Fristianity Refuted!

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

And there's also going to be another live stream tomorrow, so don't miss that. I'll share a little bit about that, but we're back again to talk about a topic that you don't normally hear about.

If you do presuppositional apologetics and you're familiar with transcendental arguments and things like that, you might be familiar with what we call the

Christianity objection to the transcendental argument for God's existence.

Big, scary, fancy words, but not a big deal. We want to talk about it today. I have a friend of mine on with me today,

Joshua Pillows. I've had him on before. He actually did a debate on my channel.

I moderated a debate between himself and David Pallman on the issue of presuppositionalism versus evidentialism.

It was a debate on apologetic methodology, which I highly recommend. If you're interested in apologetic methodology, and you want to see what an evidentialist approach looks like that is represented by David Pallman and a presuppositional methodology, which is represented by Joshua Pillows, you want to check out that debate.

I probably should have put it in the comments somewhere or in the description, but you can just type in presuppositionalism versus evidentialism, and it will pop up.

Excellent, respectful discussion, and I think it displays both of the methods quite well, so totally check that out.

Now a couple of things. On September 22nd, I'll be having Dr. Lane Tipton on from Westminster Theological Seminary.

We're going to be discussing his new book on Vantill and Vantill's Trinitarian theology, so that's going to be super awesome.

Now all the way in December, I'll be having Pastor Jeff Durbin on, and so I'm super excited about that.

It's a little far off. You know, I shared the thumbnail a little early, and people are like, oh my goodness.

That's so far away. Why'd you share it? I don't know. I tried really hard to get him, and when he said yes, I made the thumbnail, and I was super excited to share, so there you go, and so tomorrow

I also will have someone who was on the show once before. If you remember, that super awesome episode we did entitled

The Apologetics, or I'm sorry, not The Apologetic Smorgasbord. I think it was called The Epic Presup Roundtable or something like that, where I had a bunch of different apologists on to discuss everything presuppositional apologetics.

We had Jimmy Lee. Jimmy Lee is well known in the

Facebook world. There is a Facebook page on Facebook entitled Reformed Presuppositional Apologetics, and he posts regularly there.

A pretty sharp guy, knows his stuff, and tomorrow I will be having him on to discuss the topic of the

Old Testament and the philosophy of evidence. The Old Testament and the philosophy of evidence.

Now from what I gather, he suggested this topic because he thought it might be interesting, and it sounded super fascinating. If I'm not mistaken,

I think he's going to try to show that the Old Testament kind of creates a good context for us to develop a philosophy of how we should interpret evidence and data and things like that.

So if it has nothing to do with that, my bad. All right, so that's it.

So we have an episode tomorrow as well. You want to, you know, check that out when it comes. Now, I do know that there are some students here of mine.

I teach at a Christian private school, and sometimes they pop in on live streams.

So before I invite my guest, I would like to say hi to Tatiana. Hello, how are you?

And I hope this discussion is not too far over your head, but this definitely requires a little bit of background on the topic.

So our topic is presuppositional apologetics, transcendental argument, okay, for the existence of God, and we're going to be addressing a specific argument against the transcendental argument, as us presuppositionalists like to use it, and that argument is called the objection of the

Christianity objection. So if that sounds weird, we're going to explain it in just a few moments. So without further ado,

I'd like to introduce my guest, Joshua Pillows. How's it going, man? I'm good. How are you, bro?

I'm doing well, and I'm super excited that you were able to come back on. Me too. I always love being here.

It's always a pleasure. Well, that's awesome. I enjoy, I mean, I've had you on a bunch of times, but I totally recommend folks to look up Revealed Apologetics, Joshua Pillows, and he's been on a couple of times, and they have been excellent discussions.

So you and I are proponents of a school of apologetic methodology known as presuppositional apologetics.

To narrow that down, we come from what we would call a Vantillian flavor of presuppositionalism.

There's kind of a broad spectrum as to where someone could land on that, on that, you know, methodology.

Why don't you explain to everyone very briefly, what is presuppositionalism in general?

What is the transcendental argument in particular? And then from there, we'll kind of branch off into addressing this, this

Christianity objection against the transcendental argument. Sure. So presuppositionalism, broadly speaking, argues over presuppositions, foundational assumptions about one's view of ethics, about one's view of reality, one's view of knowledge.

And what we attempt to do in our apologetic is to compare our foundational assumptions with our unbelievers' foundational assumptions.

And we ask the question, well, which world you can make sense out of, why experience is intelligible to begin with?

You know, why is nature uniform? Why can we do science? How can we make sense out of human consciousness, laws of logic and so forth?

And so broadly speaking, a presuppositional approach analyzes the presuppositions of the

Christian and then of the non -Christian and puts both of them under scrutiny to see which world you can make sense out of intelligible experience.

And so that is what we call the transcendental argument, which is a proof that God is the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of human experience, the

Christian God specifically. And it is through his existence and his creative power that we can make sense out of the uniformity of our experience, the intelligibility of our experience.

And so while we do analyze presuppositions and we utilize a reductive argument, we try to show that the other non -Christian position reduces to absurdity.

What we're ultimately arguing is worldviews in general, which one can supply these necessary preconditions for this very discussion we're having right now, let alone anything else that we ascribe intelligibility to in our experience.

Sure. Okay. So when we talk about presuppositionalism as an apologetic methodology and the transcendental argument as a specific argument, do you see presuppositionalism and transcendental argumentation essentially and necessarily connected?

For instance, I had a discussion with a brother a few episodes ago over this very topic. Do you see the transcendental argument as an essential feature to the broader methodology of presuppositionalism?

Yeah, because if we take out transcendental considerations and we're just analyzing presuppositions, all we're really doing is in analyzing presuppositions, we're just showing that our opponent's position is absurd.

And if we leave it at that, it's like, oh, okay. So what? I mean, what's left of our apologetic?

All we've shown is the opponent we're debating, his position reduces to absurdity, but that says nothing about Christianity in and of itself.

And so that's why we need to argue transcendentally, which is to argue for necessary preconditions.

And we tether that to presuppositions. Can the unbeliever's presuppositions make sense of intelligibility, these preconditions, or can the

Christians? Okay. So when we talk about, pardon,

I almost choked on something. I don't know what I, I almost cried just there for a second. It's like, I have such a way with words, you know.

I don't want to have an ugly death on the live stream, you know. I hate it when I pass out.

We don't want that to happen. Can you show us then, what is the transcendental argument?

I know we make a distinction between transcendental arguments in general, and then there's the unique transcendental argument that is utilized by Vantillians.

Greg Bonson, of course, comes to mind. What is the specific argument, transcendental argument, that demonstrates the truth of the

Christian worldview? So someone will make a distinction between, say, a transcendental argument that demonstrates that a

God is the necessary preconditions for knowledge. How would you demonstrate that it's the triune

God? What does that argument look? How is it defended? How is it laid out? And then maybe we can kind of talk, we can kind of shift into the discussion of some possible objections, more specifically the objection that comes from Christianity, as we'll explain it in a bit.

Yeah, our apologetic, our argument is predicated off of revelation from God.

And so immediately there's a huge antithesis, a contrast. So if someone wants to say, I can make sense out of X, Y, and Z if I conceive of this particular

God. It's like, okay, great. But all you're giving me is some conceivable, hypothetical, almost purely formal scenario.

But as Christians, we start with an actual Bible, a concrete, material, substantive proof and revelation from the triune

God. Can I interrupt you real quick? I do apologize, just to clarify. So you're saying when we, as presuppositionalists, who are arguing transcendentally, we are not positing the truth of the triune

God as a hypothetical entity that may or may not exist. Let's go and prove him together.

You're starting with, he's there, and here, now we need to ask the question, why he must be there in order for anything else.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah, he's there, specifically because he's revealed himself to me, and to you, and to everyone else.

And so that we are, as Paul says, without excuse. And so we are starting, Bantil was adamant throughout his career, and in all his writings, we start with this

God, this triune God, concretely, with the actuality of the book, he says. I think that's in common grace.

He says that we start with the actuality of the Bible. So we're not starting with speculation. We're not trying to find logical consistency and coherence, or, you know, abductive reasoning.

What's the best explanation for this intelligible experience we experience? We're starting concretely.

God has revealed himself. He's shown himself. And so we're going to predicate our argument off of that revelation. Hmm, okay.

So what does the argument look like? Do you typically present the argument in like a deductive form, with premises that lead to a conclusion?

Is there a way you can lay that out, and kind of just in a thumbnail sketch, demonstrate to us the transcendental necessity for the triune

God? Yeah, I tend to, personally, I tend to avoid a deductive formulation.

Not because it's defective, but because if you formulate it in a deductive form, whether it's modus ponens or whatever, people who don't fully understand this line of argumentation will assume, oh, so it's a deductive proof.

But it's not. It's a transcendental proof, but we just formulated it deductively. And so it kind of muddies the water, so to speak.

I have a particular syllogism, a particular argument I use that's more or less catered to a transcendental proof.

But I don't formulate it as like a modus ponens, if P then Q sort of thing. All right.

So what does it look like? So prove to us that the triune God exists transcendentally, and then we'll talk about the objection that is the topic of our discussion today.

