Every Believer Confident: Presup for the Everyday Believer

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and I'm fixing my focus.

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There we go, the lens. Technology. See, I do this by myself, so I have to do all of the special background stuff.

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Well, anyway, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today, once again,

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I have a very special guest with me. He came highly recommended, and of course, every time someone asks me for resources on presuppositional apologetics, people get very intimidated, because I always suggest, you know, maybe something like, let me see here, something from Van Til or Bonson or something like that, and those books can be somewhat daunting.

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Of course, Bonson, much more clearer than Van Til, but can be a little challenging sometimes, and so the go -to resource for presuppositional apologetics has for a very long time been

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Dr. Bonson's Always Ready, which I still highly recommend, but there is another book in the mix, okay?

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I feel like this is like a movie trailer. One book, one resource, you know? There's this other book that has been recently the go -to resource for those who are looking for a simple, accessible entry point into doing presuppositional apologetics from a very practical perspective.

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If you think about this, apologetics done online is not normally how apologetics is done when we're kind of interacting with people face -to -face, and I think the book that we're going to be talking about today,

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Every Believer Confident by Mark Farnham, is an excellent way to equip people as to how to navigate conversations and use a presuppositional approach in a very practical and accessible way.

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So I'm very excited to have Brother Farnham with us. Now, I want to share a little bit about Mark Farnham, and he can correct me later on with respect to some of this information, but Mark Farnham has been teaching apologetics in local churches for almost 15 years.

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His studies of apologetics has opened the doors to interact with all kinds of unbelievers from doctoral students in philosophy at Philadelphia University to Muslims inside the mosque to everyday people on the streets of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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He is an engaging speaker who combines simple and clear explanations with gripping personal illustrations from fascinating encounters with unbelievers of all kinds.

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I like that. There is a great diversity with which he is able to present his apologetic, and I think that is something very useful for everyday people interacting with other everyday people.

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Mark is a professor of apologetics at Lancaster Bible College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. If any of this information is inaccurate, he will be sure to correct me, but I'm just going to share this with you just for a few more moments.

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Previously, he taught systematic theology and apologetics at the seminary level for 11 years, and prior to that, he served as a senior pastor in New London, I don't know what that is, maybe

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Connecticut, there we go, for seven years, and he earned his PhD in apologetics from good old Westminster Theological Seminary, and he holds a

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Master of Theology degree in New Testament from Gordon -Conwell Theological Seminary and a Master of Divinity degree from Calvary Baptist Seminary.

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So he is probably still paying for his student loans. Maybe he got a full ride, we don't know, but without further ado,

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I'd like to invite Mark Farnham, the author of Every Believer Confident.

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How are you doing, brother? I'm good. Thank you so much for having me on your show. Well, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you on.

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As I said before, you came highly recommended, and so I'm looking forward to this conversation, and I'm sure others will be as well.

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Why don't you kind of update us on what you've been up to? If any of the information that I've just presented is a little out of date, maybe you can kind of correct some of the mistakes that I made there.

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Sure. No, it's mostly right. It's been over 15 years that I've been teaching apologetics in local churches.

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It's pronounced Lancaster, not Lancaster. People around here are very picky about that.

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And in addition to teaching apologetics at Lancaster Bible College and Capitol Seminary, I'm also the director of our new

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Master of Arts in Christian Apologetics degree, which debuts in January. Okay, excellent.

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And this book that you wrote, Every Believer Confident, why that book, right?

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So you have this background, you have pastoral background, you have seminary background. What possessed you to write the book

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Every Believer Confident at the level that you wrote it? Is there a connection with your work in local ministry that led you to write a book on apologetics in a very practical way?

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Yeah, I have to do a little bit of background here. I wasn't born in a Christian home. My parents came to Christ when

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I was in elementary school. And from the time I was 12, I knew I wanted to be a pastor. I came to Christ at nine.

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I had a wonderful church and Christian school that encouraged serving God with your life. And so for all my life, since the time

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I was a teenager, I had a great burden to reach the loss and felt and experienced nothing but frustration, despite the evangelism classes, despite every attempt to learn how to do that.

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That continued on through seminary and even into my pastorate, seven years of pastoring in New London, Connecticut, always felt like I just didn't know what

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I was doing evangelistically. It felt like I was dropping the ball. So in 2002, when

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I moved back to the Philadelphia area to teach at the small Baptist seminary where I had attended for my

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MDiv, I had to choose a doctoral program. And they paid for it, by the way.

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My recommendation is always get someone to pay for your degrees if you can. And I'll never forget in the second semester of my doctoral work,

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I started a New Testament because I just completed a THM in New Testament, Gordon Conwell.

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And I wasn't enjoying it. And I look back now and see that was of the Lord. So I decided to audit a master's level apologetist class.

