More WLC & Apologetic Methodology, Karlo Broussard on Alleged Parallels of Atheism & Sola Scriptura

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:37

Greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line. My name is James White and I don't know what you're on about because there's nothing up on the screen.

00:44

Oh, there's something up on the screen now. Hey, lots of stuff to get today. We might open the phones.

00:50

I'm not sure if I can get the thing to actually work to do that.

00:56

I might see if I can work that out later. I did mention it on Twitter or wherever it was.

01:04

Unfortunately, I don't even see the phones anymore. I'm not having a good computer day, folks.

01:09

Let's just put it that way. The computers around here have decided they do not like me and they want me to go away.

01:16

So I feel like going away. Where did the phones thing go? I don't even know. It's just like poof, gone.

01:23

Lovely. Anyway, so maybe we won't. If I can't pull it up, it's not even there anymore.

01:29

I don't know where it went. Maybe Safari still has it. Go back to the old ways.

01:37

Things like that. Anyway, so we might do something with that or we may not.

01:46

If I can't find any way to bring it up, then let's see. Phones. Click to use

01:52

Flash. Lovely. Use every time. Okay, it looks like that one's actually working.

02:01

Something worked. Woohoo! All right. So we may do something with that a little bit later on.

02:07

Anyway, Sy Tembruggenke put up a one -minute long stuff here,

02:14

Sy. You're putting out really long videos here. One -minute video.

02:21

So, William Lane Craig and his own words. Because the second part of this...

02:33

I have a feeling... I've done a lot of these things in the past. I have a feeling they just sat down and did the whole thing on apologetic methodology in one session.

02:44

And then just divided it up into 20 -21 -minute segments, something like that.

02:51

So, I didn't really expect there to be any interaction with criticisms or with people saying,

02:57

Hey, have you actually read Van Til or are you just reading other people's interpretations of Van Til?

03:06

What's going on here? If you didn't catch the last program, on reasonable faith,

03:13

William Lane Craig is doing a review of a radio interaction that Sy Tembruggenke did on apologetic methodologies, presuppositionalism versus evidentialism, classical apologetics.

03:34

Exactly how you differentiate them, I'm not 100 % certain. Anyway, the first part that we listened to, over and over again, we had to come to the conclusion that William Lane Craig's reaction to the things that Sy was saying indicated a fundamental lack of familiarity with the presuppositional approach.

04:09

And everybody's like, Nah, is that possible? Because he's written books where, you know, he's been involved in books where they have the different approaches and stuff like that.

04:17

And it's like, well, maybe, but a lot of people don't remember when

04:24

Norm Geisler wrote something about Van Til. He almost always depended upon secondary sources, upon interpreters of Van Til rather than Van Til directly, often actually citing someone else's words as if they were

04:41

Van Til's. So it wouldn't be the first time this has happened.

04:48

And I do get the feeling, I'll be perfectly honest with you, that for a lot...

04:54

See, I got to be very careful here about some of the parallels that I'm familiar with. But look, we all do this.

05:02

There are certain perspectives that we don't really have any great respect for.

05:09

We don't really think should be taken seriously. And so it's real easy to just sort of dismiss them and not really spend a lot of time looking carefully at what they're saying.

05:20

And I've had this done to me many times before, and I have a feeling this is going on here.

05:29

And so in listening to this second part, all I put out on Twitter was, well, now we have real clear evidence that William Lane Craig has not done original reading in presuppositional materials.

05:47

That's just all there is to it. And there's no question about it.

05:53

And in the process, listening to Dr.

06:00

Craig, he said a number of things where I've just gone, that's not what

06:05

I've heard you saying in your debates. You know, I mean, Romans 1 comes up and does man really know that God exists?

06:14

Well, I believe that it's in the Bible. Well, if it's in the

06:20

Bible and you believe that, then shouldn't that be the determinative reality of the formation of your apologetic methodology?

06:28

It just, you know, we've talked about this before. It's one thing to go, well, yes, yes, yes,

06:34

I believe that it's in the Bible. But to take it seriously and go and sense it's in the

06:45

Bible, then I need to reorient all my secular learning, all my university learning, all my doctoral learning, whatever else it is, in light of what is in Scripture.

06:55

That's a different thing. And I think that's what we've got going on here. I just don't,

07:03

I don't get much of a sense from, for example, I've not heard anywhere where Dr.

07:11

Craig even intimates to be going, well, I'm not sure all presuppositionalists would say it like Saitam Birgit says it.

07:19

You know, you have frames take over here and you've got Oliphants take over here and Bonson, you know, had more of an emphasis.

07:27

Nothing like that, because there are differences. There are differences in interpretation between a

07:35

Bonson and a frame and Oliphant and, you know, they all have their emphasis, shall we say.

07:45

Nothing like that. I just, I just don't think he's listened. So Sait put together a one minute little clip here.

07:54

I'm not going to bother saying the video because even though he does show the video, it really doesn't make much of a difference.

08:02

It's what he said. And it's the same, I was, evidently he's been feeling the same sort of disconnection that I've been feeling in regards to Dr.

08:23

Craig saying, well, yeah, I accept that. I accept it can only be done through the Holy Spirit and so on and so forth.

08:28

And, you know, we need to be presenting the one true God and things. And I'm just sitting back going, yeah, but hasn't he said this type of thing?

08:38

Well, Sait went back through some videos and put together some quotes.

08:44

So let's listen to what Sait put together here.

08:51

I encourage unbelievers not to think of the Bible as divinely inspired. Over 50 % of evangelical pastors think that the world is less than 10 ,000 years old.

09:03

Now, when you think about that, Kevin, that is just hugely embarrassing. We're not arguing for Christianity tonight.

09:11

I haven't presented an argument, a moral argument for Christianity or even for the

09:16

God of the Bible. Over half of our ministers really believe that the universe is only around 10 ,000 years old.

09:24

This is just scientifically, it's nonsense. You ought to rejoice in my arguments.

09:32

And I can just say I'm going to be a theist, but I'm not going to be a biblical theist. We're not trying to disprove

09:38

Allah's existence. We are arguing for generic monotheism that is affirmed by Jews, Christians, Muslims, deists, and theists of many sort.

09:48

Are you certain that God exists? No. Good. That last one, of course, is

09:53

Sai's favorite. Are you certain that God exists? No. It's the apologetic equivalent of what was the

10:06

Democratic guy that goes, remember the Howard Dean scream?

10:12

Yeah, because it was like four octaves above where it could have ever been respected.

10:22

But yeah, so yeah. What? Excuse me, excuse me, but I just kind of wondered, the one before that where he's arguing that, you know, whether we're just arguing monotheism, isn't that what all these

10:39

Chrislam people have been accusing you of for the last several weeks going off the beam? These people have gone absolutely bonkers.

10:47

I don't even go there because, look, my summary for many years of William Lane Craig's position has been that, the way

11:05

I put it is, the preponderance of the evidence points to the greater probability of the existence of a

11:11

God. That's what I've heard him arguing over and over and over again.

11:18

And so it's like, it's a generic, as he just, the terminology used there, generic monotheism that can be affirmed by a number of different people.

11:29

And Sai's point, and my point, is that's not what the apostles ever did.

11:37

This is the incrementalism where you get excited because you can get someone to go from being an atheist to an agnostic to being sort of a deist type thing.

11:50

And you just hope you can just keep pushing them far enough along that they'll get to the truth eventually.

