Apologetic Methodology

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:08

From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is

00:17

The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

00:28

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

00:34

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the

00:43

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

00:51

James White. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line here on a, well

00:56

I normally say a Thursday afternoon, but it is Tuesday, we moved it back to the normal Thursday time, just to complete all of the confusion concerning time.

01:07

You all once again played with your clocks, we did not. And they don't do that in Hawaii either, they don't play with their clocks, so they bounce back and forth between time zones, but nobody knows what time zone they're in anyway, so it doesn't really matter a whole lot when you're all that far out.

01:22

I got on an airplane around 11 o 'clock last night and flew back across the

01:29

Pacific and got in around 8 o 'clock this morning and I've gotten a little bit of sleep, but not a whole lot, so I'm not quite certain how sharp we're going to be today.

01:41

I would like to start off, of course, by thanking very, very sincerely the folks both in Hilo, Hawaii and in Honolulu for their tremendous kindness toward me over the past,

01:58

I was about 8, 9, 10 days, I was in Hawaii, flew to Hilo first, was at Berean Bible Church and Daniel and the elders there were very kind to me and had a great time there and got some good rides in.

02:17

It was very rainy all through the Hawaiian Islands, even the Hawaiians were saying this is rather unusual, but I managed to dodge stuff one way or the other.

02:24

I got 139 miles, 11 ,500 plus feet of climbing in and that's not bad.

02:31

When you're away from home, get that much in, I don't feel like I've lost anything anyways when I get back and it was gorgeous.

02:37

In fact, what we'll be doing partly on the program today, I prepared while climbing

02:43

Stainback Highway in Hilo, Hawaii. That's when I listened to this initially and said, you know what, we need to do this on The Dividing Line and again encountered so many people that listen to this program.

02:56

It's just amazing to me how many people listen primarily to podcasts, but we do notice that our numbers continue going up on the regular live links, at least when we do it when we're supposed to be doing it.

03:11

So I had a wonderful opportunity doing that. I was not listening to anything while riding in Honolulu because I was in the middle of traffic and so I wasn't wearing anything in my ears.

03:22

I was watching my rear view mirror very carefully. I carry a rear view mirror on my glasses and I was listening.

03:28

It was called survival and I posted about the one climb

03:33

I did. I did a second climb and then yesterday, Pastor Shane Sowers and another gentleman from the church and I, Shane drove the van and we rode up Tantalus Drive, which is one of the most famous rides there in the

03:50

Honolulu area and thankfully the rain held off until I was getting toward the bottom of the descent.

03:58

Actually it actually started drizzling a little bit as I was going down and that's, you know, you're on a bike, you don't know, on a twisty, turny descent and it's raining and so things get slick and that was exciting and then

04:13

I just got soaked coming up. I mean, I went up a second time and just swam the rest of the way, but I had a great time with everybody there and much discussion of doing this much more regularly, which

04:29

I could live with this. I could live with that. We only covered basically

04:35

Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses because there's a lot there on the islands and there's lots of other topics that we need to address and we're going to see if we can't get somebody from the

04:47

University of Hawaii to debate and plans within plans. And so very, very pleased and also very thankful my wife got to come out for a couple days anyways and have some good time there in Honolulu especially.

05:02

So that was very, very exciting. So back for a little while, let me please make sure you all know

05:09

Thursday night, I don't think I blogged this yet. I know I put it on Twitter, but I didn't blog it yet.

05:18

Thursday night at 8 o 'clock

05:23

Eastern time, I will, so 8 o 'clock Eastern time, that's going to be right, that's 5 o 'clock our time.

05:32

That means that's going to write and run right into the end of the dividing line. No, it's not good timing because it's done by video.

05:40

So I have to be set up for video before then. So we have to have somebody in there setting up the video so I can just come running in there and do the program here that we're going to have to,

05:51

I think it'd be better to bump Thursday up half an hour. So I have time to do this because we need to set up Skype video for a debate on the

05:58

Aramaic broadcasting network. It's for sure Eastern time because I thought they were like central. No, I checked on it.

06:04

It's Eastern time. So I will announce right now we were going to have to go 3 .30 to 4 .30

06:09

on Thursday for the dividing line to have enough room for me to get set up on Skype.

06:14

I'm going to be debating a Muslim scholar on Surah 4, 157.

06:21

And so not really sure even right now what the time parameters are going to be as far as that kind of stuff.

06:28

I need to get that information tomorrow. This was set up very, very briefly, but I'm working on the book, so it's not a big deal.

06:35

But then a week later in Toronto, I'll be debating Shabir Ali on Did Jesus Claim Deity, which

06:42

I'm sure will end up being can we know anything that Jesus claimed because we really can't because of all the liberal theories about redaction criticism and the alleged contradiction of synoptic gospels and all that kind of stuff.

06:57

It won't be like most of your conversations with Muslims. It'll be a little bit different.

07:03

But anyways, that's what we've got coming up. So I've got that. I've got Toronto. Then I've got

07:08

Cincinnati. The travel stuff really kicks in here for a while, and it's going to be crazy.