Well, if we strip the argument of any contents, and we just left it at variables P and Q, the transcendental form, or a transcendental form, would be a premise one would be for P to be the case,

Q needs to be the case, because Q is a necessary precondition for P. The second premise, the minor premise is, well,

P is the case. And so the conclusion is, therefore, Q has to be the case, since it's necessary for P. And so that would be the syllogism

I use. That was what was championed by Bonson later in his life.

And it's just distinct. It's not a, oh, it's modus ponens. It's deductive. No, it's distinct. But when we incorporate the

Christian worldview, we would then just insert the components of that. So we would say, in order for intelligibility to be the case,

Christianity must be true. Or you could say, more narrowly, God must exist, the triune

God must exist, in order to make sense out of intelligible experience. He's a necessary precondition. Then the second premise is, well, we have intelligible experience.

So then the conclusion is, therefore, the triune God of Christianity exists, or Christianity is true.

Sure. Okay. And so we often hear when the argument is presented, well, saying that doesn't make it so, right?

So if we say, you know, if intelligibility is possible, Christianity is true. Okay. That's the claim, right?

So I'm not asking you for a fully robust, like right now, top of your head layout, the whole thing.

But if you can give us, again, in a thumbnail sketch, what does the defense of that premise look like?

It's a good question, because I didn't tell you this, but I was on Clubhouse last night, in a room full of atheists.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for you. No, I was slightly out of it, because I'd already taken like some stuff to help me fall asleep.

But then I got carried away, and I was just... So time out! You went on Clubhouse while on drugs.

And I really hope that's not going to end up on YouTube or somewhere, because it's not a good picture of who

I am. This is Joshua. He's like, I'm on Clubhouse. Let me debate some atheists. Well, let me tell you, because of that, they were so open to everything

I said. Like, because I wasn't being obscurantist or arrogant or whatever, because I was, you know, under some, you know, sedated state of drugs.

But we had a very fruitful discussion, and that kept coming back over and over again, because there were other presuppositionalists that would come and go in that room.

Well, just saying it doesn't prove it. Yeah. So who cares? I mean, it's just a tautology at that point.

Where's the substance behind it? So it's a good question. The answer to that is simple, and it lies in the fact that all you have to do is stand on the

Christian worldview, on the Christian's presuppositions, the Christian worldview as it stands from the Bible.

And when you analyze the Christian worldview, you see that, wow, all of a sudden everything makes sense.

We can make sense out of consciousness, reliability of sense perception, excuse me, uniformity in nature, so science, causality, laws of logic, and moral absolutes, and stuff like that.

So the proof of that, the illustration of that, is to ask our unbelieving opponent, well, stand on my worldview for a second, and let's just go over what my worldview entails.

I mean, you'll see that Christianity supplies these preconditions for intelligible experience. And now if we step into your worldview and apply what it entails, you're reduced to absurdity.

But not only are you reduced to absurdity, you have to assume my worldview in order to even argue against it or bring it into question.

So the answer to the criticism of, oh, well, just asserting it doesn't make it so, the answer is, well, stand on the

Christian's worldview for the sake of the argument, right? Be charitable. We want to be charitable. That's how you refute another position.

You have to assume that what they're saying is true. Stand in our position, and you'll see, wow, we supply the transcendentals.

We can make sense out of intelligible experience. So what, okay, so I say this all the time.

People say, well, wait a minute, bro, right? This is what I always do when I do my impression of the opponent, right? It's the same thing every time.

Apparently, every atheist is from, like, California. You're asking me to step into your worldview, but you haven't demonstrated.

I don't want to step into your worldview. You demonstrate to me. So a lot of times people will shift it and say, so they don't want to participate in your attempt to demonstrate it, because your attempt to demonstrate it requires that they hypothetically step into your worldview so that they can see the coherency, how it works, that it in fact accounts for the things that are under discussion.

How would you respond to someone who says, I'm not going to step into your worldview right now, because I want to see you demonstrate your

God. You're trying to shift. You're trying to get me to throw out my worldview so that you don't have to defend your perspective.

I'm sure you've heard something along these lines. That was also in that chat. There you go.

I mean, I love it, because it really shows the climate of today. This was not a thing back in Bonson's day.

We didn't have social media. We didn't have all these connections. And so you see that lacking in his work.

Excuse me. Yeah, so if someone wants to say, well, I want demonstration. I don't want to stand in your worldview, right?

Because I don't accept it. Well, I can respond to that in one of two ways. I could say, okay, well,

I don't accept atheism. I don't want you to argue for it, because I don't accept it. And if I have to assume it, that's not true.

So in other words, I can just turn it back on the atheist or whomever I'm talking to, if that's the game we're playing. But the demonstration is straightforward.

It's simple. Stand in my worldview. What are the metaphysical and epistemological implications of Christianity? And you'll see that it supplies the three conditions.

But if an atheist wants to say, no, no, that's not legitimate. I want some objective, neutral demonstration or proof.

Of course, we know neutrality is impossible. But that is the demonstration. And for anyone who wants to reject that, wants to reject the principle of charity, which is what everyone should be doing.

That's how you reduce a position to absurdity. Like I said earlier, you have to assume your opponent's correct for the sake of the argument.

If you're going to assume something different than what your opponent's espousing, then you're not critiquing your opponent internally.

It's going to inevitably be external. So the demonstration is just through stand on my worldview.

Okay. And so that's what the argument will look like regardless if you're talking to an atheist, if you're talking to a agnostic, if you're talking to a

Hindu, if you're talking to a Buddhist, if you're talking to a Platonist. Regardless, the conversation will be generally the same.

If you want me to show you that my position is true, hypothetically grant the truth and I will show you.

Granting its truth, look, it actually provides those preconditions. And then we do the same for the other perspective and show, look, on its own terms, this internal critique, right?

On its own terms, things don't work out. And of course, you know, that's where the debate's going to have to be. Now, that is not the main topic of our discussion today.

So I want to take a moment to shift now. Okay. I'm assuming that everyone listening here and everyone that will listen will be somewhat familiar with the transcendental argument you laid out and the sorts of discussions related to that.

So I want to shift then to our main point under discussion and that is the issue of Christianity.

But before we do that, I'd like to thank Glastine Russell, former student of mine. Thank you so much for your five dollar super chat.

Glastine says, hey, Mr. Ayala, I'm an official college student now that is so awesome. I was her 12th grade teacher and she's an awesome, awesome student.

Just hope all is well. Many blessings to you and your family. Thank you so much. Just to throw it out there for people who are listening, if you have any questions about presuppositional apologetics, specifically apologetics more generally or the transcendental argument or Christianity, which we're about to go through now, please feel free to leave a question in the comments and preface your question with question so that we can differentiate it from the normal run -of -the -mill discussions that happen in the comment section.

All right, Joshua. Okay, I gotta put my glasses back on again. All right.

All right. Listen, okay, you're telling me that only the

Christian worldview can provide the preconditions for intelligibility. Okay, again, we're assuming people are familiar with this and you say as a

Trinitarian that only the triune God can account for unity and plurality and somehow this is related to intelligible experience and knowledge so on and so forth.

But suppose you have a worldview that is similar to Christianity in almost every single way except in just a small, you know, just little features here and there that are different.

Suppose we have a triune God, but it's not the Christian worldview. So you have a metaphysical grounding for unity and plurality, these sorts of things, how do you avoid what we would call the counter example of the

Christian worldview, Christianity? You have one in the many accounted for metaphysically because the

Christian God is both a one in the many. He reveals himself. There is an epistemological link between his creation and his revelation.

And so we could account for epistemology, right? We have a coherent epistemology, our metaphysic. We have a triune personal

God. We have an epistemology that triune personal God reveals such that we could know, have knowledge, intelligible experience, so on and so forth.

How would you respond to that objection to the transcendental argument, the objection from Christianity?

Right. Well, yeah, I thought you were gonna let me explain it. So I was like, oh, I'm sorry. Yes, easy. No, no, no.

It's okay. Yeah. So yeah, the Christian says, well, feel free to expand if you think I've left any significant. No, no, you got it.

I don't want to be like, oh, I've got it. I'm arrogant or I don't want to be like that. But yeah, now the Christian basically says

Van Til, you've got it right. You have a great argument. It's solid. It gets the job done. You can make sense out of intelligibility.

But the problem is it gets the job done, which means it's sufficient, but that doesn't mean it's necessary.

Because another conceivable world can come along, like you say, an ape Christianity in every way except for one or two fundamental points or premises.

And come to the same conclusion. We can make sense out of one and many in science and so forth. And it's like, so there you go,

Van Til. I commend you, but it's only sufficient. It's not necessarily true. And so the first thing that I would say to a

Christian, whatever it may be, and Mike Butler in his thesis,

Bonson's student, refers to Christianity as being a quadrinity. And I kind of just like sticking to one example because it doesn't really matter.

But let's just say God is four in one. Okay. And the Christian says, well, Van Til, I can conceive of another worldview that answers it in every single way.

So therefore yours is not necessary. It's only sufficient. Now right off the bat, the irony in all of this is the phrase

I can conceive of. Because what Van Til is arguing is metaphysical.

He's arguing for the actuality of Christianity. It's not some merely conceptual transcendental argument.

That's more modest. He's ambitious in his attempt. Like I said before, I don't know. Was it here or was it before we went live?

Anyway, Van Til argues concretely. Absolutely. We start from the authority of the

Bible, the actuality of the book. And so immediately we have a problem because Van Til's up here in metaphysics land giving an ambitious transcendental argument.

