't sure but one of the things one of my favorite parts of the debate and I figured this was gonna come up but he he put he did this scenario where it was basically like if God told you to kill me would you and an atheist like to put you in those positions just to own it and say

I don't know we'll see doing the debate and it was pretty funny it was a way to neutralize his you know just trying to trap me right but so that was a lot of fun that was that's on YouTube I this is like gosh 13 years ago okay yeah

I look back at these things and I would obviously do a lot of things differently but I think it's been used well then I did debated

Dan Courtney twice so once on my home turf this is what I moved out to Pennsylvania and taught at a classical

Christian school for seven years hmm so I moved out there and he was he's from New York maybe it's

Ithaca New York anyway we debated God's we debated morality and then God's existence and it was like within a couple of months of each other so we did it on my place then went to his place and debated

God's existence and I would say and that was like 2013 14 and that was where it that was right before though I had learned logic so I I wanted to make my arguments deductive

I'd never studied logic but I did a good I think it was good cost examination with him on I can the inductive can he justify induction and I thought the exchange went pretty well in the cross -examination and so that that was you can see the growth from the first one but then

I had some guts they are jumping into the cold yeah yeah and some people counsel you not to do that because you're gonna look back and say oh

I could have done some things better but and that's true but I think it forms you like it shows you fairly quickly if you're if you should do this or not yes if can you can you take making errors like are you too proud to ever because if you know if you're not willing to fail you're not willing to make errors when you present or not do things maybe just not do things as well as you wanted to sure and you shouldn't get into this should be okay with your own limitations and take a loss at a debate as a learning experience yeah yeah yeah and many times they're not losses it's because the unbelieving position is so awful that it just becomes could have been better you know it wasn't like he won it's just you know you didn't take it home right so I encourage people to if they have a heart to debate work your tail off I mean put in I remember

I would memorize 20 minutes of presenting with the pauses and I mean

I spent hundreds of hours in prep on these debates so yeah don't take it lightly but don't be a fail afraid to fail and to get better sure and I haven't debated since then because after the debate with Dan Courtney which

I think went well I knew though I didn't have it down exactly okay

I need this so I stopped I said you know what I'm gonna I started studying logic started teaching logic and I dove into a lot

I mean logic was my life for five years mathematical logic like I really

Principia Mathematica with Russell and I love logic and that was essential to understand to put this together and the other thing that came along with it was

Wittgenstein for the plane with Wittgenstein a natural language I knew there was because I didn't know how to defend axioms sure how do you defend them but yet you they're not provable because their assumptions in the argument by definition you don't prove them right so that was always a key stumbling block but those two things so really girdle and logic and Wittgenstein and philosophical investigations were the two things that came together when

I came back to and I was teaching Vantil this whole time as I was studying this but I didn't read bouncing or Vantil for like five years

I just read this stuff and then I came back to them and like 19 and that's when things all came together where I presented

I started putting pieces together and then I presented it this last year right I'm always interested in person's intellectual journey and all these things so that's pretty cool to hear

I got to check out some of your debates well let's let's get back to your your PowerPoint there so you said that we welcome the burden of proof yes right if well yeah if you don't have a proof then you should welcome the burden you should be we should be careful about this term proof okay all right loosely all right so where do we go from here okay so Vantil's apologetic is a deductive argument this is this is a not this is often denied and I actually was when

I listened to the event that transcendental conference that Bonson did with Michael Butler yes and they're in reach if you read

Strawson in the 60s and then other transcendental philosophers get into presuppositions they'll talk about things and they'll describe transcendental reasoning that's somehow different than deductive reasoning it's not and but it sounds like it should be a certain context and so it can really mess you up to get into what is the actual argument because it becomes this thing that you can't pin down it's just like it's out there it's this different thing and we kind of just talk about it here and there and I don't think it's

I think that's wrong I'm going to show but Bonson was also I think a little confused confused on this so we'll get get into that okay so Vantil says when the

Christian I'm going to go through some examples of how they're against deductive this like deductivism they talk about and also deductive arguments okay and so we'll talk about so I'm gonna paint that picture and then we'll talk about it when the

Christian is an opponent use the same terminology they do not mean the same things both speak of inductive deductive and transcendental methods so he's assuming are either three different but each of them presupposes his own starting point when he uses these terms which of course you know is true the fact that fact gives these terms a different meaning in each case it follows from this too that what the

Christian is opposing is not these methods as such but the anti -christian presuppositions at the base of them which

I completely agree I don't think I don't think when you're using deductive arguments you can be neutral to God okay like you're either using using

God's truth as an axiom or you're not okay so it's not in the meaning of your the semantics of your your system here is either for God or against God and because logic deductive is these all inferences are true obviously that's

God's truth right so again it's not neutral okay all right if the axioms on since Bantill is really worried about the axioms if the axioms on which science depends are thought of as resting in the universe the opposite of the

Christian position is in effect maintained and so again he's worried that he was worried that if he had if he would embrace deductive arguments he thought that it required him to be somehow neutral to God because I did probably because everyone he read it that was in the logic would behave that way so I think he just got wrapped up in that Boston said years ago

