The Presup of John Frame

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today we're gonna be covering

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John Frame. John Frame's book entitled Apologetics, A Justification of Christian Belief.

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So again, you guys know that we cover a lot of topics relating to presuppositional apologetics.

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And I don't know if there, how many other resources there are who cover the wide ranging issues that we cover here.

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And so I'm sure there's some people that do it, but my goal is to try to provide a resource for people who really just wanna dive deep into presuppositional apologetics.

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And so I'm super excited to have my guest on who I'm gonna introduce in just a moment, but I wanna begin this episode by showing a little love to John Frame.

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I know those who are Bonson fans and Van Til fans, John Frame is a somewhat of a controversial guy within presuppositional circles, but he's definitely been someone who has been greatly beneficial to me in my personal studies.

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And so there's a lot of great insights that we can glean from John Frame, even if there may be some areas of disagreement.

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So hopefully that will serve useful for folks who are listening in.

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And of course, we don't just cover presuppositional apologetics here, we cover a wide range of topics relating to reform theology, issues of Protestantism, Sola Scriptura.

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We've covered a wide range of issues here, but been on the precept tip for quite some time and I don't see anything moving in a different direction.

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There's just so much to cover. And it is my goal and my prayer that as complicated as some of these issues can be, that you as the listener learn to contextualize what you're learning.

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So we can talk about all the highfalutin theological terminology, but if you are not able to contextualize that into your day -to -day discussions with unbelievers, then of course we need to work on that area.

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So, but there you go. Well, before I kind of, I'm gonna share a little something in just a bit, but before I do that, let me introduce my guest.

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I have with me Patrick Studebaker. He has his own YouTube channel where he covers issues of apologetics and theology.

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I highly recommend you guys check his channel out. It is called, and you can correct me if I'm wrong,

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Cave to the Cross? Cave to the Cross? Apologetics, just at the end, apologetics, yep. Okay, so it's

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Cave to the Cross Apologetics? Correct. All right, excellent. So if you're watching this and you wanna kind of click away real quick and do him a solid and sub to his channel,

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I highly recommend you do that. Covers a wide range of topics, but I've seen some great book reviews on his channel as well, and that's a great way to read without reading, if that makes sense.

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You can learn what a book is about without having to go through the whole thing. Now, of course, if you have time, you wanna read it, but it's great to have a resource where folks are summarizing and doing all that hard work for us in our busy life.

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So Patrick, why don't you share a little bit about yourself and then we'll jump right into the meat of our discussion.

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Sure, well, and let me just plug you for a minute because I was there in the beginning when you were debating a negation of P, and I remember seeing your debate where you were very kind and respectful, but also presuppositional and very high view of God and his word.

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And so I was, I don't know if I wrote a blog post or pointed people to it on our

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Facebook page, but that was drew me in. And then once you did presupp you, I was one of the first.

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So again, it says to be like Jesus. And if I can be at least be like Aslan and be there in the beginning, then

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I'm there. And so there's nothing like being questioned by Matt Slick on your last day, thinking that you have everything done for presupposition and you just get bowled over.

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So if you haven't, sign up for whatever, all the presupp use and help out

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Eli. Well, I appreciate that. And if folks are interested, I'm actually making a part two of the course. I will be recording with a poly, one second.

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Let me adjust the chair, my chair. You'll notice that throughout our discussion, I'll get shorter. My chair is gonna start sinking.

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So I apologize. Yeah, I was invited back out to Apologia Studios in Arizona to do another part, kind of a part two, but I'm also creating a longer version for my website and folks who wanna enroll in the part two of that course.

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It'll be more expansive when I'm done with that. It's gonna be a presupp applied to atheism.

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Let me see if I can remember. Presupp applied to Roman Catholicism. This is one part of the course. And so I'm excited about working on it.

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It's presupp applied to presuppositional Eastern Orthodoxy. So that's gonna be super interesting.

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And then presupp applied to the cults and then how to navigate discussion and what that looks like in the practical day -to -day.

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So that's what I have on the docket. So, all right. Well -

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The only problem with Jesus being Lord of all is that you have to presupp everything because he is

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Lord of all, so. That's right. So you'll never run out of topics. That's right. They're endless, endless.

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Now, before we get into talking about John Frame, in honor of John Frame, because I am a fan,

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I am a fan. I wanted to read a bit of my last interactions with John Frame on Facebook.

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So people have asked me, Eli, why don't you get John Frame on your show? Well, you would imagine with all the different guests that I've had,

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I've tried, but unfortunately, well, fortunately for him, unfortunately for me, he's retired.

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And so, you know, he's kind of a retired war horse, so to speak.

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And so I'm sure he wouldn't mind. After I invited him on here, a few things that he said, and I'll even read you some of the questions

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I asked with some of his responses. They're not terribly long, so folks might be interested here. So after inviting him on,

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Eli said, Eli, I'm sorry, John Frame said, Eli, I'm honored by your invitation, but really

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I cannot accept. I retired in 2017 and am now 81. That was a couple of years ago.

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So he's older now, right? So he said, I've distanced myself pretty far from academic theology in general and the presuppositional debate in particular.

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I used to engage in those debates with great gusto, but no longer. I think we'd be better off not arguing about methodology and instead, and here

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I think I would agree with him, instead take it to the streets as Greg Bonson asked us to do. My final word, this isn't his final word,

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I got to squeeze a couple more words out of him, but he says, my final word on all of this, every presuppositionalist is at heart an evidentialist and every evidentialist is at heart a presuppositionalist.

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Now you could interpret that however you'd like. May God richly bless your labors in the kingdom in Jesus, John Frame.

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And so later on, I asked him a couple of questions. Here's a couple of questions

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I asked him. Let's see here. I think I asked him, let me see.

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I asked him, okay, there was one question I asked him a while back about the issue of equal ultimacy and predestination with respect to Van Til.

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And so here's what I asked him. I said, question number one, did Van Til hold to the notion of equal ultimacy with regards to predestination?

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If so, what was the gist and as to why? Is it simply because he thought it was biblical or did he have a more specific form of argumentation?

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And then I asked him a practical question. How do you, or how did you study and take notes?

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Do you outline what you read, et cetera? Any insights would be helpful. Thank you for your time. And so he responded, hi,

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Eli. Van Til held to equal ultimacy because it is biblical, but of course it is also logical.

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If God chooses a certain group, then he does not choose other groups. With respect to my question about studying, he says,

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I took notes during my professor's lectures. Afterward, I would rework them and put them into an outline if I needed to take a test on them.

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Then I'd walk through the neighborhood with my notes, memorizing as I went. In reading, the type of study varies with the content.

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When I'm reading a book to write a review, I read it several times, taking notes each time.

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The first time, my goal is to learn what the author is saying. The second time, my goal is to take notes on anything particularly helpful or unhelpful, what

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I like and what I don't like. Those notes would form the core of my review. And when I'm reading, not to review, but just for my edification,

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I would skim some parts and read others more carefully according to my interests. And so I said, thank you.

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And so there's another question I asked him. I said, morning,

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I hope all is well. As I was reflecting on the objection against presuppositional methodology, that is, that it is circular, an objection we are all too familiar with,

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I came across the following, and this is an objection someone wrote. The problem with presuppositionalism is that it is circular.

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It says that in order to prove the Bible, you have to assume the Bible. How does this work when there were thousands of years in which people never had the

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Bible? And he responds. And again, he responds with a caveat,

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Patrick, because you can tell he doesn't want to go too deep because he's retired, okay?

