Presuppositional Musings

Alright. Welcome to another Revealed Apologetics video. I am very excited that folks are finding the

Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel to be super helpful and useful for them and giving them good quality content with the interviews and things like that.

I've got a couple of good interviews coming up tomorrow as per when

I'm recording this. I'm having Scott Oliphant to come in and talk about presuppositional apologetics. I have

Jeff Durbin to come in on April 30th.

And then I think we have Doug Wilson on the 27th. All to talk about presuppositional apologetics. This is kind of like a jumbo presuppositional month.

Again, as you guys know, I'm very much into apologetic methodology. And of course, as a

Reformed apologist, I hold to the presuppositional method. I think it's the biblical method.

It's an effective method. But first and foremost, it is a biblical method from my perspective.

Of course, there are those who are faithful within the Reformed community and just the evangelical community in general who hold to a wide range of methodologies.

But one of the goals that I have is to kind of put forth the strength of the presuppositional method as best as I can because I think it is biblical and very useful for those who wield it correctly.

I also have a burden to kind of emphasize, regardless if you're a classical apologist, a presuppositional apologist, or whatever, to allow one to, to the best of their ability, allow their apologetic methodology flow from a consistent biblical perspective.

And so, again, am I a classical apologist? No. Is there fruitful relationship between the different methodologies?

Well, of course. And so, if we're going to defend the faith, we want to avail ourselves of all the resources that are out there and even conduct ourselves within the context of those differences in a way that is itself consistent with the

Christian faith. So, what do I want to do with this video, this particular episode? Well, basically,

I just want to talk. And I don't have anything specifically planned. Here's the thing.

I want to talk about apologetics in general, talk a little bit about methodology, and hopefully,

I will accidentally say something that you might find useful. And so, some of you people might like that.

And so, I'm going to talk a little bit about presuppositionalism some more. And if you're familiar with this kind of stuff, and this is something that doesn't interest you, you know, by all means, you know, click on something else that you think might be useful to you.

But for those who are unfamiliar with presuppositional apologetics, I want to be kind of a resource for folks.

And I know there are many resources out there. But I want to be one of the many voices that are pointing people to what

I understand as a biblical apologetic. And so, let us take a look here.

Presuppositional apologetics. It is a mouthful if you're not familiar with apologetics and this sort of terminology. And so, there have been various pushes in renaming the methodology because the term presuppositionalism is not at all useful because of just the broad range with which one can use the word presupposition.

Of course, even within the presuppositional camp, you have different flavors, different varieties. You know, there is

Schaeferian presuppositionalism, which takes after Francis Schaefer. You have Clarkian presuppositionalism, which takes after Gordon Clark.

You have Vantillian presuppositionalism, Framian presuppositionalism, all with their little tweaks and variations.

And all very important, and I think all of the different variations within the presuppositional framework can benefit from one another's insights.

For example, one of the things that is difficult when people are learning presuppositionalism from a

Vantillian perspective is when they avail themselves of the source material, when they start reading up on Vantill, what they will find is that you need a big old shovel to dig through the convoluted language that is often associated with Vantill.

He wasn't the best communicator, of course, and so you really have to dig deep in his writings to find those nuggets, those really helpful, useful, biblical, theological, and apologetical nuggets.

And that can be difficult, right? That's why folks who do presuppositional apologetics really greatly appreciate the work of the late

Greg Bonson, who I think, in my estimation, was best at clarifying

Vantill's thoughts. As a matter of fact, he did write a large tome called Vantill's Apologetic Readings and Analysis in which he categorizes all of Vantill's key major writings and kind of gives us nuggets of his thought and then, of course, ongoing commentary explaining the structure and an import of Vantill's ideas, which

I think has proven very, very useful. So for those of you who are just getting into apologetics, by no means this shouldn't be your first foray into presuppositional apologetics, but Greg Bonson's Vantill's Apologetic Readings and Analysis is a very, very helpful book.

If there are those who are critical of the presuppositional method, again, if you want to criticize the methodology appropriately, take into account a proper representation of the methodology, of course you want to avail yourself of the writings of Vantill himself and not just quote mining.

You want to get a flavor of his overall system if you're going to offer critique, which within the in -house discussion of methodologies, we welcome critique.