07:14

So keep an eye on the blog and on Twitter. Those are the best ways of knowing when the dividing line is going to be on, stuff like that.

07:20

Today on the program, I want to briefly talk a little bit about Paul Copan's article on the

07:29

Gospel Coalition concerning presuppositionalism, and then I want to start looking at something even beyond doing

07:39

Bart Ehrman. We haven't gotten to Adnan Rashid yet. I've got so many things on the plate that we want to talk about. But as I said, while I was climbing the

07:47

Stainback Highway just outside of Hilo, I was listening to a reasonable faith symposium.

07:59

I believe it was the University of Florida. It was in Florida somewhere at a university that William Lane Craig had not been before.

08:06

And it's approximately an hour and an hour and a half long.

08:11

And as I listened to it, I was struck once again by what the usefulness would be of responding to Dr.

08:22

Craig's answers as an illustration of the differences between when you define, when you create your apologetic methodology on the basis of your theology, or when you create your theology based upon your apologetic methodology.

08:43

I do believe that there is a substantive difference between a, what terminology do

08:54

I want to use here? Obviously, I would say biblically consistent apologetic.

08:59

What I'm referring to is the fact that I believe that we should define our apologetic methodology first and foremost in light of what we affirm theologically.

09:12

The fullness, not just a bare skeleton of theological beliefs, but the full in -depth beauty of Christian theology should be what gives rise to our apologetics.

09:28

And what I see in the popular forms of apologetics in the world today, and I mean very popular, the most popular, the ones that get all the attention, the big names, what

09:42

I see is a philosophical priority that results in a diminished emphasis upon the theological richness of the

10:00

Christian faith. It's this mere Christianity stuff. Let's just defend the basic concepts of bare theism, and that's

10:08

B -A -R -E, not B -E -A -R, bare theism, and a surface -level

10:19

Trinitarianism, and something about the resurrection, and any more. Let's not worry about the gospel.

10:24

That's just way, way, way, way too much to incorporate into our apologetic methodology.

10:30

I just don't see that. And when we listen to Dr. Craig, there will be times when

10:36

I go, all right, yeah, that was very good. And so this is what causes confusion amongst people, is that he will say things that are excellent.

10:47

And you go, oh, you know, we're not as far apart as we thought. And then the very next question, the answer he gives will be so far removed from what we would even begin to understand that we are lost as to why this is.

11:02

It goes back to certain foundational presuppositions, and that's what we want to look at.

11:09

But first, just rather briefly, on yesterday's

11:16

Gospel Coalition blog, Dr. Paul Copan, who is the current president,

11:23

I understand, of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, wrote an article called

11:29

Questioning Presuppositionalism. Now, there are already some rather full responses on the web.

11:35

There's one at the Choosing Hats blog from Razor's Kiss that has already been published.

11:40

He couldn't sleep last night, so he worked on that. And what really concerned me is that, as much as I love

11:59

R .C. Sproul and his way of teaching and what he's done for Reformed Theology, everybody has their blind spots.

12:08

And it seems that when we come to presuppositionalism, there are a lot of people, even within the

12:16

Reformed camp, though I would say they're much more of a minority in the Reformed camp, but certainly outside, who just really have some major blind spots as to what we are saying when we talk about the necessity, the biblical necessity, and I say it's a biblical necessity, of recognizing that we cannot, we dare not pretend that there is such thing as moral neutrality in doing apologetics.

12:41

Because there isn't. We are denying the lordship of Christ, we are denying a fundamental element of our belief when we say that there is a neutral ground upon which you and I, as human beings, can stand and then judge the existence of God.

12:59

I think that is, it's not only unbiblical, I think it is a denial of biblical truth.

13:07

And when Dr. Copan here, and I realize it's a blog article, but even in a blog article you can be accurate in your representation of the position that you're denying.

13:17

He does not accurately represent presuppositionalism just as classical apologetics, which was co -authored by Sproul and Lindsay and others.

13:26

Likewise, it's just amazing if you've actually read Van Til, if you've read

13:32

Bonson, you've listened to the debates, and you've maybe made some application, and you've worked through utilizing a presuppositional approach in arguing with an atheist, and then you read fellow

13:46

Christians trying to criticize the way you've done that, and you go, but that's not what

13:51

I believe. Wait a minute, no, I don't believe that. Why did you come to that conclusion?

13:57

Where did we ever say that? Didn't Dr. Van Til say this? Didn't Greg Bonson say that? And it's like they're not even listening to what we ourselves are saying in defense of our own methodology, and let alone are they listening to how we're doing apologetics.

14:15

It's just, it's frustrating. It really is frustrating to read these things, and you know,

14:25

I mean, to say, it's a very simplistic thing. I'm looking at the article here.

14:32

It says, in his objections, he says, first, it engages in question begging, assuming what one wants to prove.

14:41

It begins with the assumption that God exists, and then concludes that God exists. Such reasoning would get you an F in any logic class worthy of the name.

