Always Ready: Part 1: Intro to Always Ready by Greg Bahnsen

Okay, we're starting a new study tonight on presuppositionalism, presuppositional apologetics.

So how to put that up, this is the work of our brother Anthony here.

We're going to be using this book, Always Ready, by Greg Bonson. And that's going to be used kind of like our textbook.

He put this up, I think this is a perfect way to start because we're always told, we see the analogy of building something, erecting something in scripture all the time.

We're supposed to build up in our faith, build a church, we are being built up in Christ.

And so if this is the house that is supposed to be built, apologetics is kind of at the foundation, especially the presuppositional form of apologetics.

So what we're studying is, and typical of Reformed Baptists, most

Reformed Baptists, I can't say all, along with most of the Reformed Presbyterians, we hold to a form of apologetics called presuppositionalism.

And we're going to get into a little bit of what that means. What is it? Why is it important?

Apologetics is simply the defense of the faith. We get the term from 1

Peter 3 .15, but sanctify Christ as your Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.

Being ready to make a defense. And notice it says, but sanctify the

Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense. The Greek word translated as defense is apologia.

That's where we get the term apologetics from, and we're making an apology for the church.

When we say that, it's not the general vernacular. We're not apologizing.

We're not saying I'm sorry for what we're doing. It's but making the defense.

I have to tell you too, this is the first time I've taught this particular course. So that being said,

I have no idea how long this is going to take. So we're going to just take it as it is.

I'm planning just to do an introduction tonight and go to the first chapter of the book.

And I'll let you in on a little secret. If I have very short notes, all right, chances are

I'm going to be very long winded. If I have very long notes, it keeps me more on track and my sermons tend to be less.

So if you ever see me walk into the pulpit, I'm holding a sheet of paper. Watch out. But so I'm going to give a little context.

Almost every course I've ever taken on apologetics, which are numerous, the course always starts with 1

Peter 3 .15. That's almost standard, all right? But I've never seen anybody give a course on apologetics and give the context for 1

Peter 3 .15. And I think it's very important that we do that. So let's look at the verses leading up to it.

1 Peter 3 .8 -9. Before this, before verse 8, if you read 1

Peter, what Peter is doing is he's telling you what it's like to live a

Christian life. So he's talking about our behavior, what is expected of a

Christian. He talks about wives and husbands and their relationship to one another as well as our relationship to the church.

And so we get to 1 Peter 3 .8, and he says, To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit.

Notice he's summing up his whole book at this point up to this point.

And he says, before I go any further, before he gives us this imperative to defend the faith, he says,

Be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit.

This is all leading up to how we should defend the faith. Not returning evil for evil or insult for insult.

How many times have you ever seen a debate with a Christian and an atheist and the

Christian falls into the same trap as the atheist? And the next thing you know, it's acerbic and it's like they're throwing daggers back and forth.

It's almost like a wrestling match. But not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead, for you were called for that very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.

Now again, remember, keep in mind, this is leading up to 1 Peter 3 .15. Then he quotes from Psalm 34.

Peter continues, who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? I love that verse.

It's obviously a rhetorical question. If you're doing what is right, who's going to harm you?

What can they do to you? What's the worst they can do to kill you?

They send you to heaven, what Peter anticipates.

But even if you should suffer, because Peter knows you're going to suffer. In fact, he says later on, don't be surprised by the suffering.

But if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you're blessed. And do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled.

Now again, remember, he's giving this leading up to your defense of the faith.

What's he saying? Be bold. Fear not. But go out and boldly proclaim the faith.

But in what way? Being harmonious, gentle, not returning evil for evil, not insult for insult.

And now here we come to verse 15. But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

Just pause there for a minute. Sanctify Christ as Lord in your heart. What does that mean? What does sanctify mean?

We have a tendency, we see these words, sanctify, holy, and we put them, this is all very ethereal, it's all up here.

So what am I going to do? Sanctify Christ as Lord in my heart. I'm just going to think about the Lord. No, this is practical.

Sanctify as Lord means set aside the Lord in your heart. The Lord should be in your heart setting you aside.