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But here's what he says. He says, hello, Eli. I used to spend a lot of time on these issues and I can't do so any longer.

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Please don't get me into a long back and forth. But briefly, one, not only the

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Christian worldview, but any worldview depends on certain ultimate presuppositions. Two, these cannot be proved the way we prove other things because all proof presupposes those presuppositions.

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Three, so if you want to call it circular, go ahead, but every worldview is circular in that sense.

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Four, the circularity includes every attempt to prove the presupposition. Five, but once you've proved the presupposition, you can engage in non -circular arguments to prove other things within the system.

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For example, the law of gravity or something along those lines. Six, the Christian presupposition includes the

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Bible, but also natural revelation, every bit of knowledge that has come to us from God. Seven, since all our knowledge comes from God, our presupposition includes all knowledge, but of course for the

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Christian scripture directs, this Christian scripture directs our reading of all revelation outside of itself.

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Nine, the fact that all knowledge is included in our presupposition is to say that all knowledge is revealed by God.

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10, the other way to see this is that all knowledge has a normative perspective. All knowledge plays a role in governing our lives.

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So there is not a sharp distinction between our presupposition and knowledge in addition to the presupposition.

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The two are perspectives on one another, the normative and the situational. The normative is knowledge governing life.

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The situational is life governed by knowledge. The existential perspective describes this knowledge as a subjective event.

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Here's my favorite part. I guess I spent more time on this answer than I originally intended, but I would ask you not again to ask for more.

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And that was the last thing I asked him. So there you go. That was the final words of John Frame, at least with respect to my interactions with him.

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And he was gracious enough, even though he was long past his time to do those sorts of things, he still gave a little time for my question.

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So I appreciate that. Well, I will say too, one of your first students in PresupU did get him on his show and he talked about his relationship with himself and the church.

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And I found that interview quite enlightening as to the person of John Frame. So that was really interesting to see.

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Yeah, I remember the first time I met John Frame, I visited him at RTS in Florida.

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And I walk into his office and I see his feet under his desk. They're just dangling there.

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And it's like a wheelie chair. And I couldn't see his face because there was a pile of books, like five feet tall.

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And he's like, oh, Elias, it's a pleasure to meet you. And I felt so bad because I kept asking questions about Bonson.

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So I was like, what was it like to have Bonson as a student? Blah, blah, blah, you know. But he was gracious with his time and it was cool to be able to talk to him for a little bit.

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But all right, well, got that out of the way. I hope people enjoyed that. Okay, we already have some people in the chat here.

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So welcome. And a couple of people expressing, yes, they've subscribed to your channel.

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That's awesome. Good, good, good. All right, well, let's jump right in. So Patrick, you just recently finished

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John Frame's book, Apologetics, A Justification of Christian Belief. And I don't know if you've read the entirety of this bad boy, but I highly recommend this one.

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Yep, so Cornelius Van Til and Analysis of His Thought. This is the book that I highly recommend people who want a very comprehensive view of Van Til.

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So these are the two things. If you wanna go deep, here are two really good books. There's Greg Bonson's Van Til's Apologetic Readings and Analysis, which is my favorite book.

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And then John Frame's Cornelius Van Til and Analysis of His Thought, which is an excellent book, probably up there as well.

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I have some points of disagreement, obviously, but it's a super helpful book. Nonetheless, he's got a great section on Van Til's character, just the kind of person he was.

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So that's actually fun to hear how John Frame perceived his professor.

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So, all right, so what were your thoughts on completing the book? What was your overall kind of impressions when completing the book?

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And then we'll jump into some of the specifics of the book. Yeah, so my mentor and I, we do the show together where we just read a chapter.

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And then we used to do this just offline and talk with each other about apologetic books so we can build each other up as iron sharpens iron.

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I took Howard Hendricks to task and read everything that he ever said. And he said, find a mentor and then be a mentor.

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And so I chased down my person who helped me the most with philosophy.

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And we said, we need to read together. And so we collaborate now just filming it.

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So we invite people on to kind of experience the book club with us over coffee or on your drive to work so that we do kind of the heavy lifting for it.

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So for Frame, we found this as, so initially we did

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Against All Opposition by Bonson. And we said that was kind of a high school level introduction.

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And so we wanted to kind of take it up a little bit and look at maybe like a college level. And so we found

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Apologetics here, Justification of Christian Belief by Frame. And that sits right kind of in the middle of your lower level college basis of where you're gonna talk about.

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So you kind of need a little bit of the philosophy in there to kind of make sense of it, to slow down and read it.

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But overall, Frame has a high view of scripture. He pushes you to have a high view of scripture in your apologetics, in your life.

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And he attempts to encourage all people to have good dialogue where you are presenting the best possible case for the gospel in your apologetics.

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So he does not divorce apologetics and gospel presentation. They are, you're doing evangelism when you're apologizing and you're apologizing when you're doing evangelism.

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So I love that aspect to him. That's great because I think this is,

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John Frame does not represent what we often see in online manifestations of presuppositionalism.

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I've seen online presuppositionalist, I mean, literally like spout out profanity in their discussions.

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John Frame is kind of the soft teddy bear of presuppositionalism, razor sharp intellect, but he's very congenial, very like conversational.

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And I think you would agree with, I hopefully you'd agree with this, whether you agree with Frame or not, he writes very clearly.

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And whether you agree with his conclusions, he covers aspects of Vantill that you're wondering about after you read

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Vantill. You're like, well, what about this? And he covers those areas, whether folks agree with the direction he goes or not.

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He definitely knows the main key points that are interesting to people who study this area.

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What do you think of that? Absolutely, absolutely. He drives you to be salt and light and serpent and dove.

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You know, he's not afraid to say it's wrong to do apologetics in a certain way, but he's also asking people to have grace in their speech.

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And that comes out immensely when he's talking about it. Suavitar and Modo, right?

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Something like that? Right. Yeah. Now, with respect to how he comes, his presuppositional approach is very much linked with his tri -perspectivalism.

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You'll find threes throughout this book. Yes. So he's the Trinitarian apologist in the sense that everything comes in threes.

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Now, what I found useful, Patrick, and maybe you can kind of unpack this if you can, when he defines apologetics, there's a whole section in the book on definitions, and he actually gives kind of a trifold definition.

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He defines apologetics as proof, which involves presenting a rational basis for faith or proving

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Christianity to be true. He defines apologetics as defense, which involves answering objections of unbelief.

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And then he defines apologetics as offense, attacking the foolishness of unbelieving thought. Can you unpack those three different levels, those three different definitions that he provides?

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How does that reflect his very much tri -perspectival approach to apologetics as a whole?

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Right. Right, so yeah, he has what he calls a biblical perspective on apologetics.

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Again, he's always going to tie apologetics with scripture. If you don't, he warns about teaching falsity, which is not what we wanna do because we're always evangelizing during our apologetics, even evangelizing to the believers, which

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I'll get to in a little bit, or we become false teachers ourselves, which is definitely something we don't wanna do.

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And it's something that I've seen, I won't name any names, but it seems like the easy thing to do these days is to downplay or to deny certain aspects of once held standard biblical theology just to kind of appeal to a conversation that gets you in the door to the scholars at the table and provides you a seat.

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And so, Frame's not worried about having the seat at the table. He's worried about, am I presenting the gospel inherently here?

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And so, of course, I always call 1 Peter 3, 15, and 16, the tattoo that all apologists would probably get on their arm, even if they didn't believe in tattoos.