11:57

And that, to me, is one of the key issues. Was there something else? I was just going to say, it just blows my mind that you've never said such a thing.

12:05

These people have accused you up one side and down the other of saying such a thing. He's been saying this really for a long time and yawn.

12:16

Nobody gives a care. I don't even, I don't take seriously anybody who suggests for a second that I've ever said a word about Chrislam or anything like that.

12:30

Obviously such a person just has absolutely no credibility as far as I'm concerned.

12:39

I can't even interact with someone that silly because they're obviously not dealing with the real world.

12:46

And so I don't even really give them much of a thought. But you heard the things that were said. It's only one minute long.

12:51

Let me just comment on just a few of them. I encourage unbelievers not to think of the Bible as divinely inspired.

12:58

We commented on that one because I remember the scene that's being showed there.

13:05

And this again, then what are you doing? What does this say concerning your approach to the lost man?

13:14

Are you really taking seriously the idea of suppression? He's suppressing the knowledge of God, rebellion against God.

13:22

These are all key issues that as I'm listening to his comments, which we'll get to here in a moment,

13:29

I'm just not finding any serious interaction with it at all. Over 50 % of evangelical pastors think that the world is less than 10 ,000 years old.

13:41

So Dr. Craig is extremely concerned about this. He really does believe that it is fundamental to Christian belief to accept current cosmologies and to accept the idea that you begin with the assumption of a beginning that is non -functionally, that isn't created to have a purpose and a function at the time it was made.

14:15

I guess it'd be the way that I would put that. And this is just intellectual suicide from his perspective.

14:23

Now, of course, if cosmology changes, that's something that's going to mess everything up. Now, when you think about that, Kevin, that is just hugely embarrassing.

14:32

We're not arguing for Christianity tonight. We're not arguing for Christianity. Now, of course, there could have been a context for that,

14:38

I suppose. I mean, if the topic were specifically focused on another faith or another religion or something like that,

14:51

I suppose there could be a context in which I would say something like that. But in all probability, it was in the context of arguing for the mere existence of a god.

15:06

And the presuppositionalist says that is bare theism, B -A -R -E, not

15:13

B -E -A -R. Bare theism is incoherent. It is insufficient to actually bear the weight that someone might want to put upon it.

15:24

And so there's an issue there. And then the bad sound stuff here, I don't know what it was from, but this is,

15:32

I haven't presented an argument, a moral argument for Christianity. I haven't presented an argument, a moral argument for Christianity or even for the

15:40

God of the Bible. Or even for the God of the Bible. Again, depends on what the context was there.

15:46

Over half of our ministers really believe that the universe is only around 10 ,000 years old.

15:54

This is just scientifically, it's nonsense. You ought to rejoice in my argument tonight and just say,

16:02

I'm going to be a theist, but I'm not going to be a biblical theist. Now, there's an important one.

16:07

I don't care what the context is there. You should say, I'm going to be a theist, but I'm not going to be a biblical theist.

16:19

I don't know how to put together that kind of a statement with what I've been hearing from Dr.

16:26

Craig on the podcast. I don't see how to put those together.

16:33

I really don't. We're not trying to disprove Allah's existence.

16:38

We are arguing for generic monotheism that is affirmed by Jews, Christians, Muslims.

16:45

Now, see, generic monotheism affirmed by Jews, Christians, and Muslims must be non -revelational monotheism.

16:57

Because we as Christians do not simply affirm a generic monotheism.

17:05

We affirm a revelational monotheism of a specific God, Yahweh. And that becomes central to the apologetic for the identification of who

17:16

Jesus is, because the New Testament writers identify him as Yahweh in human flesh, despite what

17:22

Bart Ehrman doesn't know about New Testament theology. And so, it's this ability to argue for something less than the reality that is the issue here.

17:43

And I think it's important to recognize that. Deists and theists of many sorts.

17:50

Are you certain that God exists? No! Good. I encourage...

17:55

Are you certain that God exists? No! Well, so, that would seemingly go to the knowing, understanding type thing, and the testimony of the

18:09

Holy Spirit. And I'm sure Dr. Craig would say, well, in the context in which my opponent was speaking from a historical perspective, or a philosophical perspective,

18:20

I can say that I know God exists experientially, by the testimony of the

18:26

Holy Spirit, or something like that. But the reason Sy keeps pointing to that, is you've got him saying that there, and then, on last week's program, you heard him saying, well, yeah, men know

18:42

God exists. It's in the Bible. You would think that would be more than it's in the

18:48

Bible. You would think it would be, this is absolutely central to the issue, to what's going on here.

18:56

So, there's that. So, I thought that was helpful to have, obviously,

19:02

Sy's feeling the exact same thing that I am, and that is, ah, um,

19:13

I don't know, anyway. No, here it is. Okay, I found it. Alright, I guess

19:19

I still do need the, I guess I can't hear what I'm playing. I need a, I've wanted to look at the

19:25

Bluetooth ones, but there's always delay. And it ends up throwing you, you've got to have it hardwired.

19:32

There just doesn't seem to be any way around it, unfortunately. So, as silly as it looks.

19:37

So, let's try to run through this as quick as we can, and see what we can learn from it.

19:45

So, let's pick up where we left off. Sy Tim Bruggenkate continues in this exchange.

19:50

Now, obviously, we need music in the background, okay? I mean, it's sort of like when that guy did that really cool video from South Africa of my closing statement.

19:59

It sounded so much better. I need to hire a piano guy, okay?

20:04

And he can just set up a little keyboard over in the corner at the debate, and when I start preaching, he can just start.

20:10

You know, we could get that lady that plays for T .D. Jakes. Yeah, oh, she's good. She knows how to just roll.

20:17

Right in there, the timing's perfect, everything. Yep, yep. To get it faster and slower, depending on...

20:24

And we need that tune, dun -dun -dun. No, no, no, no, no. You've got to have that.

20:30

When he sees evidence and says, well, Christianity can't be true, then it shows that they were always the judge of the evidence, and I say, that's problematic.

20:38

Now, remember, I'm not sure if I've ever heard

20:43

Sy with cool music in the background. I don't think it goes with the Canadian.

20:49

You know, it just, eh, you know, it's not working. Where's the maple syrup? Anyway, remember last week that I was taken aback by the fact that William Lane Craig responded so negatively to the judge issue, because isn't the whole...

21:09

You know, we cannot, and I emphasize this myself, we cannot put the unbeliever in the position of acting as judge of the existence of God.

21:19

And that's a prejudicial example. Why not a person, we're just proving to a person that we have the cure for their disease.

21:28

The category disconnection here is astounding. We're talking about someone who is demanding the right to judge whether God exists.

21:39

It's not talking about disease. We haven't even gotten to the point of sin and a savior from sin.

21:46

If you haven't even gotten to God yet, how have you gotten all the way to that point? The example, and the one that fits the idea of suppression and of exchanging, the exchange issue that you find in Romans 1, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.

22:09

This fits it perfectly, and that's what Sai is talking about. I think my main issue with the other types of apologetics is it reduces

22:17

God to probability. It does not talk about the God that has certainly revealed himself in Scripture.

22:24

And how many times have we heard Dr. Craig talking about probabilities, preponderance of evidences, all sorts of stuff like that.

22:36

This whole group, I mean, remember the...

