Keep sharing good news without ads.
In this episode Eli Ayala talks with Street Apologist, Vocab Malone about the strengths of presuppositional apologetics.
Welcome to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Elias Ayala, and today I have a very special guest, the street apologist, Vocab Malone. Is there a nickname you go by? Like a short, I mean, your name sounds cool, just saying the whole thing.
I mean, what? Yeah, yeah, Vocab Malone is pretty much, that's the nickname. And the street apologist, you know, the way it works is kind of like, it's the idea of it's the street apologist show or street apologist media.
Not that I'm necessarily the street apologist, you know what I mean? But it kind of gets all muddled together and, you know, it is what it is. But yeah, I just go by Vocab. And then for the show, I say that we like to serve the underserved and look into the overlooked.
And then at the end of every episode, I tell people, come back next week where we make apologetics fun again. And the idea there is, was it really ever fun? I don't know, but we're gonna make it fun as I want you to preach or say, not that I'm a fundamentalist, but I thought it was funny.
We put the fun back in fundamentalism. That's what's up.
Very good, very good. Okay, see, he's got a sparky personality. So hopefully this won't be a drag for a lot of people. Someone's asking me, why am I inviting, why am I inviting a Muslim apologist? Someone said they watched you in a debate this morning that Allah was the true God and that Christ is not divine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I destroyed Anthony Rogers. I proved to him beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is not God and the New Testament is not to be trusted. Oh man.
Well, for people who don't know who you are, just to throw it out there before I kind of do some introductory comments here, Wocab is a reformed Christian and he believes in the deity of Christ, the inspiration of scripture.
And of course he can get into that later on as the topic that we're gonna be covering today has very much to do with the inspiration of scripture and the role of the Bible as our ultimate authority. So we'll get into that in just a few moments, but just by way of quick announcements, I'm excited to announce that on April 27th, God willing, I have Doug Wilson to come on to talk a little bit about presuppositional apologetics as well.
I know that you guys who are used to listening to my channel and my episodes that we cover a wide range of apologetical issues, but I love to focus on presuppositional methodology as I think it is the biblical methodology.
But there's much to learn from those other methods as well. Also, I'm in the works, just nailing a date and contacting the proper people. But if you remember the last episode, I had Kevin Harris on from Reasonable Faith and he is going to hook me up with a interview with Dr. William Lane Craig.
So I'll keep you guys tuned in for that as well. And so we are in the process of getting some really interesting guests to talk about a wide range of issues. But today we're talking about presuppositional apologetics.
I am all ready for today. I have my signed copy by Van Til himself of Defense of the Faith. A good friend gave this to me. And as I was looking through this, because the cool thing about this old copy here is every now and then I'll gaze at it, because I think this is cool.
I'm like, man, he signed this, this is pretty cool. And as I was flipping through the pages, a letter that Van Til wrote to the gentleman that gave me this book fell out. So I got Van Til's mail up in here.
Let me see if I can get this up here. He got bad, he's got terrible. Is this a true story? Are you like making something up, bro? No, this is a true story. Oh, I'm dead. I'm dead honest about this. Here, let's check that out, bro.
That's, let me see if I can get on the camera. My friend is a retired pastor and he is very much rolling in the OPC. He knew Van Til personally, Bonson personally. And he had a copy of Defense of the Faith, a signed copy, which every time he would invite me to his office, I'd always leave with a book.
And every time I go to his office, I'd be like, you wanna part with this one? He goes, no, I don't know if I'm ready to part with that one. But eventually I softened them up. He gave it to me, but I don't think he realized that there was, I mean, you can barely read it, but it's a letter that Van Til wrote to him.
But it's looks like probably when he was on his last legs, very old, he couldn't really, can't really read. I still can't even read it.
Is he like cursing him out or something like that?
If he is, it's probably written in Dutch or. Secret Dutch curses. Yeah, I mean, look at this, bro. I can't even read that. I mean, he's got very shaky handwriting. So it was probably when he was like much older.
I wish that the,.
Oh, wait, it looks like he predicted coronavirus in that letter. It says, in 2020, there'll be a plague from, oh, I'm just kidding. Sorry, man, I have a twisted sense of humor.
No, it's all right, I'm the same way. But you know what? If he would have, I thought you were gonna say like he prophesied. I didn't know that he was charismatic, but he probably couldn't be given the OPC position that he holds.
But be that as it may, I'm a huge fan of Van Til. I'm a very big fan of Greg Bonson. But I understand, I listened to your stream, I think it was last night or the other night, you were on with David Wood and you guys were talking some pre-sup, which I really enjoyed, but I heard that you were more of like a Framian guy, right?
Yeah, so let's see. What do I got? I brought, did I bring my Frame books? Oh, I only grabbed my, I left the other ones on the table. Maybe I can sneak away and grab my other set of books. I brought my classical evidential books here just so people can see.
But in a second, I'll go grab my other ones. Yeah, so I would be more John Frame and I like a lot of things that Frame does. So I liked it. Frame looks at things in very nuanced ways. So, you know, if you've read anything by Frame, you know, he loves to draw triangles and put three sides of an issue or perspectives of an issue on the triangles to get kind of a full or view of something.
He does that in regards to theology and apologetics and things like that called tri-perspective, tri-perspective, I can never say it.
Tri-perspectivalism.
Yeah, that I is what I always messed up on. The I is what always gets me.
You're a street apologist. You gotta use all the technical terminology, you know?
Yeah, so he, like, for example, in relationship to the title Lord for God, you know, he'll say that he has the power, the authority and the presence, things like that, which is basically might, right, in being here and being involved, that is.
And then he does that with everything. He even has a little book on that thing of tri-perspectivalism. And I find that helpful. I like that he's a little more nuanced in those ways. And, you know, he doesn't totally agree with Vantill on everything.
He's a little more friendly to basically what I would call reworking classical evidential arguments within a Vantillian or presuppositional context. He says that you can take arguments that are direct arguments and make them into indirect arguments since Vantillians really wanna go for indirect arguments.
And that's why they like the transcendental argument, which I agree with all of that. But I also think I like the creativity and flexibility I see in Frame's position. And I like sort of some of the passionate aspects.
He says a lot of being a presuppositionalist is sort of a heart attitude. And he tries to find common ground, yet he still defends presuppositional thought at the end of the day. I still think he's a proper student of Vantill despite what smarter people, there's smarter people than me who don't agree with that.
He wrote a book on Vantill's thought, you know, much like Bonson and some of the interpretations are different. And so I'm still learning about Frame and trying to get him on my show. I mean, I've been reading him for years, but he writes large books.
And so you got to go from the again and again, and then listen to his lectures on iTunes, you from RTS to kind of put those two things together. So I, you know, I'm always kind of doing all that. I'd love one day to try to be a guy who popularized Frame, but I don't know if it's ever going to be possible, but it sure would be cool to help do that.
So that's my perspective on it. Not that I'm against everything else. I just like the flexibility and creativity of Frame. And so that's where I'm at with things.
Yeah, yeah. I completely agree. I'm more of a, I'm along the lines of Bonson. So I don't, it would be important to kind of explain the differences between Bonson and Frame and Vantill, because there are some nuances there.
But I actually met John Frame when I was out in Orlando on vacation with my family. I was like, we're near RTS. Let me go take a trip over there and see if he'll, if he'll have me. And he was nice enough to, you know, invite me into his office and we spoke a little bit.
Of course, he has a very fun way of speaking. He's all, well, oh, and his desk was covered with books and this guy, brilliant guy, very learned guy, but very, very much down to earth, very much of an evangelistic heart, which is really good to see in somebody who is of the intellectual stature that he is.
But one interesting thing that he told me, which was related to something you just said with Frame's desire to kind of rework the traditional proofs is, I hope he wasn't offended by this, but I brought up Bonson a lot.
So he's probably thinking, I thought you were coming to ask me questions of talking about Bonson, but he was happy to talk about Bonson. And he actually said that one of Bonson's dreams was to take presuppositionalism to the streets, which is something that you would resonate very much with, taking some of that high intellectual power of the presuppositionalist thinkers like Vantill and Bonson, and Bonson wanted to bring that to kind of the everyday person.
But he said prior to his death, Bonson was in the process of trying to work on a book that would rework some of the traditional arguments within a presuppositional framework. And I think this is important because the caricature of presuppositionalism is often that they recoil at the use of evidences.
Why don't you explain for folks why the presuppositionalist has no problem using something like evidence?
Well, running around the internet, you find people who almost basically affirm almost every position there is. And so sometimes I run into guys that do look like they're the equivalent of, you know how some people flatten it out and they kind of view all Calvinists as hyper-Calvinists?
Yes. I think there's a such thing, I don't know what the proper term would be, it's almost like hyper-preceptors who almost jump over the edge into what some guys accuse us of doing, which is fideism and like kind of jump over.