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I mean, yeah, that's the one. I mean, I'll probably be a tattoo and from 1 Peter 3, 15, so yeah.

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That's right. So yeah, so it needs to be carried out with this honoring

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Christ as holy. And so, yes, you're right. He talks about apologetics as proof. He says that you're able to offer evidence in support of your belief.

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And what does he do? He ties this with the Bible. He says Jesus offers proof of his works in John 14.

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He does so with Thomas. The misalignment of what we let people talk about the word faith in with doubting

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Thomas is rooted here, and it would behoove the apologists and all

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Christians to know proper definitions of faith. And this isn't a blind leap in the dark.

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In fact, that's what we're going to accuse non -believers of doing when it comes to certain aspects of their worldview.

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But this is something rooted in the testimony of the apostles and then ultimately in Jesus himself.

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And then of course, we have the resurrection testimony in 1 Corinthians 15. Of course, yeah. Now I think it's very important.

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A lot of people think that presuppositionalism and like the transcendental argument kind of boils down to kind of a form of fideism, kind of like a bear authority claim that Christianity is true.

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But it's interesting to note that the title of the book, which wasn't the original title, I think the original was apologetics to the glory of God.

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Notice that the title of the book, which I think captures really the essence of what precept is about and what apologetics is about is that it is apologetics, a justification of Christian belief.

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So whether you think frame is successful in that, whether you think Bonson is successful in that, I think all presuppositionalists would agree that apologetics is about justifying the

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Christian worldview. And this is why I think Van Til's definition of apologetics is so important. People ask me, what's a very simple way that we could define precept?

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And the first definition that comes in my mind is the first page of Christian apologetics by Van Til.

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He says that apologetics is the vindication of the

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Christian philosophy of life over against the non -Christian philosophy of life. So our apologetic involves vindication.

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It involves a worldview, a philosophy of life. Antithesis, we're against another philosophy of life.

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And so he kind of summarizes the whole precept method there in one sentence, which I think is awesome.

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So, okay, so if you could summarize in kind of a broad stroke, what is this book about?

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Why is this book unique? And then we'll kind of dive into some of the specifics. I think there's a really important section that I'd love to get your thoughts on with respect to frame's understanding of the importance of sola scriptura in apologetics.

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There's a section there, yeah. So he does this trifecta of evidence, defense, and offense.

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And then that's what he offers. So that's kind of the breakdown of his book.

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And so when it comes to defense, you're answering objections to unbelief, things like the theodicy is there, but also we're answering objections of unbelief or objections that people have.

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And so frame doesn't shy away from saying that our apologetic can also be towards the

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Christian. And so there are times where frame even says, there are certain cases where even more so that our apologetic is to build up the believer, to build up the church.

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And of course that was his goal as well. And then going on the offense, that's what you're talking about is the antithesis.

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So let's take a look at all the other worldviews out in the world and let's answer them.

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And so we're able to parry and we're able to lunge with our rapier.

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Right, that's awesome. And you said also that apologetics involves engaging with other

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Christians as well. I mean, there is an external aspect of apologetics where we're engaging the unbeliever.

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And then there are elements of apologetics that we need to do within the church. The first thing that came to mind when you said that was

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Jude chapter one, verse three through four. I don't read it for folks, because I think it's cool.

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Verse one and three, chapter one and three, we often quote that for like putting forth this idea that apologetics is necessary contending for the faith.

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But look what Jude says here. He says, beloved, although I was very eager to you to write about our common salvation,

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I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

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And then he goes on in verse four. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our

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God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. And he says, I found it necessary because people have crept in.

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So even within the context of believers, we have falsehoods that come in and require, indeed it is necessary that we contend for the faith within that context, as well as that external context of engaging directly with like the unbelieving world.

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That's not necessarily within the quote unquote four walls of the church. So I think that's an important point.

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So perhaps you can unpack for us, what is the difference in your opinion of John Frame's presentation of a presuppositional approach and Van Til's?

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I know a lot of people are very critical of Van Til's kind of broad brushing over the gist of what he's arguing for.

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So if we know, for example, philosophically, Van Til comes from a continental philosophical perspective in which there's great emphasis upon worldview and systems.

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And those who are more analytic minded, chide him for not being so specific.

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Do you see a contrast between kind of the broad stroke ambiguous kind of big picture and maybe

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John Frame's approach to, do you see Frame going into more detail on key points than Van Til has?

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I guess from what I've read of Van Til, again, it's not to say that Van Til doesn't use scripture, but that the push for Frame is to always ground your evidences or your claims of,

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I think you say the number of times of the preconditions of intelligibility is you kind of got to do more than that.

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And so here, Frame does look at metaphysics and epistemology and ethics, and he's tying it back to kind of the character and person of God.

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And so that's kind of where he goes for in his apologetics is looking at those areas and then building out exactly what in those areas makes precept such a good foundation because of who

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God is. Yeah. Yeah, the who God is so important, right? The metaphysical foundation.

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So we talk about the Christian worldview, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, which are the three foundations of a worldview.

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One of the basic assumptions metaphysically for Van Til is that creator -creature distinction, where we acknowledge a fundamental difference between God as creator and everything else as creation.

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God is original, we are derivative. So there's always that healthy balance between what creatures are and the unique nature of the creator.

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And that actually has great apologetic import as to how we answer certain questions theologically.

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So I think that's very important. Now, when I look at Frame's book here and I look at the table of contents, he kind of breaks them up into multiple sections.

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So he talks about apologetics, the basics of apologetics, talks about definitions, presuppositions, all those sorts of things.

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But there is a mention here of sola scriptura. And I think that's on page 18.

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Let's see here, I have the book in front of me. So sola scriptura. So of course, Frame is coming obviously from a clearly reformed perspective.

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What role do you see sola scriptura playing in John Frame's apologetic?

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Or just in terms of the reform perspective, I mean, sola scriptura is such an important aspect. How does he involve sola scriptura in the broader discussion of what he's trying to accomplish in his book?

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Yeah, yeah. And that's something too, is that Frame is wholly, as in complete, not wholly, in the other way.

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He's probably that too. He's fully, he's fully, not wholly. Yes, yes, exactly. He's 100 % reformed and 100 % man.

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So you got a two nature, yes. The hypostatic. All right, well, so yes, in sola scriptura section here, he says that you don't need to exclude everything else other than the

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Bible. It's just that the Bible restrains how to look at everything. So you can bring in other books, other church leaders, other, you know, evidences or writings or proofs, but it has to be restrained from the

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Bible. So if it precludes you from bringing that argument to the table, you should say, that's interesting.

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I wonder if I can reform it and turn it to the glory of God. But we can look at other things.

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It has to be restrained by the Bible. So we can use other items other than the Bible to bring evidences, but our ultimate control of looking at those evidences is the

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Bible. The Bible judges those other books and evidence. The Bible doesn't conform to those other sources. And then he goes on, sorry, to talk about natural revelation and soul scripture as well.

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So he's probably someone who would tend to use as well. And he says, natural revelation is the truth of God and everything is made, nature, man, everything.

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That of course comes from Romans one, which is probably the other arm tattoo that we all need, but natural revelation doesn't show the gospel message of salvation.

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So that's the important part of why we need that special specific outpouring of God's word to us.

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Direct divine speech shortens the length curve of natural revelation. So yes, we can get there.

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We can say, oh, look up at the stars. There's something above and beyond that that has to have created it.

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It must be greater than it. It must be outside of it. Why do all the hard work when in the beginning,

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God created the heavens and the earth? Divine revelation shows the purpose of the resurrection.