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And within two or three weeks, I was sitting in class with my mouth open, hearing answers, as Scott Oliphant was teaching

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Ventilian apologetics, hearing answers to questions that no one I ever asked could answer.

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I had asked PhDs before these questions. They were deep -seated epistemological questions.

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How do we know that we're right? How do we know that the Bible is true? It's not that I doubted them, but I just I thought if I had encountered someone and they asked me this question,

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I will not know how to answer. And so that first semester, just auditing that class totally changed my life.

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I realized this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. I was in my late 30s at the time, and the first thing

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I felt after I experienced amazement was anger. I thought the

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Presbyterians have had this all along, and they never told us Baptist. Really just wondering why have

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I never heard this before? And as we're reading Ventil, you know, the straight 100 proof stuff.

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My mind is automatically going to how could this be used in actual conversations with unbelievers?

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And how could I translate this into a lay level? So that was way back in fall of 2006.

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I began thinking and plotting this book out like this must be taught.

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This must be told. People must get access to this because this is life changing. So that's where the book began.

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Excellent. And again, once again, the book is Every Believer Confident. It can be purchased on Amazon for quite an affordable price,

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I might add. If you are a Kindle guy like myself, you can get the book for $7 .49.

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If you're a paperback guy, it's $14 .99. Either way, it is worth every penny.

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It really does a good job in just laying out what it looks like. I think you have some kind of mock dialogues there where people go back and forth and you show how people can answer.

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And what I like about it, Mark, is that you don't just teach people what to say.

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You teach them how to think presuppositionally along biblical lines so that while you offer a response to objections, they're also learning how to navigate and be flexible regardless of who might come their way.

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So I think that's a super helpful element of the book there. Now, as I'm reading the description here on Amazon, there was a last portion here.

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I don't know if it's also on the back of the book, but it says here, Every Believer Confident Apologetics for the

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Ordinary Christian simplifies the basic principles of apologetics and provides effective strategies for use in actual encounters with unbelievers.

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It provides a structure whereby any Christian can engage anyone they meet, that's one, move the conversation to spiritual matters, that's two, answer objections raised against the

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Christian faith, four, and present the gospel of Christ in all its glory and rationality. And as I read that last little portion there of the description of your book,

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I thought that might be a good way to kind of frame our discussion here. So if you can, where it says here,

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Your book provides a structure whereby any Christian can engage anyone they meet.

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What does that mean? What does it mean that you provide a structure for people who are looking to engage unbelievers in doing apologetics?

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This is one thing I learned when I first began learning apologetics, Vantillian apologetics, is

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Vantill never gets into specific evidences, or very rarely. This is not to say evidences aren't valuable.

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My library is full of evidential apologetics and all the wonderful things that have been found there. But Vantill was more focused on the general concepts of the way unbelief works and how to expose the irrationality, the contradiction, and the unlivability of the unbeliever's worldview in such a way that's the structure, so that you enter the unbeliever's worldview, you look around and say,

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OK, this is not rational. That contradicts something else you say. You can't really live this way.

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Josh Chatro calls this an internal critique, and I like that idea. Vantill called it taking the unbeliever's side for the sake of argument.

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And that structure alone allows you to encounter anyone you meet and know where to go in the conversation and how to make progress in showing them the weakness, the contradiction of their worldview, and presenting

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Christ as the rational, logical, beautiful alternative. Excellent.

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Now, OK, so I have a question here. So I don't know why I thought this, but as you were talking, because you're talking about structure and how that equips us to kind of talk to anyone.

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The great Mike Tyson, the great philosopher, once said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

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OK, so it's very easy that we can read these apologetic books and we have kind of this structure in our mind, like what we're going to say.

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But we can't really predict that because I know more or less what I'm going to say, things are going to work out the way

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I want them to in a conversation. How can a presuppositional approach and just good old basic logical reasoning help us in navigating the issue of flexibility within a human being encounter?

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Very different than reading a book, you know, question, answer, question, answer. How can someone prepare themselves mentally to engage really in unstructured dialogue with just anyone they might confront?

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Right. And that sometimes is terrifying to people. They would rather have a script, but I never use scripts, because if here's the way most people start apologetics where they're thinking,

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I have to say these things and here's perhaps a couple of possibilities of what the other person might say.

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And then I have to say that I have none of that in my book. It's all about how do I show a holy curiosity in the unbeliever so that I ask questions about who they are?

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I show an interest in them as a person. I don't rush into a presentation of the gospel. I ask questions about who they are, what's important to them, what their spiritual background is, what matters to them.

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And then I just naturally see where they're where the conversation goes. So that every conversation in one sense is different.

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But in another sense, they're all the same, because at some point the person reveals, begins to reveal things about their worldview and you just begin to it's like poking a bruise.