But I don't think that's most people. And I think a lot of it has to do with sort of the order in which you do things in, and also a willingness to confront unbelief with scripture. And so there's this idea usually, and a lot of other apologetic systems that you, for example, we prove the resurrection and then we'll go on to kind of like who was the man behind that event and those kinds of things.
The presuppositional model to me is more the whole enchilada of Christianity. It says, no, we start with God and that's where you need to start to make this work. Now let's discuss. And it's almost like the context, as long as it's sort of set in a presuppositional way, then we can discuss what evidence really means.
But I think a true preceptor will do things like basically kind of remind the person they're speaking with the fact that this only makes sense in God's world. Remind the person of, it doesn't have to be in a rude way, basically the silliness, the foolishness of unbelief and those kinds of things.
And so like James White, him and I have differences over here and over there, but one thing I appreciate is that if you watch a lot of his debates, it's not like he's not getting into the evidence. It's not like he's not bringing forth evidence that he does that, but he'll do so in a presuppositional way.
My favorite example is probably the debate with Ehrman. Sometimes people say Bart Ehrman, where the question was about the preservation of the text and even just simple wording, I think is helpful. And I think this relates to 1 Peter 3 15, which is like the idea of first, you set apart the fact, the reality that Christ is Lord, first of all, which is a proof text for the divinity of Jesus ultimately, but it's this recognition of his Lordship.
And so your scholarship, your research, your rhetoric, all of that falls under his authority. And so one thing that James White kept on saying in this debate was, how has God preserved his word? So it was as if when he was defending against the accusations of Bart Ehrman, he was also saying, God has done this.
Now the question is, how has he done this? How has he faithfully preserved his word? It wasn't as if he was sort of basically ever joining in with Bart's doubt, Bart's hyper skepticism and that kind of thing.
And I think things like that are helpful, yet evidence is presented, because then you're talking about P66 and Chester B and all these other kinds of things. And so I find that helpful. Now, I actually believe that if I'm not mistaken, that particular debate, I think it was that one, there were some preceptors who criticized him after that.
And like I said, I've had disagreements with them, but that's not one place I would criticize him on because they basically said, why did you succumb to the Bart's unbelief here with this and that? And I don't think that that is what he did.
So just the idea that we're not opposed to evidence because I think we can see it in scripture itself, but it's this whole project of, we never lay down the Bible as God's word. We sort of don't act like that's not the case.
You know what I mean? We never put that away. We never, basically we don't seek to make the bullseye super big. We keep the bullseye the size it is, because we know it's only going to be a supernatural thing that makes the arrow hit the target in the first place.
We let it be what it is and then discuss, you know? And so
Well, okay, why don't you expand on what you just said there? What do you mean by making the target, not just merely making the target big? I think what you're referring to there is the whole mere Christianity approach in the way that we defend the Christian faith.
Am I correct there?
To an extent. So, you know, I'm not a guy who likes to do too much armchair quarterbacking in a sense of like, you know, every Christian who has a debate, well, I would have said this. I don't get into that.
However, it doesn't mean I don't recognize differences in our theology as fellow brothers and sisters, as different strands and types and stripes within our theological system. That does show up, if there's a consistency there, in our evangelistic and indeed apologetic conversation.
So I recognize that reality. And it's sort of a stereotype, but I think there's some truth to it where you'll sometimes hear reformed people say things like, well, look, why do Now, this is a little bit of a stereotype, so I apologize to all of my Arminian friends out there, but they maybe say, why do the Arminians need to bring out smoke machines and turn down the lights and beat drums and give countdowns and weeping and wailing and 32 refrains of just as I am?
Why do they need to do that? Because they ultimately believe they can bend the will and they believe they can act upon the will in this way. Now, again, some of that stereotype, but it's not like all Arminians are into those sort of either megachurch or hyper revivalistic tendencies.
And to a certain extent, I actually grew up that way. So I know what they're talking about. Whereas whatever flaws they may have, because sometimes I see a passion lacking in some reformed presentations of the gospel, where it's just a head game and that's not a, I don't think that's really the full person either.
However, you generally speaking, don't see reformed folks making those kinds of errors because they don't have this notion that, well, we're gonna bend and shape this person's will. If we don't say just the right thing or do just this right thing, you know what I'm saying?
Then it's not gonna work out because they ultimately understand only a miraculous event, which is the Holy Spirit supplying the necessary precondition, which is faith, which is the trust. Without the Holy Spirit implanting that in the heart, there is no regeneration.
There is no faith. It's not gonna happen. And so we wanna be faithful messengers. And again, I'm not saying we always do this. I'm not saying I always do this. I'm not saying that no one else but reformed people get this right.
I'm not saying anything like that, but I'm just saying that comes across unapologetic. So generally speaking, you don't find reformed apologists, if they're presuppositional, saying things like, I'm not here to defend an errancy.
We don't need to defend an errancy tonight. Or we're not sure for certain who made the resurrection of Jesus happen, but God's a pretty good candidate, don't you think? Things like that are sort of anathema.
And to a certain extent, I think they, and when I say anathema, I don't literally mean that people are cursed. I'm just saying, we're like, whoa! You know, don't wanna, don't wanna, because it's like, is that what an apostle would do?
Now, to the people's credit doing that, they found Jesus, Jesus found them is more accurate, but you know, they think they've found Jesus. And they want people listening to experience that same love, so they care about them.
And they're trying to, you know, okay, what's the, so I get all that. And sometimes again, I think reformed people need to make sure we keep that evangelistic, passionate approach, and considering the audience and all of that kind of stuff.
And so I'm very, try to be sympathetic or empathetic, but I think it's a problem, because we've got to say, is that, is, guys, is that, is that a faithful witness? Is that really how we wanna do this?
Is that the kind of stuff we wanna say? I don't think so. I don't think it is. So, so, so why are we doing those kinds of things? And at the end of the day, you go back a few steps and it has to do with essentially the type of methodology that you hold to.
Right, now, of course, the methodology is very much connected to our theological convictions. And so you made mention there real quick, where people try to, in their apologetical approach, and even in their evangelistic approach, to bend the will of the person they're trying to convince.
Even psychologically with the countdown screen, it's like, I don't wanna receive Jesus, but it's, there's only 10 seconds. I gotta go. You know, it's like psychologically, you wanna, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty intense.
So, but when we argue for say the resurrection and we say, hey, we're not saying that it's necessarily, you know, 100 accurate. Do you think that that methodology is wrapped up in someone's theology of salvation?
In other words, this issue of faith preceding regeneration versus regeneration preceding faith, that we present arguments in such a way because we think they play a certain role given our wider theology.
What would you say to that? Yeah, I do. But I also recognize, you know, I said I managed to grab my classical evidential books, but my precept stack I left on the kitchen table still, you know, there's exceptions.
So, you know, Gerstner, who was a mentor. I'm breaking out in hives. I'm breaking out in hives. And then you got Sproul, you know, they defended a classical approach to apologetics and gave what they called a critique of presuppositional apologetics.
Now, whether they were successful in their critique or not, I'll leave that up to the reader, but the answer is no. And these are reformed men, but they defended a different approach. And so we would share their soteriology.
Now, I wouldn't share his pedo-baptism, but I would share his soteriology. And yet there's differences of methodology. And every now and then I run into a person who's not really reformed, but is quasi or almost very presuppositional in their approach.
And to me, I, you know, I appreciate that. Cause I run into other people that you say the word presupp, and it's like, they break out in hives, you know? And so I do think so. And so that's why I've heard some interesting things where I've heard my brothers who were classical or evidentialist sometimes say something like, they offer a critique of presuppositional apologetics and in their critique, they'll be saying, well, it's not just a, you know, one method may be more effective or this or that.
And it's almost as if they believe one of the reasons we've adopted presuppositionalism. Now I've heard this, I don't know about you, I'm just saying in my own life, they've seemed to think, some of them, that we've adopted presuppositionalism because we find it simply just more effective.
Sure. And that is A pragmatic approach. Yeah, that's, and it's, I'm almost like, what? I think maybe, maybe they're, it's almost like a little projection, like where they feel like what they have is a more practical approach.
And I'll hear them critique preceptors like, well, you know, you think it works, but is it? And I'm like, wait, no, no, no, no, no. Like, I'm not a, I'm not adopt, I never adopted this because I thought this is the pragmatic way and we keep a score sheet of, you know, who did better.
Like, was it Josh McDowell or, you know, was it some, no one's doing, I'm not doing, it's not that, it's we're trying to get to the bottom by God's grace, at least. What is the most biblical model? Right.
What does it look like the prophets were doing in regards to this? What does it look like the apostles were doing in regards to this? What does it look like even in the conversations of Jesus? What does this look like when you go to specific texts that have direct bearing on unbelief, direct bearing on evangelism, direct bearing on apologetics?
And that's where I think a full or presuppositional model is supposed to come from, it's supposed to be exegetical. Now, one last thing I'll say, and I'm not the first person to say this, Vanto himself was raised in an environment, steep, not only in Dutch Calvinism, but in scripture.