I think healthy criticism and back and forth between different methodologies is very helpful and useful for the

Church. That being said, I do agree with Dr. Bonson's encouragement to the

Church to take this to the streets. We need to take apologetics to the streets. And, of course, he favored the presuppositional apologetic methodology, but I think it is quite useless if all we do is debate methodology to the neglect of actually taking this stuff into the world in which we need to kind of use these things for the work of the

Kingdom. And so we don't want to get caught up in these in -house debates, although these in -house debates are for sure vitally important and we need to be having them.

So you want to avail yourself, of course, of Vantill's writings and, of course,

Greg Bonson, very good at explicating and explaining and going into the ins and outs of what

Vantill was trying to say. And what I greatly appreciate about presuppositional apologetics, just from a personal perspective, is that it requires the apologist to understand the

Christian worldview as a system, as a system of thought in which the individual parts are given meaning and context as they relate to the whole of the system.

And so presuppositional apologetics, or some have called it covenantal apologetics,

I do like that phraseology a little better, is a holistic system of apologetic methodology.

And so I think that's very, very important. Vantill very much emphasized the importance of the fact that we defend the

Christian faith, not block by block, one piece and then another piece and then another piece, but rather we are presenting the

Christian system of thought over and against the non -Christian system, whatever way that manifests itself, whether it's a naturalistic perspective, whether it is variations within the naturalistic perspective, whether it's polytheistic religious systems, other forms of Unitarian systems in which there is the denial of the

Trinity. All these things are very much important because they have within them systems of thought.

Everyone has a worldview, right? And Vantill and Bonson have stressed this beyond exhaustion.

Everyone has a worldview. And even the person who says they don't have a worldview has a worldview.

And so everyone has a system, whether they acknowledge the individual parts and hold it in a way that's consistent with a broader perspective.

Not everyone thinks in worldview categories, but that's not to say that everyone still has a worldview perspective.

And so what I appreciate about the covenantal methodology or the presuppositional methodology is it's very system conscious, right?

It's very conscious of the Christian system of thinking. And it is very much rooted, as I understand it, within the

Bible. Again, one of the things that a lot of people don't like about presuppositionalism is that it's very uncompromising in its claims, especially as it manifests more specifically in what we know as the transcendental argument for God's existence.

And we'll kind of get into that a little bit later. But where does this idea of presuppositionalism come from as an apologetic methodology?

Where does this idea of covenantal apologetic come from? And I really think it's very much rooted in Scripture.

And as I encouraged earlier, that our apologetic methodology must flow out of the soil of the

Word of God. And that is not to say that people who do not hold to this methodology are not trying to be faithful to Scripture.

But the presuppositionalist who disagrees with, say, the evidential perspectives or the classical perspectives will try to politely, sometimes politely, point out that there is an inconsistency with what we are committed to as Christians and how our apologetic methodology actually looks in practice.

What that looks like in practice. We want to make our practice, our apologetic method, consistent with the soil out of which our methodology grows, which is the

Scriptures. And, of course, when we try to defend an apologetic methodology biblically, there are two things you want to keep in mind.

Number one, and this is important because there's a lot of infighting, and I think unnecessarily so, between the different methodologies and different schools of thought.

If we seek to be biblical in our apologetic practice, okay, how we use our apologetics in interaction with unbelievers, if we want to do that, we need to be sure that we're using a method that is itself consistent with Scripture and when we are engaging in interaction with fellow believers on the issue of apologetic method, we want to also look at the holistic thought here.

What I do in apologetics and the attitude and manner with which I engage in that must itself be consistent with how

I engage with fellow believers in the issues of disagreement. And so when we take, for example, 1

Peter 3, verse 15, set apart Christ as Lord in your heart, always being ready to give a reason for the hope that's in you, yet doing so with gentleness and respect.

And this is the case when we are engaging with unbelievers. We are to show gentleness and respect.

And that does not mean compromising or being soft. There is a place, obviously, for sharp words.

But the general principle, proceeding with disagreements with gentleness and respect, is kind of the protocol that we need to be doing when we're defending the faith, so that we can reflect

Christ, right? And again, I know there are people out there, well, that same Jesus who says, love your enemies is the same

Jesus who, you know, kicked over the money changers' tables and made whips, and I get it. I understand. And there's a place for that more,

I'm going to say, aggressive approach. But, within the context of in -house disagreements, especially between people who disagree over apologetic methodology, we need to never forget that when we're engaging fellow believers, we are to do so with gentleness and respect.