14:47

If you really think that that's all we're talking about, that we're just assuming the end to get to the end, then you don't have any idea why it is that we say that the entire

15:03

Christian message is based upon the reality that we are creatures, and if the biblical teaching is true, that the fear of the

15:16

Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and if the biblical teaching is true, that we are creatures made in the image of God, which comes up in the second part, second objection, then that has particular impact.

15:32

It has to. You can't make that secondary, and he then goes on to talk about logical laws, and yet he never grounds them in anything.

15:44

They just sort of exist, and we all share them in common. Well, why? The Christian has an answer for that.

15:51

The Christian has a grounding for why these laws of logic are binding and universal, and they're not just the consensus opinion of human beings, and all the rest of this stuff, and so it's just amazing that it could be said, well, it just begins with the assumption that God exists, and then concludes that God exists.

16:12

That is, wow, that's just not where we're coming from at all, and even later on it says, indeed the statements of Scripture themselves presuppose the validity of logical laws of non -contradiction and excluded middle.

16:28

They also appeal to criteria beyond Scripture, the court of appeals of historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection, things that were not done in a corner.

16:36

Here's where I again think that first and foremost, the first skill that an apologist should seek to be developing is not that of a philosopher, but that of an exegete, and to think that the

16:54

Apostle Paul is actually grounding the divine authority of the proclamation of the

17:01

Gospel in something that is above Scripture, as if those historical criteria that are, as he puts here, criteria beyond Scripture, have a validity that is either higher than Scripture or even equal to Scripture, is to really misunderstand what the

17:20

Apostle Paul is saying, and that is one of my biggest critiques of the leading evidentialist apologists is that,

17:31

I'm sorry, by and large they are lousy exegetes, and that also is reflected in the fact that the vast majority of them are not reformed in their soteriology, which likewise has exegetical issues.

17:42

But what I really wanted to look at was, second, Christians share common ground with unbelievers who are likewise made in God's image, which is not erased by the fall.

17:52

And I just have to get so frustrated. You have to be utilizing secondary sources to not recognize that your criticism is of a straw man.

18:06

I mean, have you not read Vantill? What is the common ground?

18:12

The common ground is the fact that we're made in the image of God. It's not, it is not the idea that as a result there is some kind of moral neutrality, because there is no morally neutral ground.

18:26

There is nothing that God has not created, there is nothing that is not what it is because God intended it to be that way, there is nothing of which the

18:33

Lordship of Christ does not reign supreme, and therefore there is no morally neutral ground I can stand on to say, let's reason from this point the existence of God because the ground

18:41

I stand on was made by God for the very purpose of me standing on it. And so what was then, what have we said over and over and over and over again as presuppositionalists?

18:56

The point of contact is that you're dealing with a creature of God who is suppressing his own knowledge of God and his own creatureliness.

19:11

That's the point of contact. So why is it an objection on the Gospel Coalition blog from the president of the

19:19

Evangelical Philosophical Society? Second, Christians share a common ground with unbelievers who are likewise made in God's image which is not erased by the fall.

19:29

Why does anyone think that Reformed people really do believe that the image of God is utterly eradicated?

19:37

It's just like they keep repeating this to themselves and we keep saying, no, no, we don't, no, we don't, no, we don't believe that.

19:45

Marred in the fall, all those things, yes, but eradicated?

19:52

I mean, yet in some

19:57

Reformed circles the doctrine of total depravity seems to leave no trace of the Imago Dei. Where?

20:04

And if you're critiquing Van Til, why not quote Van Til saying that? Because he can't because it's the very thing he said was the point of contact, for crying out loud.

20:15

It's just like, I just don't understand this. These people have all these degrees and yet when it comes to something that has some element related to Reformed theology,

20:27

I see the exact same attitude on their part toward us as I see from theological liberals and people like Bart Ehrman who come into a debate with me and they don't even google my name because they don't think we have anything meaningful to say.

20:41

And here it's happening as well. And it just, you know, there's just so much that could be said about that, but I want to be actually brief on this and get into the

20:55

William Lane Craig stuff, but I just wanted to point that out. You know, he says, as a cloud of apologetical witnesses can testify,

21:03

God has used philosophical arguments for his existence, scientific supports for the universe's beginning, big bang, and it's fine -tuning and historical evidences for the resurrection of Jesus to assist people in embracing

21:14

Christ just as God uses the preaching of the gospel. Now that, let me mention about that, just as?

21:20

No, sir. N -O, sir. Not just as. Don't you, don't you, please folks, listen to me and I hope you hear, and I hope

21:31

Paul Copan does not believe this, maybe he does, but when you put just as in italics, it sounds like you are making these apologetical witnesses such as philosophical arguments, scientific supports, fine -tuning, and historical evidences, you're putting them on the same par as the preaching of the gospel, and it is not in any way, shape, or form, and cannot be.

22:03

We are born again by the proclamation of God's truth. We are not born again by philosophical argumentation, and in fact, the direct assertion of 1

22:14

Corinthians chapter 1 is that in God's good pleasure, men by their reasoning, by their wisdom, will not come to know him.