Bantill realized that opponents of pre -subditionalism tend to think that there are only two kinds of reasoning inductive and deductive deductive reasoning stands opposed to inductive however there is also transcendental reasoning in which the preconditions for the intelligibility of what is experienced asserted or argued are posed or sought it to stands opposed to purely inductive to a purely inductive approach to knowledge all right critics seem to think that since pre -subditionalism does not endorse pure inductivism it must favor deductivism instead this logical fallacy is known as false antithesis and so when they use that and this is not nuanced very well but like they switch to deductivism or deductive systems they said they have it a conception of logic that if there's a system it must be neutral hmm and I and I disagree with that so the so so because of that false assumption they then think that they it can't be systematized or you know it's somehow you can't and and Bantill gets into this so deductivism is the issue

Bantill gets into this later I'll show you he's so worried that a deductive system would get rid of the mysteries of the gospel or the mysteries of God's sovereignty and man's freedom that it can't fit into a deductive system and so that's he denies it and anyway but but and I quoted this last time but Bantill and Bonson especially

Bonson speak of Antos argument in deductive language purely deductive language like there's no other way to understand it he says on pages 79 to 80 it should be clear from the context here that Bantill meant to claim more than that the argument is valid which is just that the premise the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises in the first place the strong kind of argument that he's advocating would also be sound this just means the premises are also true okay so the argument has to be deductively acceptable or valid and our end their premises have to axioms have to be true so it's sound it's a sound deductive argument he says it should be clear from the context sorry there we go moreover the truth of its premises is acknowledged or notable without prior acknowledgement or statement of the conclusion the kind of strong argument

Bantill intended by argument intended by Bantill is a genuine cognitive advance without him realizing it upon analysis to require or imply the truth of the

Christian worldview so he's saying that we start with truth that the unbeliever would who's readily agree with not knowing that it leads to the truth of Christianity and it's not truth neutral to God it's

God's truth all of this is deductive none of this is somehow a different kind of argument okay so Bonson does this very well at certain points and then

I've quoted all this last time but the problem is and I think and part of this is Bonson I think that he knew of these issues but I don't think he started really diving into them until the last year or two of his life hmm so as Michael Butler got into and this

I'm putting this together through reading literature and I actually interviewed Michael Butler one time do you know where he is nobody seems to know the grid somewhere but he he did his paper

I think on the the philosophical literature you know transcendental arguments sure and he has a article published in that book on Bonson you probably have it somewhere with or David Bonson gives that introduction the standard -bearer yeah yeah standard -bearer so there's an article in there by by Butler and okay and he's good and there's some online lectures still by him that are on this

I like Butler he's pretty good it's a shame that he's kind of missing in action I think yeah a lot of good things to say yeah but the so but but Bonson and he was pulled in so many different directions and but he

I don't think he really got into this until the end of his career or his life and so when he wrote

Van Til's Apologetic which is the last year or so of his life he starts to interact with this and I think he's taking the language of Strassen and what's given and interacting with it without having been able to go through it in depth for years sure so I have the advantage of spending all these years and not having his burden that he had in this but but there's inconsistency in Van Til's Apologetic on this on this issue okay okay so but I'll just quickly go to the

Van Til part here but after all you are not interested in a priori deductive systems I have argued on a number of occasions against various people to the effect that the biblical system of truth is based upon the exegesis of the authoritatively given truth content of scripture so he's against a priori deductive systems but the problem is

Van Til all of Christianity could be made into a deductive system there's nothing wrong with that like you just give me the main of give me the main propositions of Christianity and we can formalize them so then there's not hard to do well

I guess it's you'd have to know a lot of logic to do it but but you can be hard but there's nothing there's nothing inconsistent with deductive systems in Christianity okay keep going

I can hear okay so he says when exegesis seems to lead into so -called antinomies such as the relation of the all -controlling sovereignty of God to the freedom or responsibility of man

I simply admit that I cannot logically penetrate the situation see Van Til is worried here that if he embraces deductive systems he has to get rid of the the tension in our understanding of God's sovereignty and man's freedom which will probably always be there you know where we just do the mystery you know that Van Til was so great to describe in God that we will never be able to fully understand unless you adopt

Molinism now I'm just kidding just kidding yeah but for formal systems in no way require you to get rid of mystery sure but he thought they did so that's why he was me

I cannot yeah I won't go to the rest of that okay so this is where Bonsack is into this he says that the transcendental argument has this special logical feature about it that they can draw its conclusion from the affirmation of some position as well as from the denial of that position this exhibits a necessity with the transcendent argument proves this is not the same as a deductive necessity since the denial of a crucial premise in a deductive argument would render the argument invalid this is just a he's this is wrong here like it's not that you can do that if you deny a premise in any argument

I don't care what you're talking about you keep the argument done like so I think and here's here's where it's it's confused well and there's a footnote here by elephant in the defense of the faith where he referenced in straw the straw sony and formula most of this comes from strawson so what is a presupposition he says that P presupposes

Q or Q is a presupposition of P if and only if Q is true provided P is true or P is false