So his father's always reading him scripture, you know, after every meal and all that. And so when Vanto writes and speaks, he is writing saturated with that kind of verbiage and general framework and stuff.
However, when it comes to exegeting or referencing lots of specific scriptures, he's not doing that a lot. I'm not saying never, I'm just saying that's not there as much as maybe we would like. And so I think it's like the second, third, fourth, fifth generation.
One of the things we come along and do and say, what are the proper, specific, explicit scriptures that we apply to this? And that relates to apologetics, because one thing I heard John Frame say that I like is one way to define apologetics is simply scripture applied to unbelief.
And I found that a fascinating way to do it. And I agree. And again, it's not about what's more pragmatic. We're trying to get at what's more biblical and it's not a contest of, well, I'm more biblical than you.
It's just, don't we all want that?
No, I hope we all want that. And that's what we're trying to get after. And I think that this is one of the benefits of studying presuppositional apologetics just as a personal discipline is that because the methodology we see is so rooted in scripture, it's not like you're studying hours and hours of the complexity of the eye or astrophysics, all important aspects that we wanna integrate into our apologetic.
But when we're studying the methodology, you're automatically immersed. I mean, look at the writings of Greg Bonson. You're automatically immersed in scripture because scripture plays that central role in our worldview.
Why don't you kind of unpack that for people? In what way do presuppositionalists see scripture as the central foundation, the metaphysical foundation, the epistemological foundation,.
The ethical foundation of our worldview? Well, the idea there is that it is the normiest norm. And so scripture sets the norms on all these issues. And so that's why we won't just automatically go to, well, there could be a soul building thing that God is doing in response to the problem of evil.
Now, first and holds to some aspects of that. And I think there's some truth to that. We could talk about it, but I think it makes sense first to say, okay, you're saying problem of evil, tell me about this evil.
So you're using that term. That means you think there's some kind of standard. And for me, I don't see how we get an idea of evil, wrong, immorality in any meaningful way without understanding what the absolute good is.
All of that can only find its source in something transcendent, specifically someone transcendent. God answers the questions. And Van Til even said one time in his writings, you may think that I'm using God as a dumping ground.
Basically, he was saying to every big question. And the answer was sort of like, basically he's the only firm foundation. It's the only way to do it. So you could call it a dumping ground, but there is nothing else.
If you end up making a people, if you end up having it rooted in creation, or if you think it's just merely nature, nothing else is gonna work to root anything, whether it's logic, whether it's morals, whether it's why this world around us seems to have some kind of sense behind it.
Numbers are running the show and why we can make predictions based upon the regularities and uniform, all that kind of stuff we've got to talk about. And when we get to questions like the problem of evil, we wanna go back.
And so the idea is that we're applying scripture to everything. The idea is that scripture is a standard. The idea is that scripture is the only place. And why is it scripture? Because what it is, it's God's will revealed.
It's part of God's thought revealed because we don't know everything about God. Only God knows himself inexhaustibly. We don't know God exhaustively, but we know what he's revealed of himself. And he hasn't revealed anything that is false about himself.
And he's revealed what we need to know and he's revealed it in a way that we can understand it. Not that there's nothing mysterious about anything. I mean, he, after all, is the creator. We are the creatures.
And so we look at that and we put that all together and we have a firm foundation then to go forward in confidence with reason, logic, evidence, all those kinds of things because of the foundation. Whereas any given non-Christian worldview doesn't.
And that's what we're saying. Yes, you can say Muslims and Jehovah's witnesses and Mormons and Hindus and atheists and Scientologists and Hare Christians. You can say that, but the Bible bifurcates it into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of darkness.
The Bible bifurcates it in those who are sons of Adam and those who are sons of the second or the last Adam. The Bible bifurcates it and splits it up. And so that's the reality. It doesn't mean we don't take time to study any of those because I do think free subbers got to recognize, for example, Islam is a much better candidate and sort of more formidable, at least in my view, because it's almost sort of an imitation in a lot of ways of biblical religion.
That's what partially it purports to be. Now it ends up falling short, but because of that, it borrows some of the strengths of actual true biblical religion, to use a phrase, similar with Judaism, whereas Hinduism, which denies metaphysical reality, it has a much more difficult time.
It's not as nearly formidable as far as its worldview. And so I do recognize that, but go ahead.
Yeah, I wanted to stop there for two seconds because I want to talk a little bit about the transcendental argument, which is usually associated with the presuppositional methodology and how we would apply a presuppositional methodology to other religious perspectives, okay?
But before we do that, let's take a quick break from our normal course of conversation. Would you mind taking some questions that people are sending in here?
Yeah, at some point I want to hear, I almost want to ask you some questions because you're the guy out there doing debates on presuppositionalism, you know what I'm saying? So we need to get you on this because I'm not really out there debating people on presupp, you know what I'm saying?
It'll be fascinating to hear some of what you'd have to say about this, but yeah, let's try to take questions to do my best.
Definitely, I'll put some questions up on the screen there and then you could ask me questions after that and then we'll jump right back into the main course of our conversation, all right? All right, someone said, what's up with a overly emphasized up?
I don't know if there's a question, but Eli and Cab Malone, don't forget that vocab is one of the coolest Calvinists on the planet. Bro, the first time I ever laid eyes on you was I think you were emceeing a G3 conference or something like that.
You were wearing some hat and I was like, who's this guy over here? And then eventually I saw you were putting out a lot of material out there and I just recently, I've been watching you for so long. I just subscribed to your YouTube channel, man.
I don't know how I didn't do that earlier, but you've been putting out a lot of content out there. So I would agree, you are the coolest looking Calvinist out there, right? You don't look like the traditional, you know, well, the traditional bearded, you do have a beard, but it's not a traditional Calvinist beard if people know what I'm talking about.
Let's see here. Okay, we have a question coming from England. My buddy here, Daniel's saying here at vocab, seeming that you said you were more inclined to Framian precept, he argues inductively, how does the problem of induction still not exist?
How would you unpack that there?
Man, I knew I was gonna get a question like this or I wouldn't be able to properly, really answer. Okay. He's saying, how does the problem of induction still exist with frame? I'm not sure what he means.
If you argue presuppositionally inductively, how do you avoid the problems of induction?
I guess. But does it have anything to do with frame? I'm not, I'm trying to follow. Some of this, you know, I don't, so I don't, I guess I don't see what frame, frame still believes that you can, you know, do things like make indirect arguments and argue that way.
And he even does things like say that the ontological argument is a sort of a version of a transcendental argument. Now, most people disagree and that gets all complicated, but like, I'm not sure what he means.
I mean, all I know in relationship to this question is that presuppers point out, especially the best people to do it with probably are atheists, but point out, it wouldn't be, actually, if you're dealing with polytheists, all kinds of people, point out the massive issues with the problem of induction with unbelieving worldviews.
And that's part of this indirect argument that says, we know Christianity is true from the impossibility to the contrary. And so it's the idea of a sort of last man standing in a way, although it's first man standing.
And so, you know, with the problem of induction, it's like, okay, how do we know that going forward, anything's gonna be like it already has been every time you answer is gonna be a problem because you have to base upon past experience.
And then you're just using that just justify the present. That doesn't really answer the question. Philosophers have known about this. A lot of modern atheists kind of just ignore it and act like it's not a real problem because they know that they really look into it.
I think that they really have no answer for why the universe has any kind of regularity to it. Why there's any kind of uniformity to it, you know, because what's at the bottom is chance and necessity.
There's no hand guiding anything. There's no purpose. There's no intention. There's really no reason why there should be any guarantee of anything systematic. And really, it's funny. Ancient peoples knew this better than I think we realize because if you look at like ancient Egyptian religion, the idea is basically like inside here is controlled order and the Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, as the manifestation in some way of Amun-Ra, part of his job, what he does is hold together the opposite of the chaos that's outside.
And you go outside the kingdom and it's filled with chaos and the gods represent that. So gods are fighting and struggling every day just to get the sun to rise every single day or the Nile to do something and things like that.
Whereas the Bible has the sovereign Lord who made all these things in control and he doesn't just control one part of it. And so there's an answer for the problem of induction is that you have a person at the back who has always been and he sets up these things and there's a guarantee for regularity because he even says, I've given you these things for signs and then he tells Adam that, he tells Noah that, he tells Job that, the Psalmist says the same things.
And so we see that Christ holds all things together. So we have answers for those questions. We don't have to worry about a polytheistic system where one God's in control of this and they can act capriciously one day and say, oh, I don't want the tide to go in and out.
We don't have to worry about any of that. And so miracles actually are not violations of some abstract law, they're simply God interacting with his own creation in a unique way, abnormal from what he normally does.
And that's why we noticed him. He's not breaking some law, he's interacting with his own creation in a different way than we are used to seeing. And that's why we take note and that's why it's a sign.
But when it comes to the problem of induction, what he's saying in relation to Frain, maybe I'm not smart enough to get what he's saying. Maybe you can help me out Eli, because I don't know what would be some difference.
Although let me go grab my books,.