22:24

We come to know him not by our philosophy, but by the foolishness of preaching, and I don't get the feeling that 1

22:33

Corinthians 1 and 2 is one of the favorite texts of many people who are very caught up in this philosophical methodology today.

22:45

God uses the preaching of the gospel to save, period, full stop, end discussion.

22:54

Now, can he use means of preparation? Well, first and foremost, without the work of regeneration, you're not going to get anywhere, but God can use many other things.

23:05

There are many things that in a subordinate way point to the truthfulness of Christianity, but when you replace the power of the gospel with the idea of the greater probability of the existence of a

23:22

God, that is where you see the fundamental difference between the apologetic methodologies we're discussing today, because this methodology is, well, you know, you take this argument, you know, this argument has about a 70 % chance, 70 -30, okay, and then this one's about a 60 -40, and you put them together, and you've got a little better probability, and this somehow becomes the greater probability of the existence of a

23:47

God, and once you've got to a God, then maybe we can, and that's just not how it works at all.

23:57

That is unbiblical. It is a clear evidence of someone starting with a methodology and creating a theology that, rather than having a full -born biblical theology, and then creating an apologetic methodology that accurately communicates that theological truth without compromise, and I would submit to you that it also very much touches upon very pragmatic issues.

24:25

That is, that methodology looks at what will work, and very often

24:33

I hear coming from these folks, well, that's not going to work, that's not going to work, all assuming that the real mechanism by which someone becomes convinced of the truth of Christianity is not the change of their heart and mind by the gospel of Jesus Christ, but it's something else.

24:50

It's the comprehensiveness and power of my argumentation, and I simply,

24:58

I simply absolutely reject that. Now, it's interesting, he finishes with saying, fourth, it is important to distinguish between the confident ground of our knowledge of God and the highly probable public case for the

25:13

Christian faith. I don't think there's any difference. That's another major difference between us.

25:20

We don't have, in our little conclave, confident ground of our knowledge of God, but that's just us.

25:30

That's not what we proclaim to others. We proclaim them something else, a highly probable public case for the

25:37

Christian faith. He says, the witness of the spirit, not a host of intellectual arguments, is what ultimately gives us confident knowledge that we belong to God, yet this does not exclude the spirits using highly probable or plausible public evidences for God's existence or for the resurrection of Jesus.

25:54

To what end? It doesn't say. To what end does he use that?

26:03

Knowledge in one area does not exclude knowledge in another. Having warrant for belief by the spirit is not the same as showing my belief is warranted using evidence and reason.

26:12

Really? Well, what's the final court of appeal here, anyways? So, you know, there's a sort of a tip of the hat to, well, you know, we need the witness of the spirit, but in the same breath, it's in essence saying, but the witness of the spirit is insufficient without these other things.

26:33

Well, to accomplish what? Once again, your theology determines the answer to this question.

26:38

The theology here is, you can have a basically moral neutral person, a morally neutral person, and it's good to have the witness of the spirit to get them farther down the road of Christianity, but to get them started, the work of the spirit's not enough.

26:54

We need to have these other external things, and that person is in a proper position to make judgments about the

27:02

God about whose knowledge he's already suppressing, anyways. That's what the criticism of presuppositionalism here, if you really listen to it, goes back to a fundamental starting point in your theology, and I know

27:25

I have young apologists out there who are torn because they hear the one side and they hear the other side, and look, one side gets to go to a whole lot more conferences than the other side, and there's a whole lot more money supporting the evidentialist

27:41

Arminian side. I understand that. I simply say to you that if you're going to call

27:46

Muslims, or Mormons, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or atheists, or Buddhists, or Hindus, or any of these people to consistency, then you must be consistent yourself, and if you are in a context where you are recognizing that apologetics comes from, it comes out of theology, don't compromise.

28:21

Your apologetics must reflect that. Very, very important.

28:28

So, with that, I want to press on, and I want to look at, listen to this reasonable faith conversation that took place at the

28:44

University of Florida. Hopefully, it will be of assistance to you, and I'm going to start off with an illustration that theology matters, and it is more important than philosophy.

29:03

This is actually the very end, and this was, well, let's just listen, and I'll hopefully be able to comment meaningfully at the end of it.

29:18

I'm a Christian, and one of the things that's really difficult for me, as I witness to unbelievers, is giving a good analogy of the

29:28

Trinity. Are there any good analogies out there that can represent the

29:33

Trinity, at least somewhat? Well, I have one, though it's sort of controversial.

29:42

A little bit. But yeah, I do have one, and I lay this out in J .P.

29:47

Moreland in my book, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Okay, you ready for this, folks?

29:52

I hope you're sitting down. And I think a good analogy for the Trinity is the mythological dog that guarded the gates of Hades in Greek mythology named

30:03

Kerberos. One of Hercules's tasks was to go and capture

30:09

Kerberos, who guarded the gates of Hades. Kerberos was a three -headed dog.

30:15

Now, that's really interesting, because what it means is Kerberos had three minds.