You are to be sanctified. Sanctified means to be set apart for a purpose and, of course, for a holy purpose.

And here's where it comes in now. Here's where the apologetic comes in. Sanctifying the

Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you.

To everyone who asks you. How are people going to ask you?

Because you've sanctified the Lord in your heart. That means you're different. You should be living your life in such a way that people come up to you and say, what's different with you?

Or maybe what's wrong with you? You ever have somebody say that? What's with you?

You don't get mad. Why don't you curse? Why do you walk away when the dirty jokes start coming out?

Why aren't you going out and getting drunk with everybody? What's wrong with you? That's a good thing.

That's a good thing. All right. So being ready to make a defense for everyone who asks you.

To give an account for the hope that lies within you. And then he says it again. Yet with gentleness and reverence.

That's our apologetic method. Right here in this verse. Sums it up. But you've got to keep it in the context.

Okay. So apologetics is simply the defense of the faith.

Presuppositional apologetics is the defense of the faith. With certain truths being presupposed and non -negotiable.

Okay. And we'll get into a little bit more. This is just the introduction here.

Presuppositional. What is a presupposition? Exactly what it says.

Something that is presupposed. Taken as truth. All right. We'll get into what those truths are later on.

This delves into the field of epistemology. Now that's a big fancy highfalutin word. Simply means what's your theory of knowledge?

What's your basis for knowledge? Our epistemology is rooted and grounded in what?

The scriptures. That's our source of truth. All right. The book,

Always Ready, written by the late pastor, Greg Bonson, is an explanation and application of the presuppositional apologetic method.

Okay. You'll see. We're going to go through what the outline of the book is. And we'll only get to the one first chapter of the first section today.

But notice it's an explanation and an application.

He will tell us in the book how to go about defending the faith in a presuppositional manner.

And so this book will serve as our textbook for the study, so it is good if you have the textbook and you do read the chapters ahead of time.

And so we're going to begin by giving an outline of the book. This is how the book is going to be unfolded.

Section 1 is titled The Lordship of Christ in the Realm of Knowledge.

So in other words, you can kind of get an idea of what presupposition is right here.

The Lordship of Christ in the Realm of Knowledge. All knowledge. And we'll get into that. That's what the first few chapters are.

Section 2 is The Conditions Necessary for the Apologetic Task. What is it that you have to set forth?

How are you going to prepare to defend the faith in a presuppositional way?

Section 3 of the book. And there's about four, five, or six chapters in each section.

Section 3, After Setting Down the Conditions and the Lordship to Foundation, How to Defend the

Faith. It's going to be some realistic examples of how do you actually go forth in a presuppositional manner.

Well, I should say something right here. It's out of turn, but because we are presuppositional does not mean that we do not use evidence.

One of the major schools of apologetics is called evidential. And some people say, well, you don't use evidence.

We use evidence all the time in a presuppositional manner. It's just that that's not our foundation.

There's nothing wrong with using evidence. The Bible is full of evidence.

But there are certain facts that are presupposed and we don't set them aside. But we'll get into that later.

So then it's how to defend the faith. Section 4, The Conditions Necessary for Apologetic Success.

In other words, it's something that needs to be learned. It's something that really needs to be practiced.

Remember, we said that when we studied hermeneutics, that hermeneutics was both an art and a science.

Why did we say it was both an art and a science? What's the difference? Who can remember way back was last summer when we started hermeneutics.

Science has strict laws that need to be used, like A and B. There's a certain sequence, certain rules.

On art, it's more open to interpretation. There's more flexibility. So with hermeneutics, there's rules that we should abide by.

But yet, sometimes you need to be a little bit flexible in using those different skills.

Sure, sure. It's both an art and a science. Science is pretty rigid. There's rules that must be followed, whereas an art is more practical.

And how do you—you know, it takes practice, you know. And you can say the same thing for apologetics.

There's certain rules that come right from Scripture, all right, just like in hermeneutics.

The rules for hermeneutics are not man -made rules. They come right from Scripture. Same thing with apologetics.