22:41

In fact, I was just looking at it. Again, this whole Mike Licona thing where he's getting into the apparitions and stuff, where he's talking about,

22:52

I know this woman, and he's even now started to put the newspaper article where the girl fell at the concert and she's the one that appeared at 2 .30

23:06

in the morning. And then the only way he could get rid of the apparition was to say the

23:12

Lord's Prayer and stuff, and all this kind of stuff. That really seems to me to be a part of this whole put themselves in the position, preponderance of evidence.

23:26

Well, think about the probabilities here. I mean, it's sort of hard to explain these apparitions on the basis of an atheistic worldview, you know?

23:35

But on the basis of a Christian worldview, then it makes perfect sense.

23:41

It does? I didn't know that it did, but this kind of stuff is troubling, very, very troubling.

23:50

And I think it ultimately reduces or takes away from Jesus Christ's glory and salvation, because these are things that you need to do to try and bring people into the fold.

23:59

You know, what I'm trying to do is give them the truth, not so that they repent. 2

24:04

Timothy 2, 24 and 25 says that, in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.

24:11

So the people that I give truth to, it's not so that they repent. I give truth to them in the hope that the

24:16

Holy Spirit opens their eyes so that they have truth to be converted unto. So what

24:21

Si is saying there is, I want to be used as an instrument, but what

24:28

I'm doing is, you know, I like the illustration of prying up the fingers, of demonstrating the inconsistency of the person who's living in God's world, but is not living in accordance with God's world.

24:43

That's, you know, that's the kind of illustration. That's what I see us doing in apologetics, in dealing with the person who's denying the existence of God specifically, is, you know, it's been well said, that critique of the worldview, the internal critique of the other person's worldview, and with the atheists, just simply the exposure of their suppression of the knowledge that's already there.

25:11

They are going to give you plenty of evidence that they live in God's world. You just need to know how to utilize it and place it within the proper context.

25:20

At this point, this is exactly the same thing the evidentialist would do, is he would present evidence and arguments in the hope that the

25:29

Holy Spirit would use them to open the heart of the unbeliever and lead him to repent.

25:36

But notice the difference, however. This is where the difference is getting lost. Dr. Craig doesn't seem to grasp what the issue is.

25:47

I'm well aware of the fact that evidentialists can say, well, we need to pray that the

25:52

Holy Spirit will work, but what's the Holy Spirit doing? Is the

25:58

Holy Spirit bringing about regeneration?

26:05

Because I don't think Dr. Craig's theology is such that regeneration precedes faith.

26:12

So he's dealing with an individual who has the capacity in and of itself to repent and believe.

26:18

And even if he, you know, I don't know. When I heard him say, yes,

26:26

I believe what Romans 1 says, I believe that man knows that God exists.

26:32

Well, what's the nature of that knowledge? What's the nature of the suppression of that knowledge that is spoken of in Romans 1?

26:41

That's what we need to find out, because that's going to have a direct impact. That's what

26:48

Paul's saying in 1 Corinthians 1. Why is the message of the cross to them their perishing foolishness?

26:56

But to we who are being saved, it's the power of God. It's the nature of the person that determines how that's going to be interpreted and how it's going to be heard.

27:07

And so when he says, well, yes, that's what the evidentialist is doing. The Holy Spirit has to use these things.

27:14

But what does the Holy Spirit do with these things? What's the nature? How is this?

27:21

If this man has this free will, and in fact, as a Molinist, what does any of this have to do with Molinism?

27:31

I mean, because God's already chosen the exact universe where in this person is going to be in these certain circumstances.

27:39

The Holy Spirit can't change any of that. God's just dealing with the cards he's been dealt. That's his own words.

27:46

So why does a Molinist pray to the Holy Spirit? Pray that the Holy Spirit would do something in this person's heart and mind if the circumstances have already been micromanaged so that they've been put into position as to whether they will or will not believe.

28:05

Freely, allegedly, I think that empties the word freely of having much meaning, personally.

28:12

But still, that's what's happened. I think it's actually unloving and uncaring to withhold good evidence from an unbeliever and just command him to repent without giving him any good reason to.

28:30

Now, did you catch that? I think this is extremely important. This is where you really see where the disconnect is.

28:36

Because it's unloving to withhold from the unbeliever good arguments because they're already suppressing all the truth that they already possess.

28:51

I'm sorry, when he said on the last program, Oh yeah, I believe men know that God exists.

28:58

I don't remember if the specific terminology of suppression came up or not.

29:04

It needs to, one way or the other. But it was almost like,

29:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe that, but I don't let that get in the way of what I'm doing because we've got our philosophy and we've got our

29:18

Molandism and we've got our decades of doing this and we don't want anything to get in the way of that.

29:24

So we're not going to go there. So unloving to withhold from them.

29:33

So they already know God exists and they're suppressing that knowledge. And so it's unloving to withhold from them more arguments that they're going to suppress.

29:47

And then I keep trying to plug this in somehow to a Molanist worldview.

29:58

And I don't know how it works. In light of middle knowledge, didn't God already make a decision as to how many are going to be saved, how many are not going to be saved freely?

30:12

So if they're not going to be, if they're not going to believe freely, then why give them more arguments which would increase their guilt before God?

30:23

I don't know. I'm just trying to make sense out of it. It doesn't, it's not helping me out very much.

30:30

If those reasons exist, why would you withhold them? And I think that's the big difference in the apologetic. It's a different view of God.

30:37

It's a different view of Jesus. And that's what I found when I was using evidence is to try to convince people that God exists, that I was actually not honoring the

30:46

Lord that I adore. And thankfully with this methodology, I think that anybody can do it.

30:51

And it's just a matter of starting with the presupposition that He exists and that His Word is true. Here's the first response from Eric.

30:58

Dad thinks I wouldn't talk to anybody unless he thought that something he said would be effective. So I think right there he's assuming that they at least have the free will to listen to him when he's talking about presupposition.

31:09

Okay. Wouldn't talk to anybody unless he felt that something he said would be effective.

31:16

I believe that anytime the Word, the truth of God is proclaimed, then

31:22

God is glorified by that. When you mean effective, sounds like you're judging whether you're going to get the desired response type of a situation, which

31:33

I don't know. And I'm not going to engage in that kind of examination of somebody to go, hmm, well, you know.

31:43

I mean, obviously there are lots of times when I go, is this the right time? Not the right time type situation like that, but it's not based upon whether someone's going to accept what

31:51

I've got to say. So yeah, I think even he presupposes that the atheist is capable of understanding his reasoning, his logic, and whenever we do present...

32:00

Well, of course the person is capable of understanding the reasoning and logic.

32:07

The issue is not whether they have the intellectual capacity. This is a matter of the will.

32:14

And that's why this is all theological issue. It's all based on what you believe about anthropology and theology proper.

32:23

Does God have a sovereign will that he's accomplishing? Is man dead in sin?

32:31

Theology matters, and it determines your apologetics. And you're seeing it right here. Arguments or evidences. We're not putting God on trial, we're putting the atheist and his claims on trial.

32:39

Because whether or not they believe in God is completely irrelevant to whether or not God exists. So yes, I think that when you present things to God, I mean, things to the atheist about God, as the verse says, how can they believe if no one's told them?

32:53

And how can they come to God if they haven't even heard of God and no one preaches to them? So yeah, definitely. I think that the atheist could understand.

33:00

Notice there was a conflation. Eric made a mistake there. He confuses the gospel proclamation and giving people knowledge of the gospel with the knowledge of God himself.

33:14

He just switched between the two without recognizing that that's actually two different contexts and two different points.

33:21

Step outside of his worldview and say, okay, let me think about what you just said and set my beliefs aside and consider or weigh out the pros and cons of what you just said.