30:22

Canine minds, obviously, but we could invest these minds with self -consciousness and self -awareness if we wanted to, so that you would have three canine persons.

30:33

And yet, clearly, Kerberos was one dog. He was one animal. And these three minds had to work cooperatively in order for Kerberos to be an effective guard dog at Hades.

30:46

So it seems to me you have a very nice analogy here of three persons in one being, which is the doctrine of the

30:54

Trinity, that we have three persons that are one God. Thank you, Dr. Craig. I don't even know how to start.

31:11

I really, really don't know how to start. But you just listen.

31:18

The man who is considered to be the leading apologist in the

31:25

English -speaking world today, give as what he thinks is a great analogy for the

31:32

Trinity, a three -headed dog from ancient mythology.

31:42

And unfortunately, that was the last part of the presentation.

31:48

That's how it all ended, was with that. And as I said,

31:56

I don't remember where I was on Steinbeck Highway when that hit.

32:05

But it was undoubtedly dangerous as I listened to that. That is not a meaningful analogy for the doctrine of the

32:17

Trinity. On any level that I can possibly think of, as long as you actually understand the doctrine of the

32:23

Trinity and you understand being in person and the relationship of the persons.

32:32

And I can't begin to understand how anyone could even think that it is a good example of the doctrine of the

32:44

Trinity. If that young man had asked me that question,

32:53

I'll never, well, I'm not going to say I never, I did a pastor's forum in Honolulu just last night and they asked excellent questions.

33:02

But I won't ever have the opportunity of being one of the big guys because I do this.

33:08

Because it's politically incorrect in our day for me to be reviewing somebody else and saying, I don't think so, but I think it's absolutely necessary.

33:16

If that young man asked me that question, I would have said, well, there is no illustration of the

33:26

Trinity that is going to function because the doctrine of the Trinity is absolutely unique.

33:31

And what you need to communicate to someone in the apologetic context is that since God exists absolutely uniquely, if there was an illustration of the

33:40

Trinity, he wouldn't actually be unique. And therefore, this is God's revelation of himself to us.

33:48

We need to accept the parameters of his revelation of himself. And I would want to try to inculcate in the mind of that person a need to respect not only the range of God's revelation, he has revealed himself in this way, but also the fact that he is under no obligation to go beyond what he has revealed to us and to answer every single other question that we might want to ask.

34:17

And that is that's how I would respond. The idea of going to cerebrus and which some there's, in case you haven't noticed, there's two different ways of pronouncing

34:29

Latin C's. Cerebrus and cerebrus would be, you know, it's like Cicero and Cicero, etc.

34:37

Anyway, would never cross my mind. And I don't think should cross anyone else's mind either.

34:44

I think the 800 pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the room is people are wondering is if you were sitting on the stage, answering questions, and the guy who went before you answered that question, and then you're next in line to say something, what would you have said?

35:04

Well, I would have been stuck if it was a question and answer type thing.

35:10

And you have a panel. I obviously could not possibly have kept my mouth shut. I and that's why that people ask me, why aren't you at this big conference?

35:18

Why aren't you at that big conference? This is why I could not have kept my mouth shut. I have commitments that would just I couldn't do it.

35:25

I'd have to correct that. And that's, that's dangerous. That's a loose cannon. See, and that's politically incorrect.

35:31

And that's why it's normally just me, myself and I. But no, I, I cannot imagine the theologically sound folks in the audience and what they were thinking when this thing ended.

35:54

I don't, I don't know. But there it was. Now, there was a good response in here, too.

36:02

So I suppose I should balance the face planting, you've got to be kidding me element with the a good one.

36:11

And I think this is it. I, I can't figure out how to edit the names of my markers in this program yet.

36:17

I need to find that out. But I think this is the one if it isn't, I'll stop and start. Let's see if this is the one where I went, hey, that was a really, really good response.

36:26

After the panel that you appeared on with. Oh, that's not it. No, that's a funny one. Maybe it's this one.

36:33

The Bible is authoritative and divinely. No, that's not it. Let's try this one. Come on.

36:39

Let's get to this one here. Let's try that one. Simple question and I'm kind of loaded. Why is

36:46

Christianity? No, that's a that's a good question, too. Heart, free person,

36:51

God. After the panel that you and my question has to do with the religious history, religious history in the

37:00

Mediterranean. And it appears as though the Jesus bio, as it was, was going around the

37:06

Mediterranean for a thousand years before him, as well as in, for example,

37:13

Osiris's son, Horus, has pretty much the exact same bio. And I was wondering how you reconcile your faith and historical accounts of the time.

37:22

You know, I have to say in all gentleness that that's just based on misinformation.

37:29

This is this is garbage that's spread on the Internet that just isn't true.

37:35

And what's really funny about this is that these people who say this kind of thing never seem to quote the primary sources.

37:44

They tell you that this is in Osiris or Horus, but you never see the primary sources quoted.