I'm sure most people who read that have no idea what that means it's like this this seems very complex and but it's it's not like here

I'm gonna unpack it so we can slow down and just go what is a presupposition what is he trying to what are we trying to get at here it's simply this if P then

Q if not P then Q okay so Q follows from P but Q also follows from not

P that's all that what that meant okay what was said there okay so Q then is a presupposition of P because whether P is true or not

Q follows okay all right now so when Bonson says about you know you could deny a premise and the thing still works well what he means is if you deny the proposition the antecedent if you deny the antecedent it still works because look

Q follows from the negation of it okay this is a big deal because it shows up in the in the literature all over the place it shows up in revelation and reason and Don Collette pages 270 to 271 got that one too so go if you go to those pages sometime you'll you'll see this this talked about where and I'll be

I'll get into some of the detail here but it frames frames book and his new it's updated apologetics book on pages 76 to 77 same kind of thing and he's actually talking about this article in Revelation reason okay okay so and this and this has been in other places as well okay all right but what's missing all of this is that if you can prove one and two

Q follows if you can prove one and two

Q follows logically so there's nothing mysterious about this this is not some like extra logical thing it's a standard deductive argument this has been known even before Principia was written by Russell and Whitehead I used to have the reference memorized in class that I would use and I would teach my students but this being proven deductively in in Principia okay and this was known prior this is known in the 1800s okay so if P is true not

P is true right so it's all right so if either one thank you Q follows all right now if we were to update this to our argument so we use lowercase letters because there's no content to them we're just talking about propositions and like any give me any proposition but if we want to give content to them typically then in propositional logic we then make them uppercase just to distinguish between the two now they have meaning in a sense of that specific meaning so if knowledge if there's knowledge in Christianity is true that's what

K so K is knowledge there is knowledge C is Christianity is true so if K then

C if not K then C right therefore Christianity is true now what they want to try to tell you is that look in this extra logical presuppositional thing we can make the second premise not

K and somehow C still follows in this extra logical argument and that's the nature of a transcendental that's what they would say but that's completely wrong okay this this is this is denying the antecedent it's a common logical fallacy it is not acceptable anywhere you're not allowed to do this but it's talked about as if it is because we're under this spell of that we're in something outside of deductivism or deductive you know reasoning and and if you if you pin them down about why this is correct what they do is they appeal to the other premise if not

K then C they'll say well but you see though C follows from either one well okay but then to do that you just use that premise then with this and it's just modus ponens so this does not follow

C does not follow from the premises that is an invalid argument okay but just change the first premise then if you've already proven if not

K then C and Anderson actually talked to frame about this you mentioned this to to frame but what was missed is that you don't actually need not

K if you have both these premises if K then C and if not K then C you don't have to worry about not

K or K because you can get C right away you don't have to get into any of this any of this stuff sure but but that's just how he would this is how in their reasoning they do it well again this is deductive if you pin them down it's really just a deductive argument okay does that make sense yeah so far it makes sense yeah okay so this is not some different thing than deductive regular deductive reasoning now the argument

I presented is different than that one though the argument I presented is if K then C and then the second premise was

K there is knowledge right and just standard modus ponens if K then

C K therefore C all right this is really important to get down because this

Hank this was a hang -up for me for a while and how to prove this so I need to formalize this for a second just get rid of the the if then so the arrow there is just if K then just the if then so if K then

C K therefore C and the three dots is just therefore does that make sense yes okay now so that's that's a distinct form of argument it's van

Til's argument there's also a way to present it though which bonds I'm going to talk about in others where it's this other form where you're saying

C follows from K or not K that would be another form of argument if K then

C if not K then C therefore C there's actually a third way you can do this and this is the one

I spent most my time on before I switched to this other one and that is this if K then

C so the first premise is always the same but the second one would be if K then

C then C this would be that if Christianity is necessary for knowledge then it's true okay you know could you could you prove that and conceptually it was easier for me to attack premise two in this third depiction than the middle argument if not

K then C I think it's really hard to visualize I have a question I have a question so if if knowledge then

Christianity so it's okay if K then C therefore C if knowledge is true then

Christianity is true what would you do when someone says well wait a minute that's not necessarily true because there is a distinction between epistemological necessity and ontological necessity so perhaps

Christianity is a necessary framework for knowing things but that doesn't tell us anything necessarily about the ontological situation so and this would be an objection to the direct argument that I gave the first one so Christianity is is a worldview of propositions about the world okay so if it's it is necessary for knowledge and there is knowledge then it must be true which means its propositions must be true which means you have ontological truths proven okay so and we're gonna get into that in the next thing about it being a truth -directed transcendental argument okay that's good that's a good it's a good point all right so what's what's not known well though and I didn't realize this until I worked it out in actually did this well so the middle argument if K then

C if not K then C therefore C is actually the exact same argument as the third one which is not obvious just looking at it so the first two premises are the same right if K then

C all right but did you know that logically if not K then C is logically the exact same as if K then