The Christian comes along and he says, well, I can conceive of another worldview. Well, that's great. But we're not talking about conceiving things up here.

We're talking about actual states of affairs. And so before we even settle the dispute with a

Christian, we have to pull him up and say, no, no, no. We're not conceiving anything. If you're going to refute

Christian theism as it's been posited in an orthodox fashion, you have to likewise argue metaphysically.

And so basically you have to correct the critic from the outset before you can attempt to refute him.

You have to help him out. You have to pull him up by his bootstraps, so to speak. So you first have to make it clear that the

Christian needs to be arguing metaphysically. That he says, oh, well, I can conceive of a similar worldview. It doesn't say anything against Van Til's because we're not on the same playing field.

We're not even playing the same ball game at that point. We need to get to the same stadium before we can hash this out. So the problem already is a difference in transcendental arguments.

So the Christian is arguing in hypothetical conceptual land where Van Til is not arguing in hypothetical conceptual land.

He's saying, no, I'm starting with the metaphysical reality of the Christian God and arguing on that basis.

He's not a theory out there. He's not what some people would call the

God hypothesis, right? That's not what Van Til is arguing. Oh, okay.

Well, someone might say, well, wait a minute. You can't start with the actuality of God. Here it comes, Joshua.

This is one we see all the time. You can't start with the metaphysical reality of God because that is begging the question.

No way. Wait a minute. We have to do the Home Alone. Ready? You know,

I was like, I've never heard that one before. No. Yeah. So, okay.

So we'll return back to some different variations of Christianity. But what do you say to someone to say, well, wait a minute.

You can't just start with the metaphysical reality of God. What's wrong with that assertion? What is the misunderstanding of the nature of transcendental argumentation when someone says something along those lines?

I love that we get to Stroud. Stroud's my favorite criticism of all.

Okay. Yeah. So basically it's illegitimate to start with a Christian metaphysical scheme. We have to start with ourselves and then work outward.

So there you go, Van Til. That's legitimate. Well, the comeback to that is, says who? I'm sorry.

That was just completely taken for granted. Now, how about you prove that for me, Mr. Critic or whoever it may be?

Because as it turns out, the person giving that criticism is himself or herself starting out with her own metaphysical picture.

Namely something of a Kantian divide or an egocentric picture. We have to start with ourselves before we can work out.

And as Christians are starting with God and us together, we're starting with an external world. And so we have two antithetical worldviews.

And so for one to say, well, it's illegitimate for you to start with your metaphysical scheme. Well, then why is it legitimate for him to start with his metaphysical scheme?

Everyone starts metaphysically somewhere and this type of critic just completely takes it for granted. Everyone starts somewhere.

And the question is, which worldview makes sense? So to criticize a starting point is just a moot point in and of itself and moreover, it's self -contradictory because he's taking his position for granted.

Doing the same thing. He's doing the very thing he says we shouldn't do. Right. So it's not you either start with God or you start with self.

That's a false dichotomy. The presuppositionalist will say we start with both.

We start with a worldview that constitutes the metaphysical actuality of God and myself as a knower, as a conceiver.

Yeah, and even Sproul, for instance, just would not get this and I could link the video of where he says we can't start with God consciousness because we have to start with self -consciousness.

And it's like, okay, Dr. Sproul, I love you. And I know you're a Vantilian right now. But that's just a false dichotomy.

Really? How do we know it's an either or? Because given my worldview, given the Imago Dei, we're made in God's image.

Quite everything we do quite literally reflects God thinking. Man thinking is

God thinking. Revelation is permeable everywhere. It's inescapable. So we start with God and man.

That's the metaphysical picture we begin with and therefore the metaphysical picture we begin with starts with an external reality.

We don't start with ourselves and work out. Well, I don't know, Joshua. It looks like you're confusing ontology with epistemology.

Why don't you address that real quick? We'll get some of the elephants in the room out of the way and then we'll turn back to Christianity, okay?

How would you engage that? Because this will inevitably come up if you're discussing presuppositionalism with someone who's familiar with these kinds of discussions and you see the major talking points come up.

I mean, that's fair. These are good questions. They're not dumb questions like, why are you asking that? How could you think we're confusing ontology with epistemology or that we're begging to question?

These are perfectly legitimate questions that they should come up and we should address them as presuppositionalists.

So how would you engage that? Yeah, well, yeah, I just want to say I love these objections because it shows that the critic has at least a basic understanding of the transcendental program

Vantil has given us, right? It's not something like, oh, Vantil was an idealist or oh, presupps hate evidence.

It's heresy or whatever. It's just like, come on, man, like seriously. But these kinds of criticisms,

I love it because it's more philosophically rigorous and I respect and commend the critic for actually having some knowledge of this program.

But to answer that question, it is a valid criticism, not because the apologetic is guilty of it, but because apologists are guilty of it.

Particularly those who are less learned and I don't mean to belittle any presuppositionalists who are learning, but it is very common for that to be the case.

Well, you start with an epistemic premise and then you conclude God exists. Well, that doesn't follow at all, right? So how do you rectify that?

Well, the rectification or the solution lies in the fact that Vantil himself endorsed both.

So we can talk about metaphysics, but ultimately, or I'm sorry, we can talk about epistemology, but it ultimately is going to entail metaphysics because the two are inextricably linked.

So we could start with either one, but as long as we propound and stress metaphysical implications, the existence of God, not just that we have to believe in him, the existence of God, then we're not confusing anything.

Vantil's argument can be purely conceptual if you want to put it that way, but I can quote Vantil directly where he says that God's existence is necessary for X, Y, and Z.

So while presuppositionalists may confuse it, and that is very true, the apologetic itself does not succumb to that criticism.

All right. Well, let's kind of backpedal then to our Christianity objection and this idea that there could be similar worldviews.

Would you say the worldview in which a triune God exists and reveals himself through scriptures and the

Bible, yet the Bible lacks a couple of books, would that be a completely different worldview?

Because I know we argue as a worldview system, and part of our system is that God has in fact revealed himself in the 66 books of the

Bible. How would you say, well, there's a triune God who's revealed himself in nature and scripture, but his scripture lacks the book of James, and let's go with Titus.

Yeah, this was brought up in Clubhouse too last night. And again, I -

Someone's asking, what is Clubhouse? I don't want to answer that question. I'll answer it. I'll answer it.

Some wise man told me, and I'm not going to say who, but a wise man once told me it's the underbelly of discord.

It's just like a cesspool of intellectual and moral degeneracy. There's some good people there, but yes.

But there are some good people there. It's like the Tatooine of the internet. Yeah, so it's like discord, but down a tier, and yet people still go to it anyway.

So that's basically what it is. It's free if you want to join. It is free. It is free.

Oh goodness. What were we talking about? Oh, okay. Yeah. So if some of the books were taken out, right, and this is where we have to draw a fine line between a

Christian objection and a non -Christian objection, because if the book of Philemon or Titus or Judah or whatever was taken out, it has no significant bearing on the

Christian worldview as a whole. In fact, I would help the critic, like I had to help the

Christian get up to metaphysics, right? It's not conceivable. It's metaphysical. So I will help this critic now and say, guess what?

The canon wasn't completed until the fourth century. Uh -oh. Well, that's not good. We didn't have a full revelation until then.

So I guess this is just some late, you know, unbiblical apologetic that we're giving. Well, the answer to that is, and even in the

Old Testament, the Israelites had revelation that we don't have today. They had special, you know, privileges that they had and witnessed and experienced that we don't have today.

In the time of Paul, when he gives his apologetic in Acts 17, he had revelation from God, especially on the road to Damascus and onward.

And so what's the point? Well, the point is God's revelation permeates everywhere. It's permeated everywhere since Adam and Eve, let alone the

Old Testament, the early church before the canon was compiled, and even today. So if someone says, well,

I believe in the Apocrypha or I don't believe in Titus or whatever, it has no significant bearing on the

Christian worldview as a whole. I get the Apocrypha has some contradictions. Maybe I wouldn't allow that.

But in terms of removing a small book here or there, it's nothing significant. Because what we're arguing for is the metaphysical structure of Christianity.

So if I have a one -page book in the Bible that doesn't necessarily contribute or add anything to that metaphysical scheme in any significant sense, then if it's removed or if God, you know, from eternity past said,

I won't have the book of Jude in the Bible, that's nothing significant to the Christian worldview. So those are, you know, yeah.

But you would say that some books contain content of the metaphysical situation that would be.

So for example, if God gave us a Bible that didn't have the Gospels or didn't have some portions of Paul or Genesis, yeah, then that would be a different situation.

Totally different ballgame at that point. Yeah, that's a big problem. But yeah, I like that objection. You can have some books removed.

Not saying you should because it's permissible that God has given us his canon. But yes, you can have some books removed without significantly affecting the

Christian worldview in any sense like that. Yeah, now I want to mix things up. I usually do questions towards the end, but I want to kind of intersperse a couple in the middle if that's okay.

Because I want to make sure we get to them. So Nemtugz, I can't pronounce that, sorry.

I do apologize. This person says, it seems that Joshua's response is that the

Christian's worldview doesn't exist yet, but Vantil just doesn't deal with conceived theoreticals.

The argument functions as a critique of coherentism. I'm not sure what they're asking, but perhaps they're getting at the idea of how can you respond to a worldview that has not yet been presented or something along those lines.