37:50

When you look at the primary sources, you find out they're not at all parallel to the

37:56

Gospels. And this movement to try to explain Jesus of Nazareth and Christianity against the backdrop of pagan mythology,

38:06

Greco -Roman and other religions, was very popular back around the late 1800s or so in Germany.

38:19

And the movement soon collapsed for two reasons. One was that when you examined the primary sources closely, they weren't really parallel.

38:29

The parallels were spurious. There's nothing comparable, for example, to the resurrection of Jesus in pagan religions.

38:37

Secondly, in any case, there was no causal connection between these myths and Jesus of Nazareth or the earliest disciples.

38:47

In fact, one of the things that has characterized contemporary scholarship about the historical

38:54

Jesus is what has been called the Jewish reclamation of Jesus.

38:59

What has happened is that New Testament scholars have come to understand that Jesus of Nazareth was a

39:05

Jew, and all of the disciples were Jews, and that therefore it is against the backdrop of first century

39:12

Palestinian Judaism that Jesus is to be properly understood, not against the background of pagan mythology and pagan religion.

39:22

And so what scholars have come to appreciate is this earlier approach back in the late 1800s, which is completely wrongheaded, because it didn't understand the

39:32

Jewishness of Jesus. And when you read Jesus against a Jewish milieu, the credibility of the

39:39

Gospels has been tremendously enhanced. And this is, as I say, a movement that is in part being spearheaded by Jewish scholars and historians.

39:49

And I spoke with James Crossley at the University of Sheffield a few years ago about this

39:54

Jewish reclamation of Jesus, and I said, why do you think it was that this approach to Jesus in German theology used this pagan mythology as the interpretive grid for Jesus when it's so obviously wrong?

40:10

And he said it was because of German anti -Semitism. And all of a sudden the light just sort of went on for me.

40:16

I thought, oh man, this is exactly the same sort of anti -Semitism that led to National Socialism in Germany right up through the

40:24

Second World War. They wanted an Aryan Jesus. They didn't want a

40:29

Jewish Jesus. And so New Testament theology was derouted into interpreting

40:37

Jesus in the framework of these pagan religions, which is a total distortion of who

40:43

Jesus really was. So I would encourage you, you should just divest yourself of this point of view.

40:51

It's utterly outmoded among scholars. There's a very good article that I can refer you to on this.

40:57

It's by Mark Forman, and it's going to be in the volume called, Come Let Us Reason, which is being edited by myself and Paul Copan with Broadman and Holman.

41:09

It's coming out probably in a month or two. And Mark has a wonderful analysis of the

41:14

Zeitgeist movie. Have you heard of that movie, Zeitgeist? It makes this claim about Horus and Egyptian religion.

41:22

And Mark Forman just takes this to pieces. I mean, it's a piece of theological and historical dismantlement.

41:30

So look at Forman's piece, if you don't believe me, and see if what

41:36

I've said isn't correct. So I agree a thousand percent.

41:42

Excellent response. I loved out how straight off he says, that's just bunk.

41:50

That's just ridiculous. And even though the guy had said he was a history major, something like that.

41:56

So hats off. That's great. Unfortunately, that was the minority of stuff in the conversation, but I thought that was really well done.

42:09

Now, we'll listen to some of what they did is they had a guy from the university interview

42:14

Craig and they went back and forth and they started taking questions. It was about 50 -50, actually a little bit less than that, about 40 -60, 40 % just those two talking and 60 % questions.

42:25

This one I found was a little bit interesting because it was obviously a guy that was prepared.

42:32

He had all the quotes lined up. And well, I just found it interesting because I've faced similar accusations.

42:41

Let's listen to it. After the panel that you appeared on with the late Christopher Hitchens, you referred to him in an interview with Christian radio as quote, and this is on YouTube, Weasley, oily and lacking an intellectual substance.

42:56

You then referred to in your debate with Richard Carrier while he was there to him as a hack.

43:02

You also referred to fans as Richard Dawkins in an interview, and this is also on YouTube.

43:08

Dawkins is so popular because people are so unsophisticated, inept, sophomoric, they cannot think logically, uninformed, silly, ignorant, and the result, and this is your words, of an educational system that has been dumbed down.

43:29

Miss Craig, quite frankly, is this hypocrisy or is this just a glimpse of the real

43:36

William Lane Craig? Well, I think it's a glimpse of the real William Lane Craig.

43:49

No, no, I don't know that. But no, maybe it's important to describe what an ad hominem is.

43:56

That means literally against the man. And what an ad hominem argument would be is that the reason you reject his conclusion is because you attack his person.

44:10

Maybe like attacking me, you know, for these aspersions. No, wait, let me finish.

44:16

It would be like saying that my conclusions are wrong because I've said all of these nasty things.

44:23

See, that would be an ad hominem argument. But in none of these cases that you've quoted where you've compiled words, not strung together at once, but you put them together, in none of these cases,

44:35

I think, will you find that I ever reject a person's argument or conclusions on that basis.

44:42

Rather, these were probably said in response to questions like tonight, where I said some pretty negative things about folks rejecting

44:51

God for emotional reasons rather than intellectual reasons. And I would certainly reiterate what

44:57

I said about the lack of sophistication and the dumbed down educational system. But in no case is this committing an ad hominem fallacy where I say that their conclusions are wrong because of those things.