So the conditions necessary for apologetic success is a whole section. Section 5, answers to apologetic challenges.

In other words, there's certain circumstances that you're going to face. You've probably faced some of them already. And you're going, well, how do

I deal when somebody says this? And so he's going to deal with that. Then there's an appendix to this book, which

I'm really looking forward to. It's the encounter of Jerusalem with Athens. Anybody familiar with Terton?

Terton was the one who came up with the phrase, what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens? All right.

Basically, what he was saying was, what is Greek philosophy? What is secular literature, in other words, symbolized by Athens?

What is Jerusalem symbolizing Christ? What do the two have to do with each other? All right.

Well, Paul seemed to think so because that's exactly what he did when he went to the Areopagus, when he went to Mars Hill.

And the appendix is going to be an exposition of Paul's apologetic method on Mars Hill. Something, whetting your appetite a little bit, huh?

Yes. Was that where he was preaching about the unknown God? Yes. Yeah.

So that's the outline for the book, which will be the outline for the course that we're going to be studying. And what

I've done in this, because there's going to be a lot of quotations from the book and also quotations from scripture.

So what I've decided to do is put words in yellow and italics. They'll be quotations from the book.

Most of them would be Greg Bonson quotations. And the white, when I put it in italics, will be quotations from scripture.

So you'll be able to tell pretty much at a moment's notice where I'm quoting from. OK? So the first section is the

Lordship of Christ in the Realm of Knowledge. And the first chapter,

Bonson has titled The Robbery of Neutrality. What does he mean by that? Christians are often urged to assume a neutral stance regarding the truthfulness of scripture.

In other words, if you're going to get into a discussion with somebody, especially somebody who doesn't hold to the authority of scripture, they'll say, listen, let's put the

Bible aside for now. That is death. And it is wrong.

And in fact, his second chapter is titled The Immorality of Neutrality. All right?

But that's not till next week. All right? So but we're often challenged with that.

Say, well, you know, let's start on neutral ground. We put the Bible aside. No, that's not neutral ground. That's moving over to the enemy's ground.

All right? So this is one of the things that we presuppose. The Bible tells us itself that the

Word of God is truth. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And so we never compromise on that.

We never put the Bible aside. OK? This is usually the case in the area of scholarship.

All right? Teachers, researchers, and writers are often led to think that honesty demands for them to put aside all distinctly

Christian commitments when they study in an area which is not directly related to matters of Sunday worship.

See, the enemies of the church are willing to say, yeah, no, we understand. The Bible, sure, you take that out

Sunday morning. It tells you how to worship. It tells you what you need to do in your Sunday service. But anywhere else, the

Bible doesn't necessarily speak to that. All right? And this is the way it will come at you. I'm sure you've heard that type of argumentation numerous times, especially if you've gone to college, especially if you've taken any philosophy courses in college.

I'm sure that you've heard something similar to that. Is it really necessary to hold to the teachings of the

Bible if you are to understand properly the War of 1812, the chemical composition of water, the plays of Shakespeare, or the rules of logic?

This is something that they'll say to you. Why do I have to understand the

Bible to understand these things? The Bible has nothing to say about these.

That's what they say. Don't buy it. This demand for neutrality is often raised in the field of apologetics.

And so many Christians succumb to this argument for the sake of academic acceptability.

All right? In other words, I've actually spoken with Christians, especially college professors who are professing

Christians, and they say, if I assert six -day creationism, I'll lose all credibility in my field.

And so they say, so for the sake of academic credibility, they give up and they adopt this stance of academic neutrality.

All right? And hopefully by the time we get through the first two chapters, you'll see why that's not the right idea.

Well then, in these and many other ways, we can see that the Christian is called upon to surrender his distinctive religious beliefs to temporarily put them on the shelf and to take a neutral attitude in his thinking.

Sounds noble and fair. But I'm going to quote

Dr. John Gerstner. He was R .C. Sproul's mentor. All right? And if you ever listen to R .C.

Sproul and listen to John Gerstner, you can hardly tell them apart. They have the same inflections and everything else.