But I'd like to hear what you have to say. Sure, I'm not sure specifically what he's referring to, but when a presuppositionalist argues inductively, we do not run into the problem of induction because when we argue inductively, we are not arguing inductively isolated from our broader worldview commitments.
Our broader worldview commitments to the triune God who reveals and has governed everything gives us a justification given our worldview that we can have an expectation that the future will be like the past.
The problem of induction is only a problem for a person who does not have a worldview that is grounded in a personal revelatory God that ensures that his creation acts in a regular fashion. So I can use inductive arguments as a presuppositionalist, but that's because my worldview couches and makes intelligible the very process of reasoning inductively.
So like Mocab said, we do not argue in piecemeal fashion. When I'm arguing inductively, that is also taken together with the package of Christianity that gives me a justification for arguing inductively and deductively and abductively and transcendentally.
You see, it is the truth of the Christian system that gives coherence to its individual parts that includes our different lines of reasoning that we may take. So I hope that answers the question somewhat.
And so we're gonna move on to another question here, not so much a question, but perhaps something we can both chime in. Someone here is asking, I wanna find some good debates with Dr. James White, like his best ones.
Well, of course, best is quite subjective, but in your opinion, Mocab, what is your favorite debate, a James White debate?
Well, I mentioned it. It is the bar airmen debate on textual criticism. I think it might just be called like is the New Testament reliable or is the New Testament trustworthy, something like that. But I like that because there was so much information exchange that I feel like there's no way you could have watched the debate and not walked away with more education, with more learning, with more awareness.
And I think it was a great example of seeing where unbelief lands you, where to prop up his skepticism against the New Testament, airmen is essentially forced to say, well, yeah, there's this black hole where we don't know what happened between the writing of the New Testament, this gap.
And when the first manuscripts were, and it's like, you know, this discussion ensues, okay, well then what about these other documents with these, you know, and he has to say things like, you know, they have massive and they have ginormous gaps and yet you don't see the same level of skepticism in these other documents that are way more separated from the events that happened.
And I think that was helpful to see because it was a perfect example of showing here is the evidence, here are the facts and here are the ways that you interpret them, these facts, this evidence, the ways you interpret that data based upon your presuppositions.
And that's why presuppositionalism is important. It wants to get at the root and the nature of unbelief and show that it's ridiculous before just granting to the unbeliever, yeah, you know, we're both gonna utilize reason and logic and evidence.
Yeah, that's important in a debate, right? We agree with that, but we wanna get to the question of why? Why is it that we're using reason and logic to win this debate and not handguns? Why is logic valid?
How is it even there in a manner of speaking? Why does evidence count? And all these kinds of things that I think are helpful to discuss before we just start saying, well, you know, there's this over here and that over there.
And I think that debate was helpful. That's my debate. My other favorite one would be against Dan Barker on the idea of like, was Jesus in New Testament kind of ripped off from pagan deities and stuff?
I forget the exact way that, but I love that one because Barker stands up in the middle of it and says, don't quote, why are you quoting my book? Don't quote me, bro. Yeah, yeah, I thought that was pretty epic that he does that.
So I really enjoyed that as well as the debate itself where Barker's basically like, well, I don't hold to that position anymore. I don't hold to that position anymore. It's like, this is in your book about this subject and now you don't hold to this anymore.
What exactly, what? So those are two ones that I particularly liked. Yeah.
My favorite James White debates would probably be that one along with, you know what, to be perfectly honest, I actually liked the Dan Barker debate when he debated Dan Barker on the topic, does the triune God of scripture live?
And the reason why I liked it, it wasn't the greatest debate of all time, but because I'm a guy that's very much interested in methodology, it presented a presuppositional approach that addressed specific evidences.
And I like that because it kind of explodes out of the water the caricature that presuppositionalists don't appeal to evidence. And that's a very, very popular caricature. But as Scott Oliphant said, I don't remember the context where he says that presuppositionalists are eminently evidentialist because we think literally everything is evidence for God, like literally everything.
Right. As Francis Schaeffer said, this is God's world. You know, the atheist at the end of the day has to live in God's world. I think that might've been the debate. I'm trying to really remember what debate it was that he got criticized for basically behaving like an evidentialist.
It might've been that debate. I need to go back and find out which one it was, but.
Yeah, but I liked it because it kind of refuted that common notion because James White is obviously presuppositionalist approach. He doesn't hide that. Definitely not the sort of presuppositionalist that Bonson was.
They argued differently, although they probably would have had points of agreement in how the issues were applied there. Let's take another question here. Daniel sends in another question. What about the miracles in Acts?
Were they not evidences that they were representing the true God? You want to tackle that one if you understand the question?
Yeah, however, the Bible talks about false prophets being able to have signs and wonders. And specifically in the book of Acts, we see a situation where Paul arrives and the young slave girl is following him around.
And it's clear that she has demonic activity present in her life. And she's able to tell the future to some extent because of it, according to Luke there. And eventually Paul is irritated. You know, he's vexed, he's troubled.
He, by the Lord Jesus, cast the demon out. And then the girls are no longer able to tell the future. And then the guys who quote, own the girl are upset because they've lost their cow with the milk is the way they looked at it.
And so we see that there can be false miracles in a sense of that doesn't mean that what the person is saying is true. I don't necessarily think it means they're all tricks or sleight of hand. It seems like as if to some extent, there was some ability because, you know, you could get into this whole thing of how is it that Satan did that.
But similar with the court magicians, perhaps Janus and Jambres, it seems they were able to imitate to a certain extent, some of the miracles that Moses and Aaron did, at least in the beginning, as far as those signs go.
And even Deuteronomy says, look, even if what this prophet so-called does, what he says comes true, if he is, or performs miracles basically, if he tells you to go after another God, don't listen to him.
And so there's still this aspect of veracity and truthfulness. And so my point by saying that is, that's why scripture itself is so important, because it also acts as the divine interpreter of events.
And that's why we start with God at the back, at the back in the sense of being the center, the bottom, the foundation, whatever terms you wanna use there, that's where we start before we just say, well, resurrection, because it is true that maybe you could be like Christopher Hitchens, and he says, well, if I knew someone really rose from the dead, I might just be like, oh, that's really weird, or I might take a few steps back from him, or you'll hear sometimes atheists say, well, strange things happen in the strange universe.
And so what we need is essentially divine exegesis, divine interpretation upon historical events, things happen. And so it's not just the miracles, it's what they're saying, because there are prophets who didn't perform in their prophetic ministry, it seems any what we would classify as miracles, and yet what they're saying is still true and valid.
And so, yes, the miracles are a sign that point to Jesus, and that they're representing God. Remember, the Pharisees recognized, hey, you couldn't do this stuff unless the Lord was with you. In John 3, I'm saying Nicodemus recognized that.
Others saw those same miracles and signs and said, what? Oh, well, Satan's on your side, that's how you do it. And Jesus showed the logical problem there with Satan fighting Satan. And so you can have the same set of data, whereas the Lord, the Holy Spirit is apparently working on Nicodemus' heart, and so he realizes you're from God, even though he wasn't all the way there, whereas other ones are like, oh, well, you're actually with the devil.
And so that's what they're gonna say. The miracles and signs in themselves, I don't wanna say are not a guarantee. I don't know how to properly phrase that, but there's sort of a combo package. It's like the full deal.
You know what I'm saying? And part of that is the truthful message, the veracity of what they are saying. And so, yes, but we gotta be careful because who knows? Now, this is only if you're not a cessationist.
If you weren't, though, you might say, hypothetically, the Lord could move in a Benny Hinn rally and someone could get healed. I'm just saying, that doesn't mean Benny Hinn's a true teacher. I'm just saying, even given that, let's just say that could happen.
That doesn't mean Benny Hinn's a true teacher. Even if a person, now, I'm sort of reformed on a conservative, charismatic side. Probably a lot of people listening aren't.
I'm more of a Kenneth Copeland kind of guy. Yeah, Kenneth Copeland.
Well, he's called down the heat wave, and so him calling down that heat wave is gonna take care of the coronavirus. But if someone does get sick, we're okay because Jim Baker is selling the silver solution.
So we've got the silver solution from Baker. If you do get sick, but to prevent it, the heat wave's gonna destroy coronavirus because Kenneth Copeland
Wait, wait, wait, time out. How can you predict the heat wave? Summer's already around the corner. What the heck? He's calling it down. He's praying for a heat wave.
Okay, all right, okay. To destroy the coronavirus. Okay. And along with his anointed hand on the camera, you know, he's got it all taken care of. Okay. So anyways, I think it's important though. That's why we say, okay, what does the Lord say?
And that's why, you know, we got to walk in discernment because Jesus told us, hey, people are gonna come out in my name. They're gonna say this, you're gonna say that, but do not be led astray. If you read Mark 13, they want to know about the end times.
These disciples asked Jesus about the end times. Basically, he spends a lot of that passage instead of talking about signs of the end, about being aware and being on guard as the end approaches, because that's when people are gonna get caught up and get tricked.