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You know, if you had a brother or sister and you love to torment them and they got a bruise, you sneak up behind them and you poke the bruise to irritate them.

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As I'm talking and asking questions, I'm looking for ways to question people about what they believe or how they live and to do it in a subtle way.

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One of my favorite books is Os Guinness Fool's Talk. Yeah. OK. Covering the art of Christian persuasion,

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I think, is the is the subtitle. Somewhere there. Yeah. He talks about.

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Oh, it's a wonderful book. I would put that in the top 10 or 15 apologetics books after Van Til and Bonson.

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Oh, man. It's been on my shelf. I've never read it. So I guess I should not go to bed tonight to read it.

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OK. It's learning to ask questions that cause the unbeliever to think. And so it really doesn't matter what they say.

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I'll give you an example. A few years ago we were in I was teaching a study abroad trip to Oxford, England, for three weeks.

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And we were in we decided to take a flight overnight to Edinburgh, Scotland, just to experience.

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I had five students with me. And on the bus from the airport into the city, we sat next to a

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Scottish atheist. And so while the students were listening, I entered a conversation with this guy and quickly turned the conversation to spiritual things.

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And he objected. He objected. He didn't want to talk about it at all. But I did make some progress in pointing out the contradiction of his worldview.

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Half an hour later, we were checking into our hostel and I was with my son and my nephew and we had an empty bed.

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And so we prayed real hard that it would be a male. And it was. It was a Sikh from India who is he was a

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Ph .D. and there for a biochemistry conference. And we had a wonderful conversation for more than an hour following the same procedure of just asking questions.

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Tell me about Sikhism. I know a little bit about it, but what's at the heart of it? And oh, that's interesting as a

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Christian, I agree or I disagree. And the contrast couldn't have been greater between the two people we were talking to.

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But the procedure was the same. Yeah, I'm sure the Scottish guy probably gave you a more pushback, right?

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Oh, yeah. No. Get out of my face. You know, we said we don't talk about things like that in public.

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Like that's just not acceptable. Yeah. Well, I want to highlight something that you said, that you asked questions about the individual.

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And I'm sure you will agree with this. Not only is that strategic, it is not simply strategic.

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I want to point this out to people. We do care about where people are coming from.

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And we want to be very careful that our questions are not simply to anticipate laying an intellectual trap.

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Those are appropriate, I think. Right. But we want to be careful. We want to show a genuine care and love for the person we're talking to.

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And so we want to really hear where people are from. And that, again, opens lines of communication and makes communication easier.

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So I think that's excellent. People smell a sales pitch and they also smell a trap.

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So I try not to rush into that. Two principles that guide me.

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This is a person made in God's image. Therefore, they have a life of their own. And therefore, they are a fascinating person.

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As C .S. Lewis says, you've never met an ordinary person. I love that quote. And so I'm interested in them because they're made in God's image and they have a life.

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But secondly, they're someone for whom Christ died. And so I should love this person and go about my apologetic efforts in such a way that they know that I'm genuinely interested and I care for them.

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And I'm not just trying to get past the conversation to my sales pitch. And this is very important,

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Mark, to talk about with other presuppositionalists. I don't know if you're familiar with the state of presuppositional apologetics online.

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But it's not as if you're not, then good. I'm trying.

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Part of the goal of this channel is to really help polish the public perception, because there is a difference between presuppositionalism as a methodology and presuppositionalists as persons who may or may not use it in a loving way.

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But a lot of people criticize presuppositionalists for simply following a script of laying logical traps.

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And that should not be something that characterizes presuppositionalists who desire to defend the faith.

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It's not necessary. You don't have to do that. You can show genuine concern, look for clues in what they say, but genuinely listen to them.

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And they will unavoidably expose either irrationality, contradiction or unlivability.

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You don't have to set traps. Now, as you're asking subversive questions, as Osgun has called them, there are going to be traps in there.

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But I never intend to try to set a trap. Excellent. All right. Well, so we have structure, right?

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There's a roadmap that we should be following, especially as presuppositionalists, understanding the role of the authority of Scripture when we're talking to someone, understanding what the

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Scripture says about the person we're speaking. Those are all important theological presuppositions we bring to the apologetical task.

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But from a practical perspective, how do we shift from talking to someone casually to moving things to a spiritual sort of conversation?

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That is really difficult for people. People say, I know I need to do apologetics, but how in the world do

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I move the conversation to talking about spiritual things without looking super weird?

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Why don't you unpack that for us? But real quick, I'm speaking with Mark Farnham, the author of Every Believer Confident.

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And if anyone has questions they would like Mark or myself to interact with, please preface your question with question.