But great man of God, Presbyterian theologian, he always said, beware of the theology of the first glance.

Something can sound noble and fair at first glance. And when you delve into it, find out that it's anything but.

Okay? But there are several problems with this approach. And now, Bonson goes on to list four, at least four problems with this approach of putting neutrality on the table.

What are the problems? First, and here you can see I've just quoted him. I'm not trying to paraphrase.

This would prevent the conquest of the world to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. Remember, the

Bible. Where do I start?

No, I'm looking for a specific. The Bible teaches us, and we hold to that, especially in this church, in Reformed churches, that the

Bible addresses not simply religious matters, but we are to exercise dominion over the entire world.

Yes? Well, I think it's interesting, because you're not like secular philosophers at the point.

Like, I think the best example is Peter Peterson right now, coming out and saying, like, the Bible serves as the foundation for all of society and how we act and govern.

Like, we understand it through the three conditions that it sets forth.

Yeah, I mean, because it's logical. And because even nonbelievers are made in the image of God, they have a certain knowledge.

Yes, their image is shattered, but there's still that. So you can have nonbelievers come and understand and accept those principles.

Go ahead. Yeah, so many of, like, the respected and intelligence, like, of, you know, not just the classical age, but also even the modern era for the last few million years, many of them come up with theories that are just rephrasing the

Bible. Yeah, and they try to distance themselves from the Scripture too often. Okay, yes?

The way I see it is the Bible is the sword, and the idea behind the sword of brutality is mentioned as disarmament.

Yes, yeah, absolutely right. Because, and again, the point that I was just trying to get my words straight on, where we're commanded to make disciples of all the nations, not merely in a spiritual sense, but in a physical sense, bring this world under the dominion of Christ.

When we do that, okay, we are to, well, how do we do that?

By replacing the old self with the new self on an individual basis, and a new society with, you know, pushing the old society away, all right?

What happens when missionaries go into, in the past century, when they'd go into primitive tribes, and they'd bring the gospel?

Whole cultures changed, and that's what we're called to do. If you put the

Bible aside, the world, this would prevent the conquest of the world to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord.

You can see why not the entire evangelical church holds the presuppositional apologetics, because a good portion of the evangelical church believes that we are to be concerned about spiritual issues only.

Why is the United States in the mess politically as it is today?

Why is our government so pagan? And I don't think anybody can disagree that, in general, the governments of this country right now are pagan.

I mean, we're killing how many millions of babies? We can't even define what a man and a woman is.

We can't define what marriage is. Why did it get that way? How did we get here?

Because it wasn't this way in the beginning of the 20th century. The church started to preach, the world is going to end.

We're out of here. Stay away from politics. It's dirty business. And they started preaching separation of the church from society.

And so they just abandoned it, and Christians stopped running for office. Now you're starting to see a resurgence of this again.

So the first problem is, how can you say that the world is supposed to come under the dominion of Christ and him as Lord if you're not using the scriptures?

You're putting the scriptures aside. You can't do it. Second, this would make professing

Christians impotent in their witness, aimless in their walk, and disarmed in their battle with the principles and powers of this world.

This goes to write exactly what Miguel says. You take the scriptures away, you're disarming.

You're being disarmed. And the sad part is, the Christians are not only letting them take them away, they're putting them down willingly.

It's like watching the old -time movie with the macho guys. Ah, take my gun off.

I don't need my gun. I prefer the Harrison Ford issue. You know, the guy's got this

Ford. That's the way it should be. I mean, we've got the superior weapons.

The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. I can't believe

I used Harrison Ford as an example. Indiana Jones.

This is the third. Such neutrality would prevent sanctification in the Christian's life, for Christ said that his followers were sanctified by the truth.

John 17, 17. So if we're saying now, well, the scriptures are neutral, by what process are we going to be sanctified?

And you saw in 1 Peter 3, 15, prior to the apologetic command, what did it say?

Sanctify Christ in your hearts. So how are you going to be sanctified? And the fourth one. Contrary to neutrality's demand,

God's word demands unreserved allegiance to God and his truth in all our thought and scholarly endeavors.