33:30

Because no one else can be the judge of the evidence for himself but him. I can't believe in God for him.

33:37

He has to do that himself. So you are inviting this person to be a judge of the evidence of God's existence.

33:44

He's basically saying, yeah, you have to do that. You have to put the individual who is suppressing the knowledge of God in the position of judging the evidence for the existence of God.

33:56

And that's the whole point. That's the whole problem. That's why you have to address the presuppositional aspects of their nature as a fallen human being.

34:08

And if you don't start there, but they don't accept that, it doesn't matter. That's what they are.

34:14

You have to have some knowledge of the spiritual nature of the person with whom you're speaking.

34:20

Of course, in the academy, that's not even allowed. That's a good response, but it does leave out what

34:26

I have wanted to emphasize, namely, that it is the Holy Spirit who is using the arguments and evidence you present as means to draw that person to himself.

34:38

Now, again, that sounds great. I'm excited to hear

34:45

William Lane Craig saying things that strikes me as not exactly what he's been saying for a long time.

34:54

You know, I don't want to discourage someone from moving toward the truth, but within a

35:06

Molinistic context, how does this work? It still seems like, well, it's almost a prevenient grace type thing where God's using this.

35:18

He can use these arguments type things, but drawing whom? Is the

35:25

Holy Spirit doing this equally with each person? Is the Holy Spirit actually able to bring a person to the point of regeneration or not?

35:41

I don't think Craig's theology, I think we're hearing him saying these things and probably reading into them a context that we want to hear.

35:52

Well, at least I do. I tend to want to hear someone say something correctly, even if they haven't in the past.

35:59

But I think we have to be careful at this point. There's just no reason to think that the

36:04

Holy Spirit confines his work to preaching, and doesn't use other means of working.

36:13

So while what Hernandez said is entirely correct, it's incomplete.

36:18

I think he needs to emphasize the way in which the Holy Spirit is the one who brings about conversion and repentance by using means.

36:29

So can the Holy Spirit bring a person to repentance? Unless something has changed recently, what he would say, what he's,

36:41

I think, saying is that the Holy Spirit can use means in the realm of prevenient grace.

36:52

But again, I'm trying to put this as best I can into the context of a

36:58

Molinist. And it's sort of tough to do. Because who's going to be saved and who isn't going to be saved is already known to God.

37:10

It just hasn't been determined solely by God. It's a synergistic decision between God and whoever determines the content of middle knowledge.

37:25

Whoever the car dealer is, as we've said before. That's where it goes.

37:31

This is the moderator of this debate, and he's a pastor in the Houston area who has this radio show, and he presents this question.

37:39

Let's just say the Kalam cosmological argument, which I think anybody getting into apologetics is going to run across pretty quickly.

37:46

It's pretty easy to understand, and it basically gets you to the sense that there is a cause behind the universe and all that we see, or anything that begins to exist.

37:57

But would you say that it's a kind of affront to God to even offer something like that as proof that God exists?

38:04

Now, before listening to the response there, an affront to God, now notice the terminology, to offer this as a proof that God exists.

38:15

Again, if what you're saying to the rebel sinner is, you have the right to examine this argument and to judge

38:28

God's existence on the basis of this, that's different than saying, here's an example of the consistency of God's world that you cannot explain, and that this puts you in the position of having to answer for why you live the way you do in God's world when you have to keep borrowing from him and then rejecting other elements of his perspective.

39:01

So you provide an internal critique of that person's worldview the big difference is going to come out in your language.

39:11

It's going to come out in your language as to whether you think this person, or you're trying to get this person to make a decision versus you want to see this person see themselves as God sees them.

39:23

Those are two different things. Very, very different things. And the one tends to push you toward utilizing not programs, but isms and frequently emotional appeals and things like that.

39:44

Well, we see what the result of all that is. To a non -believer? I would say it would depend on the context.

39:49

However, even William Lane Craig admits that it's not arguing for the God of Christianity. And my Bible tells me there's no other gods.

39:56

So if it's not arguing for the God of Christianity, it's arguing for something that I don't believe in. Yeah, that's,

40:01

I think, really silly. Doesn't he believe in the God of the Old Testament? And the

40:07

Kalam cosmological argument leads to a creator God of the universe. I think

40:13

William Lane Craig just basically said that Yahweh is just a generic monotheistic

40:22

God. I think that's what he's... Why would he make the distinction? I mean, that's the only way

40:33

I can interpret what he's saying there. Is that it's okay to argue for a non -Christian

40:40

God. Because we have the Old Testament. As if there's somehow a difference in God when the reality is it's just where you are in regards to what

40:55

God has or has not revealed about himself. And, of course, you've heard me say more than once I believe the doctrine of the

41:02

Trinity is specifically revealed between the Testaments and the Incarnation of the

41:07

Son, the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But, that sounds like, that sounds like what he's saying.

41:16

And I think this is the God of Christianity, but that would require additional argument based upon Jesus, for example.

41:25

That would require additional argument. How can we, how can anyone go back to an

41:36

Old Testament context? Why would you want to? I wanted to ask you then about this cumulative approach, which someone like William Lane Craig, I think, would embody, right?

41:49

I mean, like you say, let's say he's arguing with an atheist, there's like, he'll make five arguments for the case that God exists.

41:54

The Kalam, the argument for morality, the resurrection of Jesus, there's usually another two in there that he uses frequently.

42:03

I mean, do you think the cumulative approach then is, I mean, obviously you think you would say it's a valid approach.

42:10

Because you're arguing for kind of a big picture God, and you're going to whittle your way down to the

42:15

God of the Bible. Okay. That's an incrementalist approach. Rather than,

42:21

I don't know what you're embarrassed about, but it's an incrementalist approach that you go from atheist to agnostic to deist to theist to Trinitarian.

42:38

And, you know, if you don't get them all the way to the end, well, what happens then, I wonder? I guess that's the perspective.

42:45

And what would you say are the benefits of that? Because, I mean, Psy would argue, or a presuppositionalist would argue that you're already sort of talking about a

42:53

God other than the God of the Bible, and you're already ceding ground to the nonbeliever. Right. Well, first of all,

42:59

I'd say that some arguments like the Kalam is used to get at certain attributes of God. I mean, if you even look, let me just put it to you like this.

43:06

If you look biblically, the Bible didn't start off with, it didn't start off with a list of every attribute of God. It didn't say

43:11

God's a Trinity, God's this, God's that. In fact, there's progressive revelation in Scripture. So, I don't see why

43:16

I cannot start with an argument that doesn't conclusively lead to the God of the Bible if the

43:22

Bible itself doesn't start with giving you every single attribute that God has. Now, how is that a parallel?

43:35

Let's go back to what only Abraham had. If that's a more effective way of arguing, how could that be a more effective way of arguing?

43:45

We have the completed revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and we'd use something less than that?

43:56

What is it about the full revelation that's embarrassing to us? I don't understand that.

44:05

That doesn't make any sense to me. We now have the full light of the gospel and the intention of God from the beginning and fulfilled prophecy, and you want to go back to trying to argue somebody into believing in a generic

44:22

God, and then what? Well, then maybe we can, once you've got the foundation of God, then maybe we can introduce the idea of prophecy or something like that and just start moving our way slowly up.

44:35

I think that's the idea, as far as I can tell. In fact, you find in the

44:42

Bible where God says, Come, let us reason. Now, is God putting himself on trial? Of course not. It's a really abused text, really, really is, in its context.