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Natural revelation only gets you to the fact of the revelation, which is something that we kept saying, my mentor and I through this conversation is the fact of faith is not the resurrection in and of itself.

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It's Jesus died and rose again on the third day to pay for your sins.

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And that's where the ultimate expression of faith resides in. Is he going to be faithful to the end to pay for my sins?

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Because without him and without doing that, then I'm still dead in my sins. And so we need to realize that the divine aspect of scripture kind of outweighs and makes it easier and provides the basis for knowing the purpose of the resurrection.

30:54

So when we talk about classicalists or evidentialists who do the two -step approach or the one -step approach, which if you're dancing, evidentialist is the way to go because you only have one step and you're less likely to step on people's toes.

31:06

But there you might get to the resurrection. And what happens to the unbeliever? Oh, well, people,

31:13

I guess, do rise from the dead. It's that story of the man who you're trying to convince isn't a zombie.

31:19

And he goes, but zombies don't bleed. I'm clearly a zombie. Well, zombies don't bleed.

31:24

Would you suggest that's the truth? Well, yeah, sure. Zombies don't bleed. You pick them, lick them, and he bleeds.

31:31

And he goes, huh, look at that. Zombies do bleed. So he's just shifting his idea because his ultimate ideas in life is that he's a zombie.

31:40

Well, divine revelation corrects our mistake in natural revelation. And here's kind of the key point from this section is that presupposition is the application of scripture of natural revelation.

31:50

So we don't remove, we don't disjoint the fact of the resurrection with the meaning of the resurrection because on a purely evidential basis, when you quote -unquote prove the resurrection of Jesus, all you've proven is that someone came back from the dead.

32:04

But what that means requires the broader worldview context that gives it meaning. Now, some people might think that's ridiculous.

32:10

Like, oh, you know, someone says, well, you just proved that someone was raised from the dead. That doesn't mean Christianity is true.

32:15

People don't actually say that. If you prove the resurrection, you know, come on. I had a debate with a well -known

32:21

YouTube atheist by the name of Tom Jump. And in our debate, in our discussion, he actually suggested, he said, well,

32:30

I can grant you the resurrection. That's what he told me. He says, I can grant you the resurrection. That doesn't mean that an all -powerful

32:37

God exists. And I was like, wait a second, you're disjoint, you're trying to pick apart my worldview and isolate the parts.

32:44

I said, my worldview is not that a man named Jesus rose from the dead. My worldview is that the all -powerful

32:51

God revealed in natural and spiritual revelation is the one who raised him. You cannot separate those elements.

32:59

And this is very much what we see today, Patrick, with a lot of people within the mere Christianity movement, right?

33:06

That all we need to do is prove the resurrection and everything else gets clumped together, right? We don't need the

33:11

Old Testament, those sorts of things. That's the piecemeal apologetic approach, which

33:17

I think Frame, to some degree, would reject. And there's some elements of piecemeal in his, we don't wanna get into that.

33:24

But you hear other people's argue along those lines. Right, exactly. Yeah, that's the greater benefit of the presuppositional position is we can't break apart

33:37

God. We can't talk about him as love and only love. It has to be in the context of judgment and supremacy and impartiality and specificity.

33:50

A worldview that anyone operates is not a real worldview if they're able to hold one out here and one out here.

33:58

If they're not standing on that worldview, then it's not their ultimate commitment. Right, and just as Van Til said, that apologetics is the vindication of the

34:08

Christian philosophy of life. It's a worldview system that we don't put apart. Now, just for those in the comments,

34:14

I know some questions are coming in. Yeah, if you have any questions for Patrick or myself, we'll take a few towards the back end.

34:21

I'll give him all the hard ones because it's Thursday and I'm tired. I don't know how many questions

34:27

I'll be able to contribute to, but if you have any questions for him, awesome. If you have any questions for me, that's fine as well.

34:32

I'll try my best to address some of them. But what I really appreciated, something you said, Patrick, about Sola Scriptura is that you acknowledged the usefulness of other authorities, but that Scripture is the ultimate authority.

34:46

Isn't that not what Sola Scriptura is, right? It's the idea that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith.

34:53

Not that it's the only rule of faith, but it's the sole infallible rule of faith. And I think there's an interesting parallel, Patrick, between the issue of the utilization of presuppositional methodology and the use of evidence and arguments.

35:06

We could use arguments, okay, but they do not stand more ultimate than the authority of God in those arguments.

35:13

So they work together. They're not mutually exclusive, but we acknowledge the proper roles and authority. I think that's important with respect to Sola Scriptura.

35:21

Right, right. And when we talk about the confessions, the church fathers, when we kind of talk about our church constitutions, even, we understand that we have learned men who are working in community under the guidance of the

35:39

Holy Spirit, to not the full extent of Scripture, but to the extent that they have

35:45

Him living inside of them, and then doing the best to formulate a consistent and biblical document or writing or telling of truth.

36:01

But ultimately, what does the good pastor do in the pulpit? He says, ultimately, don't believe me.

36:09

Open your Bibles and find it there. If I'm an error, let me be an error, but let every man be a liar, but God is not.

36:18

And that's so important too, Patrick, because it assumes, the Christian worldview assumes that language is a sufficient mechanism to gain truth.

36:27

This is very much involved with the issue of like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. You hold to like an infallible, you know, if you're

36:34

Roman Catholic, you have an infallible magisterium that needs to tell you what Scripture means. And so, you know, you have no authority to interpret, but God has created us in such a way and communicated to us in such a way that language is a sufficient tool to go to and study and learn.

36:50

I don't, we don't need an infallible magisterium. God has given us the ability to read Scripture and to understand it.

36:56

Now that's not going to remove the reality of disagreement, but as I often say, the, you know, when someone says, well, someone's gonna interpret

37:03

Scripture differently than you, the reality of different interpretations does not logically entail the impossibility of knowing whose interpretation is correct.

37:12

Multiplicity of interpretations doesn't mean that there's not a true one, nor does it mean that you can't know or justify your particular interpretation.

37:21

So I think that's important to keep in mind. Go to your Bible because God has created us and revealed himself in such a way that that is a sufficient tool to judge what is right.

37:31

So I think that's an important aspect. So you're telling me out of all the numbers that you could pick from, from zero to infinity and then some, two plus two equals this thing that you call four, but on my paper,

37:41

I have five. So clearly we have different interpretations of this. No one is wrong. What, out of, out of all the false numbers there, why did you have to pick this one?

37:49

You know what? I just believe in one less number than you do. That's awesome.

37:56

All right. So in, I think chapter three of Frame's book, he does talk a little bit about faith,

38:04

Scripture and evidence. He talks about the concept of proof, the need for proof, but he also talks about the important topic of the point of contact between believer and unbeliever.

38:12

Maybe you can unpack that for us, because we know that because apologetics engages in kind of a worldview discussion, you know,

38:20

I have my worldview, I have my presupposition that's going to impact how I interpret the data. The unbeliever is in the same situation.

38:26

What does, what does Frame say with respect to what the point of contact should be? Because it seems that there is no neutrality, right?

38:35

We all have our worldview framework, our worldview bubble or lens. So how do we communicate with each other?

38:40

I think Abraham Kuyper is a well -known reformed thinker who said that, hey, there's antithesis, there's a worldview, there's no neutrality.

38:48

So apologetics is useless. Is Abraham Kuyper right? And where would Frame disagree?