45:12

I've been asked to characterize certain things as I was tonight, and I've given my honest characterization that I would stand by.

45:22

I mean, I think it is true, all of those things that I said. But it's not an ad hominem fallacy.

45:29

At most, it would be impolite, maybe. You could indict me for being impolite, but okay.

45:35

Okay. Well, I was impolite, but what

45:45

I said was true. So I'm not really sure how you can speak truth without being impolite,

45:52

I guess, about that. But anyway, well, let's just continue on with these questions.

45:58

I don't really have any comment on that. I just found it rather intriguing. And my question has to do with the religious history, the religious history and the meditation.

46:06

Yeah, yeah, we already got that one. The Bible is authoritative. Now, this one really does illustrate a fundamental difference, very, very deep fundamental difference between the two perspectives that we are talking about today.

46:24

Once again, obviously, I believe that mine is a consistently biblical methodology of apologetics and a system that I think argues you shouldn't be concerned about biblical consistency.

46:39

You should be concerned pragmatically and philosophically about what works in our society. Here's a young man, and he's asking

46:48

William Lane Craig, how can I defend the authority of the Bible? And well, listen, listen to what happens.

46:54

The Bible is authoritative and divinely inspired. And I find that in evangelistic conversations, that would be really beneficial to proof, just to kind of make a case for who

47:06

Jesus is and the existence of God himself. And so I was wondering if you might give us your best defense for the inspiration of the scriptures and then the authoritative.

47:15

Well, I take a very different perspective, actually, than you do. If you've ever seen some of the debates or talks that I give,

47:23

I really stay away from that claim. And I encourage unbelievers not to think of the

47:29

Bible as divinely inspired, but I encourage them to look at it as just an ordinary collection of historical documents, like Tacitus, Annals, or Thucydides' Peloponnesian Wars, coming down out of the first century, written in the

47:45

Greek language, telling this amazing story about this man, Jesus of Nazareth. And ask yourself, how credible are these documents as history?

47:55

And in order to show that, you see, you don't need to show they're divinely inspired, you don't need to show they're inerrant, you don't need to show they're contradiction -free, you just need to show that these are pretty reliable historical sources for the life of this man,

48:10

Jesus of Nazareth. And on that basis alone, then, I think a person can make a commitment to this man, having come to believe who he was and that God raised him from the dead.

48:22

And then you begin to reflect upon the nature of the Bible and say, is this just a human product?

48:30

Maybe it's more than a human product. Maybe it's a divinely inspired human product.

48:35

So I see that conclusion as coming much later down the road. It's an issue for Christians who reflect theologically on Scripture.

48:46

And I guess you asked me for the best reason I would give. I would say the best reason would be because that's the way

48:52

Jesus of Nazareth regarded the Old Testament. Now, I'll just stop there, because once again

48:58

I'm seeing people in Channel and elsewhere banging heads against walls and doing other physical damage themselves, similar to the cerebrus as the best illustration of the

49:10

Trinity, three -headed dogs from Greek mythology. And now, you just treat the

49:18

Bible like it's Pliny or Tacitus or something like that. And it's just, you know, it's pretty reliable.

49:25

And on that basis, you get them to make a commitment. A commitment, Dr. Craig, to what? See, here again, theology matters.

49:37

And we have to ask the question, commitment to what? Just a general assent to the possibility that Jesus might have been a little something other than a normal teacher?

49:48

What is the foundation? On what foundation can you build a commitment to the

49:56

Lordship of Jesus Christ? Or is that just a reflection that comes along later?

50:05

Now, this is why when people listen, I mean, there's a Roman Catholic in Channel right now.

50:15

And while we were listening to this, he's going, I like William Lane Craig. You know, and I'm just sitting here, just sitting here going, well, okay,

50:23

I understand why this doesn't connect because there's a lot of things that aren't connecting there. But when you listen to that, if red flags are not flying, if alarm bells are not going off, then

50:38

I am concerned about you engaging the world because you should see there's a fundamental epistemological contradiction in what is being said here.

50:50

And this is where, this is why what William Lane Craig and people like him argue for is the greater probability of the existence of a

50:59

God. And that's also why the gospel is so often negotiable amongst these folks.

51:06

That's why they're into the C .S. Lewis, mere Christianity stuff, because they don't have a certain word.

51:14

They don't have a certain revelation. They have a probability. And then the rest is just, well, we can think about it.

51:22

We can ponder it. And, you know, what you come out, it's up to you type of a situation.

51:27

As I'm listening to him say this, I'm thinking of an old rock song. Jesus is just all right with me.

51:35

Well, Jesus is just all right by me. I think he may have listened to that just a few many times.

51:41

Well, but see, let's recall, I didn't cue this up, but let's recall that it wasn't that many months ago that I played a clip from a debate that Craig had just done with an atheist where his one of his final one.