Especially if you want to be winsome and you want to be, you want your perspective that you think to be correct to be taken seriously, we want to respect those that we disagree with.

And, of course, my call here is not merely for unity between different, not methodologies, but unity between believers who share different methodologies.

I want unity, but not at the expense of where we're compromising, but when we're talking with one another, we need to speak in such a way that communication, lines of communication are open.

And so I think this is very, very important, and in many regards is lacking, especially within kind of the popular arena, like on the

Internet and things like that. And, of course, as my friend Braxton Hunter has said in multiple videos over there at Trinity Radio, he says this, and I 100 % agree.

If the shoe doesn't fit, you know, don't wear it, right? If this is not describing you, then, you know, it's not describing you.

Great. If you are able to have respectful conversations with people with which you disagree, awesome.

You know, praise God. But I'm speaking to those who are having the difficulty of, they're getting excited and angry, and in the midst of that, they allow their emotion to cloud the clarity and the truth they're trying to put forth.

And I think this is very, very important. We need to be balanced, okay? What we do in apologetics, how we engage in believers, must be balanced also with how we engage fellow believers, who are, in principle, on the same team.

Now, if you have other theological disagreements with people, and you kind of make dividing lines in certain places, I understand that as well, but generally speaking, we need to speak with clarity, we need to speak with charity, and engage in kind of those open lines of communication.

That's very, very important. Now, that's one thing, okay? So, when we're discussing with believers, there needs to be a consistency of that gentleness and respect, and open lines of communication.

But also, we don't want to defend our apologetic methodology, biblically, by quote -minding.

Quote -mining, sorry. We're picking a verse here, picking a verse there. The defense of the presuppositional methodology, as a biblical approach, is really taken into account when we consider what all of Scripture has to say.

And so, it's not merely just finding a verse here and there. For sure, though, we are going to quote verses. I'm going to quote verses that I think are not inconsistent with some other methods, but perhaps is better understood within the context that I'm speaking of, within that presuppositional framework.

But when we understand what the Bible has to say about any given topic, we understand that the Bible presents for us a system of thought, okay?

The Bible is not a compilation of just these piecemeal, atomistic items, like there's this over here and that over there.

Everything is connected, okay? One of the key primary distinctions that we believe is grounded in Scripture, but also was a point that Van Til brought up often, was what he would call the creator -creature distinction, okay?

And that is very much connected with our metaphysics. So, if you take a worldview, for example, a worldview is, here are the people who are not familiar with the apologetic terminology.

This is for you, ready? A worldview is a way of viewing the world, okay? It's a way of view, and everyone views the world in a particular way, okay?

And the way you view the world, the lens through which you view the world, is going to affect how you interpret the specific items that come to your experience, right?

So, a worldview is very, very important. Now, for the more philosophically -minded people, I give you the more technical definition, and I like the technical definition.

A worldview is a network of presuppositions in terms of which all of reality is interpreted, okay?

And the reason why I like that definition is that it highlights that within a worldview, it is a network of beliefs.

So, you have belief A, belief B, belief C, belief D, and it's a network. They're all interconnected, right?

We do not believe things in an isolated fashion. We believe things in clusters, right? If you think about it real quick, if you close your eyes and you think about one thing that you know, or one thing that you believe, and try to isolate it from other things that you believe and know, it's impossible, right?

We think in terms of systems, and of course, we're not all conscious of the systems, but we all think in systems, okay?

In which the individual pieces have a meaning within the broader context of the system, okay?

And that's very, very important. When we take a look at scripture and we say to ourselves, if everyone has a worldview, and the

Bible is the revelation of God, and it itself promotes a worldview, well, what is a worldview?

It's a network of presuppositions in terms of which all reality is interpreted. It is an intellectual lens, so to speak, through which we see and interpret the world around us.

What worldview is the Bible teaching us, okay? What outlook on the world is the

Bible encouraging us to follow? If the Bible is our lens, how does that lens affect how we see and interpret the world?

These are very, very important questions. Now, if we take the three pillars of any philosophical system, which is incorporated within worldviews,

I think it's very important because then we can see, biblically speaking, how we derive a biblical outlook without using, of course, the technical terminology.