I apologize if I miss an understanding. I mean, it's just the way it's typed out. It's very hard to figure out what he's asking, or she's asking,

I have no idea. Do you know what's going on there? Yeah, I don't know about the word yet because all

I've been saying is the Christian has to turn his conceivable conceptual argument and make it, well, materialize it, make it metaphysical saying, no, this is the case.

It's been the case for 2 ,000 years. Not that, oh, it just popped into existence and we've, you know. In terms of Vantil not dealing with conceived theoreticals, you'd have to ask what it means, but no,

Vantil deals with all sorts of non -Christian thought and they all apex at the same problems of like pure impersonality and being like Plato, brute facts, sheer chance and possibility, governing predication, and therefore there's no explanation to intelligibility.

So it's not as if, well, we're just critiquing some sort of coherentist view, a particular coherentist view, and hey, it's internally inconsistent.

We're talking about metaphysics here and Vantil does talk about or does critique any conceived theoretical worldview that could be out there.

Okay. Now, what about the objection that refuting competitors, competing worldviews, or non -existent hypotheticals that may be true, that may come into existence later that, you know, worldviews that we haven't heard of yet.

How can you demonstrate the truth of the triune God without engaging in an inductive refutation of all of the options out there?

And you know, Joshua, this is a common, right? You can't prove Christianity by simply refuting options that are presented to you because there's just countless number of options.

How would you address that argument to show that the transcendental argument, as we understand it, does not require you to engage in that exercise?

Again, I love this criticism because it has an understanding of what Vantil is getting at. And for the third time in, how long has it been?

Like 37 minutes? This was on Clubhouse last night. Again, all of this was on Clubhouse.

Seriously, it's in the culture today, in atheistic culture as pertains to debating

Christians. So we need to know these kind of criticisms. Sure. And there was an apologist in that room that was trying to answer it and he wasn't doing it.

I knew what he was trying to get at, but he wasn't saying it the right way. Okay. The atheists were right.

There's no way you can prove Christianity is necessarily true from an inductive survey of worldviews.

Because first of all, you'd have to go through every worldview that's posited today. We have 8 billion people on this rock.

But even then, if you could do that, you'd have to refute every other conceivable hypothetical worldview in the future. And it's impossible given our finitude.

So you can't inductively prove a necessity. Okay, well then, oh, let's do it deductively.

Well, I could form a deductive argument and prove that Christianity is necessary. But the problem with the deductive argument is it's purely formal.

It doesn't tell me anything about the external world. All I'm showing is, hey, I can make a valid argument.

The conclusion follows from the premises. But that doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on reality itself. Okay, so inductive reasoning doesn't work.

Deductive reasoning is really purely formal. Abductive reasoning is reasoning to the best explanation.

It's clearly not what Van Til is saying. He's arguing for necessity. So then that brings us all the way back to transcendental reasoning.

We argue for necessary free conditions. How is it that we're even able to predicate right now or even bring anything else into question to communicate with one another?

Can you briefly define what predication means for someone who's like, man, I really like what he's saying, but he just used that word and I have no idea what that means.

Yeah, how do we ascribe properties to something? How do we work? How do we talk in a subject -predicate relationship?

Or how do we reason discursively through a line of reasoning, inferencing? Okay. And so, well, the answer to that is just to go all the way back to what

I said a while ago, which is transcendental reasoning. Stand on the Christian worldview for the sake of the argument.

It supplies the transcendentals. Oh, but wait a second. There can only be one worldview. It can't be two realities that contradict one another.

So Christianity supplies the transcendentals. If you reject Christianity, you're not only reduced to absurdity, but you have to assume

Christianity. You have to assume the very thing you're arguing against. And so the proof of necessity of the uniqueness proof of tag of Christianity is transcendental.

Stand on its own terms. It supplies the transcendentals and therefore you have to assume it's true in order to even argue against it.

Okay. Okay. So this is good. When we say that the Christian worldview provides the only transcendental foundation for knowledge and intelligible experience, can you unpack in more detail why there must be one, only one transcendental foundation?

And if Christianity is a precondition, it does account for those, then it must be the only worldview.

So that if Christianity does provide the necessary preconditions, then it follows it must be the only one.

Can you unpack that? Because when you listen to Bonson's lectures, his lectures are awesome. And I think the majority of what you've learned is listening from lectures.

If anyone's interested in like, well, how did Joshua learn all this stuff? Actually listening to Bonson lectures and reading his books and things.

Yeah, all that kind of stuff. But this particular point is either garbled because of a bad recording or is not fully laid out in a way that would probably be more useful to the average person.

So let's go the Highlander route. There can be only one. Why? And why is

Christianity the one? Yeah, well, and I'm sure

I brought this up in past times I've been here, but he did bring this up in the summer of 95, a few months before he passed, really when

I was born. But it's in a lecture series and it's nowhere in any of his writings that I'm aware of anywhere.

It's not in his last book, his Van Til's Apologetic. So that's why this always comes back over and over again.

He should have written this down. But so the answer to why there can only be one, you don't even need to like talk about transcendental considerations here.

Just ask someone well, or just say it's true that we exist on earth. We all live on earth.

But then tell them it's also true that we don't exist on earth at the same time and in the same sense. Now 99 % of people will tell you that's stupid.

That's impossible. That's absurd. That makes no sense. And so just at face value, you don't even have to talk about Van Til or transcendental considerations.

In the nature of the case, there can only be one reality. If there are contradictory realities, it doesn't even make sense that there are contradictory realities.

Because you have to assume there's one reality in terms of which you can talk about contradictory realities. I'm probably going too fast.

I love this sort of stuff. That's okay. If I need to slow down, just let me know. Slow down just a bit because I want to make,

I'm trying my best. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no. It's not you. I'm trying my best to get these sorts of questions out because I know these are the questions that a lot of the critics are asking.

So I'm trying to do them a solid and say, hey, man, that's a good question. I'll try to address it and ask my guest or if I have an opportunity to explain it.

But I think in my opinion, I think you explain it much better than I do. And so I think you're doing an excellent job so far.

But if you can kind of just a little bit more slowly unpack that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're doing an excellent job and I appreciate it.

All right. How about I put it this way? A reality, a single reality is necessary for this to even be happening, for anything to be happening, to talk, to doubt, like Descartes would say.

There has to be some sort of reality, right? And so we could say that a reality is a transcendental to experience.

It's a necessary precondition. If there is no reality, then there's nothingness and this wouldn't even be happening. So there has to be a reality, a definite objective grounding or metaphysical view that has to be true.

Okay. So that's easy to follow. But then someone comes along and says, oh, I agree with that.

But there's also another reality that's true at the same time. And in the same sense, it's also objective. And in this reality,

I don't exist. But I do exist in this other reality. And so what are we left with?

Well, I have one reality where I exist and another one where I don't exist, to use my existence as an example. So I have two realities that contradict one another.

And if that's the case, you can't even make sense of that claim to begin with. It's completely self -refuting.

There has to be one concrete reality by which you can posit anything you wish. Even to deny that there's a reality, you have to assume that there's a reality.

But there can't be this reality. And then there's another reality where, you know, the flying spaghetti monster is true and Josh Pillows doesn't exist at the same time.

And I'm not talking about the multiverse theory or anything. I'm talking about, you know, one holistic objective view of reality as a whole.

And so in the nature of the case, there can only be one true reality. And then connecting this to Van Till and Christianity, we can make sense out of this reality.

Even atheists and skeptics will agree, and Kant would agree, there is an external world. There is an external reality, but we can never know of it.

We're stuck and confined in an egocentric picture. But Van Till has realized and taken Kant's program and said, no, with Christianity, with that revelation, we know what this one reality is.

And there can only be one reality. Because if there are two realities that contradict one another, then you've lost unity.

You've lost coherence and therefore you've lost intelligibility. This isn't even possible. Okay. So that if Christianity, because that's the case, if Christianity's worldview does account for intelligible experience, which one of the ways we demonstrate that is laying out the

Christian system and inviting the unbeliever to internally critique the system, right?

Yeah, go ahead. If the unbeliever doesn't want to do that, then he doesn't want us to prove our point, because part of the demonstration is the positive presentation of the system and the inviting the unbeliever to taste and see, so to speak.

There you go. Yeah, it's like, and Vonson says, if the unbeliever doesn't want it, excuse me, oh, man. Don't worry.

What you're doing, where are my glasses, you know? How dare you hiccup on live

YouTube? Vonson says, if the unbeliever doesn't want to argue with you, is that a defect in my apologetic?

Well, not at all. All the unbeliever is saying is, well, I don't want to be rational. I don't want to involve myself in, you know, logical considerations here.

I don't want to be charitable. Well, if you don't want to be charitable and rational, that says nothing about my argument, right?

So get off the court, so to speak, you're right. Let's get the next person on the court and I'll play with them and we'll hash it out together.

But if you don't want to be charitable and logical and reason with me in an open -minded way, then

I have no reason to argue with you. Apologetics is a defense. It's not an offense. So if you're not going to play,

I'm just going to sit on the court playing defense. Who's the next opponent coming up, you know? So it's not a defect in my system.

Right. So it requires you to play nice and actually respond to the invitation to internally critique my worldview as part of the demonstration.

Because I can lay out my system, right? If I, if I lay out my system and say, look, it accounts for intelligibility, be like, yeah, but that doesn't prove you just laid out your system.

Okay. So now jump in my system. So I can show you, this is how I don't want to jump because now, now the person has to actually engage in internally.