C then C okay so if you did the truth table for it which

I've I've used to do this all the time in logic class I would throw it up for people but if you just do the truth tables for both of them you'll see that they're there it's true true true false for all of them which is the truth table for a disjunction so they're the same logically which you wouldn't know that just looking at it so I thought that was interesting when so they're actually the same argument if you can prove one you have the other sure yeah this is what happens when someone comes in the middle of the stream and sees this on the on the someone at Mason says what's this algebra one or something actually the best compliment you can give for someone teaching logic is if someone walks into your class and says this looks like math yes

Mark Mark says help I'm logically deficient yeah so okay so I'll get through and this is this is meant to be something that you digest over time yeah here's the thing

John a lot of people will complain that when we give the transcendental argument at the popular level kind of just like through discussion oh it's not specific enough and then we'll go into the details to be like oh this is too complicated well which one you want right you pick which one you want but go ahead oh

I don't see I don't think this exists anywhere other than this presentation so if you want the if you want the person

I think precise and to then here it is if it's too much well then just back off and you don't get and in the and we give some of that in the part one you know

I talked about here are the different levels of complexity and how you want to present right but now the first one though is distinct if K then

C K therefore C is a logically distinct way to do it but they're both Vantillion arguments both of them okay well the direct method actually has two different ways to do it so there you go it's a fun all right so but what makes the argument transcendental is the first premise that's really important to understand what makes the argument transcendental is not the conclusion there's plenty of arguments to try to prove the truth of Christianity they're not transcendental that's a transcendental premise that will do most of the heavy lifting in the argument yes you read go read the in transcendental arguments by Barry Stroud or Stephen corner

AC Grayling or Ross Harrison or Ralph Walker or the rest and what is most of the time is spent on is this premise this is what makes it transcendental is there a precondition for knowledge is there something necessary for there being knowledge or the possibility of knowledge or experience or the possibility of experience etc would you say intelligibility would be better than knowledge since the definition of knowledge is debated so if we were to if we were to define

I was thinking about this today while I was driving home from work it really was as you know

I was thinking about this that if we say if knowledge is possible then Christianity Christian worldviews true but then some quibble over the tripartite definition of knowledge as a justified true belief that that is a debated definition so with things what could we avoid that debate by simply just saying if there's an ability then

Christianity's true yeah so I I don't think you can avoid the term knowledge in this so if you most of the good literature on this what they're trying to do transcendental arguments is trying to answer the skeptic right and so how do we prove something and then so the but they all assume that we have to give an assumption here we had a grant that something exists experience possibility experience you know whatever that we got a grant something here now they don't think they think it's acceptable for the unbeliever to deny that there's knowledge

I don't I think that's absurd I think we can easily refute that which I addressed in part one but they would accept but but because they assume that the unbeliever is a lot or the unbeliever the skeptic is allowed to do that they soften

K to to the possibility of experience and they and they they possibly acknowledge well they equivocate in their terms sometimes like they'll talk about experience which

I would take to be stronger than the possibility of experience right right so so there actually is experience not just the possibility of it well and but they'll use them interchangeably so it's not like this is a hard fast terminology that people use but they tend to move in and out of experience possibility of experience but they typically don't use the term knowledge only because they think that they can't make good on the second premise okay all right so I think you can so I don't that didn't really interest me that much but the but here when you talk about intelligibility if I actually drill

I drilled you on what you mean by intelligibility you're talking about knowledge okay understanding the world well what are you understanding okay well any restrictions are they well are they true or false okay yes are you saying you have evidence for them that's a good point yeah

I guess when you put you believing do you believe in your intelligence when you're being intelligible are you believing in the proposition that you think is true okay you just you just described

JTB like this is just knowledge that you're trying to cover up in them so I don't

I don't think it's good to in bouncing used intelligibility and knowledge interchangeably like right these are all just interchangeable things okay

I don't think we should hide from the JTB debate because I think it's very answerable like easily answerable with Wittgenstein so even in light of Gettier examples oh yeah

I go through this exhaustively okay in my Wittgenstein presentation at the on the

Christ Church website I did this actually at LBC at Mark Harnum's class okay this past year it was in October and so I I think we should embrace

JTB without question it is it is clearly the the common man's definition of knowledge completely satisfactory if you use it in the context in which is supposed to be used okay and without the false assumption that one of the false assumptions that Gettier states explicitly in his paper the second assumption so you can you can go to that if you want to see how that's refuted so I embrace the definition if someone questions it

I don't mind defending it I think it's because I think it's inevitable I think you have to defend it or else you're not going to be able to move forward sure does that answer your yeah

I mean I would want to see an illustration of it but I can just check out the video yeah I went and I could come back and I could give it if you want yeah that'd be awesome because I know

Gettier examples are always brought up when we talk about knowledge and what makes for justification and is it sufficient to actually know to truly know something so in that into just a teaser all

Gettier examples are they commit one of two errors one is and Gettier states thankfully he you know he states very clearly his two assumptions at the beginning of the paper a beautiful paper short and beautifully written is that basically justification transfers from a false antecedent so if you have an implication if a then

B and you thought a was true and you're justified because you can be justified in a false belief so you're justified and and so if a then

B and that's actually true B does follow from a so you're justified in B following from a you're justified in a being true and you're inferring