Of course, not the elect, because it says, even if possible, those who are saved will endure to the end. And so those messages are there. So we gotta be on guard. But God used the acts in the book of Acts that are really the acts of the Holy Spirit via the apostles to spread and propagate further the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And I'm glad that he did.
Now, I think it's important too, where you talked about the divine in exegesis, so to speak. Now, when we study the area of exegesis and hermeneutics, the science of interpretation, what do we learn in seminary, right?
Context is king. And that's true when we're interpreting literature, but it's also true when we're interpreting events. Context is king. What is the worldview context in which we are viewing and interpreting the specific instance, miraculous instance?
So when we see a miracle, what worldview is interpreting that, you see? And if it's not the Christian worldview, it's some other worldview. And if that other worldview is rationally incoherent, then they are interpreting that event through a broken pair of glasses, so to speak.
So you can address those issues apologetically. Miracles is not necessarily a sign that God is working. It also needs to be coupled with that proper worldview context of which we could interpret what we're experiencing.
When I teach my students apologetics, and we talk a little bit about this, I tell my students, if you're praying in your room and an angel appears to you in your room with all the glorious light, and let's say this angel has huge wings that spans the whole room, and you hear the trumpets and the music in the background, what's the first thing that you say to this angel?
And I tell my students, you ask for some ID. You see, because without the proper ID, I mean, we could be, the Bible says that the enemy comes as an angel of light. It doesn't matter what we see with our eyes, but rather what is the message?
What is the interpretive grid that provides that context to interpret what we're experiencing properly? I think that's a very important thing. Context is king in exegesis. It's context. Context is king when we're interpreting events like miracles and things like that.
All right, let us move on. There's some more questions. I don't know if you wanna continue our normal conversation or take a couple of more. That's up to you since you're the guest. I wanna respect, I don't know if you're nervous that someone might ask a question that's kind of like, oh, snap, I don't know that one, man.
I'll just hand it over to you. If I can't answer, I'll say, I don't know. What do you think, Eli?
All right, that's a good technique. And if I don't know it, I'll be like, hey, look, I don't have a co-host though. We'll just have to throw it up in the air. Okay, there's another question by Daniel.
He says, should the prophets of the Old Testament denied God because they did not believe he was triune and transcendentally, that is wrong. I don't understand the grammar of the question. If you can retype that question and be very careful in the way that you type it, because you're asking a very philosophically nuanced question, and we'd have to kind of pick that apart little by little.
So if you wanna ask that question again, maybe in another comment, and you can rework it so that we could address it adequately. So we'll continue on here. This is the last one, and then we'll move on to our discussion and then take some more later on.
Okay, someone asks the question here. It seems classical, well, it makes a statement. It seems classical apologists believe we can actually reason to God. How would you address that vocab?
Well, you know, there's a lot of classical apologists. There's a lot of people who are evidentialists or people will say, hey, I'd use cumulative case. They all have their own sort of systems and different ways they do things.
And so to me, case by case basis, I know there's sort of general swaths or strands of thought and all that. So to a certain extent, but even someone like, you look at the end of Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig, and he talks about Holy Spirit epistemology, which can sound, you can look at a certain way and it's like, well, it's almost like the sort of the ultimate proof is this immediate, this thing that has happened at a very existential level to us that we recognize.
And there's sort of a knowing that comes along with that, that is what sometimes philosophers will say, immediately accessible. And you look at that and you say, well, I could see how that could be friendly to aspects of a priesthood, at least to me, maybe I'm not smart enough to see all the problems now.
I'm not saying that other stuff Craig says or does, lines up, but my point by saying that is, ultimately, just like reform folks say, pray for the unbeliever, the evidentialist guys and gals, they say that too, pray for the unbeliever.
And there's old Joga reform people will say, well, all Armenians sound like Calvinists when they pray, because at that point they're recognizing the only gods in control, that kind of thing. I get it, but I think there's sort of different levels and I do think there's problems when sometimes there's not a full recognition of the reality of sin in the unbeliever.
And I think that's the main thing with that when it comes to this. And so like Aquinas seem to say, seem to say almost as if reason was this one aspect of human existence, it was almost unfallen. And we can kind of just go there as if it's just this kind of thing.
And then there's these five proofs and then, but at the end of the day, I think even they recognize that the Lord's in charge to an extent, because you know your inconsistent statements. So I think kind of, I think it just kind of depends because I do hear Armenians say things that I say, yeah, that's right, that's right.
But in other times I'm like, ah, guys, I don't think you're fully recognizing the depth of sin and how it affects our rational faculties. Logic and reason itself are untouched as the product of God's mind in essence.
But as far as the way we utilize those tools, it's all messed up. And that's what we in the reformed world called the noetic effects of sin. And that's a very real reality. And so in relationship to that, I feel like sometimes classical apologists don't fully recognize that, the sort of how much of a problem that is.
And it sometimes seems like when I get into discussions where we go through Romans three, for example, that they almost think it doesn't really mean what it says. And again, I say this all due respect, but it's almost like, and no, not one, no one seeks God.
And I've actually heard people say, well, yeah, there's some people who don't. And I'm like, no, no, no, it doesn't. It's not talking about like this certain group of really bad people.
Hey, be careful before Layton Flowers jumps in here.
And then, and again, I like, so, you know, I'm not so hardcore, I get it. And I like, you know, him on a personal level and stuff. I'm not trying to have fights with any of these guys or go to my death, you know, for the cause of precept or something like that.
But she's, I'm just, I just say, I don't understand. How are you reading Romans three? And that's not, well, it's just, no, it's not just Romans three, sons of disobedience, children of wrath. You just look and it's everywhere.
And even Romans three itself is this potpourri of Old Testament passages put together because it's all throughout the scripture. And it was like, how do you get the people who are seeking God sort of on their own?
How do you get that? And I think that's really a massive handicap when an apologist doesn't fully recognize the fight that rebel sinners have against God. And that's all of us before the Lord works on our heart.
So it's not like special class of bad people. That is all of us. And so I think that's the problem as far as this question goes.
Shout out to Kato, by the way, subscribe to his channel, good guy. And I like the question here where the statement, he says, it seems classical apologists believe we can actually reason to God. And that's a good way he phrased it there because this is a good opportunity to quickly differentiate between what presuppositional apologetics does versus what classical apologetics tends to do.
Classical apologetics tends to be a bottom up approach. And so he's very right. You kind of reason your way up to God via the traditional proofs, appealing to evidence, which all have their place. But the presuppositional apologetic method is more of a top down approach that we begin with God and we reason in light of that.
So there's that very important kind of difference there. One is moving up, the other is moving down. And then sometimes you kind of have a intermingling there. Sometimes they're inconsistent applications there.
So there's a lot going on there. Now I wanted to move on, but I can't, I have to let this person share here. We have Guillaume Bignon who as recently was on my show to critique Braxton Hunter, Leighton Flowers and Tim Stratton, one Frenchman versus, one French Calvinist versus three libertarians.
And he was a tour de force in his critiques. And I thought A tour de force. A tour de force, I can't even, I'm not even gonna try. But he is saying, all right, let me crash this Calvinist love fest.
Eli, will you ask vocab my question? So he has a question for you.
Tell him his question is misguided because Calvinists have no love. That's right.
And he is asking me to read the question with a French accent. And this might actually make me lose my viewership. You're not French, are you? I'm Puerto Rican, bro. Wow, I didn't think so. He's like, if you don't provide additional premises, then it seems you're committing a non sequitur because the biblical nature of the triune nature of the transcendent creator.
I can't, that's too much, too much. Let me try it on my regular That's pretty good though, bro, for Oh, I couldn't keep it consistent. It just feels awkward. And his question's too long. Maybe I can get away with it if it was a shorter question, but oh my goodness.
All right, so here's his question. He says, if you don't provide the additional premises, then it seems you're committing a non sequitur because the biblical nature and triune nature of that transcendent creator don't immediately follow from the laws of logic and morality, but if you provide additional premises, then how is it different from the classical two-step approach?
Basically, if I can guess what Guillaume is thinking here, he is thinking in terms of the transcendental argument and the attempt by many presuppositionalists to demonstrate the truth of the Christian God via a transcendental argument.
Do you want to address that? And maybe I'll give my two senses or I don't think I, I don't think I,.
I mean, if I start talking, I'll just be saying stuff that's probably not totally relevant to what he's saying. I mean, I have, you know, it's funny. I mean, so Guillaume is like a legit philosopher, right?
You know, I've hung out with him and he's I apologize. He had an extra point there. I didn't read that part. Oh, no. He really says this to Guillaume. This is what you can do. I can't do this. You know, break down the transcendental argument in two steps.
One, wait, no, it's not one. Isn't it? The existence of the laws of logic and morality until the existence of a transcendent creator. And step, this transcendent creator must be the triune God, especially because of other good premises we provide.
Right, right, right.