Yeah, that's right. And if they're not going to entertain it, then you're not, I mean, that's it. You're not playing at that point.

Right. Now, now in defense of the atheist and in defense of the skeptics you did make a very important distinction between presuppositionalism and presuppositionalists.

And there have been presuppositionalists that have not played nice on the apologetic field, so to speak.

They have used deceptive tactics. I'm not against using a script. I know people say they have their presub script.

We all have scripts. I mean, there are things I want to say and I want to get to, and I give a line of questioning so that I can get to that point.

It helps. It guides you. Yeah. Right. But there are people who use the methodology in a very disingenuous way to get kind of the logical and rational upper hand in an argument.

And to that, that's inappropriate and it should be called out. However, if you happen to engage with someone who's laying out their case and they're being genuine, we have goodwill towards one another and we invite you.

Come in and internally critique the Christian worldview. When I debated Eric Murphy, who is,

I think it's a talk heathen. He was from the talk heathen show. And he invited me on to do kind of a debate slash conversation.

When it finally clicked for him to do a internal critique, then he tried to.

And so he says, fine, the idea of the Trinity is logically incoherent. And to my mind,

I'm like, good. Now we're talking. You get the idea now that I have a worldview, you have a worldview and everything you're going to say to me,

I'm going to filter through my worldview. Everything I'm going to say to you, you're going to filter through your worldview. So now you need to jump into my worldview.

And he tried to do that by critiquing the coherency of the Trinity. The problem is he didn't properly represent the

Trinity. Right. So I always tell people on my show, one of the ways that you survive the internal critique is to know your theology.

Yes. You want to survive the internal critique. You need to know your system. So, all right. Yeah. Okay. So let's

I hope that's sufficient for people. I think we covered a lot there. Let's take a few moments kind of at the back end here to take some more questions.

Is that okay? And then we'll wrap things up. I think this was excellent. Yeah. I see Brian already kind of coming in with the first few objections.

Excellent. There are not a lot of questions here, but we'll go through some of them and hopefully it will be to everyone's satisfaction.

And hey, you leave watching this episode and you're like, I don't buy it. Okay. I mean, that's fine.

DM me. We do. And we use it. We try to use it consistently. We try to answer the objections and things like that.

I mean, there's a difference between proof and All right. Real quick.

This is not a question, but a comment. I want to give a shout out urban reform podcast is clarifying Jimmy Lee, who I'll be having on tomorrow to talk about the old

Testament and the philosophy of evidence is also an admin of that Facebook group. I mentioned the reform presuppositional apologetics, and he runs the

Veritas domain website, which has got some really good articles, outlines, teaching lessons on presuppositional apologetics that you guys definitely want to check out.

That is the Veritas domain. All right. Let's scroll down and see what we got here.

Do, do, do, do, do. You might be encouraged by this. Joshua. Mike Carr says, hello. Good to see Mr. Pillows again.

He speaks apologetics philosophy in a way that I can grasp. And so that is super helpful because that's what it's all about.

People grasping it and hopefully understanding it and using it effectively. Thank you so much. I just, you got to give him, you know, when you learn audibly instead of just reading books and articles, but you hear his voice and it's in a classroom setting, like, of course, you know, you're a teacher.

It is so different because in a classroom setting, it's less formal, right? You get through all the big vocabulary words and the concepts and it's down to earth language.

And so I I'm hoping I'm mirroring his way of how he would convey these things to his classes.

And so I'm so glad I get to see messages like that where, oh, it's very clear. And I'm like, yes. Absolutely.

Awesome. Uh, Cesar, I think he's Hispanic. He's not, I'm Puerto Rican. I don't know.

Cesar. Okay. Ask the question who came up with the Christianity of, uh, Christianity objection.

Do you, I know it kind of goes back as far as like the early eighties, I think. Uh, but I don't remember exactly the person who brought it up.

I couldn't tell you either specifically. I know. Um, I think it goes back before that because in Van Til's Festrift, John Warwick Montgomery, um, who's a devout

Lutheran brother still alive, by the way, I think he's in his nineties. Wow. Um, yeah, I mean, he's, he's going, you know, but he, he leveled a similar criticism, um, that sort of mimics or follows in line with Christianity.

Uh, and so you see the seeds of Christianity coming to fruition even back as far as the seventies, maybe the sixties.

So this criticism has been around for a while. And the problem is it hasn't been elaborated on and Bonson unfortunately died, um, shortly before social media.

And it's where this would get more notoriety. So imagine Bonson on Twitter, bro. He'd be banned and he'd be going off and everything.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's been around for at least half a century, I would say comfortably.

Okay. Thank you for that. Uh, the evil divide, uh, can Joshua recommend some books on precept apologetics.

Now I wanted to give you an opportunity to suggest that, but I want to let everyone who's listening.

Now, if you are fascinated with how Joshua explains his views and has a grasp on the methodology,

I can speak for him that 90%, maybe he'll even say 99 % of everything that he's learned has been listening to Bonson's lectures.

He has an entire series on transcendental arguments. And so, and that's available for free right now.

You can go to sermon audio and type in the Bonson project in which all of his audio teachings have been made available in category categories for free spend hours and hours on that again.

I mean, Bonson's not, you know, the omniscient all know, no looming apologist, but he was a really solid teacher.

Even if you disagree with him, he's a good teacher. And so even if you're a critic of presuppositionalism and you want to understand it, you could read the books that Joshua is going to suggest in a few moments, but check out the lectures.

I think they, they kind of fill in some of the gaps that perhaps Bonson doesn't go into detail in some of the books.

So I highly recommend the Bonson project, B -A -H -N -S -E -N project.

All right. Why don't you suggest some books for, uh, for our listeners? Um, well, if we're beginning with a more elementary understanding, a more primitive level, a level of primer understanding, um,

I would probably start with Jason Lyle's book, the ultimate proof of creation, just because it has more of a practical, pragmatic, practical approach to this day and age.

Yeah. And, and, and it's, it's down to earth. It's focused around science and evolution and stuff like that, but it's thoroughly presuppositional.

He compares worldviews. There's no such thing as neutrality, another hiccup. Um, so that would probably be the best one.

Um, other than that, you could always ready by Greg Bonson is his syllabus book. That's his, that's the standard book.

Always ready. Presuppositional apologetic stated and defended is I find to be just a complete masterpiece.

The first half of it, it's very rigorous, but it is hardcore. And the story behind that book is really sad, but that would be good.

And then Van Til's apologetic is his, um, last book is antemortem book, which is like 800 pages long.

And that's an exhaustive basically, uh, exposition of until that's my, that's actually my favorite.

Uh, isn't that it right there? Yeah. I was like, there it is. You can tell this one is my favorite.

I actually have a really cool app called voice dream and I download books on PDF and it reads it.

Not only does it read it to me in a high definition robotic voice, but it actually breaks the

PDF into chapters so that you can actually go to the different parts of the book.

And I've, I read this book in the morning, I have a 40 to 50 minute drive to work. And so, um, if you don't have time to lug this thing around, there are other ways to use your technology, uh, to kind of digest a lot of this material.

Yeah. You gave me, um, what was it called? Speechify. That's what you recommended to me a while ago.

I voice dream is better now. I think it's better in the way that it formats the stuff. I think

I paid like 20 bucks. It's been the best 20 bucks that I, I, and you can listen to it while turning your phone off.

You know, it's, it's awesome. So, and, and, um, the evil divide, there are other books, like you're going to have to help me out here.

Eli, I don't know his last, how you say his last name, Daniel Conde. I don't know how you pronounce that. Um, he's roughly my age, you know, learn from Bonson as well.

I'm not sure what his whole background is, but the folly of unbelief is probably, Oh, you promoted my book. It's pretty good. I mean,

I haven't read it. I haven't bought it or anything, but he is very solid in presuppositionalism and he knows his philosophy behind it.

And that's his first book. And he's gosh, he's gotta be my age or younger. That's always ready.

That's the, that's the standard, you know, Magna Carta, if you will, of presuppositional apologetics.

But yeah, I was just getting at, there are, there are up, up and coming authors as well, pushing the antithesis.

That is the most elementary and systematic book by Bonson, because at the end of every chapter, you have a

Q and A, um, to test you, you have a glossary terms and all the answers to the questions are in the back of the book.

So you're not left in existential despair, but it's very, it's very, um, straightforward.

It was based off of a class given to high school seniors who are about to go to college. So it's catered to that sort of audience.

But yeah, there are many books out there that you can get on this. All right.

Um, Rob V asks the question, does this argument help with in -house disagreement among Christians?

I would say no, because if we're, if we're, if we're defining in -house as like inter -familial squabbles,

Michael Butler always used that we're all a big family, but we squabble amongst, you know, Romans nine, is it choice meets or is it, you know, something different, you know, or do that if Leighton ever watched this, he'll make it.

I'm just kidding. I love, um, or, you know, or should we be pre -millennialist, post -millennialist and so forth?

Um, a transcendental approach isn't catered to tell you that because a transcendental approach is only catered around necessary preconditions.

And we can't know for certain as much as you hate to admit it, which, um, eschatology, for instance, is the correct one.

We can exegete it. I am a firm post -millennialist, but, um, in terms of in familial squabbles between Christians, um, this apologetic, this transcendental approach is not catered or meant to resolve those types of disagreements.