B from a but if I but you find out later that a is actually false it turns out that you were tripped so Jones you know the

Smith and Jones are the two people he uses in his examples well but then see he gets justification or to transfer from a to B from from a falsehood of a so justification he's assumed can transfer from a to B and so now he's now he believes

B but we all know he doesn't really have good reason for it because his only reason for it was a but a is false right so clearly but he's justified he believes it and it's true so is it knowledge we would say no and I would say no

I don't think he has JTB there I don't think I think he believes it I think it's true but I don't think he's justified in it because I don't think

I have to accept that justification transfers in that inference almost antecedent in almost every example they give that's how they treat it and you can go there are hundreds of these examples it's the same scheme every time you just paint this picture create it to where that you thought the antecedent was true and you make it false and then that sets up this whole problem sure the other way they do it is they create an environment in which justification was never meant to function so you create some environment in which it breaks down but it's like putting a tree on the moon and it didn't survive okay well of course it's not going to survive it wasn't meant to survive on the moon right so justification is not supposed to live in an environment where it's like for example if I'm driving through the field and there are these bomb barn facades

I don't know that but there are all these fake barns but there happens to be one true barn and I look at it I barn it's true

I believe it but am I justified hmm in believing it see if you say

I am but clearly though I'm not right like I am or I'm not and that and that's the other way they take they take the term and they put into a context in which it's not supposed to function like we assume when we go out and we use these terms that what we see is generally reliable we're not being tricked in some way right so anyway so you can go

I definitely I'm definitely interested in that but what we're actually are actually at the past the hour and so I want to make sure this is digestible is there a way you can kind of like summarize and wrap up what you were getting at with the indirect argument the indirect well what we were on the end of the indirect right what you were going through here oh

I was just going through the the form of this this is a deductive argument and I was just going through the forms okay all right well let's see if we can if we can summarize kind of the main points of what you're trying to get through because I want to make sure people watch it if it's long then people won't watch the whole thing but is there a way you can kind of summarize the main points of what you're trying to demonstrate and then kind of briefly summarize the the two ways that you described and then we can wrap things up is that okay yeah can

I just quickly move through the rest of it yeah of course yeah go for it I'll go very quickly and you can

I won't interrupt yeah you can go I'll go very very quickly on it so the last one it so I've got everyone is

Trent the transitional premise is truth directed okay this is important that when we do if there is knowledge and Christianity is true it's not that if there is knowledge then we must believe

Christianity to be true okay which is a different that's a belief directed transcendental argument okay ours is truth directed now this comes up because Bonson sometimes and I have some other stuff on this which

I won't get into now it's good stuff this is all new but Bonson says at the end of the impossibility contrary what

I'm going to show is that to prove anything you must first believe in God all right and how it picks up on this and in the event of until we'll slip into this and it sounds like he's confusing the truth directed with the belief directed and but he's not

I just think he's being sloppy here so what makes me how so presuppositions are our meta assumptions outside of the arm of our arguments this is this is very important to understand so when we come at arguments and I made it circle because you know circularity right so we make arguments they are this contained thing that I can hold and I can unpack and look at it has a form all arguments have a form

I can hold it in my hand and I can look at it outside of any argument are the transcendentals I have to bring them to the argument now we also sometimes call these presuppositions which is fine the problem is though not all presuppositions are transcendentals and so I won't talk about that but I think it's helpful to call these meta assumptions so now that we have to get rid of the other terms but these are assumptions outside of the argument not in the argument outside of the argument this is this explains

Bantill with circularity so in these arguments with our deductive inductive we have assumptions we have conclusions that we have definitions all right now

Bantill calls it spiral reasoning all right you're a circular argument but it's spiral transcendental arguments are spirally circular

I think it's the best it's best term I've ever heard to describe this brilliant so the meta assumptions are can be the conclusion in your argument but they're not your assumptions and they're not explicitly in the definitions so they're not formally circular they're spirally circular they're transcendentally circular so and everyone agrees that there's circularity when you start talking about induction and in these things you talk about Hume or Russell talking about Hume or you get into the transcendental literature from 1960s they're all they all agree there's some kind of circularity going on here and they all agree it's not rich viciously circular well how is that well it's because it's outside of the argument so but it's clearly

I'm clearly assuming it and yet proving it right to me visually this is it's the best way

I can find to show that this is not viciously circular if it was viciously circular it would be in here right the definition of the assumption that I prove it it's not it's outside of it okay and this is under the ontology epistemology you know we confuse ontology with epistemology well we don't see when

Bonson so this is this premise is considered an epistemological premise in the literature but we're proving an ontological truth right the truth of Christianity is necessary for knowledge so the truth of Christianity is necessary for knowledge now does that mean that you have to believe it for intelligibility well yes because the nature of transcendentals is they is you have to use them to make any argument any inference well clearly you have to believe the thing you're using yes you are aware of it you're believing it that's right so that's what

Bonson's doing is he's moving from here to here without explicitly stating it and that get and Richard Howe has gotten more fanfare and time in speaking publicly and doing this stuff