38:54

And you're going to pit me against Frame and Kuyper? I'm not getting in the middle of that one, but they are way too

39:00

Dutch reformed between them for me. Hey, I'm Puerto Rican reformed. So it's, you know.

39:06

That's right. Well, of course the reformed understanding of how unbelievers can have a point of contact with truth is that they are made in the image of God.

39:13

And that's where Frame poised to sail for this portion. How can we, you know, we're each trying to levy shots at the foundational aspect of our presuppositions here.

39:28

Hopefully the unbeliever is doing the same. The Christian actually has the high ground. We know in Star Wars that you have the high ground, you win.

39:34

So there's that. So being made in the image of God isn't destroyed, but it's suppressed.

39:41

Of course, we always turn to Romans 1 there. Suppression still has this point of contact, he says, which is that image of God.

39:47

And this is where the apologists should appeal to. So suppression is done through ethical rebellion. It does according to their desire, not a psychological one.

39:57

A believer is characterized by right thinking to do the right thing. So there's their change desire produces right thinking and doing.

40:04

This is why the apologist must be truthful in preaching the word and rely ultimately on the Holy Spirit. Proof and evidence is appealing to the image of God within the unbeliever.

40:11

And so kind of how I think about this, I could be wrong, which isn't entirely known to happen, is

40:17

I always think of a basketball or a beach ball. You're putting it under the surface of the water and you're suppressing it.

40:24

And if you let it go, poop pops back to the surface. We don't want that basketball to be seen.

40:29

We're pushing it under. But what do I have to do in order to suppress it? I have to maintain some contact with it.

40:36

And what frame says is that point of contact, our fingertips on the ball as an unbeliever is the unable to get away from the image of God.

40:45

And so that's what we're speaking to when we say, when you talk about Romans one, it's not a,

40:52

I went out to the field and I looked up at the sky and all of a sudden I'm convicted that there is God. Anything that you do throughout your entire life, from birth to death, everything in between, brushing your teeth, all happens because the truth of God.

41:06

And so from looking in the mirror, you should be convicted from pushing that beach ball underneath.

41:14

You are maintaining some contact. It's corrupted, the mirror's foggy, but it's not all the way broken so you can't see yourself.

41:23

Okay, that's important. I think the point of contact is not for frame and for Van Til and for Bonson, I think is not neutral ground.

41:33

That's not the point. Absolutely not, absolutely not. But it is common ground. So there's a distinction between neutral and common ground that I think is important.

41:41

And a lot of folks who criticize presuppositionalism often mix that up. Yeah. All right, very good.

41:49

And so when we take a look at the presuppositional method, I think the heart of the presuppositional form of argumentation is the transcendental argument.

41:56

And of course, frame touches on this. And I appreciate the fact that there's a section,

42:03

I believe in chapter four, I think it's on page 80, where he talks about TAG, Transcendental Argument for God's Existence, and the

42:12

Trinity. How does frame work that out as you understand him? What is the relationship between TAG, the

42:19

Trinity? What does that look like in terms of argumentation for frame? Well, first in his metaphysics,

42:27

Trinity plays a big part there. So one being in three persons, you can be described in a personalistic term.

42:34

The example is God is love is not directed towards anything outside of God. It's also sufficient within the triune

42:40

God there. But as for TAG, I'm not quite remembering any portion of Trinity as it relates to TAG.

42:49

I know there is quite a long discussion there on the transcendental argument though.

42:55

Okay. All right. All that being, so if folks are interested, it's on page 80 of his book.

43:01

So if folks have the book, that might be worth looking into.

43:08

And I have a whole, I have a bunch of videos on TAG. Yeah, so mere theism doesn't happen here.

43:13

God must be the one and the many, and therefore must be a Trinity. That's why I don't have too many notes from it, because I'm still trying to figure out one in the many.

43:21

I see. Okay, I see. But would you say that frame is not arguing for generic theism by using

43:27

TAG? He's specifically arguing for a Trinitarian conception of God. If you break down God at any point where he is not the biblical

43:36

Christian God, frame is going to reject it. Okay. And so it has to be

43:42

Trinitarian in nature because of who God is in both the relational and then also able to exist independently of his creation and still maintain all the qualities.

43:53

Love is a great one. That's always a good one to go to when we're talking to Muslims, because you have to say,

43:59

God cannot learn anything new, correct? Well, how does one love if you don't have any object to which to love?

44:07

Well, in the Trinity, that's easy. In fact, it's more than easy because there's more than one person within the

44:12

Trinity. And that's the son, the father, and the spirit. But when Allah is just one complete, well, he has to create an order to love.

44:23

And so their creation is dependent on Allah. Yeah. Well, excellent. So there's a lot of different areas that he covers, some technical areas as well, which we don't have time to get into, but there is a section,

44:35

I think on chapter 10, entitled Talking to a Stranger. So if we take all of this complicated metaphysics, epistemology, words that you probably should never use in discussion unless you're online debating these issues with someone who's more philosophically nuanced in their approach, how does

44:53

Frame speak to the issue of bringing this to the streets?

44:58

Because I know one of the things that he told me when I met him all those years ago, he said that the big thing was that Bonson wanted people to stop arguing about methodology and take it to the streets not that those arguments were unimportant, but that it's better that we're doing apologetics than simply or merely, that's key, arguing about methodology.

45:20

I think we should argue about methodology, because it's important, but not to the exclusion of actually doing it. How does

45:25

Frame speak to that issue of applying the method in kind of our day -to -day situation?

45:31

Yeah, I think it's removing the hard stuff that we like to put in there.

45:41

So like when we talk about, well, all right, let's approach this area of abortion and let's talk about the preconditions of intelligibility here.

45:51

No, it's really difficult to get somebody else to do that. In fact, the one thing

45:57

I think Frame mentions is that you're almost on a bus with somebody.

46:03

And so you're not wanting to have this full -on debate with other, you know, a big name atheist.

46:09

You're having a conversation with a person and you almost have to meet them where they're at as far as language goes.

46:16

And so that's what he suggests as far as making sure we can understand it.

46:23

In fact, there's a YouTube series that I really like on explaining X, and it explains to a six -year -old and then someone in high school, then someone in college, and then someone who's, you know, like a master.

46:35

And it's always amazing to see that breakdown because if you can't explain it to the six -year -old,

46:41

I think Einstein says, is that you don't even know it yourself. And so if we're able to do it well, and what we're doing too, remember, is that we're doing evangelism.

46:52

So we're offering the God of the Bible in place of whatever they might have.

46:59

And I'm sure I've missed a lot there because there's a great section. In fact, he has in there a kind of a faux conversation that is really good that just takes the book that you just read and systematizes it in a conversation form.

47:14

Now, okay, so he lays out what apologetics is. He goes into the details of worldview and goes into the whole presuppositional spiel.

47:23

But someone might ask, well, what's the difference between someone like John Frame and someone like Greg Bonson?

47:29

If someone were to say, Patrick, can you suggest for me a book to learn presuppositional apologetics?

47:36

Is Frame for you the first person you go to? If so, why? If not, why not?

47:43

And in essence, what makes Frame different than someone like a Bonson in your opinion? It's gonna be tag, of course.

47:53

It's gonna be the transcendental argument that is the forked factor there that Frame is holding

48:01

Van Til's idea of the transcendental argument a little looser.

48:07

He doesn't discard it, but he holds it looser than definitely what

48:13

Bonson would want to. It's something that Van Til probably wouldn't support as well.

48:20

So I would still suggest Bonson because Bonson is going to drive the point home and there's good resources out there.