People who are even conscious of their worldview don't often think in terms of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Three pillars of every world, every philosophical system. Metaphysics pertains to the nature of reality.

What is your theory of reality, right? And depending on your worldview outlook, depending on the lens that you wear, if you have a certain metaphysical outlook, you look at the world as being a certain way, that also affects and is connected to, simultaneously, your epistemology, your theory of knowledge.

How do we know what we know? What is your theory of knowledge? Does knowledge come through sensation?

Does knowledge come through intuition of some sort? Does knowledge come through mystical experience?

However you answer that question, everyone has a theory of knowledge, and every worldview has that theory of reality, the theory of knowledge, and, of course, every worldview has an ethic, which, in turn, asks the question, how should we live our lives?

Okay? And so these three pillars, if we take these three worldview pillars, and we ask ourselves, well, what does the

Bible have to say about these things? What does the Bible tell us about the nature of reality?

And so when we ask the question, the reality question, the metaphysical question, we need to be careful now.

Okay? We're not pretending that the Bible is a sort of science textbook, right?

Where we're now coming up with scientific and mathematical theories and things like that. The Bible, as the

Word of God, is the communication of God to man through the context of story, historical reality.

Of course, this manifests in the Scriptures in different genres and understandings that we need to all take into consideration.

But we must be clear on something. The Bible does teach us that the world is a certain way.

It does teach us a metaphysic. And when we are consciously, self -consciously, remember, not everyone does it this way, but when we self -consciously build our worldview as Christians, we want to take into consideration and base our outlook of reality on what

God has revealed. Okay? This creator -creature distinction category, right? And the Bible tells us a little bit about what reality is.

And what does it tell us? Well, that there is a creator and there is a creature. There is a creator and there is a creation.

And why is this important with regards to our worldview and apologetics? Well, it's vitally important because if there is a creator of all things, everything that is created is given meaning and context from the creator, right?

So if a thing has an objective meaning in a God -created world, it has the meaning that it has.

This individual piece has the meaning that it has within the context of the whole system, which includes the creator creating and giving meaning and context.

That's why, from the presuppositional perspective, we greatly understand. I think that we make the greater point than other perspectives, although there are those who also take this into account, obviously, that in order to understand something truly, it needs to be related to that broader system of truth, which is

God Himself. And so unless we understand created things and interpret them in light of God's preinterpretation of them because He is the definer of those things, then we will never know a thing truly.

If you do not understand yourself as a human being in light of the broader context of the fact that you're creating the image of God, you're not going to understand yourself truly.

Every fact that we interpret must be consistent with the preinterpretation of the creator who gives meaning and context to these things.

That is to say that from a biblical perspective, I want to interpret the world the way God interprets it because He created it.

I want to understand the world the way God understands it because He gives it meaning and context.

I want to understand other human beings in the context that God understands other human beings.

This is very, very important. And if we miss this fact, then we will try to interpret the world independent of that broader context of truth that is itself grounded in the creator

Himself. And so one of the great strengths of presuppositionalism, I think, and again, it's not exclusive to presuppositionalism, but I think the presuppositional perspective really makes these points in a very consistent fashion, is this importance of the distinctions of creator and creature, the interpretations of the world in a way that's consistent with the creator, and then applying those categories to the area of unbelief.

For example, one of my favorite definitions of apologetics, and I don't remember if it was

Van Til, the first person that I heard it from was Dr. Scott Olyphant over there at Westminster. He said something to the effect that apologetics should be understood as Christian theology, biblical theology, applied to unbelief, okay?

Biblical theology applied to unbelief. That is to say that we take the revelatory outlook and we apply it to the area of unbelief, okay?

We do not, when we're engaging with the unbeliever, we do not take our foundation, the Bible, and set it aside and find neutral footing with the unbeliever and assume the things he assumes.

Hey, let's just find something we agree on and just take it from there, right? We've got to be very careful, you see.

Van Til brought this part up often. He often said that there is no neutrality between the believer and the unbeliever.

And Bonson, of course, would highlight what he would call the myth of neutrality. So there is no neutral ground between the believer and the unbeliever.

However, it's very important to keep in mind that there is common ground between the believer and the unbeliever.