I think, I think if I can give my two cents here is Please do. There is, there are extra steps in a transcendental argument if you formulate a transcendental argument within a deductive context. So if I were to get a, if I were to give a transcendental argument deductively, we can say something like this.
Premise one, if knowledge is possible, then the Christian worldview is true. Premise two, knowledge is possible conclusion, therefore the Christian worldview is true. And so the transcendental premise there that's going to be at issue when you're presenting it deductively like that is gonna be the first premise.
And so I'm gonna have to defend the premise that the acquisition of knowledge is only possible given the entire Christian package. And so how would we unpack that? You'd have to go through various premises and things like that.
But that's if you form the argument within a deductive structure. You have to understand that what I said just a few moments ago, when we argue presuppositionally, we're not arguing up to God, rather we are arguing from God.
The argument transcendentally is that if you do not start with the triune God that already has within that the Christian worldview, the packaged in concepts of oneness and manyness and his revelation and how that relates to human beings.
When we speak of the triune God, that presupposition, that transcendental presupposition is the entire package. So the indirect method of defending the transcendental argument is don't assume that and you couldn't even justify inductive principles, deductive principles, or any principles of rationality at all.
And so there are also two sides of the presuppositional approach. We can use an indirect proof, which is traditionally what transcendental arguments try to do at least as Bonson presented in Van Til, but we could also use the vocabulary that Gordon Clark used of providing a positive construction.
So that when someone says, but I don't see the connection as to how the triune God grounds all these things, then we can lay out what was our metaphysical and epistemological starting point, the Bible, and talk about what God has said about himself and draw those connections within the context of a discussion.
So that's a very compact response to the question, but of course, that'd be way beyond the scope of our show here to address it in more detail,.
But go ahead, Bocab. Yeah, that works for me. You know, a game comes on here. I mean, aren't you supposed to be at Wall Street right now or doing something like that game? Aren't you supposed to be like in New York, walking around and your loafers looking down on the cleaves or something like that?
But maybe social distancing doesn't allow that. I don't know. But with all seriousness, there's a certain, I could be wrong on this, but there's a certain way in which I almost notice a strange hesitancy and it's weird.
I almost ended up sharing this for like legit preceptors to actually give arguments for God's existence. It's almost like, hey, look, God exists. Now let's hold your worldview up against mine and all that the trying God of scripture existing, all that entails, and let's find out what happens.
And that's where the collision comes in. And as we push the antithesis, we have the confidence and know that it's going to be the case that there is no competing worldview of any sort or any variety that at the end of the day is gonna be able to withstand proper scrutiny and win in a sense, as far as a worldview.
It doesn't mean any given debate or anything like that. And so it's kind of almost like, that's why there's this very indirect argument that's like, we know Christianity is true by the impossibility to the contrary, the idea of everything else is.
And I see like a lot of people, there seems to be a hesitancy for preceptors, unless I'm wrong, to even necessarily formulate even tag, which is sometimes thought of as an argument for the existence of God and a traditional syllogism.
It's almost like, well, let me show you what it means that God's exists. And it's an interesting thing. I don't know if that's exactly what you were saying. And Guillaume is a whole nother level. You said you've already interviewed him.
Because it seems like you probably should really interview him and have this discussion, not me. Well, we did interview him on the topic of, as he would say, Calvinism and the philosophy. And so we didn't talk about apologetic methodology.
However, we have spoken on the phone over our disagreements and we had a very nice respect to the conversation in which we just disagreed on various points. But again, that might be due to just the difficulty of navigating the topic, the ambiguity of, as you mentioned before, there's been a hesitancy of presuppositionalists trying to formulate the transcendental argument in that way.
Traditionally, it's often been understood as a disjunctive syllogism and not necessarily a deductive argument. We have people who kind of fall on different spectrums there. But thank you for the question, Guillaume.
Let's spare a vocab of all his technical syllogisms, right? Everyone's like, you know, doesn't classical apologetics, isn't it man-centered? And here you have Guillaume saying, well, the premise and the syllogism.
So let's move away from some of those things and let's continue our conversation real quick. And I don't wanna take too much of your time, vocab.
I don't know how much time you I just feel bad that I disappointed Guillaume, not really being able to give an answer. Tell him next time I see him, Guillaume, I'll bring you some escargot in my luggage.
I'll bring you some snails to make up for it. Cause I feel like I really let you down, man. And I know if I bring you some tasty treats and some snails, you'll say it's okay.
This is my favorite statement of the entire show. Eli's French accent is gold. I look forward to discussing this more. And also, Guillaume, remember what I said. I know that I tickled your interest when we talked about the transcendental necessity of logic.
So he knows what I'm talking about. But we'll move on from there. So what I was gonna move on to was the transcendental argument, but we ended up talking about it. So let's bring it down to a more applicable area in which we can take, for example, the presuppositional method and apply it to different religious perspectives.
So how would you use the presuppositional approach against, say, like a Muslim? How would you challenge the Muslim's epistemology, their metaphysic, and things like that?
Yeah, so the fact that they do not, in Islam, have a god who is triune, the average Muslim views that as a major asset and feels that when they bring up the trinity to the Christian, that they've sort of got them on the ropes in a weak spot.
But the reality is understanding the implications and ramifications of God's triune nature as revealed in scripture, that's why we believe it, is actually a great benefit and really essential. So it answers classic problems in philosophy.
It deals with the fact of God is totally sufficient. So this God, and this is pointed out by medieval philosophers and people way before me, anything like that, deals with the fact that God doesn't create man and then experience something new, which would be a relationship with another, thereby enabling him to truly, even really know what love is.
Because if you have a sort of a monad or a Unitarian God, exactly, you know, who is he loving? But yet we see from all eternity past, in manner of speaking, the father loves the son, the son loves the father, and they love the spirit, and vice versa, and it keeps on going.
And so you have actual relations, you have a total sufficiency, you know, there's community, it's not like loneliness or need. And of course, you have the problem of the one and the many or the many and the one, depending on how you want to put that, answered where you don't have that in Islam, and systems gravitate a lot of times towards being too close to one or the other, but they really can't answer either in any meaningful way.
And then really, Islam, despite proclaiming to be a submission to a law, Islam ultimately, what it really is, and this is where we get into the facts of Islam, Islam really is a autonomous man run wild, because if you look at what Muhammad said and did, from the Quran to the Hadith, it's autonomous man.
And here's what I mean by that, autonomous man is a man who ultimately is a law unto himself in regards to he makes his own judgment on things, the final measure, he is the final measure, there is not the full recognition of our total dependence.
Now, Islam pays lip service to all that, that's why it's so dangerous and tricky, but let me give you a few examples of what I mean. God reveals himself as triune, man in his own capacity says that doesn't compute in a way that is acceptable to me and my brain, so I deny that revelation.
So God can reveal himself as how he is, and Muhammad and the Muslims after him and embedded inside the Quran says, no, that's not right, and actually then puts words in those of Jesus denying that reality of worship to himself.
That is autonomous man rejecting the revelation of God. Another example is the incarnation is the centerpiece, it's prophesied and predicted in the old, it's carried out and then it's discussed looking back, it's essential to what the cross is and what it means, and yet, well, you can't have a God who comes down and needs to be at his mother's breast and have his diaper change, you can't have that kind of situation, you can't have a God who he can't get tired or hungry, he can't be in the boat sleeping, so I reject that aspect of God's working, I reject that say doesn't make sense, have Jesus say so in surah five, and now here we go, and now we're gonna act like this was God saying this, all the while surah 1094 saying that we actually recognize the revelations before us, and that's the massive internal contradiction in Islam, and that's very presuppositional, and lots of non-priests use it, but to show this catch 22, Jesus is a prophet, the Bible is the word of God, those kinds of things create massive dilemmas because then you have Jesus predicting his own death, well, is he a prophet or not?
Then you have, in the word of God, things that would be directly against Islam, there's lots of big ones, but I like to sometimes mention the small ones, if Muslims are gonna say they hold to Old Testament law, more so, or that there's this continuity, what was the reason that you can have Muhammad say for his community, you can eat camel now?
Now, I think this is relevant in the new covenant, but Muslims don't recognize the new covenant, they're going backwards in a very retrograde way away from the new covenant, and if you're gonna do that, then what gives you the right to say, oh, we can eat camel, because Muhammad said, that's okay, well, in the Old Testament law, you can't do that, so what's up with that?