I'm claiming that there's ontology epistemology confusion and he butchers these quotes from Bantill and Bonson it's not very charitable and in putting this stuff together for them well if you ever want to have a dialogue with Richard Howe I can set it up I would like it's fine yeah that'd be fun as I actually do have his contact information

I would love to yeah we can dialogue on this and that would be fun yeah okay so that's the distinction that's that's going on there in Bonson confuse sometimes though can confuse these two things you can talk about unproven assumptions he says in the argument leading to conclusions and so he confuses axioms and meta assumptions sometimes now that is into the form all right now the last thing about the presuppositions is anti -christian presuppositions are always inside the argument they can't be outside because they're false so they can't be transcendentals so the transcendentals tell us about the ontological situation yeah but they're true right so and then we have to bring them to any argument well all anti -christian presuppositions are false so we can't bring them to arguments really so that they outside of the argument okay so anti -christian reasoning that has to be formally circular if they're consistent and if you actually do drill into the arguments though evident evolutionists do this all the time but realizing that their definition of evidence for example will be anti -christian mm -hmm or if you actually drilled into their axioms which they don't state will be some something that's really just well

I know a guy who says well I don't I don't have any presuppositions yeah I said right no no man

I don't have presuppositions I'm like okay so all of its circular though in Van Til I'm not sure he didn't have this laid out but he saw it says reasoning in a vicious circle is the only alternative to reasoning in a circle as discussed above he called it in the first early on his career all right the last part it's really quick I want to say is

Van Til's apologetic is not necessarily reformed that's controversial from what has been demonstrated what do you mean clarify that but we like wait a second

I know I want to show you I want to I want to we got to go through this really quickly I believe it is it is reformed okay reformed

I'm just gonna say Calvinism Tula okay technically is broader than just to love but sure which

I'm just gonna for reform for sake of argument I'm just gonna say reformed is Tula I have looked at this and I haven't found anyone had actually proven this until Bonson don't prove it they say it is they don't prove what that the argument is explicitly reformed they say it is they stated well isn't the entire

I'll show you I think I have I think I can show you where we haven't done it so far okay okay and then

I think we can I but we haven't so I'm a I'm a bit I'm a Calvinist to the bone

I'm a young earth creationist to the marrow but I'm a Calvinist to the bone okay so but I don't think this has been proven okay now then till he actually somewhat relents on this he says that the main doctrines of Christianity is what we're defending in our argument he says a reformed theology does not attribute infallibility to its confessions well think about this if Antos argument it's one of certainty if it's inherently

Calvinistic then Calvinism we must know a certainty if is it possible that we're wrong about Calvinism if you say yes then

Vantos argument cannot be Calvinistic that that's right and that because Christianity for Vantil was

Calvinism that's how he understood one though but I would say most

Calvinist if you pushed him would say no I don't know Calvinism is true with certainty that's why I would say

Arminianism could possibly be true but Vantil wouldn't say that I don't well he seems to say it here in this moment of weakness

I've scoured his literature numerous times like looking for these things read actually you're not just like word -searching the

CD at the CD of his works but like actually reading everything I can on him and and so yeah and and and so he but he seems to say here like for all practical purposes a faithful reproduction of the truths of Revelation does not attribute infallibility to his confessions well it infallibility to any part of the confessions but okay so he seems to relent here but then you go through it's like well there are only two ways to defend

God's existence there Arminian or the Calvinist there Arminian is the man's his man's way and Calvinist is

God's way you know and I and I have all these quotes here from I think Lane see I wanted to get Lane Tipton to discuss this because then

I had him when I had him on he would I mean he would he would believe it is a component of reform and I watched that presentation that you had with him on and I don't think he proved it well

I don't I don't think he spent too much time trying it wasn't them it was just a question it wasn't kind of the main thing we were discussing but I would like to have them on I'm just saying that I don't you know

I'm saying but I would like to have them on to kind of unpack the necessary connection because I get the question all the time like I know

Eastern Orthodox guys who use the transcendental argument is it something that only Calvinist could use

I get that question all the time okay so let me let me let me show you why I don't think it's been proven yet but I think it can be okay so here are the axioms of the direct method okay are there any of these axioms logically inconsistent with Arminianism I don't think so as far as I understand

I don't think you have to deny any of these axioms if you're Arminian and if that's true then are there any definitions that I have to deny well if not then they're the arguments not

Calvinistic Arminianism you can correct me if I'm wrong have inherent within it elements of possibility that is more ultimate than God I think

I think you can I used to be in Arminian prior to my my James White conversion daughter's freedom and chosen but free

Roman Geisler I read him back I'd read him I'd read one to read the other and I bought different versions of it I go back and forth and the third reading

I became a Calvinist right before my actually in my Barker debate so but in practice what you find is that Arminians almost always reject axiom 1 and ax and or axiom 5 okay they almost always reject these two well surely there are other worldviews that are sufficient for knowledge they would jump to say that's true or they would say that no all people don't know what certainty that God created the world they interpret

Romans 1 differently than we would but I always thought that the the whole idea of libertarian free will actually leaves contingency and possibility outside of God's sovereign control okay so here you're getting at a deal