This is a broad scope, metaphysical, wide ranging apologetic. It's not, it doesn't deal with the minutia of theological doctrines.

Okay. Um, this is unorthodox for me to do, but I feel so inclined and I hope you don't mind.

Uh, Alaysar86 says if anyone could pray for me, I would appreciate it. I'm sick as a dog.

God bless. I'm going to pray for you right now, if that's okay. I don't know who this person is, uh, but, uh,

Heavenly Father, we come before you in the name of Jesus for, uh, Alaysar86. Uh, you know, um, the situation there, um, feeling under the weather is never fun, but we know that you are a

God who heals. You are a God who listens to prayer, Father God. And we should just pray in the name of Jesus on behalf of, uh, this, um, uh, this brother or sister.

I'm not really sure. So, uh, we thank you for your faithfulness, Lord, and your loving kindness towards us. We pray your will, uh, in their life.

We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. All right. We pray that, uh, you feel better.

I definitely resonate with that. I wasn't feeling very well a couple of weeks ago and my wife is not feeling well tonight.

So, um, prayers. Yeah. Is that the totally off topic?

Yeah. Is that a reference to Aragorn in Lord of the Rings? Because that was his name in Lord of the Rings from Tolkien.

And I'm not sure. I was just, I'm a nerd, but I'm not, I'm not, I have to know now.

Is that from Lord of the Rings? Um, more, but anyway, yeah. Maybe, maybe. Uh, oh,

Brian Stevens. Okay. Brian Stevens. Can anyone support the first premise of tag? So, um,

I think this is associated with a conversation I had a while back, um, on Clubhouse. We've been talking about Clubhouse so much tonight, which

I laid a transcendental argument out in deductive form. Um, I think it was, uh, if, if knowledge is possible, the

Christian worldview is true. Knowledge is possible. Therefore the Christian worldview is true. Uh, you have the, the first premise, which is basically that is defended, um, in various ways.

I actually have written out and I don't have it in front of me now. Um, I have a deductive argument in defense of that premise.

So I'll have to find it. Sorry. I mean, people have asked me, cause I, I tried to, um,

I said I would get back to people. I've been so busy. I did write up a response. I'd have to, maybe I might do a show where I just talk about the first premise.

So I do apologize. I can't, I don't have it in front of me right now. Um, Josh, would you, uh, would you engage that argument in that structure and give at least the listeners something to chew on while I get my act together and eventually get to it?

Yeah. Well, yeah, this was on Clubhouse last night. Again, it's all just coming back, but, uh, okay. I did say

I was going to get back to them and I, I've been sick past two weeks. I've been busy. I got to it, but I haven't had,

I don't have anything in front of me right now. Well, um, I already answered that. We answered that already, I think twice, but, uh,

I don't know if he was here for that. I don't know. I'm not sure. Uh, but, um, the way you support the first premise would be if we incorporate the

Christian worldview in order for intelligibility to be the case, the Christian worldview must be true because it's being true is a necessary precondition for us to have intelligible experience.

And then someone like Brian comes along and says, Oh, okay, great. Well, if that's all you're giving me, who cares? I want support for that premise.

Well, as I've said earlier, what's the support? How do we prove that it's standing on the Christian worldview?

Take it for what it stands for. What are the metaphysical and epistemological and ethical implications of it?

And if you walk through that with scripture as the basis, as that backing, um, then you see that it supports the preconditions for intelligible experience.

And so it's not deductively dependent or inductively dependent or abductively dependent.

We're not probabilists here. All we're asking is stand on my worldview and see where it takes you. What are the implications?

We can make sense out of intelligibility if you take it for what it stands for. Right. Now, of course the person can respond, dude, you don't prove that by quoting your scriptures.

Actually you do because it's the scriptures, the function of the scriptures and its worldview implications that actually give a metaphysical explanation of the actual state of affairs that provides the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience.

So that's part of what I mentioned when I was on, on a clubhouse that we lay out the Christian system.

Now I agree with that. Then you need to attack the premise, right? So suppose I say,

I lay out the Christian system. If the Christian God is metaphysically there and there is an epistemological connection through revelation, these sorts of things, you disagree with that.

You now have to attack the truthfulness of the first premise. You don't attack the truthfulness of the first premise by hand waving and saying, you don't prove anything by simply quoting your scriptures.

Quoting the scriptures is part of laying out our system. Those are elements of the system that constitute essential presuppositions that do in fact provide those undergirding pillars of intelligible experience.

They're necessary. Yes. That's like, that's like a skeptic coming up to you and saying, you know what? I don't believe you exist.

And I want you to prove that you exist, but you can't assume it. Well, you have to assume it. You know, it's Descartes argument. He didn't formulate it in a transcendental fashion.

So he gets thrown against the rocks all the time, but it is a transcendental argument and all transcendental arguments are inherently circular.

And so if that's the first time you're hearing that, then I don't mean to, you know, put you down, but that's, that means probably it's time to read up on transcendental literature.

All transcendental arguments are inescapably and of necessity circular because you have to assume the necessary precondition in order to even argue for it or against it.

Well, I could avoid, I could avoid being circular, Josh. Uh -oh. David?

Direct acquaintance, bro. David, I know David's going to watch this.

David, is it Paulman? I don't know. Yeah. He's great. But yeah, if you're going to just start with first principles, that's, we already have that discussion.

You start with a subjective starting point and you have no objective verification for it. So, but anyway, yeah, the logic behind it,

Brian, is stand on our worldview for the sake of the argument. And it satisfies these preconditions. It's not analytic philosophy.

It's not empirical. It's completely different from any philosophy we see today. We're not looking for logical coherence or consistency.

Are we attaining knowledge in our cognitive mental states or however you want to frame it? It's a completely different philosophy altogether.

It's metaphysically laden. It's not epistemologically laden. And so when someone says, well, prove to me that, you know, rejecting

Christianity involves self -contradiction or it's illogical. I have to tell you, I don't know exactly how to respond to that because that's not what

Van Til's apologetic is catered around. It's not catered around cognitive states and it's not catered around epistemology in general.

It's catered around metaphysics. What needs to be true in reality in order to make sense out of logic, in order to make sense out of contradictions to begin with.

So it's, that's part of the problem is we kind of talk past each other. It's a completely different philosophy. Right.

Now, Brian has a comment here, a follow -up comment here. He says the Trinity, which is an aspect of the

Christian worldview is not a necessity. There could be a four -person God, five -person God. Again, surprise, surprise.

I don't mean this disrespectfully. I mean, this is an old hat. I mean, I would, if he is interested in looking deep into this,

I would highly point him to Brant Bosterman's work on the vindication of the

Trinity and Christian paradox, where he addresses specifically and in great detail, not just four -person or five -person, but he goes, if you read chapter nine, he goes into a multi -person personal

God and why those don't work. He essentially argues why God must be three in persons.

So that, that is laid out there in the book, but do you have a thumbnail response to this or is that something that it takes a little time to unpack?

Well, we can, well, thank you for picking up this comment and thank Brian for making this comment, because this is quite frankly, the first Christian objection in a sense, pick up again.

Excuse me. This is Christianity. This is what the video is about. And so then now we'll get into, man, golly.

It happens, man. You just go with it. This is live. You just do it. Yeah. It's like nothing you can do about it, but yeah, so this, what

Brian is saying here, this is the Christian objection and this is what the video is about. So this would be, I guess, a good segue to turn into focusing on that at this point.

Sure. All right. Carlton asks, is the resurrection metaphysically necessary for intelligibility?

If so, how? Yes, because God made the world a certain way and he decreed it a certain way from eternity past.

And so if we have everything in scripture being true from Genesis three onward, and then

Christ doesn't resurrect, then we have an incomplete revelation or just a false revelation in general.

It's impossible for Christ not to resurrect. And in the same way, it's impossible for his revelation to be fallible or to be incorrect.

And so it's what Bansfield says, it's a package deal. We have to argue for Christianity as a unit.

Again, if you want to tinker with small points like, well, were the Jews or were the Israelites held captive in Egypt for 500 years?

Or was it like 498 or 501? Okay. It could be figurative numbering, but this would be something that is metaphysically necessary because it entails the complete unity of the

Godhead and of his revelation. All right. Excellent. Carlton also says, what pieces of Christianity are necessary for intelligibility?

For instance, I would think soteriology, Calvinism, Arminianism isn't part of it. What pieces are?

You're going to get different answers to that based on who you talk to. Like if you talk to people in the reform pub, oh man.

But for those who are not as dogmatic, I left, I left that place and that was just, it was like, that's cool.

I'm sorry. What are necessary? What pieces of Christian are necessary?

Things like the triunity of God, the plurality of God and the unity of God, the immutability of God, the absoluteness of God, because he's the source of all truth and knowledge.

The sovereignty of God, the omnipotence of God, nothing is above him. He's sovereign over everything.

There is no room for chance. The omniscience of God, because in him are deposited all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

The providence of God, because if God wasn't providential, we're stuck with the problem of induction now, aren't we?

He said to Noah, well, see time and harvest will continue after the flood, right? As long as he's in power.

But if he's not providential and he's really careless, it doesn't really matter. So we could all just die in the next three seconds for all we know.

So things of that nature, you could list all of God's attributes as a satiety and so forth. But I would say, just think of the attributes of God and there you go.

There's at least the mostly filled list. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Brian has another one.