I'm going to say that again. Very, very important and it is a key distinction, okay? Whereas we hold that there's no neutrality between the believer and unbeliever.

Again, we have different frameworks. The believer and the unbeliever does not understand a fact truly unless he sees it through the eyes and the lens of God's revelation.

The unbeliever is not looking at it through the eyes of revelation, and so we would say he does not understand that fact truly, okay, given his unbiblical outlook.

And of course, the Christian, based on God's revelation, we understand the facts truly inasmuch as we apprehend it and kind of look into it.

We see it through the lens of Scripture, God's revelation. But when we are engaging the unbeliever, we are not neutral.

But there is common ground. But the common ground between the believer and unbeliever is not neutral ground, okay?

There is no neutral space. There is no buffer zone between enemy camps, right?

What does light have to do with darkness, right? There is God's way of seeing it and not God's way of seeing it, right?

And so there's no buffer neutral zone in which the enemies can come on these common grounds and just talk it out from an independent perspective that we interpret facts independently of our broader context.

We can't do that even if we pretend that we can, okay? But common ground is itself still

God's ground, okay? The common ground between the believer and the unbeliever is that they're both made in the image of God.

And so we understand as Christians that although the unbeliever denies God with his mouth, he can't function that way.

He can't live consistently that way. As Van Til has often used the example of a little child sitting on her father's lap and slaps the father in the face.

You see, the only way that the child can slap the father's face is if she was being supported by her father's lap.

And like fashion, for the unbeliever to argue against God, he must be sitting on the lap of God in order to reach his face.

He must be on the foundation of God to reject God. And so even in the rejection of God by unbelievers, the unbeliever must assume thought categories that don't make sense within their own framework, you see.

And so there's that inconsistency. But I could appeal to those common grounds. You're made in the image of God. And so let's talk about science.

Let's talk about logic. I know he uses logic. He can't deny it, right? You must assume logic.

I'm not denying that unbelievers do science. And I'm not even denying that unbelievers do science well and many times better than Christians, right?

But it's not because the unbelieving perspective is true and provides a framework for that. But it's because the

Bible is true and the Bible's metaphysic and the Bible's epistemology is true. And so in order to function in those categories of science and philosophy and history, there needs to be...

We need to point out this inconsistency. There's that common ground. We're both made in the image of God. We both think in similar categories when we deal with logic and induction and all these other things, the uniformity of nature.

Those are our common grounds, but they're not neutral. I don't grant that the unbeliever can justify and ground those things independent of the

Christian worldview. But I do know that he uses them. And I want to make him... or point to...

not really make him, but to point to the reality that, hey, use those tools you're using consistently with your own worldview.

And hopefully, within the apologetic encounter, we can show that there is an inconsistency there. And of course,

I can say that. But of course, you know, that needs to play out. And how does that play out?

Well, there's a Bible verse that I think is very, very useful at this point. So I'm going to look up. It's in Proverbs.

I believe it's Proverbs 24 or 26. Let me find this out real quick here. Have you guys noticed

I'm in a different room here, usually in my office. So things look a little different here.

Okay, let's see here. So boom, boom, boom. Let me find this passage here.

Okay, almost. Okay, so... Okay, here we go.

It is Proverbs 26, okay?

Proverbs 26. I should have memorized that. 1 Peter 3 .15, John 3 .16, they come really easy.

Some of these other ones, not so much. Okay, so Proverbs 26, verse 4 and 5 says the following, okay?

This is important. This is what Bonson pointed out, the twofold apologetic approach when we're engaging with the unbeliever to highlight that common ground and then point out the foolishness of understanding those common notions within an unbelieving context.

He says here, do not answer a fool according to his folly or you yourself will be like him.

But then verse 5 says, answer a fool according to his folly or he will be wise in his own eyes.

And so which is it, right? We have Proverbs 26 telling us answer not the fool, answer the fool.

And this is important because we want to have this two -step approach in mind when we're engaging with all forms of unbelief, whether it's the atheist, whether it's the

Muslim, whether it's the Mormon, whether it's the Jehovah's Witness, whatever the perspective would be. You keep this twofold approach.

Now, this is very important because notice what I mentioned just before. You want to use this approach and this mentality, right?

We want to apply biblical truth to unbelief. You're going to apply biblical truth to all forms of unbelief.