I say I think you're getting at where we get to prove this stuff so I don't think it's the axiom here that's the problem with them then

I think it's what we mean by God what okay unpack that for me so I think it's

I think we have to prove so how I define Christianity and how I define God has to be inherently

Calvinistic but the only way for me to do that is I have to be able to prove that Calvinism is true how would

I prove Calvinism is true how do I prove the five points of Calvinism or show that they're true they're plainly taught in scripture right there we're talking about certainty or not just a good argument an irrefutable argument an argument that grants certainty then sure you may get at the your

Arminians commitment to probability which is the opposite of tulip if you deny any point of tulip you're gonna introduce you have to prove that you're going to introduce possibility and then that is inherently inconsistent with our with the

Bible's depiction of God and if you could make good on that then you've proven Calvinism with certainty and that means then our definition of God in this argument and of Christianity is one that the

Arminian could not hold okay so I guess you can give a transcendental argument for Calvinism right if if knowledge is true then

Calvinism must be the case what actually because you define Christianity as a framework yeah yeah because I define it as the main doctrines of Christianity well someone could ask me what are those and I could list them and say and I could say

Calvinism is one of them and I could make my definition of God a little more Calvinistic explicitly and when

I define God in the first axiom but until we do that though because typically when you asked like when Tipton was unpacking it it was all in the theology of God mm -hmm it wasn't on that there was some axiom or some premise that they couldn't accept it was that our understanding of God their understanding of God is not biblical mm -hmm and then in Van Til's understanding of God is inherent in his argument which

I agree with amen right well you'd have to be able to show then that with certainty and few people in academia that are reformed

I don't know if James White would say this that they can prove Calvinism to love they can prove tulip with certainty unless you define

Christianity as having that as an essential element and include that in your transcendental argument sure but if you couldn't demonstrate but but it's not you gotta make sure you make you select main doctrines though that are actually main okay right

I could bring in I'd like to tease this out a little more I want to do I want to do I want to ask some people what has been if they could prove the necessary connection as a very fascinating real quick I just want to give a shout out to Clint Clint from Australia I believe

I believe he's from Australia thank you so much for your super chat he says I get so much enjoyment out of this channel you're doing great work for the kingdom

Eli cheers mate thank you so much for that I really do appreciate it and I hope you guys are enjoying my guest

John cows who is doing we're digging in deep today it's it's a lot but you know the beauty of YouTube you can go back and listen to it and watch it slowly and take notes and things like that and so hopefully you guys are benefiting from deep conversations like this and some of the more intermediate level discussions that we have when we have other guests and different topics so thank you so much for that Clint and I really appreciate it and all right well thank you again for that super chat now

John if you could now kind of give some or maybe kind of zoom through to the end of your presentation so that we can wrap things up in a nice way that will make sense because I don't want to go too long because again the longer the longer it goes people won't watch the whole thing is just too long

I think you're doing an excellent job by the way and I definitely will go back and listen to this again so but if you can if you can do that for me

I'd appreciate it sure so seven points in this Vantil's apologetic has two different ways you can prove it they are distinct they're not the same and we typically blend the two and we need to stop doing that and make good on either one the topic of self -deception is not central the

Vantil's apologetic so understanding how the unbeliever can know and not know God is not being able to actually put that down plainly it's not essential to to do the apologetic if you have a proof for God's existence which is what

Vantil's apologetic is then you should welcome the burden you should say I'll stand up and present it you critique it we should we should do more of that Vantil's apologetic is deductive it is not somehow some third way of arguing some transcendental extra logical way of arguing arguing it's a regular deductive argument what makes it distinct is the meaning of its first premise which is transcendental and that premise is truth directed so it's not this that we're believing that a belief we're not just proving that a belief is necessary for knowledge we're showing that a truth many truths actually about the world are necessary for knowledge and it's the truth of Christianity so the

Christian worldview is necessary for knowledge and we prove them that that's true and this transcendental of Christianity and all transcendentals are meta assumptions outside of our arguments this is what makes it circular how can we assume how can we assume scripture is the infallible

Word of God and yet prove Christianity be true without being sufficiently circular that's what we talked about in the sixth point that's this is a key that's key to unpacking it and the last one which

I figured would be somewhat controversial but I stand by it and I would love to I'd love to dialogue with anyone really you know it's fine on it it's just to clarify

I am I am a Calvinist I think Van Til's apologetic is Calvinistic I'm committed to that but I don't think it's been demonstrated okay so there you go all right well that's that's something that we need to flesh out or read the literature and see what people have said about it it's kind of like just like you said before cleaning cleaning some of these things up and yeah clarifying them

I think that's that's important you know I know some people be listening to this and disagree and think that it has been demonstrated but that that's okay

I mean that lay out your argument let's let's listen to it and follow it through and that's what it's all about so yeah all right all right so seven points there that's awesome so I would like to have you back on in the future to talk about some of those

Gettier examples talking about the nature of knowledge and justification and things like that yeah that would be a lot of fun but dude this has been a lot it's a deep dive but it's interesting and definitely you know helps clarify some things if people can get past some of the you know the letters like this implies that that can be difficult when