44:53

God made us reasonable. There's no question about that. But to take that one text and say,

45:00

Oh, that means that man's mind has not been darkened by sin, that man's no longer suppressing the knowledge of the truth, that there's no twistedness, it's going way too far.

45:12

He's respecting us as beings that reflect his mind and has given us minds that reflect his image.

45:20

Except that we're fallen and suppressing that knowledge and twisting that knowledge right, left, and center.

45:26

And he expects us to use those. So, no, not at all. We can give arguments and then get there.

45:32

There's even books of... See how anthropology, it's just not there.

45:39

The biblical anthropology is missing. The Bible that don't explicitly teach on God. Now, because they don't explicitly teach on God, does that mean they're not canon?

45:47

No, of course not. So, we can give arguments that point to certain attributes of God, because in just the way epistemology works, which is a study of knowledge, we have epistemic chains.

45:56

I don't start with one belief unless I believe other things first. So, before I can even perhaps believe in a

46:03

Trinitarian God, first I have to believe that there's more to reality than matter and the naturalism approach.

46:10

So, yeah, there's steps. Just straight on incrementalism, straight on non -Romans 1 anthropology.

46:22

And maybe later on we can talk about how people come to beliefs, because you can't simply believe something by forcing yourself to believe it.

46:30

You can't just say, okay, I'm going to force myself to believe something. You have to expose yourself to evidence, to knowledge, to facts, which is exactly what faith is.

46:38

It's a confidence based on knowledge. Yes, I like Andy Steiger's definition of what faith is.

46:44

Faith is trusting in that which you have good reason to believe is true.

46:50

Faith is trusting in that which you have good reason to believe is true.

46:56

There's much more to it than that, I think, even though a lot of our anti -lordship friends would actually say that's too much.

47:06

The idea of a census and confidence and trust and a sense and all these things.

47:13

No, no, no, no. They want to try to keep faith as simplistic as possible for their own specific reasons.

47:21

So faith and knowledge are not opposed to each other, nor is faith opposed to argument and evidence.

47:28

He makes a good point about Genesis 1 doesn't spell out every attribute. No. That would do a lot of work for us.

47:35

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn't say anything about Jesus Christ, obviously.

47:42

It's not the Christian God in the full sense of that term. We later discover it's the

47:48

Christian God, but I would say the same thing about the Kalam cosmological argument. You later discover this is the

47:55

Christian God. I think what he's admitting there maybe doesn't recognize is that there's only a particular worldview context in which the

48:03

Kalam makes any sense. And the idea here that the problem that, and we've pointed this out many, many times before, the problem that exists here is that what we're going to have to do down the road sometime is we're going to have to apologize to the person for pretending that we actually believed things we didn't.

48:25

In other words, if you pretend you've got this neutral ground that you all can stand on, that you're not assuming that Jesus is the creator of all things, eventually down the road, once they find out what you really believe, even if you've been leading them along, you're going to have to apologize that, well, yeah, there really isn't any neutral ground because everything exists because Jesus made it.

48:44

So, yeah, I used arguments that didn't address that and that weren't honest about that.

48:51

Sorry about that. Hope we're still good, bud, type of a situation. Here's more of the exchange.

48:57

But you're assuming too much. I think that would be the common critique of precept that you're assuming, first of all, that God exists and you're assuming that the

49:04

Bible is the word of God, but aren't those the very things that the unbeliever doesn't assume?

49:11

What the unbeliever assumes is irrelevant. The question is, what do

49:17

I, as a Christian, what's the foundation that I stand on in the proclamation of the gospel? If you're a philosophical pragmatist with a very weak view of God's sovereignty and a highly exalted view of man's mind that doesn't take seriously what the

49:31

Bible teaches about man's fallenness, then, you know, we see what direction you're going to go there.

49:37

But the point is, what kind of apologetic methodology is apostolic?

49:45

You know, we're not living in Genesis 1 day. We're not living in Moses' day. For the follower of Jesus Christ, what is the most biblical, consistent,

49:57

God -glorifying apologetic methodology? It seems to me that the classical apologist, then, is going to say, okay,

50:03

I'm not going to assume anything at all. I'm going to assume there's a kind of a neutral playing field.

50:09

There you go. See right there. This has been our critique from the beginning. This is impossible, biblically.

50:17

There is no neutral playing field. If Jesus Christ created all things, every fact that is a fact is a fact because God made it a fact.

50:24

So, we can't go there. You can pretend, you can lie to the unbeliever and say, oh, yeah, yeah, we'll have this neutral playing field.

50:36

We can't do it. Eventually, you're going to have to apologize once you get around to getting them down the road far enough to telling them who

50:44

Jesus really is. Where we can both go because we both, for example, have reason.

50:49

But we don't. What we have is the image of God. According to Romans 1, their foolish heart was darkened.

50:58

We're going to argue for this God. So, why isn't it the case, or is it the case, that presuppositionalists assume,

51:07

I mean, you assume God exists, you assume the Bible is real. Why isn't that, though, assuming too much if you're actually trying to engage with a real non -believer?

51:15

Romans 11, 36 says, From him, through him, and to him are all things. All things include logic, they include science, they include morality.

51:23

All things are from God. Now, if I approach an unbeliever and I try and argue with him about evidences, then

51:29

I'm granting him things that belong to God. I'm granting him logic, I'm granting him morality, I'm granting him knowledge.

51:35

All these things cannot be justified without God. So, I'm saying, here, these belong to Jesus Christ, but I'm going to give them to you.

51:41

I won't do that. I will not use the tools of Jesus Christ to allow the unbeliever to argue against the

51:47

Lord that I adore. I say, if you're going to argue about evidences, I'm not going to grant you those things. I'll be happy to talk about evidences with you, but first, what

51:55

I want you to do, I want you to justify yourself apart from God, you see, because the Bible says everyone knows for certain that God exists.

52:02

And I believe the Bible when it says that. So, if I go up to an unbeliever and I say, you know, do you believe in God?

52:08

And they say no, and I believe them, then I'm, first of all, I'm denying what Scripture says, and I'm calling God a liar.

52:14

Okay, so we're back to the everyone believes in God and I'm just going to somehow beat it out of you. No. That particular comment definitely gave me the clear indication that last week we heard folks saying, oh yeah, we believe it's

52:37

Aaron Romans 1, but it doesn't function. You can confess some things in the

52:43

Bible, but if it doesn't end up having a material impact upon your theology, and in this case your apologetics, your philosophy, the whole nine yards, then do you really believe what it's saying?

52:57

Really becomes the question. And beat it out of them.

53:02

No, you're going to approach them as a person whose nature and thought processes have been laid bare by the

53:11

Word of God. And they are suppressing the truth, they're exchanging the truth of God for a lie, there is a twistedness that has become a part of the creator -creation distinction, they're trying to deny that, even though they're still made in the image of God, they're still worshipping creatures, now they're engaging in idolatry, and it can be an idolatry of the mind, they're worshipping themselves, they're worshipping their own capacities and abilities, so on and so forth, and you do not encourage them in their sinfulness in a pragmatic sense of trying to trick them into coming to believe what you believe.

53:51

That's really where we're coming from. Yeah, I wonder whether this

53:56

Tim Bruggenkate really believes in Tim Bruggenkate.

54:06

Yeah, so which Bond film was

54:12

Saiyan is the question. Presuppositional apologetics, or whether he just believes in preaching.

54:18

Everything he's said so far to me just sounds like an abandonment of the apologetics project.