I'm kind of going down the line here and I like Brian's question. He asks good questions here.

He says, which is more plausible? Paul made up a story about the 500, or there were actually 500 witnesses to the risen

Jesus. And the reason why I want this question here is because this is a wonderful opportunity to highlight the importance of one's presuppositions.

And this question is packed with presuppositions. So how would you address that from a presupposition perspective?

Yeah. Brian, what a person takes to be plausible or implausible is going to be determined by their overall world and life view.

Like if we think through what we know about the world, but is this the same thing or is this something else? Yep. It's just a follow -up part to his question.

Which seems more plausible. Okay. Like if we think through the world and what we know about the world and we witness...

Okay. Same thing. Yeah. So what a person takes as plausible or implausible is determined by that person's worldview.

So I don't know if he's an atheist or what, but if Brian's an atheist and he's on the other side of this table and I'm a

Christian and we're talking about this, well, to him, it's going to be implausible. But to me, it's going to be plausible. We have the same exact evidence, if you will.

We cite the same sources, but we come to different cognitive states, if you want to put it that way. I think it's plausible.

He thinks it's implausible. Well, how do we rectify the problem? How do we solve the problem? We could just keep hashing it out with empirical inductive means, and this seems more probable because this, this, and this, or it's not because this, this, and this.

But ultimately, what are we going to be debating? When it comes to presuppositions, when it comes to Van Til's transcendental argument, we're going to be debating which worldview can even make sense out of something to be plausible to begin with.

If someone comes along and posits a worldview that's just sheer chaos and chance, and that this is all just illusory, then the whole concept of plausibility or implausibility is completely meaningless.

To even talk about it is moot, it's stupid. What we ultimately are going to get at is which metaphysical scheme, which worldview can even make sense out of this concept that we call plausible or implausible?

Which worldview makes sense out of evidence? Which worldview makes sense out of numbers, the number 500, and of history, and so forth?

We can hash the plausibility of it out over a cup of coffee, but ultimately, we're going to go back to worldviews.

Okay, excellent. Now, I want to spend two more points on Brian, and then we're going to move on to other people's questions.

He's such a good guy. Yeah, well, hey, I mean, these are good points. These are good questions, yeah. If he's asking genuinely,

I want to make sure we address it here. Brian says, my only objection to Christianity is that there isn't good enough evidence for it.

It requires faith, as does every other religion. Then he follows up with, oh, and don't go precept apologetics, just listen to precept of other religions.

Again, this is nothing new. This has been addressed in Bonson, has been addressed, and I think quite sufficiently.

Even if I wasn't a presuppositionalist, I'd say, yeah, they kind of answered it from their perspective. I could see this is all old stuff, which again, doesn't mean it's not a good question.

It is a good question, but don't go precept apologetics, just listen to precept of other religions.

You'll see they use the same tricks as Christian precept apologists, so if it doesn't work for them, it doesn't work for you.

How would you respond to that? Well, we have to ask, why doesn't it work for them? The answer to that is, as I kept going back now, stand on their worldview.

At one point or another, they're going to lack providing these preconditions for intelligible experience.

They won't be able to justify one here or there or many. Again, as I've said, now stand on the

Christian worldview. You've talked to the Buddhist presuppositionalist and the Muslim presuppositionalist, and their worldviews are defective at some certain points.

Now, come stand on my worldview, and just entertain it for the sake of the argument as it stands. I can show you how my presuppositional argument works, because it satisfies the preconditions of intelligible experience, unlike a

Buddhist presuppositionalist or whatever you may have. I forgot what his previous comment was.

It had something to do with, oh, there's no evidence for it. It's faith -based. Again, we're going to go back to what worldview needs to be true to make sense out of this thing we call evidence, the notion of evidence to begin with.

I like this comment more, because it keeps going back to what we're talking about. Stand on the Christian worldview.

You're right. Other presuppositionalists from other religions, they don't work, because they fail at one point or another, but if you stand on the

Christian worldview, we can justify intelligible experience. That's right. Okay. Very good. Thank you for that,

Brian. Appreciate it. Caesar clarified he is Mexican. It's all right. He's Mexican. I'm Puerto Rican.

We can still be friends. Listen, I'm Puerto Rican. I was raised on rice and beans, but dude, there is a

Mexican restaurant around the block. By the way, in both directions, there are two amazing

Mexican restaurants like 10 minutes from my house, and we go to both of them. It is amazing. You guys got the tacos.

You guys got enchiladas, bro. You a brother. All right. Okay. Caesar asked the question, would either of you argue that Jesus gave a transcendental argument anywhere in Scripture?

I have some thoughts. If you don't mind me sharing my thoughts and maybe - Yeah, go ahead, because I know there is a place.

I remember someone posted the argument, but I do not remember, and I'm sure you would have more -

Well, I mean, here's the thing. I don't think the Bible gives a cosmological argument. No. It doesn't give it an argument in a formal sense.

The Bible doesn't give an argument from design. It tells us that God designed everything and that the heavens declared the glory of God and that we should draw proper conclusions, but in terms of an argument, say with premises and conclusion, arguing,

I don't think the Bible lays that out in that very rigorous kind of way. However, there is what

I would call a transcendental principle all throughout Scripture that can be deduced from truths of the

Christian worldview as found in Scripture. For example, the metaphysical foundation that Van Til started with.

If you think in terms of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, the three main branches of a worldview, when we start with metaphysics,

Van Til started with the essential metaphysical foundation of the creator -creature distinction, and that comes straight from Genesis 1 .1.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That statement right there entails there is a difference between creator and created, so we make those metaphysical categories.

You take that with how God has revealed himself, the nature of God, what is implied by that with respect to creatures and how we relate to them, and there is transcendental principles that we derive from the whole host of propositions in Scripture that tell us about the nature of reality, how we know, the effects of sin upon the mind.

All these things, I think, inform our defense of the faith, and it informs it in such a way that I think it entails a transcendental principle that we should be following when we argue with unbelievers in a way that leaves them without excuse.

Those are my thoughts. Feel free to share your thoughts, Joshua. Yeah, I'm looking on right now.

I'm trying to find the exact verse just so I get extra credit, you know. I guess

I can't find it. Oh, here it is. After the resurrection of Christ, before he ascends, who does he appear to?

Well, he appears to all his disciples, but in Luke 24 -45, Christ appears to them or is with them, and it says

Christ opened their minds so that they could understand the Scriptures. He told them that this is what is written, the

Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and Bonson said that had to have been the greatest exegesis in the whole history of mankind, to have

Christ the Word himself exegeting his own revelation. So even in Luke, for instance, after the death and resurrection of Christ, and we're talking about, well, is that metaphysically necessary?

Christ walks through all of Scripture with his disciples, why it had to come to pass. So yeah, there are transcendental principles all throughout

Scripture, and I know there's an argument. I got to find it somewhere, but I'm sure someone formulated one. No worries, no worries.

Now, you do not have to address this, but I just want to point something out. Brian says, I'd be interested in seeing the defense of the first premise.

We literally just went and took time doing that, okay? He says, I am reviewing this tag argument and asking for support of the first premise.

We literally just addressed that, so you need to go back and listen. If you disagree, then you disagree, but it was presented and explained, okay?

So we're not going to address that again, and again, just thank you for sharing your comments there. All right, let's see here.

There's a lot of debate. Before we went live, you were like, yeah,

I don't know. I don't think we'll get that many questions. Well, Brian is a champion.

He's given us like half of them. That's fine. I appreciate it. All right. I don't see someone's mentioning a question from Paul, and I didn't get it.

So I want to get it. So if I don't find this Paul that people are referring to,

I'm not trying to avoid Paul. I just can't see where his question is. Do you see a

Paul question? Do you have a capacity to scroll through? No, I don't see a

Paul. He says, I'm hoping gets to Paul's question. Oh, I'm sorry. I can't see

Paul. Well, is it okay if I address Brian one more time? Yeah, go for it. When people kind of struggle with, oh, how do we prove the transcendental necessity of whatever it is we're arguing for?

And I've been saying over and over again, stand on the Christian worldview, and we can make sense of these necessary preconditions for intelligibility.

And it seems that he's not satisfied with that. So it's like, okay, well, what if we just narrow it down, right?

Because Van Til's transcendental approach is a holistic worldview. We're coming to the table with zillions of different propositions, all part of the

Christian worldview. But if we just take one example, let's say someone says, I have to exist, going back to Descartes.

Me existing metaphysically, externally, objectively, materially is a necessary precondition for me to even give the argument.

And now that's, so that's the major premise of Descartes transcendental formulation. And Brian would come on and say, well, okay, but you're making the claim.

I want you to substantiate it. How do you prove it? And the answer is, well, just listen to what

I'm saying. Stand on my ground. I have to objectively, materially exist in order to even give the argument.

And if you reject it, it's entailing self -contradiction or refutation. It's self -falsifying to reject the simple truth that you have to materially exist.

And so if we just take that one little example, instead of the whole Christian worldview to how do we substantiate that transcendental truth?

Just think about it. It's like really that simple. It's self -refuting to say I'm thinking, but I don't exist at all.

Well, that's self -contradictory. It's a transcendental necessity. Stand on that position. Oh, wow.

I do have to exist in order to doubt or to think at all and realize it must be true because the contrary is impossible.

I hope that helps. I'm trying to narrow it down some, but yeah. No worries. No worries. Okay. We'll take a few more and then we'll wrap things up.