How many Bible verses can you think to back that up? Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust in the

Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

I'm not going to go too many more of those because we'll be going through a lot of those as we go through the study.

Still in the first chapter, Paul's teaching mitigates against this view.

Colossians 2 is a very important portion of Scripture in apologetics, where Paul says, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden Christ.

Notice, notice he says, all wisdom and knowledge is deposited in the person of Christ, whether it be about the war of 1812, water's chemical composition, the literature of Shakespeare, or the laws of logic.

You can't get into a logical argument with somebody if you put the Bible aside because then you can ask the question that Pilate asked, what is truth?

And what is truth if you put the Scriptures away? You see the bind that you wind up in.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. To avoid

Christ in your thought at any point then is to be misled, untruthful, spiritually dead.

To put aside your Christian commitments when it comes to defending the faith or sending your children to school is willfully to stare away from the only path to wisdom and truth found in Christ.

Following his logic? And by the way, Bonson's logic is virtually flawless in this book.

Colossians 2 addresses this very subject. So let's look a little bit at Colossians 2.

Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Okay, that's how he starts. Having been firmly rooted and now being built up.

Here's our analogy of the house, all right. Having been firmly rooted.

Notice the wording carefully, firmly rooted. This is the Scriptures. This is our foundation.

This is what we're going to build our house upon. All of these presupposed truths and facts of Scripture.

So, and now being built up in him and established in your faith just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude.

And again, notice the wording firmly rooted. In order to walk in Christ, your foundation must be laid in him, not some neutral body of knowledge that somehow is magically put together.

And magic is as good a way of saying it as any because if it doesn't come from Scripture, what makes it truth?

So, if not grounded in Christ, Paul reveals the result. See to it that no one takes you captive.

Look at what he says. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception.

According to the tradition of men. Put the Scripture aside and what do you have?

You have tradition of men. According to the elementary principles of this world rather than according to Christ.

Another translation which Bonson uses in the book and it says, see to it that no one rob you.

That's where the title comes from, the robbery of neutrality. Beware lest any man rob you through philosophy and empty deception.

So, by attempting to be neutral in your thought, you are a prime target for being robbed. Robbed by vain philosophy, of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which are deposited in Christ alone.

There's a reason why so many of the scientific discoveries over the ages were made by Christians.

There's a reason for that. Notice again the antithesis between the wisdom of God and the traditions of men.

I mean, the Scripture is just full of this and I'm not going through a lot of them tonight. This is just the first chapter.

Any questions? Not bad timing -wise.

Any other questions at all? No? Good. Yes. A comment.

I mean, it's nothing new. From the fall, Satan cast doubt on the word of God.

That's been at issue since then. Put it aside and now it's a free -for -all.

There's no basis. That's why today they talk in terms of, well, that's your truth.

Truth is truth. It's not yours and mine and ours. Sure. And again, yes.

Sorry, just a comment. No, that's you. It's not even logical because they're asking us to set aside our

Christian perspective and they're not setting aside their perspective. Right. So it's taking our weapon and keeping theirs and it just doesn't make sense.

No. Of course not. Of course not. Absolutely. Beware of the first glance.

Yes. I think in accordance with this conversation, though, it's also important to remember that, you know, as Christians we need to also be making sure that we are sticking to the gospel and what's manifest in Scripture and not sometimes creating our own convictions like the word of God or equating it to the word of God because I think sometimes that can become dangerous too in that, like, people start elevating their own ideas as biblical truth.

And that's where we, in doing that, give the other side of our platform for argument and accusation and critique, you know?

Sure. That's exactly the error of the Pharisees. Pharisees had the word of God, but what did they do?

They added to it and they took away from it to suit their own particular purposes. And what did they wind up with?

Being completely illogical. Yes. Yes. As soon as you stray from the

Scripture, that's why we're told not to add or take away from the word of God. And also, don't forget the admonitions.

As you're going through this, humility, kindness, not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult.

That's hard to do. Especially when somebody lobs you one, you know?

You want to hit it out of the park, but you have to refrain. Okay.