54:25

Now see, this is, I, you know, I've told you about the lunch

54:30

I had with Norman Geisel years ago. As soon as you brought this subject up, it was just sort of like a veil comes down.

54:36

It's like, no, no, no. I'm too dedicated to my position to even, even give a little bit of consideration to the possibility of this, and it seems like you have the same thing here, just not even hearing the, the fundamental issues that are being brought up in regards to the nature of man and his createdness and the result of the fall and the twisting of his nature and, and the exchanging of truths of God for the lie and all, all that stuff just, instead it's like, well,

55:09

I just don't see how he can, he can engage in philosophical argumentation the way

55:14

I can, so it just, it just can't be right. That's a, that's a dangerous thing.

55:21

You preach to the unbeliever. You just declare this is a truth, and that's fine for preaching, but, but, for,

55:30

I'm sorry, that's fine for preaching. I don't know.

55:39

Do you get the feeling? I mean, I'm trying to be very careful here. I'm trying to be, you know, everyone is just,

55:45

I'm just this terrible, horrible, nasty person. Whenever I talk about William Lane Craig, I'm so mean to him.

55:52

I'm actually trying to be very careful in what I'm saying, but, do you get the feeling that Dr.

56:02

Craig views his own work as subservient to preaching, or superior to preaching?

56:12

I just, I ask the question, because, it's the message of the cross that saves, and, no apologetic argument has ever saved anybody.

56:25

The value of apologetic argumentation is opening the way for the message of the cross. That's, that's why, that's why it's the flip side.

56:35

It's, it's the, it's the preparation side. It's the getting over the barriers side. It's all a part of preaching the kerugma, the message it's preached, which the world finds, will always find to be what?

56:51

Foolish. Foolishness, scandalous. That's the message of 1

56:56

Corinthians 2, 1 and 2. And, I've, I've said for years, it just seems to me that, most of my evidentialist friends,

57:07

I just don't know that they take seriously what Paul said in those, those chapters, because, well, partly because the only way you can take it serious is if you believe in the doctrine of election, which is all over it.

57:17

That's not apologetics. If, the minute you construe this as some sort of argument, then you're arguing in a circle.

57:24

You're just begging the question. You're saying, God exists, therefore God exists, which is not glorifying to God.

57:32

That's just bad reasoning. If you really think that that's what Van Til and Oliphant and Frame and Bonson and everybody else was saying, it's just, that it's just, you know, this nice little tight circle,

57:47

God exists, therefore God exists. Then you haven't been, you haven't been listening. And that, that's not what

57:54

Psy has been saying either. He's simply been saying, biblically, we need to look at the, the person we're talking to and believe what the

58:02

Bible tells us about him. And if you believe what the Bible is telling you about him, then you will approach him in a particular way and you will not grant to him his own sinful rebellion.

58:15

And if you do, then you've got to explain why you're doing that. What's your, what's your intention? What's your, what's your reasoning there?

58:21

You know, we're only, we're only 12 minutes through a 24 minute.

58:27

We're, we're halfway through here and I had something else.

58:34

Where did, oh yeah, yeah,

58:42

I've got, I've got something else that I really need to get to. So I'm going to have to sort of mark where we are.

58:49

I think it's, I think it's a fairly, fairly decent spot to take a break. We've done a whole hour on a 20 minute program.

58:56

So we'll pick up. Well, I'll try to remember to pick up. Some people get angry with me because sometimes

59:03

I forget and other things come along and things like that.

59:09

But I will try to remember to pick up with that next time, next time around because Shifting Gears, I saw an article published four days ago on Catholic .com

59:24

that I just had to, had to address. Carlo Broussard, who again, it's interesting to me that there are, you know, we talked in Atlanta about doing debates and, you know, when

59:45

I challenged Carlo to come on the program, you know, he said, well,

59:50

I'm just, I'm just not allowed to. And I'm, I'm hoping that'll change sometime in the future.

59:56

You know, if you're going to be a Catholic Answers apologist, maybe going on non -Catholic programs and doing apologetics might be fitting.

01:00:06

I'd be happy to come on Catholic Answers Live to talk to Carlo about this.

01:00:13

It's not going to happen. But, but he put out a very provocatively titled article.

01:00:20

And remember, they're, they're having the, they're having a get together at the end of September in San Diego, the reuniting all

01:00:35

Christians, reunion of all Christians, the reunion of all Christians, 2017 National Conference. And of course, you know, just a matter of weeks before October 31st, 1517.

01:00:46

So it's, it's all about how bad Martin Luther was and things like that. But the article was titled

01:00:53

What Protestantism and the New Atheism Have in Common. Hmm.

01:01:01

Okay. Caught my, caught my attention. So I began, I began looking.

01:01:08

And what he says is yet there is, there's more of this comparison than meets the eye.

01:01:15

Protestants may not be similar to modern atheists in the content of their belief. That is,

01:01:21

God exists, Jesus is God, we will rise from the dead, et cetera. But their approach to arriving at knowledge of their subject matter is similar.

01:01:30

Now, I would like to connect this with what we were just talking about because I remember when

01:01:39

I first read, when I got my first, it seems to me that years ago,

01:01:48

PNR did not have really good graphic artists for their cover designs. And so my, my

01:01:55

Van Til books are just sort of really boring covers. And I was a little bit struck by the fact that as I would read

01:02:05

Van Til, so much of what he said was couched in a contrast with Roman Catholicism and philosophically.

01:02:14

He was really focused upon the errors of philosophical Roman Catholicism in regards to epistemology and especially natural, natural law, natural theology, issues, anything that would subjugate or denigrate the primacy and the supremacy of scriptural revelation.

01:02:39

He was really focused upon that kind of stuff. And there are extensive discussions in Van Til of the errors of Roman Catholic epistemology.

01:02:50

So there is sort of a connection, interestingly enough, at that point. So he says here, a tale of two onlys.

01:03:01

Consider how modern atheists restrict their rational inquiry about reality to science. For example, in a 2012 debate with former

01:03:07

Archbishop of Rome, Williams of Canterbury, popular atheist Richard Dawkins asserted that appealing to God to explain the universe in the place of science is a phony substitute for an explanation and peddles false explanations where real explanations could have been offered.

01:03:19

For Dawkins, science is the only thing that counts as a real explanation, and thus scientific knowledge is the only real form of knowledge.

01:03:26

This view has led many to deny God's existence based on the reason that there is no evidence for God. Take a recent call to Catholic Answers Live, for example.

01:03:33

He expressed his doubt in the supernatural due to a lack of evidence. By the way, I'll just stop for a moment and point out that I've tried about three times and failed each time.

01:03:49

I've caught some fascinating phone calls. If I'm out in the afternoon and get stuck in traffic or something like that, sometimes

01:03:56

I'll listen to Catholic Answers Live. And I've heard some of the most incredibly educational examples of the utter failure of natural theology and an apologetic based upon it in Roman Catholicism on EWTN.

01:04:13

It wasn't just Catholic Answers Live. There's other ones as well. Just face -plantingly bad.

01:04:19

And what's part of the reason? Bad anthropology? Bad theology? I continue on.

01:04:26

When Trenthorne replied with the question, Are you saying there is no evidence of the supernatural because science has not detected the supernatural?

01:04:32

the caller answered, Correct. For the caller, science is the only tool available for detecting the supernatural, and since he hasn't found

01:04:38

God with that tool, he chooses not to believe in God. Now there's all sorts of reasons to critique that because science, by definition, isn't even looking for that and cannot look for that.