48:29

I mentioned Against All Opposition is a great kind of first book that I would recommend people.

48:37

And this one is that kind of next step of once you've read the three, Pushing the Antithesis is a really good one as well.

48:43

And then I always forget the third one and you have the original copy of it somewhere back there on your bookshelf. But this would be the fourth one.

48:50

And I wouldn't shy people away from it, but I would also say once you get to the transcendental argument portion of this, this is where the separation from Bonson and frame would be.

49:02

So what is it that frame thinks of the transcendental argument that makes it different than how Bonson understands the transcendental argument?

49:10

Right, so he has what he calls questions. And so he has kind of six different objections.

49:21

Maybe objections is too strong of a word, but he's got questions that he asked that he thinks that Van Til either overplays his card or outplays too heavily against other apologetic methods.

49:41

So Van Til would make a sharp distinction between his method and the classical traditional approach and frame while acknowledging that there's a distinction.

49:49

He doesn't think the distinction is as far as say someone like Van Til and Bonson. So that a lot of what the presuppositionalist is doing or can do is gonna be very similar to what a traditional classical kind of apologist would do.

50:02

Have I got it? Have I got it a little bit accurate there? Yeah, and he'd rub you the wrong way the other way and say sometimes the classicalist does things a little bit better than even the presuppositionalist as well.

50:16

Yeah, okay, interesting, cool. All right, well, I wanna take a couple of questions from folks and then we could jump right back in.

50:24

Let's see here. Well, thank you, Jesse Garner. I love the, hey,

50:29

Eli, I love your work. I'm having serious trouble learning presupp. That's okay, but I'm happy to listen to you. Well, thank you.

50:35

And hopefully it's been useful. So let's see here.

50:43

Let's see here. All right, question by Jay Hu. Any background on the

50:49

Bonson frame disagreement on the cosmological argument? Do you have any thoughts on that?

50:57

Not specifically, at least not from this book that I gathered. I think it has to do, well, first,

51:04

Bonson was not a big fan of the cosmological argument. And that's purely independent of his presuppositional commitments.

51:11

I think Bonson, as a philosopher, did not find the cosmological argument to be a good argument.

51:17

Now, of course, you want to be very careful when you speak of the cosmological argument. That cosmological argument is more accurately understood as cosmological arguments, plural.

51:29

Cosmological arguments are a family of arguments of which you could have different manifestations of that variety. So you could have cosmological arguments.

51:36

Generally speaking, you have the Kalam, which is slightly different than some other formulations of the cosmological argument.

51:42

Bonson wasn't a fan of it because he thought philosophically and logically it wasn't good. And I think there was a dispute as to whether you can turn the cosmological argument into kind of a presuppositional -esque kind of argument.

51:55

And so I think Bonson took issue with whether Frame was able to do that or if the presuppositionalist is able to reformulate the argument.

52:03

So again, with more detail, I'm not sure. I'd have to look it up. But I would find his lecture very helpful. It should be said, too, about the original version of this book.

52:12

Bonson did read it. He did critique it. But he says, for this book in particular, that it's a great layout of the rejection of neutrality in the apologetic method.

52:23

And so that's, of course, a big key component here that Frame really wants to push.

52:30

And say, out of all the things that I disagree with, the tag,

52:36

Vantillian presuppositional form, doesn't allow for neutrality. And so Bonson praises him for that in a lecture.

52:45

I think he critiques the book as well in a classroom, in a lecture, while Frame is sitting in the audience.

52:52

Hey. There's an entire section answering Frame's criticism. If you go to Sermon Audio, there's a lecture series on that.

53:01

You can find that there and it's available for free there. So I highly recommend folks check that out. Let's see here.

53:08

Thank you, Scott. He says, my Frame impression is spot on.

53:14

Thank you very much. I worked very hard to master that. Let's see here.

53:21

Scroll down here. Okay, so Scott Terry asks, will Cave to the Cross Apologetics be covering any other apologetic book in the near future?

53:31

We're in the middle of one right now. In fact, it's one of our favorite, Garrett, with other people. In fact, we're almost, where we're at, not where the audience is at, but where we're at, we're about ready to turn the page into Presupp.

53:43

So it's Faith Has Its Reasons by Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman Jr. It's a phenomenal book.

53:51

I agree. It takes a look at all four methodologies. It says kind of the history of them.

53:59

It provides the meta apologetic positions to them. It talks about the areas in which all apologists have to answer certain questions and takes a look at how they would answer.

54:09

And then it talks about strengths and weaknesses or what the author's view does. And I'll say, when we get to presuppositionalists,

54:17

I don't even know if really their negatives are that negative. So we'll be doing that.

54:23

This section on presuppositional apologetics was excellent. That's the book that I would give if someone was to say, what are the differences?

54:32

And I'm okay reading a big book. Better than the five views. And I love five views.

54:38

In fact, it's hard to not reference five views when we're talking even in that book because the dialogue is worth it.

54:47

And of course, Frame is the presuppositionalist there, which is very apropos for us today.

54:55

Another good book that has a good section on a summary of the presuppositional.

55:00

There's even a section on the connection between presuppositionalism and Reformed theology.

55:05

And it's in this book, Mapping Apologetics. The section on presuppositional apologetics is actually pretty good.

55:12

So I highly recommend that as well. This is why I don't like watching Eli too much because my list of books keeps growing.

55:19

And so it's you and Tim Challey's daily Kindle suggestions. It's always terrible.

55:26

But I will say, if I can plug myself real quick, givethecross .com, if you scroll down to the middle of the page, it lays out all the books that we've done and it takes it from most recent in that series.

55:37

So you just go down to the bottom and then work your way back. And we do chapter by chapter. We don't cover everything because we don't want to.

55:45

We want you to pick up the book as well. Or what we like to say is take it off your shelf, blow off the dust and open it with us.

55:51

And so we've done a number of books, including Jason Lyle. We've did Mitch Stokes, one of my favorite ones that I was forced by God to preach something that I read.

56:10

It percolated in my brain for about three years and I had to get the message to other people. And that was utilizing

56:15

Scott Christian's book, What About Evil? Which I've been referencing that book.

56:20

That book needs to be longer because it had such an impact on me. In fact, the last portion of it is the application of the theodicy and I think needs to be expanded.

56:33

And I know he has got the armchair reader version coming out soon that I'll be happy to read as well.

56:40

But that book was phenomenal in being consistent, being gracious, but being truthful as well.

56:48

And then talking about God as a master storyteller. In fact, later on this year,

56:54

I've been invited to talk about that book and how it relates to authors telling stories that include evil.

57:01

So again, all truth is God's truth, even when we're creating fiction.

57:07

Yeah, that's awesome. And Scott Christensen has been on the show before and he was one of my speakers for the

57:13

Epic Online Calvinism Conference, which folks, that's available for purchase for a pretty cheap price.

57:19

It's cheaper than when we had it live, but that's not available online for public viewing.

57:26

But if you go to the website, you could actually order it. It's entitled, if you go to the pre -sub use section on the website, it's entitled the

57:33

Epic Online Calvinism Conference, where I spoke about Calvinism and Mullinism.

57:39

Dr. James White spoke about some various texts that usually come up in the Calvinism debate.

57:44

Scott Christensen talked about free will. And I had Guillaume Bignon to talk about the proper use of analogies within the debate.

57:51

He talks about the claim of Calvinism reduces people to puppets and all that sort of stuff.

57:57

Super awesome series. I had Matt Slick talk about, was it

58:02

Matt Slick? No, Matt Slick was from my other conference. I apologize. I think there was some other, I think we had Saiten Bruggencape covering how to talk about Calvinism in like a informal context or something like that.