I teach a lot I teach logic at a classical Christian school and I try to stay away from the letters not because they're not good

I mean it's very helpful in various contexts but for like students sometimes it's too abstract they need to see like a content that fills the letter like what are the actual propositions that fill those fill those categories

I tend to teach it like that but I mean either way I mean it's it's it's a useful tool in teaching logic so so yeah there's a lot to chew here man

I really appreciate you did an excellent job yeah no I love dialoguing on it and I love your channel so keep up the great work and let me know how

I can help absolutely and we'll definitely get you back on and talk about I want to talk about also as as awesome and in depth as all this is

I want to see how you would engage in like regular conversation with like how can the average person who says you know what

I don't know I mean I kind of follow what John is saying but like what does this look like in conversation maybe could have you back on and kind of have like these like mock dialogues where we can show what what what this looks like in a conversation so that we can have some practical application to some of this like rigorously logical argumentation that you've given us today would that sound okay great that would be wonderful all right well we don't have a lot of questions but there is one question here from Clint who gave the super chat he says here in part one

John mentioned some literature he obtained from Bonson's son if I'm correct would he kindly refresh on that and will he ever release any of this online for public review yeah

I have over a thousand pages David Bonson sent me all of Bonson's binders so like the notes that his most of his lectures

I have the notes on that he used lucky punk papers from Westmont he was

Westmont right that's the school in California I've looked at this for a while but the Westmont in California for his undergrad and then the

Westminster papers I have a ton of those with frame and others until comments and it's pretty cool stuff historically and then

I have stuff from USC when he did his stuff in philosophy and then I have some unpublished stuff on top of that stuff that he's pretty cool but it's all physical stuff so it's not like it's available online yeah correct so what

I want to do someday is I think God's entrusted this to me so when

I make take that seriously and well I also want to make sure it's complicated because how do you publish stuff from someone who is developing intellectually so what you read from Bonson is the

Bonson who is you know the man and which

I agree I think Bonson's great but Bonson at Westmont was not the man hmm so should you publish papers from Westmont I don't know still in the process of yeah even

Westminster he hadn't had a PhD in philosophy yet so some of his interaction on philosophy

I ran in theology is you know obviously he won awards there and he did things that people today still haven't even done at Westminster so he was incredibly gifted but he was developing so when he's interacting with Wittgenstein for example with in his couple of seminars with frame

I have those papers I wouldn't like I don't

I don't think it's a I think it's good it's well but he's clearly working through these ideas right sure I anyway but but there's a lot of stuff that's clearly advanced and good stuff to publish so it's not so easy and what to publish and whatnot but so but I think a lot of it should be published to for historical record because I think it's encouraging to for people like me and you and other mortals that that God forms men through learning over time which means that they have to be inferior earlier on sure yeah absolutely it's it's which which requires it's necessary so I think

I think follow it you could this would be unique if I would publish all of it with some commentary stuff you would see that the their rise intellectually in the development of his thought which

I think would be good so I lean toward that but yeah anyway yes

I plan on publishing it someday well that's awesome Clint says thanks for clarifying John really enjoyed your talk again hope you come back for that dialogue with Eli so we can do kind of some role -playing so that that'll definitely happen we'll make that happen and just to clarify the the

I when I present I would never present this to a lay audience like I would ever woman and just go this is if someone but you've been in this

Eli we're today well and they want to press you to go deeper right well then we go but you have to have the deep so you're always prepared to go there right if you can't go deep then you can play in the broad popularization of it which is not wrong but I don't want to get into a conversation with someone where he can go deeper than I can right and so anyway that's but so I wanted to publish that and get that out there that doesn't mean that when

I talk with people I'm mostly doing this this is more this is looking at you like I have very

I don't want to do this anyone on these issues right this me with a lot of dead men talking that's awesome well thanks a lot

John we're here at one hour and 36 minutes so people have lots of content to kind of review

I hope you guys enjoyed this this presentation it's not so much an interviews

I kind of limited my questions I wanted him to kind of just jump into you know what he had there for us but next time

I have mine will try to do kind of like a discussion or a mock kind of discussion between a believer and unbeliever and maybe to field some questions from the audience and so I'll make sure

I build that up so that we get lots of questions and you can kind of see I think we should do it where I'm not

I'm unprepared like I don't have like a real situation right where yes and you start throwing stuff at me and I might have to stop and think and go

I guess how these discussions work yeah yeah that'd be great that'd be great um so we'll definitely make that happen so I hope you guys enjoyed this episode here just real quick I want to pop this back up again

January 21st is the epic online Calvinism conference you can sign up right now at revealed apologetics comm click on the precept you drop down menu and RSVP this is an excellent way to support revealed apologetics financially when people pay to attend this event virtually that goes to the ministry and it is very very helpful so if you're looking for a way to support revealed apologetics that's one way to do it of course super chats like Clint sent is also another way as well and there's a donate page on revealed apologetics comm so really appreciate your support if you can't support financially then

I greatly appreciate your support by just simply joining me on these live streams and listening in and benefiting from what we're doing so with that said that's it this concludes our discussion