And so often the criticism raised against the presuppositional method and the transcendental argument more specifically is that sure, this would work with the atheist perspective who can't ground immaterial things like the laws of logic and rationality and things like that.

But, you know, this doesn't do really well when you are talking about other religious perspectives. Well, sure it does, okay?

And it's very important when people bring this as a criticism, this isn't new for the presuppositionalist, right?

This is not like, oh, I got you. Oh, yeah, you know, you got the atheist, but what about the Muslim? Well, no, we are well aware of how this applies to various perspectives.

And so you answer not the fool, you answer the fool. So first, what we're being told in Proverbs is to answer not the fool according to his folly.

Don't answer the unbeliever in terms of the unbeliever's own outlook, right? The unbeliever who invites us to be neutral in our approach, we're not going there.

Because if we adopt the unbeliever's foundations, we will be fools like him, okay? And on the other hand, it says, answer the fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit.

But on the other hand, hypothetically grant the fool's position and walk him through the consistent result of that position which you will see is foolishness.

So answer not the fool according to his folly lest you be a fool like unto him. Answer the fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit.

Do not grant the unbeliever's position in your own reasoning, but then hypothetically grant the unbeliever's position to show where it leads to the foolish conclusions.

The Bible is not saying, for example, that the unbeliever is an idiot, you know, you fool, you know.

And sometimes that can come across, right? The Bible has a particular usage of fool that's not, you know, kind of degenerating into kind of just name -calling.

There's a reason for this, right? And it is foolish for someone to build a house, for example, on sinking sand.

That's foolish, right? And so the Bible kind of gives us this analogy of the wise man who builds his house on the rock and the foolish man who builds his house on the sand.

All right, so basically from like a worldview perspective, Jesus Christ, God, the triune

God, is our rock. He's the foundation upon which we build our house, our intellectual house. And for the unbeliever, anything that is not that rock is going to be shifting sand.

Okay, so very, very important. Now, I lost my train of thought because something happened with camera and so something happened so now

I got to get my train of thought back. But I told you at the beginning I'm going to ramble and hopefully something will stick and be useful for you.

Ah, yes, I remember. Other religious perspectives. Okay, suppose we are talking to the polytheist.

Okay, the polytheist, polytheism, for those of you who forgot global history, polytheism is the belief in many gods.

And so there is connected to that a related epistemology and ethic.

So if your metaphysic is that there is these individual deities that are not absolute, they're not omnipresent, they're not all -encompassing, well, let's take that, you know, take that perspective.

When the Christian, a presuppositional Christian was saying, for example, that the proof for the truth of the

Christian worldview is that if it were not true you couldn't prove anything at all, you know, and someone will say, well, yeah,

I guess I see how that works with the atheists, but what about the polytheist? Well, again, what are we saying when we're posing the presuppositional argument?

What we're posing is the idea that without the Christian outlook, without the

Christian metaphysic, without the Christian epistemology, the ethic, you cannot ground anything, right?

Some people say the proof for the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it weren't true you couldn't know anything, okay?

That's the claim. So here you have a worldview, polytheism, and another worldview,

Christianity, and so you have two sides of the page, so to speak, and then we have some item of human experience, let's say logic, for example, and basically when we're doing a transcendental argument we're asking the question, say if we take logic or any item of human knowledge, we have two sides of the page,

Christian worldview, non -Christian worldview. Christian worldview and the specific instance of the non -Christian worldview in this example would be polytheism, okay?

So let's take, we have two sides of the page and we have an item of human experience. We'll take knowledge, we'll take logic, whatever that item of human experience is and we ask the question, what is the pre -condition for that item of human experience?

And so you have two sides of the page and you have this item of human experience. Let's take logic. What is logic?

Well, if logic is universal laws of thought, okay, they govern reasoning and things like that, which worldview can ground this perspective?

Now remember, don't answer the fool according to his folly, but answer the fool according to his folly. Let's assume that polytheism is true and that this world, the metaphysic of this world is that within this reality there are these individual deities that exist within a context of reality.

Well, if there's no all -encompassing God, what is the nature of that context? Let's ask the question, can a polytheistic worldview that denies an absolute

God ground something like universal laws of thought? Okay, well, you have a couple of options here.

Let's take the polytheistic view and see if it can be consistent at that point, okay?