58:12

But it's super, super helpful. Highly encourage people to check that out. All right, one last question here from Scott Terry.

58:19

He says, how is apologetics a justification of Christian belief different from Frame's much earlier work,

58:24

Apologetics to the Glory of God? Yeah, so I believe what's expanded is the problem of evil is the included chapter there.

58:33

It's a kind of two sections, multi -chapter, because when you read Reformed, you have to always read after the semi -colon and go from there.

58:43

So that's the main part that's molded in there.

58:49

So if you have Apologetics to the Justice of Christian Belief that's the second version.

58:57

And there is even a kind of forward where it talks about three reasons why the book has been written in such a way that it requires this.

59:09

And one of the reasons is an increase in support and curiosity of Reformed theology.

59:16

And you just look at Les Lamphere's Calvinist or American Gospel to show that people now have been yearning for something kind of hardcore when it comes to their faith and not this kind of wishy -washy, name it and claim it.

59:33

And we wanna be overburdened by God's glory. Okay, yeah.

59:40

Henry says, in Van Til's Christian Apologetics Chapter Two, he says that natural and special revelation only find meaning when taken together.

59:47

Doesn't this imply natural man with only natural revelation would have an excuse?

59:52

No, no, it wouldn't imply that. Because natural revelation has, you don't have the full picture, but you have a sufficient amount of the picture that makes man without excuse.

01:00:02

So that natural man has a sufficient knowledge of God that makes him without excuse, but it is a knowledge that damns him, not a knowledge that saves him.

01:00:10

Special revelation provides that redemptive knowledge. And that's why we preach the gospel. We don't say, hey, natural revelation's enough and that's it.

01:00:19

We preach the gospel and it creates context for a more fully robust understanding of natural revelation.

01:00:25

But without special revelation, you're going to be limited, but not so limited that you are with excuse, if that makes sense, okay?

01:00:34

And I love the wording that the Apostle Paul uses that they are without excuse, literally unapologetus, you're literally without an apologetic.

01:00:40

So when you look around, you cannot escape the existence of God all around you and the knowledge of God within you.

01:00:49

Let's see here. CQPO, Christian Questioning Popular Opinion. I made a super chat, didn't seem to go through.

01:00:57

Yeah, no, I didn't see a super, well, thank you for a super chat. I didn't see it go through either. But if you are trying to send a super chat, greatly appreciate it.

01:01:07

Thank you. Let me see here. Christian Monarchist, does the proposition

01:01:14

God does not exist entail a contradiction? Do you want to take that one or you want me to take a stab at it?

01:01:20

It's up to you. Yeah, you first, you're the expert and then I'll try and figure out what funny comment to add to it.

01:01:29

Yeah, so linguistically, it is not a contradiction, but what is entailed within affirming that proposition would be contradictory, given the fact that God is the necessary precondition for intelligence.

01:01:39

So if that's true, if the transcendental argument is true, then the statement

01:01:44

God does not exist is impossible. It would contradict, you'd actually have to presuppose

01:01:50

God in order to have that negation meaningful. And this is wrapped up in Van Til's summary of the presuppositional approach and the transcendental principle applied where he says that anti -theism presupposes theism.

01:02:03

So to say I'm an anti -theist is not linguistically contradictory, but when you go into the details of the content of that proposition, you will find that it actually needs to affirm or presuppose the very

01:02:17

God that it's trying to deny. That's my thoughts there. Bonson, I think, makes a example where he talks about the statement,

01:02:26

I am lying. And he says, if we're gonna be solely autonomous and human focused, if we're belly button looking, well, what do we do with that?

01:02:35

Well, it's either true, it's not true. If we're in Star Trek, our robots combust with that type of contradiction.

01:02:43

But if we have the transcendental, where God is above us, he is a

01:02:49

God of truth. He doesn't allow for contradictions in his world. This is just a contradiction and people are being absurd with that statement.

01:02:58

All right, very good. All right, thank you for that. Yeah, CQPO, didn't see the super chat.

01:03:06

So if you wanna try that again, greatly appreciate it. I'm not sure what's going on. Not sure how that works, but thank you.

01:03:13

Now that we're at the top of the hour and there's so many, the book, you can cover so many different things.

01:03:19

What are some of the main takeaways? In other words, if someone were to be like, what are the golden nuggets of this book that I need to walk away with?

01:03:30

And what are some areas that you would caution me of? Like, maybe you think there's something within frame that doesn't really capture the essence of a genuine presuppositional perspective.

01:03:41

How would you speak to that for someone who's asking questions along those lines? Yeah, so I would definitely recommend this book.

01:03:47

I'm not here to poo -poo frame in any way. I love it. Yeah, I mean,

01:03:52

I'm of the position that I can enjoy my brothers without going, but I don't agree with everything he says when they die.

01:04:01

And obviously frame is a lie, but there's a whole slew of authors on my shelf where I don't wanna have to do that every single time.

01:04:08

So I'm just going to assume that people know that I don't agree with everyone every time. In fact, probably an hour ago,

01:04:14

I didn't agree with myself then. And so I would hope that I would be gracious with myself in order to give myself, to be able to call myself.

01:04:22

So if you learn something new after you posted a video, and the thing you've come to conclude is in disagreement with what you previously record, do you go back and delete your previous -

01:04:34

I am the editor, and what happens with the magic? I will say, I was reading "'Covenantal

01:04:40

Apologetics' by Oliphant, and I vehemently just disagreed with his idea of using the

01:04:46

Trinity when it comes to proselytizing to Muslims. And I'm like, no, this is the worst possible thing that you can do.

01:04:53

And I met with my mentor, Tony, who I do the show with at a coffee shop, and we talked it out. And I was like, this is the only way to do it.

01:05:00

If anyone does it any other way, they're wrong. And so I have to be gracious with.

01:05:07

My cage -stage Calvinism was listening to James White get me slowly into reform, tell me that there is a cage, but I work night shift, and so I'm by myself.

01:05:17

And so my cage was just work. So I missed that. And so I'm allowed to be gracious with people.

01:05:25

So I will be gracious with Raymond. He's reformed in theology, he's presuppositional in form, and he's rooted in the high view of scripture.

01:05:32

And that's what you should take away, is that scripture is his number one priority. His number one priority is to glorify

01:05:37

God and to build the church. And that comes through solely here. And he will not give the unbeliever a neutral ground.

01:05:46

And that's probably the biggest takeaway. And where they diverge is going to be the transcendental argument.

01:05:51

And so if you're not familiar with some of the nuances with it, or maybe even you're not quite sure what tag refers to, if you're not the cool kids that hashtag tag, you know, there are other books to kind of familiar yourself with, but there's kind of six objections that Frame has that I would say departs a lot from Vantill to the point of there are some where my one problem with a lot of people that negate

01:06:23

Vantill is I don't think they read him, but the people that do read him can disagree.

01:06:30

But then sometimes they engage in argumentation where it's like, but do you understand that this isn't the case?

01:06:37

And so Frame for the most part understands where Vantill's coming from.

01:06:43

And there are just a few where it's like, I just think he missed the point. And it's almost sad because his initial book into this one doesn't really make those changes or doesn't address those claims that at least

01:06:58

Bonson, and not to doubt you, but with Frame being in the audience, you would think maybe he'd want to stick an article in there because these are just kind of a collection of articles that his staff has put together and made it into a coherent book.