I think you're doing an excellent job and I appreciate it. I know folks are enjoying it as well. We haven't even gotten to like the meat and potatoes of Christianity.

Hey, I've got time if you want to tackle another aspect of it before we wrap it up. Yeah. Well, I mean, just real quick, if I could give like a short summation because as it's been historically formulated and by historically,

I mean, maybe 50 years. Okay. The Christian says, again,

Van Til you've done a great job. Your argument gets the job done, but that means it's only sufficient. It's not necessary.

I have a quadrinity over here, but everything else is the same, but I have a quadrinity. And so if I take it on that approach, if you stand on my worldview as metaphysical, because his is, as we've already talked about,

I can make sense out of everything as well, even the one in the many. Okay. And so that's the problem.

That's the, that's the criticism. Now we have to butt heads. Okay. Well, how do we refute that? And granted we had two days preparation and I'm getting up at like four 30 every morning.

Joshua took this on a very like last minute as, because I know he does a great job explaining.

I was like, you know what? It would be great to have Joshua on to talk about this. And so that's why, but he, he said yes. And he only had two days to kind of rehash all of it.

So I appreciate it, but go for it. The answer, the, the problem has been answered by Van Til and Bonson already.

And the first route is to say, well, where is the Christian getting his worldview from? If he's, he taking the

Bible, because remember, Christianity is off -brand Christianity. He can't just start with another book. He's taking the Bible and say, okay, well, is he, what's he doing with it?

Is he building it up block by block, you know, unit by unit and making it and tinkering it with his own configuration.

And if the answer is yes, if that's what the Christian says, he's doing, then what Bonson says is, well, just look at the authority by which he's proceeding is apologetic.

It's purely subjective, right? He's, we, Van Til says, we take the Bible as a unit on its own authority.

And so if a Christian critic comes along and says, no, it's different in this regard or this regard. And you ask them, well, how did you come to that conclusion?

And they say, well, I took this part out or I inserted something here. You have the Van Tilians starting with God authority, objective authority, absolute authority.

And then the Christian starting with subjective authority and subjectivism eventually leads to skepticism.

So it kind of ends in like, oh, well, we can just ignore you because we already have the answer. And that's been received with backlash, even from Michael Butler, who was studying under Bonson.

Critics have said, well, okay, Mr. Van Tilian, just because you can show that the Christian has a subjective authority and starting point doesn't necessarily mean that his argument or his metaphysical view is wrong.

So, okay. Let's say the Christian says, no, no, no. I start with the authority of the Bible too, just like you do, but there's, it's a quadrinity.

You see, it's not a Trinity. It's four, not three. What's the question? How do we prove that Van Tilian Orthodox Christianity is true?

And you know what the answer is? I just came to realize you just exegete scripture and, and, and that's it.

And that's all you need to do to refute the Christian. And immediately. And the reason no one likes that answer is because they'll say, well, wait a minute,

Josh, it's scripture that's in question. So if you go to scripture, you're going to the same scripture he's citing, but he comes to a different conclusion.

So you're not going to persuade him to change his mind. But what's the problem with that? The problem with that is that critic is conflating proof and persuasion.

The two are not, um, coterminous. They don't depend on one another. I can exegetically prove

Orthodox Christianity to the Christian critic and have him be totally unpersuaded by it. But I still prove that my position is true.

That's right. It is not a defect in my argument or exegesis or my Van Tilian version of tag. If I can't convince my, um, unbelieving opponent, if whether he's a

Christian or a heretic, and this is how you would respond to the flavor of Christianity that borrows the

Bible as part of the revelation, but tweaks important metaphysical elements. Yeah. It has to tweak important ones because if it's, if it tweaks minor ones, then we're just back to familial swavels again, you know, eschatology and things like that.

It has to tweak something important. And so technically speaking, how do I refute the

Christian? I just exegete scripture. And then I have the spirit's witness as a backing to that. And the reason people don't like that is because, well, that's not convincing.

Well, who cares? Well, hold on. Let me back up there. I don't, I don't want to make, you know, make this money or anything.

Okay. You have to have a reformed understanding of salvation and conversion.

When you do apologetics, if you're going to critique Vantill from a reformed perspective, I don't have any power in me to change my opponent's mind.

I can't do it. It's not my prerogative. I don't have that ability. Only God has that prerogative and that ability.

So what's the aim of apologetics while it's to glorify God, of course, it's to follow the biblical mandate, but from a reformed view, from a

Vantillian perspective, the job of apologetics isn't to persuade, persuade, persuade, and see if we can win them over.

It's to simply give a biblical defense. You can't change the opponent's heart, but you can shut their mouth in a respectful and gentle way.

And so I'm very meticulous here. How do we refute and prove that our position of orthodox

Christianity is true? We just exegete scripture. Oh, well, you haven't changed his mind. Okay. Well, that's not a defect in my proof.

Yeah, but you need to be persuasive. Well, it's good to be persuasive in apologetics, but it's not incumbent or imperative that I be holistically persuasive because I have some power in me to do it.

That's only God's doing. And so if you're not satisfied that my exegesis doesn't persuade the Christian, you're not really complaining with me.

Ultimately, you're complaining with God. Why hasn't God changed his heart yet? And then another problem, and I know I'm going to keep going with, it's the same thing with any other theological disagreements.

Oh, look, there's a Calvinist and an Arminian debating Romans 9. And look, the Arminian is showing that it's choice meets in Romans 9.

And look, the Calvinist isn't buying it. So obviously the Arminian's argument is defective.

Well, no, that's not true. And I know I'm siding with the Arminian. He can give an objective proof, exegetical proof, regardless of whether or not the

Calvinist agrees with it. Proof is not the same as persuasion. So what's the short answer to refuting

Christianity? You just exegete scripture. And how do we make sure that's verified? We have the Spirit's witnessing to it.

He doesn't like that. That's not my prerogative to change his mind. Proof is not persuasion. All right.

Well, we are at the one hour and 27 mark. So I am not going to take any more questions.

I do apologize. I hope you guys felt that I was doing my best to get to a bunch of them. I think Joshua did an excellent job laying out all of the nuts and bolts of this issue.

Now, of course, is there more to be covered? Of course, there's more to be covered. Is there something that Joshua didn't cover?

Of course, there are elements that he might not have covered. But I hope that this discussion has given you something to chew on so that if you're a supporter of presuppositionalism, you have some information that helps you better understand the argument and how it might respond to a

Christianity objection. And if you're a critic of presuppositionalism and you're honestly kind of trying to understand it so that you can then disagree with it, hopefully some of your questions were answered and you have a better context to do that in a meaningful way.

Obviously, we think you'll fail in doing it, but it's better that you understand our position, right? So I hope it was helpful both ways around there.

Joshua, is there anything you'd like to say before we get off this live stream? And I just want to say thank you so much.

You did an excellent job. Well, thank you for having me again. I'm sad because like I said,

I love this stuff, man. And I commend these critics for having a basic understanding of what's going on here.

I could go for another 10 hours probably. I've been up since 4 .30 this morning. Hey, wait, maybe we could do a part two.

I would love to. The thing I sent you, I mean, I still have all these other arguments that show why

Christianity fails as a transcendental critique. But I hope that in the time that we have had,

I have been able to convey some of the fundamental tenets of what TAG is, how do we prove premise one, stand on the worldview, what

Christianity is, and how do we refute it? Well, just through exegesis. Proof is not the same as persuasion.

Conversion is an act of God alone. So I don't have to prove or persuade my opponent when it comes to salvation.

I mean, and I know I don't want to keep going back to it, but we want to be persuasive in other areas. And I don't mean to be dark, but if someone's about to jump off a bridge because they want to end their life,

I'm not going to scream at them and belittle them. I want to be, no, it's going to be okay. I want to be persuasive.

But that's worlds apart from salvation. It's completely different. And you have to recognize that salvation is an act of God alone.

All our job is to do as apologists is to be biblical and faithful to scripture and let God do the rest.

We can't open the heart of the critic, we can shut his mouth in a respectful way. Excellent. Thank you so much.

Joshua sent me an outline of what he intended to go through. Maybe if we do a part two, we can specifically just walk through your outline and you could unpack it in more detail.

But I think we definitely, I mean, why not do more Christianity stuff? There's not a lot of videos out there that cover it.

So we might as well try that. And we could have like a, someone from clubhouse, if they wanted to join in, we could have like a three -way call and an atheist, and we could actually have a discussion with them.

I think that'd be really cool. That'd be pretty cool. Well, thank you so much guys for listening. And thank you so much,

Joshua, for giving me so much of your time. And I enjoy every time you come on the channel and we're definitely going to have you back on for a first Christianity round two.

And of course, if you want to see more of Joshua, let me know. And I will continue to nag him to come on and cover all sorts of topics related to theology and apologetics.

With one day notice next time. That's right. I'll probably give him more time to prepare.

Yeah. I hope I did well. I wanted to say, I wanted to close with that. I hope I could articulate whether you agree with me or not.

I hope I could articulate this in a very perspicuous way and a very charitable way and that I could make

Van Til more understandable and less abstract and to be as incisive as Bonson taught me to be.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. And thank you so much everyone for listening and behaving in the comments. I'd really appreciate that until next time guys, which is tomorrow.

Stay tuned for that. We're going to be talking about the old Testament and the philosophy of evidence with Jimmy Lee.