Now logic on a polytheistic view cannot be universal and all -encompassing because the deities are finite.

They are limited. There are many of them. You have no all -encompassing or rational ground for these logical truths.

Unless you're going to say, for example, that, well, we don't need it. Maybe logic is kind of this platonic idea whereas it's kind of this abstraction.

But then you have the fundamental essence of reality as this impersonal something that grounds rationality and logic.

That doesn't seem... How do you get rationality and logic grounded in an ultimate impersonality that doesn't seem to make sense there?

And you'd have to hash that out if that's going to be your perspective, okay? What you have is, for example, the inability on a polytheism to ground universal conceptual laws or you can deny those universal conceptual laws and relativize logic.

But then if you relativize logic because you don't have an all -encompassing God and you have all these infinite deities or however many gods is within that perspective, you want to relativize it, then logic is relative.

And so you're going to run into some real big epistemological problems at that point because if logic is relative then

I can create my own logic, that guy can create his own logic or God can create his own logic and the other God within that polytheistic universe can create his own logic.

How do we get at truth at that point? You see? Truth, at least, is going to be consistent.

But if there is no universal standard of consistency then there is no consistency. And so you're stuck in, within a polytheistic perspective, you're stuck in a form of skepticism which does not ground truth, knowledge, and even given the metaphysical outlet doesn't even ground logic.

So how the transcendental argument and the presuppositional methodology can be used against other religious perspectives is the same thing.

Hypothetically grant the truth of the unbeliever's perspective, in this case a polytheistic unbeliever, and see where it leads.

And that's precisely what we would do with the atheist, that's precisely what we would do with the Muslim, that's precisely what we would do with whatever unbelieving perspective that we're engaging with.

So it's not this idea that well, this only works against one thing. It's a principle grounded in scripture that is applied to a specific manifestation of unbelief, which is basically how we defined apologetics just a moment ago, that it's the application of theology, biblical theology, biblical truth, to unbelief.

So very, very important stuff, different ways to apply this. I think we need to take all of these things into consideration.

It's very important. Okay? Alright, well, that's all I got for you in this video. Again, I'm sure that this would raise all sorts of questions and I do apologize if I have not been clear or not philosophically careful with my words.

I'm just trying my best kind of shooting from the hip in this video. But hopefully this encourages people to look into some presuppositional apologetical material.

You can pick up books by Bonson. Always Ready is a good one if you're just getting started. Pushing the Antithesis, fancy, scary title, but it's actually a beginner's book, not that bad.

And of course, you can take a look at Van Til's work and things like that if you need other resources. There's some websites out there as well.

I should have gotten a list of websites. And of course, you can check out my channel as well, Revealed Apologetics.

That being said, everything I said, by the way, a classical apologist could avail himself of.

But of course, from the presuppositional perspective, we'd want to say, well, there needs to be some tweaking there. And again, there lies the disagreements, right?

But if you are a strict presuppositionalist, I urge you, do not cut yourself off of the great insights of classical apologists, evidential apologists.

I think some classical apologists, if anything, offer great refutations of unbelieving perspectives.

And so there's helpful cross -pollination there. Regardless of what you think of methodology, we can learn from one another.

So, you know, check out other YouTube channels and other methodologies as well to kind of know the differences and kind of important and useful tools that we can share with one another.

Okay? You want to check out different channels. Trinity Radio is a good apologetics YouTube channel if you're not already subscribed to that channel.

We're Braxton Hunter over at, I think it's Trinity Bible College or something like that.

Trinity Bible College and Seminary. It's a big old complicated convoluted title to the school.

But great resources. Braxton over there at Trinity Radio takes popular atheist YouTubers and offers critique and criticism, which

I think is helpful if you want to kind of practice analyzing unbelieving perspectives that are out there online.

And if you disagree with Braxton, Braxton comes from a more classical approach. If you disagree with his methodology, you know, eat the meat and spit out the bone, right?

So there are different things that you could avail yourself of to, you know, be up on all this apologetics stuff and theology stuff.

All right? Well, I hope this is helpful. If you have not already, please click the subscribe button for the

Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel. And of course, we have a podcast on iTunes, the

Revealed Apologetics podcast. And many times, not all the time, but many times, I'll take the audio of my videos and put them up as podcasts so you can kind of get the material both ways.