01:04:50

So that would be the issue there. But now listen to this, I think, really, really, really, really bad attempt to draw a parallel.

01:04:59

In a similar way, Protestants have a restrictive approach to arriving at knowledge of God's revelation.

01:05:06

Notice the term, God's revelation. They believe that the Bible alone is the infallible guide for knowing revealed truth, a belief we know as Sola Scriptura, or Scripture alone.

01:05:17

Now we always have to point out that it is epidemic amongst our

01:05:23

Roman Catholic friends. They just don't want to define what Sola Scriptura actually means.

01:05:30

They believe the Bible alone is the infallible guide for knowing revealed truth.

01:05:36

Well, we believe in general revelation, and the

01:05:42

Bible doesn't define, I mean, it defines what general revelation is, but it's not, it's specific revelation, special revelation, rather than general revelation.

01:05:52

A belief we know as Sola Scriptura, or Scripture alone, just as science is the only tool Dawkins and company are willing to use to arrive at knowledge of the natural truth,

01:06:01

Protestants use only the Bible to determine what is revealed truth, as if we don't have a Holy Spirit. And what's the difference here that Carlo Broussard should understand?

01:06:11

I mean, this is a horrible argument, it's a horrifically bad parallel, and it creates unbelievable category errors.

01:06:20

Why? Simple. When Dawkins talks about science, he has to admit that what we have are theories.

01:06:31

There is nothing in the nature of scientific knowledge that makes it special.

01:06:39

The foundation of Sola Scriptura is that Scripture is the only thing in the possession of the

01:06:46

Church that is theanoustos, it is God -breathed, it is God -speaking. So, on an epistemological level, if it's

01:06:53

God -speaking, there can be no greater authority than it. It is the only thing that would be self -authoritative, because it partakes of God's self -authoritative nature.

01:07:04

Ultimate authorities have to have that characteristic. Scientific knowledge can never have that.

01:07:13

So, this is just really bad epistemological thinking on Carlo Broussard's part, just face -plantingly bad, to try to draw this parallel.

01:07:21

I mean, it's almost like he had been assigned, can you put an article together for such and such a deadline, and, okay,

01:07:31

I'll make a parallel between the New Atheists and Protestantism, even if it actually doesn't have any meaningful element to it.

01:07:40

Protestants use only the Bible to determine what is revealed truth. Now, is this an implicit admission on Carlo Broussard's part that there is revelation outside of Scripture?

01:07:55

I mean special revelation. I would argue that fundamentally

01:08:00

Roman Catholicism really does say that. They'll say no, but I think in light of the last few dogmas defined by the

01:08:11

Church, to try to say that that actually is something contained in Scripture, impossible.

01:08:19

Just as science is the only tool Dawkins and company are willing to use to arrive at knowledge of the natural truth, Protestants use only the Bible to determine what is revealed truth, and as many modern atheists reject anything that science cannot detect, so too do

01:08:29

Protestants reject any teaching, well, what would be a parallel here? Any teaching of something that's supposed to be revelation that is not found explicitly in the

01:08:38

Bible, where Dawkins and others like him are science -only atheists, Protestants are Bible -only Christians. Well, yes, probably so, but you seem to have missed the fundamental assertion that you're making there, and that is there's something outside of Scripture that is theogonous to us.

01:08:56

Remember when we did the response to Carlo, I think it was last year, there were a couple times we pointed out that he sort of dances right along that edge, and I think that comes out here.

01:09:13

A second note of similarity is that both scientism and solo scriptura are self -refuting ideas.

01:09:20

Now, if I recall correctly, I did inform

01:09:26

Carlo that we were doing the series that we did in response to him, and so it's not that he would not have opportunity to receive appropriate instruction in what solo scriptura actually is so as to argue against it more effectively, at least

01:09:48

I assume that accuracy of argumentation is a more effective form of argumentation, maybe

01:09:53

I'm being foolish these days, but we certainly dealt with this last year, but let's hear it again.

01:10:02

The statement, scientific knowledge is the only legitimate form of knowledge, is not scientific knowledge. That's to say, we cannot determine the truth value of that statement using the scientific method.

01:10:11

I agree. With what sense can we observe the truth of this statement, or what scientific tests can we perform to prove this statement?

01:10:19

The truth value of scientism is not empirically verifiable nor quantifiably measurable, and consequently is not subject to scientific inquiry.

01:10:26

It's an assumption. It's a presupposition. Yeah, I'm a presuppositionalist.

01:10:32

I recognize presuppositions. I try to look for them immediately. And yeah, he's going to try to go there, folks.

01:10:40

But this is a fatal problem for the believer in scientism, namely, scientism is not real knowledge. If science can't verify the truth of scientism, then how can scientism itself be a legitimate form of knowledge?

01:10:49

So here's the point. The scientific method does not claim to have within itself the capacity to provide the character of knowledge that is being assumed by the person believing in it.

01:11:05

Okay? Keep that in mind. Similar to scientism, the

01:11:13

Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is self -refuting. Well, let's see if we can draw a parallel here.

01:11:18

As mentioned, sola scriptura teaches the Bible is the only infallible source for knowing God's revelation.

01:11:26

Therefore, now, of course, immediately stop and say, remember, the reason being, it is theanoustos, and there is nothing else that is theanoustos.

01:11:40

The Church isn't theanoustos. Nothing else is theanoustos. Therefore, if a teaching is not found explicitly or perhaps even implicitly in the

01:11:49

Bible, then it's not a part of God's revealed truth and thus not binding for salvation. That's, I can quote lots of early

01:11:57

Church fathers saying pretty much exactly that. You know, I just,

01:12:03

I just keep reminding, you know, canon and rule of every dogma.

01:12:09

That was Gregory of Nazianzus. That was regards to scripture. Every dogma. And then you've got

01:12:15

Augustine speaking to Maxim and the Arian. I can't quote Nicaea to you. You can't quote

01:12:20

Ariminum to me. Let's go to what's common to both of us. That is the inspired scriptures. All sorts of stuff like that comes to mind.

01:12:29

But notice the doctrine presupposes knowledge of what scriptura is.

01:12:37

It presupposes knowledge of exactly which books are inspired by God and which are not, and thus which books are recounted scripture and which are not.

01:12:45

So here you have the standard Roman Catholic approach. It will not be to draw any type of meaningful parallel between the scientism argument that was just made.

01:12:59

Because when you have that which is theanoustos, then it contains within itself the ability to communicate adequately

01:13:11

God's intention and purposes, which science does not. There is a fundamental difference between the two.

01:13:17

So you can't draw the parallel there. So what does the modern Roman Catholic do?

01:13:23

They ignore history. They ignore the fact that it was never

01:13:31

Rome that determined the canon of scripture or discerned it or any other passive terms you want to use.

01:13:44

No, not even the quote -unquote Synod of Rome in quote -unquote 382, for which we have absolutely zero documents.

01:13:53

There's very good evidence that what's coming from there is actually coming from the 5th and 6th centuries. It's post -Athanasius.

01:14:00

It's post -4th century Orthodoxy, post -Nicene Orthodoxy, et cetera, et cetera. And in fact,

01:14:07

Rome doesn't even give us a quote -unquote infallible canon until April of 1546.

01:14:14

That's way too far down the road to be overly relevant. And so this idea, what you do then, the reason that Catholic answers especially,

01:14:28

Patrick Madrid, the very popular Roman Catholic apologist, they focus on the issue of canon because we don't.