01:07:17

Sure. All right, thank you for that. Here's another comment here from Henry. Thanks, Henry, for sharing your thoughts here.

01:07:24

He says, since man is without excuse from natural revelation, isn't this an argument for natural theology?

01:07:30

Well, first, Henry, we want to make a distinction between natural revelation and natural theology. Natural revelation is what

01:07:38

God does. He reveals himself, right? In Romans 1, it says, what can be known about God is made known to them because God has shown it to them.

01:07:47

So that's not the same as natural theology. Natural theology is what we do. We reason about creation and so on and so forth.

01:07:55

Now, I think man being without excuse from natural revelation is not an argument for natural theology because natural revelation also involves the fact that God not only reveals himself through the created order, he also reveals himself to man innately so that man's knowledge of God is not derived simply from a looking and seeing of the heavens, which declare his glory, but it is an innate knowledge within man's own consciousness in light of the fact that he's created in the image of God so that man, you can pluck man's eyes out so that he does not see, and yet he still has a knowledge of God because the knowledge of God is imprinted upon his very soul.

01:08:35

So this is not an argument for natural theology because given the noetic effects of sin, what will man theologize about?

01:08:43

What conclusions will he derive from the perspective of an unregenerate mind, right? He's gonna distort the revelation of God and suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

01:08:51

So this is not necessarily an argument for natural theology when we say that man is without excuse based upon natural revelation.

01:08:58

Do you have any thoughts on that, Patrick? Yeah, so there's the touchpoint that we talked about, being made in the image of God, but still having a touchpoint with suppression.

01:09:05

But also, ask yourself, if you're a Christian, why are you putting down your weapon that you believe?

01:09:14

You say, listen, I believe that Jesus died for my sins, that he rose again on the third day, that he ascended to the right hand of the

01:09:22

Father, and that he will come again to judge the living and the dead. Well, why put that down? Don't you believe that?

01:09:28

Well, be true to your convictions. Be true to what you claim to believe and present that.

01:09:36

You wouldn't want the atheist that you're talking to to present a case that they don't believe in.

01:09:41

So why are you negating part of it just because you want an easier route?

01:09:48

You don't need that easier route because the easier route is to say, listen, without the biblical

01:09:55

Christian God, we couldn't know anything. We know things, therefore we have knowledge that way. Very good.

01:10:02

All right, well, let's stop here. I think there's so much more to go through, but I would love,

01:10:11

Patrick, to have you on again to either continue discussion of this book or maybe cover some other areas that you've studied because I think doing book reviews and talking about it, super helpful for people.

01:10:25

And like me, when I listen to videos about book summaries, it just makes me wanna go and read a book.

01:10:33

And I will say too, even if you negatively review a book, and I'm referencing a friend who would definitely agree with this, who's a book reviewer for indie people.

01:10:45

Negatively review the book and say why you didn't like it because your negative review might be a positive review for somebody or somebody looking for that.

01:10:53

Oh, I hated this because all this person talks about is natural theology, this, and it comports with the ideas that Thomas Aquinas presents.

01:11:02

Oh, that's exactly what I'm looking for. I'll read that because I'm looking for something to critique. So even your negative reviews out there help readers find what they wanna read.

01:11:13

And so those are good too. Excellent. Also, there are bad books out there. Yeah, that's true. Well, Patrick, thank you so much for your time.

01:11:20

I really do appreciate it. And I hope that this discussion was useful for folks and definitely, pardon, definitely going to have you back on to talk about some more precept and theology -related topics.

01:11:33

But for folks who are listening in today, if you like a lot of what Patrick was saying and you like the sort of things that deal with book reviews and things like that,

01:11:42

I highly recommend you check out his YouTube channel where he's joined by his friends and guests.

01:11:48

And can you share a little bit about your co -host so folks know when they check you out?

01:11:54

Who's this other guy? Yeah, my mentor, Tony Gvan, he's the one that got me through deductive logic class in college.

01:12:01

The book that I had was awful and terrible. And I was actually dating his daughter at the time.

01:12:07

And he was getting his doctorate in philosophy. And so he had bored his family to death for so many years talking philosophy.

01:12:17

And now he's got a new protege who's super excited about talking about things like, Descartes, you go out into the woods for three days and you overturn everything and you've got the modern worldview in three days.

01:12:29

Wow, that's pretty impressive. And so he's the doctorate in philosophy. And so if you think

01:12:36

I'm smart, which you should get yourself checked, he's really the brains that I check everything with and he corrects me in a very loving way.

01:12:44

And again, we just have a book review. We release new episodes every Monday for the book that we're doing.

01:12:50

All our archives are on katewithacross .com. It's on YouTube as well, your favorite podcatcher.

01:12:55

And then we just open up a book, invite you in, you can have your coffee, you can read along with us, you can just listen to us jibber jabber about it.

01:13:03

But we wanna do all things to glorify God and build his church. And so we believe in the presuppositional method.

01:13:11

And so that's, it tends to be where we focus the most part, but every once in a while we go off and do another fun book.

01:13:18

We might be doing an ethics book coming up later because a lot of ethics books tends to just be, here's the problem and here's the biblical response to it.

01:13:26

But what are the ethics of Christianity? And so that's something that I might be playing around with this coming year.

01:13:33

Well, that's awesome. Well, Patrick, thank you so much for coming on. I really do appreciate it. And I'm looking forward to having you back. This is meeting my hero again.

01:13:40

The great thing about podcasts is that you get to talk to people who you watch all the time.

01:13:45

And so this is solely my pleasure and thank you very much, Eli. And again, PresuppU, you have to sign up and just be under the tutelage of someone who's explaining

01:13:57

Presupp in a way that you can grasp onto and then utilize for the church. Yeah, well, awesome.

01:14:03

I appreciate it. Just real quick. So someone is asking here, are you working on your next Presupp course? Yes, I am.

01:14:09

It's basically Presupp applied. I'm gonna be applying presuppositional methodology to atheism,

01:14:16

Roman Catholicism, presuppositional Eastern Orthodoxy, the cults and some other category that I don't remember off the top of my head.

01:14:24

I'm still working on it. But I've definitely, the juices and the gears are flowing. So I've got stuff down.

01:14:30

I'm making my slides. And when that's ready, I'll let folks know. You've got your icons for your

01:14:35

Eastern Orthodox brothers. Yes. That's right. So I'm not an expert in Eastern Orthodoxy, but I've been very interested in the application of presuppositionalism within an

01:14:47

Eastern Orthodox context. So I find - It is a growing field too, especially in the YouTube space as well.

01:14:53

Yes, yes. And I find it fascinating. I mean, I'm not, you know, obviously I disagree, but I very much have,

01:14:59

I found great interest in reading Eastern Orthodox material. I'm still learning because I do believe that if I disagree with a position,

01:15:06

I want to be sure to understand the position. Now, again, I'm not a scholar by any means.

01:15:13

I might be well -spoken and, you know, people are like, oh, you know, I love the way you explain stuff. I don't have a

01:15:18

PhD or anything like that. And I'm a full -time teacher. So the primary way that I learn is through audio. And that means

01:15:24

I don't always write things down. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can and then address issues that I think people are asking about.

01:15:31

So I'm trying my best. I know I probably won't have it down perfectly, but I am well -versed in presuppositionalism.

01:15:39

So I'm very interested in how Eastern Orthodoxy kind of melds that in within their perspective. So that'll be one of the lectures in the series.

01:15:47

So hope people find that useful. So without further ado, guys, thank you so much. Until next time, take care and God bless.