So that's why you always see the escape route is, well, the Bible's corrupt and all that, but that's further evidence of the very lie all the way from the garden of autonomous man sin, did God really say, the snake says to Eve, and autonomous sinful people like to say, yeah, you know, maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but you know, I got my own idea, looks good to me, let me take, and you can see that in the way paradise Jenna is laid out, he got a bunch of women who are eternally virginal, who have bedroom eyes and large chests, and they just gonna have sex with you, and you get to drink all this alcohol that you're not allowed to supposedly drink when you're down here, but then you get to do it there, and then it won't make you drunk, so isn't that great, and on, and on, and on, and on, and you say, this is clearly autonomous man, and that's why you have Muhammad doing things like, you can only have four wives, me, I'll have nine to 11, but you can only have four wives, Islam at its core is autonomous man running wild, all the while paying lick service out of the being submitted to God, but it's autonomous man at the core of the system, so that's why there's so many of these contradictions, even within itself, but also in relationship to what it says, because it tries to have Jesus co-sign itself, and all we got to do is match those things up with each other, the internal contradictions destroy Islam, and you get into more, but let me just say this, there was a brief dialogue Bonson did one time with a Jewish man and a Muslim rabbi, I forget what the school was, and you see a little bit of that, and some of the things he gets into, and this is in other places, are such as this idea of the Islamic idea of the incomprehensibility of Allah, which I think is sort of different than a classical Christian understanding of the incomprehensibility of God, it could be the same word, but it kind of is meant in two different ways by Christian Islamic theologians, and that incomprehensibility creates problems, I think for the fact of what the Quran purports itself to be, so you have massive, massive internal contradictions, and that is because it is not from God, but those are all where you're basically saying, okay, it's the truth, let's look at the system, and you're running basically a bunch of reductio ad absurdum on the system of Islam, and if you can do that with Islam, which is one of the closest copycats to Christianity, you can definitely do it when you start talking about things that I would admittedly say I know less about, like Hinduism, which again, is denying the metaphysical realism, it's sort of an anti, it devolves into anti-realism, that has much more massive problems with a system like that than even with Islam at a very kind of root level, but you can do it with everything, but we still gotta do the work to figure out how to do it.
Sure, and it runs into something like Hinduism runs into epistemological problems as well, since you don't have a personal foundation for knowledge, a revelatory aspect. Now, I do have a question with regards to Islam, and I'm asking literally from ignorance, because Islam is not an area that I've studied in any great depth, is, am I correct in understanding, and please let me know if I'm not, in Islam, is Allah able to lie, like himself lie?
So there's great debate about this verse in the Quran that can be interpreted as Allah is the best of deceivers, and so there's a lot of back and forth about this question, and there seems to be a clear strand within Islam, from the Quran to the Hadith, but essentially, Allah tricking people, it does seem like that's what he's doing, so you think you're gonna go into paradise, but you're not sure, because there's a very capricious aspect, and that relates into what Islam allows for, or what Allah allows for his followers, so in relationship to Muslims themselves, there is a strand, especially within more so Shia Islam, something called taqiyyah, and it is this, almost a command, more than even just an allowance to lie.
Now, they'll say there's reasons and all this, but it's almost like all the Ten Commandments, there's exceptions to all of them in Islam, so you can take the wives of people you capture, so you have an allowance for adultery, whatever it is, you can do X, Y, Z to the infidels, so there's an allowance for stealing, there's an allowance for lying, and it seems to be based upon the capricious, really amoral, even immoral nature of Allah, himself, so a Muslim apologist in the West generally is not gonna say, yeah, Allah is the greatest of deceivers in the way you think, they're generally gonna say, you don't understand Arabic, that verse should not be interpreted that way, it should be interpreted according to this other translation, Allah is the best of planners, or perhaps schemers, but all he's saying is that, as the wicked lay out their plans, Allah's gonna outsmart them, don't you agree with that?
Or maybe they'll go a little bit further and say, did not your God send a lying spirit? Did he not send a spirit of deception? That's all that's happening there. Now, it's not a one-to-one comparison, but sometimes you'll see that there, but Allah's character is very questionable, so your question is, there's sort of a lot of debate to it, there's a lot of debate to it, but it does seem as if the Quran is saying, and the Hadith bears this out, and you see the example in Muhammad and in the followers of Islam.
I guess my question really comes from That he's a deceiver, that he's a deceiver, yeah. I guess my question comes from the interest in epistemology, that if it's possible for the God of Islam to lie, then how could you have a basis for knowledge, since everything you think you know can be falsified by his deceptions?
So you get into kind of an evil God dilemma there.
Right, I think you actually do, and actually it's fascinating, there's a problem with that, and sort of another way where there's this idea of Muhammad as a messenger, and it's unfair, a Muslim will think, for a Christian to say that Muhammad wrote the Quran, and so the idea is he's a messenger of Allah, and when people during his day would say, hey, do you got a miracle or a sign, according to some traditions, he would say, all I need is the Quran, that's the miracle, this revelation, and then it's like, this is this obvious thing, right?
However, you have evidence of something that's been talked about a while, which are called the satanic verses, and it's when Muhammad thought he was receiving revelations from Allah, but it was actually from the devil, and these revelations allowed his followers for a short time to actually take prayers to pagan goddesses.
Allah, I forget, I think there's three goddesses' names, I forget their names, but it's a pretty wild thing, and then later on it's like, oh, well that was a test, it's like, well, wait a minute, this whole system is banked upon that, you have a serious issue, so I think there's some serious issues with that as well, because it's like, well, then what exactly is the Quran, and if Allah always preserves his word, and yet the Bible prior to the Quran was Allah's word, and yet it's corrupt, how is it that Allah always preserves his word?
So what exactly did Allah say anyway? So there's all kinds of fascinating problems with there, but you sort of have to look into the Arabic root word for the idea of him being a deceiver, and it gets pretty deep into the woods pretty quick, but I think it's a fascinating topic of discussion.
Oh, that's good stuff, man. Well, let's take some more questions then, and then we'll start to wrap things up. I wanna respect your time, I know that you got a live stream coming up. Guys, by the way, obviously, Vocab's channel is much larger than mine, so you probably know more about him than you would about me, but if you don't know about his stuff, definitely go over to his YouTube channel and subscribe.
He's got some great content available already, and I'm sure a lot of awesome stuff coming up in the near future. So let's take a couple of questions here. Daniel's got another question. How do you think the upcoming generation of Calvinist pre-suppers should deal with hardcore anti-Calvinist and anti-pre-suppers?
Hmm, let me,.
Ooh. No, yeah, I got something I wanna, I mean, let me answer it like this, okay? Let me see here. Let me see here. We should kill them all and let God sort them out.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. That was good. That was really good. Man, you see, bro, you got the equipment, bro. I can't do the special effects, bro. I can only make the faces.
I can do the French accent. That's all I got, bro. Well, you're also answering BM Bignon's massively sophisticated. He's like, I only have one question. It's in three parts and it has multiple. Well, so my thought is deal with them.
Like, I'm not gonna answer the way everyone else answers. And maybe I'm just too much of a, you know, simpleton for some of this. But my thought is smile a lot. Don't, for me on a personal level, I don't wanna sit around and debate all of my evidentialist friends.
I'm glad that they care about truth and that they care about the gospel. If they have questions, I'll talk about it. But if they start getting amped up or lit, I don't really wanna do that. Not because I don't think it's important.
And I understand people have different perspectives. Don't get me wrong. But to me, I'm like, look, you know, not, obviously I care about doctrine, but I try to have a wide berth, you know, in the sense of like, you know, hey, we can allow this, we can allow that.
Maybe part of it's my background, but what I'm saying is I think one of the best things for Calvinist preceptors to do is to basically be nice. And if you're gonna, if you have to use sarcasm or, you know, things like that, if that's what like sort of you think it's built in, why not save that for the unbelievers and go out there in the world and use your energy and all that?
So my thought is like, just help dispel some of the negative stereotypes. I don't know if it's helpful to go around telling everyone who does things differently than us that they're, you know, breaking God's law, breaking God's heart every time they open their mouth.
I just feel like we can do things in a different way. Again, I think we should talk about it, defend it, all that kind of stuff. But part of it, I think, is just being nice, friendly, compassionate, show that we have a passion for people too, that we care about them, whether they're believers or unbelievers, and go out there and then do our reform theology in the public square, but to the best of our ability, do it with a smile.
I don't mean being soft. You know, I use satire and I'll go after folks, but just kind of
And it's a genuine smile. It's not one of them like Calvinist meme smiles, you know?
Not an evil, you know, but just being, you know, a little more winsome and that kind of thing. And I think that can be helpful. And honestly, again, so people might disagree. Look, I'm not trying to, I do think it's okay to have intramural debates.
You know, I know you've done some and it's okay to say, here's some criticisms, but I don't fully understand the impulse for some of my Calvinist brothers to criticize every single little thing that every Armenian apologist does.
I just, I don't get it. So to the question, it's a little bit different. I'm not trying to change them all overnight. I want to show that this really is gospel centered and it has a positive effect on our character and our actions because we should be, we should be, there should be a great humility comes from the reality of Reformed theology.
And there should be certain kind of things that we do that sometimes I don't always see. And you know, the internet sometimes propagates that and sometimes we walk into it, but basically smile more and don't feel the need to criticize your friends all the time.
Right. Or just throw a copy, a hard cover copy of Calvin's Institutes right at the temple. That usually does the trick. So, all right. Well, we have another statement here. Patrick says the tag argument will not work with the God premises.
Too many gods makes it a false dichotomy. I have much to say about that, but why don't you share your thoughts.