01:14:38

Because we don't. And 99 .99 % of the people to whom they're going to be speaking, whether, well certainly among Roman Catholics, but 99 % of the quote -unquote

01:14:52

Protestants they're going to be speaking to, never given a second thought. Canon has something to do with the index in front of my

01:15:03

Bible, might have been a council someplace, was it Hippopotamus, was it

01:15:10

Elephant, I forget what it was, you know, something along those lines. And that's about as far as it goes.

01:15:17

The idea of people having thought through the nature of canon, the distinction between the fact that canon is an artifact of Revelation, as soon as God inspires one book, a canon comes into existence, whether anybody but God knows about it is irrelevant, the canon exists, that God has infallible knowledge of the canon, that it must exist because God has engaged in the action of supernaturally inspiring scripture.

01:15:47

But then you forget all about the historical stuff too. We are having some go -arounds in Twitter with a former

01:16:00

Christian, now Muslim, apologist who is promoting the idea of the canonicity, or at least the idea that the

01:16:08

Universal Church had always, even made the statement, the Universal Church had always accepted the apocryphal book's description.

01:16:15

Well, that's just simply not true. What is this Universal Church business anyways? When you can sit there and point to, and I point out, the best rule of thumb is the more an early church father, or actually any writer prior to the

01:16:35

Reformation, the more they knew about the Old Testament and the Hebrew language, the less likely it is that they accepted the apocryphal books as canon scripture because the

01:16:43

Jews never did and Romans 3 says that the oracles of God were committed to the Jews.

01:16:48

If they never accepted them as canon scripture, you've got a mighty tall mountain to climb to come up with the idea that somehow this is canon scripture.

01:16:56

But Origen, Rufinus, Miletus, Sardis, and Jerome, and Gregory the

01:17:01

Great, and all the way up to the time of the Reformation, Cardinal Cayetan, and others writing commentaries at that time, there had been a long and deep and highly scholarly tradition all the way through church history that had recognized a serious problem with these books.

01:17:20

And the lesser, the less scholarly, influenced heavily by the

01:17:27

Greek Septuagint perspective, Augustus himself thought erroneously that the apocryphal books were part of the

01:17:38

Hebrew canon. If he had known otherwise, he wouldn't have supported them. So there is ignorance involved there.

01:17:45

But it's been fascinating that this canon issue, even raised by a

01:17:51

Muslim who has no dog in this race, I just simply point out to my

01:17:58

Muslim friends, you know more about the canon of the Bible than the author of the Quran ever did.

01:18:05

Zero evidence, no evidence whatsoever that the author of the Quran had any earthy idea of the content of the

01:18:11

New Testament. None. Certainly didn't know anything about the apocrypha or anything along those lines, even though it comes long, long after all those things.

01:18:22

How come you know more about these things than the author of the Quran? Just something to think about.

01:18:28

The only reason that a Muslim would bring this up is to sow the idea that we don't know what the

01:18:35

Bible is. Well, we know exactly what the Quran is. Well, you know, except for Ubay ibn Kab and a few things like that.

01:18:41

But that doesn't really matter. And, you know, we all have our ways of getting around certain things. But that's what they do.

01:18:47

They bring up the issue of the canon as if they have a simple answer that you believe what the church says.

01:18:56

You need to have that infallible voice. Well, you didn't have that until 1546. And so they play on the ignorance of individuals.

01:19:09

So he says, the problem with the Protestants is that his knowledge of exactly which books belong in the canon cannot be derived from the

01:19:14

Bible. In other words, nowhere do we find the Old Testament or New Testament list of historical books among the Jews or Christians that are believed to be inspired by God.

01:19:21

There is no inspired table of contents. And so, the idea... Now, notice where the problem is here.

01:19:29

For this argument to work, you have to transfer the nature of the canon from being an artifact of revelation to an object of revelation.

01:19:37

That's why I've emphasized for years, a lot of people never understood why do you so strongly emphasize the fact that the canon comes into existence as an artifact of the act of revelation because I recognize there is no inspired table of contents.

01:19:55

And so, if you want an inspired table of contents, that becomes the 28th book of the

01:20:00

New Testament. And it has to be an object of revelation. And since everybody recognizes that must have come along at a much later point, then there had to be continuing revelation after the apostles.

01:20:10

And now you've opened up a huge can of worms. That Rome says it's not opening up, but I would say

01:20:17

Rome does. They may, on the one hand, say no, no, no, no, but then, through the back door, they do open that up.

01:20:24

So, the error here is the conversion of the contents of the canon, the canon listing itself, from being an artifact of revelation to being an object of revelation itself.

01:20:38

And you can hear that comes up in the discussion with Peter D. Williams with the posting of the debate from London just last week,

01:20:50

I think. I think they got theirs up just before ours, but ours is nicer.

01:20:56

Is that the idea? I think they got theirs up a day or three or four days before we did or something like that, but I think you put more work into it.

01:21:06

Okay, so, for all those folks who say that you're just constantly dissing me, there was a compliment in there somewhere.

01:21:14

There you go. There you go. It was tough, though. I'm going to have to get a drink after that.

01:21:23

Oh, that was tough. That was hard. Okay. Then he goes on into a discussion of, you know, extra biblical positive criteria for determining whether a specific writing is inspired, and, you know,

01:21:37

I can't completely blame him for that because so much of what is written on this subject does approach the canon from the wrong way.

01:21:46

It's like, well, you know, was it written by an apostle and, you know, all this stuff that they go through rather than recognizing that the canon is a theological concept and must be approached theologically before any type of historical things going on there.

01:22:06

But I just found I just found the attempted parallel to atheism and our acceptance of the supernatural nature of Scripture without subjecting

01:22:21

Scripture downright offensive and really bad. Just a really, really, really bad attempt.

01:22:30

But it does demonstrate that one of the fundamental apologetic arguments of Catholic Answers continues to be to seek to undercut confidence in the

01:22:39

Scriptures as the Word of God. There's just absolutely no other way to look at it than that.

01:22:46

That's simply how it works. That's simply how it works. So I wanted to get to that and I wouldn't have had time to do that if we had just kept blasting away at the

01:22:56

William Lane Craig thing. So we'll try to get back to William Lane Craig on the next edition of the program and other things that I've got queued up here.

01:23:06

I wanted to get into I wanted to get back to referring responding to Abba Zachariah didn't get to that didn't get to any phone calls didn't even open up the phone lines but that's

01:23:19

I didn't have the time to put the

01:23:24

Craig material into Audio Notetaker and that's that's why we had the that's why we had the issue.

01:23:34

I'm not really sure what I necessarily could have been able to cut out but that's why that's why that happened. so there you go.

01:23:41

Neat Stuff Developing could see as many as three debates on this next trip which starts

01:23:53

August 13th. That's coming up very very quickly. Yes we can still use your help.

01:23:59

If you go to the support us page at aomin .org you go to the travel section if you want to help to make these debates take place.

01:24:09

Right now we're looking at one in England two in South Africa one in Durban and one either in Randberg or Potsdam.

01:24:19

We'll see we'll see where and looks like right now on very very different topics we'll see.

01:24:30

But again if you want to help make these things happen those they don't let you on those big jet airplanes without those ticket things and stuff like that.

01:24:40

So if you want to help with that go to our webpage and help us out with that be much appreciated.

01:24:48

We will be back again probably on Thursday I would assume somewhere along in there and until then thanks for watching.