51:59

Well, the end of the debate, the last question was Craig saying, well, we should allow this atheist to be a non -inerrancy believing

52:11

Christian, because if that's the only thing keeping him away, then let him make his commitment to Jesus and not worry about inerrancy.

52:20

He can believe the Bible's wrong. And we're all left going, excuse me, what Jesus is he committing to?

52:28

Well, we can't ask that question because you actually have to have a sound word, a firm word, a clear word from God to know who

52:35

Jesus is. So that's why I guess he gets to just choose whatever Jesus he wants and just edit

52:44

Jesus down and make him as small as he wants him to be. Or Jesus only says the things that he wants him to say.

52:51

But we're going to call that Christianity. No, it's not Christianity. And the funny thing is,

52:56

Craig was just saying, I think one of the greatest arguments for biblical authority is that that was Jesus' view. Hello? Then why do you make that an optional thing?

53:06

Do you really think that you can function on a completely different epistemology than the one

53:12

Jesus functioned on? Bring someone by your brilliant arguments to accept Jesus as Lord based upon merely, basically reliable historical documents.

53:24

They're basically reliable. Do you really think that something as amazing as the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the second coming of Jesus Christ, the deity of Christ, the fact that he's

53:35

God in human flesh, the creator of this massive universe, actually became incarnate upon a pale blue dot in an insignificant solar system, and you can get there from generally reliable historical documents?

53:47

Really? Honestly? And then once you're there, then turn around and do the damage control to repair the ravaging of the

53:58

Bible that you allowed the person to do to get to the point where they did God the favor of actually believing what he had to say about something.

54:06

I mean, it's just so backwards. It's a bait and switch game.

54:14

I think if these guys were selling something, the authorities would be on them, because they're advertising one thing and delivering something else and then going back and saying, well, you know, when we said that it was okay for you to sort of be an autonomous judge of God, and you know, we pretended to have a neutral ground, a morally neutral ground that we were lying.

54:36

We really don't believe that. What we want you to believe now is that Jesus really is the creator of all things, the

54:41

Lord of all things. And we realize that what that means is you're gonna have to completely change your epistemology.

54:46

And we realize what that actually means is we were lying to you. We were deceiving you. We were holding stuff back. We actually couldn't argue the way that we were arguing.

54:54

We actually contradicted ourselves, but that's okay. We hope you don't mind. We hope we've friendshiped you in enough now that you're willing to make the shift.

55:04

Folks, I don't want to act like Mormons. I don't want to be a

55:10

Mormon in my apologetic methodology. You say, what do you mean? I know I've said over,

55:15

I've seen it happen. The Mormons will get you into the baptistry on the absolute minimum amount of information.

55:25

And then hopefully you'll so enjoy the fellowship and the friends that you've gotten and the dances after the meetings and stuff like that, that once you start actually encountering biblical truth,

55:39

I'm sorry, Mormon truth, I was making application. Once you start encountering what Mormons teach, then you'll accept it.

55:45

And that's what these guys are saying. They'll say, well, you know, we're going to hold some of this back. We're not going to really tell you about how.

55:51

I mean, it's offensive to say that there is no moral neutral ground and that God is your judge. You don't get to judge

55:56

God. You are a creature. And as a creature, you're judged by God. You don't get to judge God or his existence. That's offensive to folks.

56:02

That doesn't work for modern, postmodern folks and people in our culture. And so we'll just hold that stuff back, try to trick you in, and then hope that you like it enough that eventually once you really start realizing what we're really saying, you'll accept it.

56:20

I don't believe that that is something that Christians should be doing.

56:26

And so even in giving the response, I wonder what this poor kid, kid, okay,

56:32

I'm old enough to call him a kid now, but this poor college student was thinking when he asked a guy who's supposed to be one of the greatest living

56:46

Christian apologists around, how do I defend the authority of the word of God today?

56:52

I don't do that. I think you should just start off by arguing it's got no more spiritual authority than Pliny or Tacitus or Suetonius.

57:06

And then once you've fooled folks into that, later on, you can reflect upon these things.

57:17

I have one simple question for you folks. Show me, can you show me anywhere, anywhere in the

57:24

New Testament where the Lord Jesus Christ or any one of the apostles engaged in that kind of apologetics?

57:33

And don't even start going to Acts 17, because I'll blow you away on that. They didn't.

57:39

They didn't do it. They recognized if God has spoken, that has to be our final authority.

57:46

And that's where we start. And the Spirit of God will bless that. We'll continue listening to these things and many others.

57:55

But remember, we're going to have to get started half an hour early on Thursday, because right after the program's over,

58:01

I've got the ABN debate that I hope you'll be praying for and you'll be watching as well on Surah 4, 157, the

58:06

Crucifixion. That'll be Thursday evening. We'll see you then at 3 .30 our time, which is now

58:13

Pacific Daylight time, which is Mountain Standard time, which is, oh, good grief, quit playing with our clocks.

58:18

Thanks for listening. See you later. God bless. It's been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

59:17

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

59:22

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

59:28

World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N -dot -O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.