And then I'll chime in also. Will not work with the God premises. Too many. Is he saying too many gods could qualify to be the, I don't, it seems like you know what he's saying and I don't know what he's saying.
So I'd rather hear what you have to say. Well, I think that this is usually, you know, if someone were to say it's the God or not God option, that's a false dichotomy. There could be multiple gods and there's too many gods that you can't inductively refute them all.
The tag argument, when we set it up within a disjunctive syllogism, we can say something to the effect of the Christian worldview or not the Christian worldview. And this is what was getting back to what vocab said earlier is that from our perspective, there's really only two worldviews, the Christian worldview and the non-Christian worldview.
It doesn't matter all of the different manifestations of the unbelieving worldview. They all have one common stream within them, namely the denial of the Christian worldview. And so the deficiencies in one of it, well, the deficiencies in all of them are common.
Namely, they lack the preconditions for intelligible experience. And so we can talk about that when we engage in the worldview critique. Take any non-Christian worldview, and I will show you that they share a common deficiency that does not allow them to ground, say something like knowledge acquisition or something like the universal laws of logic.
You know, for example, take polytheism. If you have polytheism, true, the existence of multiple gods, what you have is the most fundamental base of reality is impersonality. This kind of impersonal context in which individual polytheistic deities dwell.
And so none of those individual finite gods can be the grounding of universal conceptual laws. And so where are those universal conceptual laws grounded on that perspective? Within the impersonal context in which these individual deities live.
And so you have impersonality grounding rational laws of thought. And that's a problem. You have this element of mystery within the aspect of knowledge. Since there's an element of mystery which surrounds everything, you can't have knowledge of anything.
Anything you think you know. There can be some unknown fact about reality that falsifies what you think you know. And so you couldn't be certain about anything. But if you can't be certain about anything, are you certain that we can't be certain about anything?
And so you run into this whole epistemological issue with polytheism, any view that posits autonomy within man's reasoning, they all have that common thread and criticisms that will not stand the critique of the transcendental argument, I think.
Let me say a quote real quick that I think is saying what you're saying and might be helpful to the person, hopefully. This is the second edition here of John Frame's Apologetics books, which I like and I love the cover and stuff and the colors.
But I do wish he would have kept the same title, which is Apologetics for the Glory of God. He changed it simply just a justification of Christian belief, which is a little more generic. A little philosophical, yeah.
But yeah, but here's what he says here in the first edition on page 70. The transcendental method does not try to prove that genuine method, genuine knowledge is possible. So we're not trying to prove the genuine knowledge possible.
Rather, it presupposes that it is. Then it asks, what must the world, the mind and human thought be like if this presupposition is true? The transcendental method then goes ahead to ask what the necessary conditions of human knowledge are.
The answer must, first of all, be the existence of God, be the existence of the God of scripture. To Van Til, this principle was not only a fact, but an argument for the existence of God. Without God, there is no meaning, truth, rationality, et cetera.
Therefore, God exists. And I think that's a fine answer, to be honest.
Yeah, that's good stuff, man. Well, I'm going to, someone, it's not a question, but definitely something we can do in the future. Someone's suggesting here, I would love to hear you do a program on the New Age or Eastern religion.
That would be a great topic, especially that Eastern religions and New Age philosophy is grounded in various forms of pantheism and monistic philosophy, which will not survive a transcendental critique.
So that is a good topic to cover presuppositionally. Perhaps we'll do that on a future episode. Now, Vocab, you did say you had, or you might want to ask me some questions. Why don't we take a few minutes to do that, and then we'll wrap things up?
Sure, shout out to MJ Jackson. Everybody subscribe to his channel. He's got good stuff against the chemists and all that. So Eli, what is the main reason you would say you're a presuppositionalist? Because it's biblical.
So what are some of the main reasons you think presuppositionalism is biblical? Can you say that again? I'm sorry. What are some of the main reasons you think presuppositionalism is biblical?
Because the principles of the methodology are grounded in scripture. So for example, every worldview has at least three foundations, metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical. And I think the Bible, as divine revelation, authoritatively gives us all of those three elements upon which we need to interpret the world.
So I think the Bible gives us a coherent metaphysical outlook that is consistent with its epistemology and its ethic. And I believe that that is grounded in scripture, and we can derive from that a system of apologetic defense.
So what are maybe a few verses that you think are relevant or supportive or indicative of presuppositional style apologetics?
Yeah. Well, first, when we talk about biblical foundation for any principle, we don't wanna just merely proof text something. So what I would encourage people to do is that when we're looking for the biblical foundation for some belief, we wanna take a systematic approach and ask the question, what does the entire Bible have to say about any given topic?
And when we speak about issues of metaphysics, the nature of reality, epistemology, how we know what we know, ethics, how we should live our lives, the Bible, a systematic fashion, when you kind of take all of what scripture has to say, it gives us enough ingredients, so to speak, to have a coherent and robust worldview.
So if I can use just a couple of scriptures, I love Colossians chapter two, where it says that in Christ is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, not just wisdom, the proper application of knowledge, but the treasures of knowledge itself.
In Proverbs one, seven, it says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And so there's this principle in scripture that we must bow the knee to God in order to see the world in its proper context.
If you deny that foundation that God has revealed to all men as per Romans one, then you reduce to foolishness and absurdity as Romans teaches. And also in the book of Psalms, it says the fool says in his heart, there is no God.
And so you can kind of draw those principles from any number of scriptures. And then you take that in a systematic fashion and you build your foundation from there.
So you've done some debates where you defended presuppositional style apologetics. How did those go? And what can you tell people about those if they wanna check those out?
Yeah, I did a couple of debates. One with Christopher, he goes by the name of a skeptic, where I use a presuppositional approach. My opening statement, I think is especially useful for people since I took Bonson's opening statement and retweaked it to cater it to my own purposes within that specific debate.
And I think that I demonstrated that on the worldview perspective that my opponent was taking, knowledge was impossible. And I was able to show that given the Christian perspective, we have a grounding for these things.
So I think it moved the conversation a little forward. And I also was invited on the Modern Day Debates, which is a YouTube channel where they have all sorts of crazy topics that are debated. I debated a nice guy by the name, he goes by the name of Negation of P, in which I used a presuppositional approach there as well.
I thought it went very well. And a key element of this that I think is very, very important for people to keep in mind, because one of the negative things about presuppositionalism at the popular level is it usually gets a bad rap because people who use the methodology usually come across as very abrasive, very brass and very, well, pretty much like jerks, you see, because the methodology can be used very aggressively.
People, I think, kind of push that to the maximum and then you kind of actually shoot yourself in the foot. That even when you're using valid forms of argumentation, your personality gets in the way and you don't really make that connection.
One of the things I've been happy with is that not only have I been able to debate folks and get into some of the nitty gritties of these issues, but we've been able to do it respectfully, cordially, and I've gotten some positive feedback just for just the manner in which we engage in those discussions.
So I think they went very well.
Well, that's good, man. I see a lot of people up in the live chat, man. Give a couple of shout outs real quick. Shout out to Rox B, Elizabeth, Nate, Liza J, and I don't know if I know the... Shout out to Marlon.
How about that? Do I know anyone else in here? I don't know if I know anyone else in there, but if I missed you, sorry, but shout out to all y 'all. Oh, is that D New? I don't know if I said D New yet, but shout out to D New as well.
So good to see some familiar faces in the live chat. And guys, I feel like our show tonight that we're gonna do, I feel like I wanna delay it by 30 minutes so I can take out the dog and take a 10 minute power nap.
I'm debating. Anyways, what's up, man?
That's all I got, bro. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on, bro. I really appreciate it. I hope I was a good host that kind of set you up for some questions and get him out of the park and teach us some stuff.
So I do appreciate you coming in.
Well, I appreciate that, man. Sounds like you're a guy that people need to listen to, so hopefully they do.
Well, thank you very much, man. Well, that's it for this show. Just a real quick announcement again, just a reminder. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel and we also have a podcast on iTunes.
And please go over to Vocab's channel if you have not already and subscribe there. He's got a lot of content that you've been, you had a channel for how long now, Vocab?
Actually, only a few years. I mean, I had a YouTube account for a long time, but I haven't really been pushing a channel for a long time. So two and a half years, I think, as far as the actual channel, but I try to be pretty active.
Yeah, good, good. I was creeping around a little bit. You guys have a lot of content there. So please definitely check, what is it, Street Apologist? Or does it go by your own name?
I don't remember. Oh yeah, yeah, just youtube .com slash vocabalone.
Okay, yeah, so definitely subscribe to that. Again, in April 27th, I'll be having Doug Wilson on to talk more presuppositional methodology. But from now until then, we'll be mixing it up. Hopefully I can lock in Dr. William Lane Craig, which is something that is in the works.
So hopefully we can get him on to talk some other important philosophical, maybe theological and apologetical issues as well. Thank you so much guys for listening. Take care, God bless, and bye-bye.