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And we'll try to address them either throughout our conversation or towards the back end. But go ahead, Mark. Why don't you address the issue of shifting conversations to spiritual topics?

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That is my most difficult part of a conversation. I am not good at that.

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I'll share some things in just a moment. But when I was a pastor, I had a man in my church who was a contractor. His name was

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Chris. Chris could start a conversation with anyone and turn it to spiritual matters so naturally,

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I would just sit in awe of him. We'd be going through the Dunkin' Donuts drive -through, and he'd start a conversation with a person.

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And this woman would be so caught up in the conversation, cars would be piling up behind us. And I said, how do you do that?

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So I'm not naturally gifted in that. The two most frequent things I ask are things like, what's your spiritual background or religious background?

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I very rarely have anybody balk at that. I might also say, if I'm having my hair cut or getting a cup of coffee and someone says, did you hear about this awful thing that happened in the world?

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I'll often say, what do you think is behind that kind of evil? Or why do you think the world is that way?

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I have a lot of health issues. I've been through a number of serious health problems. And so I see doctors a lot.

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And I have found this question is really helpful. I ask them, in your study of science and medicine, has that led you closer to a belief in God or further away from belief in God?

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Or I might say, in your practice of medicine, seeing people suffer, has that led you more to belief in God or away?

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So there are a lot of creative ways to do that. I tend to stick with one of those. Okay. Yeah. Wow.

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I know there is, of course, the question, I think, I don't remember who it was. Maybe it was

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J. Warner Wallace or something. Maybe Greg Kokel suggested asking someone what they believe about what happens when we die.

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That's kind of a straightforward question. But people are interested in death, interestingly enough. And people have a lot of opinions about those sorts of things.

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So yeah, there are any number of ways to shift those sorts of things. Now, how do you shift the conversation when you're speaking with someone who is very outgoing, very assertive in the way that they talk?

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Not necessarily like aggressive in a negative way, but, you know, like those fast talking people. Then you're with this person.

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You're like, you know, man, I want to see if I can kind of insert something in this conversation where we can kind of talk about spiritual things and engage in some, you know, evangelism of sorts.

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And then perhaps shifting into apologetics. What does that look like when you're dealing with different sorts of people with different temperaments?

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Probably the person you described there is one of the most difficult. Someone who doesn't get a word in edgewise.

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A friend of mine who is a an apologist to the Muslim world in the U .S.

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He's Egyptian born. So he speaks the language and and looks the part said with some people, they are intentionally not letting you get a word in edgewise.

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And you can't do that. You have to you have to say, well, thank you for telling me what you believe. Let me share with what

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I believe. So I find it much easier to deal with someone who really is interested in the conversation, which is why the way

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I approach contact with unbelievers is through trying to have just a normal conversation about, you know, whatever interests them.

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Another thing I do to turn or start conversations is I look for stickers on their computer, a tattoo, something about their

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T -shirt, you know, a team that they follow on their ball cap, something like that. Sure. But at some point

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I have to jump in and say, oh, that's really interesting. As a Christian, I agree or I disagree.

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And here's why. How do you justify that or something like that? So it's always looking for ways to ask questions, to keep them on topic or to steer that conversation toward spiritual or important matters.

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So, Mark, you are very observant, right? There is in apologetics the need to be observant, to read the person.

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I want to be very careful when I say this, not to read the opponent. If you're in a debate, then that's perhaps a good language.

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Everyone that we're talking to, we shouldn't think of as automatically an opponent, right? They're human beings made in the image of God.

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We want to share the gospel with them. But there is a there's a great value in being observant as to what kind of person this person looks like.

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Do they seem to be closed off the moment you begin to even shift to talk about spiritual things?

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You need to know how to navigate that. I'm often asked the question. Maybe you can share your thoughts. Someone says, how do

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I get better at sharing my faith? At least from my perspective,

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I say, well, you just got to do it. And then while doing it, you kind of get a feel. It's almost like an it factor, right?

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You can't really put your finger on it, but you kind of get a feel of people and you read them. And you kind of know like, man,

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I probably shouldn't say this or maybe this is an opportunity to say that. How would you how would you give advice to someone who says, hey,

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I want to get better at sharing my faith? How would they navigate that? A few things.

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Number one, don't ever don't ever judge people on their appearance to that, to think that you can anticipate how they're going to respond.

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When I was a pastor, I had a guy in my church we called Big Pete. He was about six foot three, 300 pounds, big, long beard down to his waist, former

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Hells Angel motorcycle gang member. Oh, boy. So after I'd known him for a while, I said, how did you come to faith in Christ?

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And I said, because I take my hat off to the first person that was willing to overlook your terrifying appearance and address that with you.

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And that's so true. I can't think of how many times I have looked at a crowd if I'm boarding a plane and there's no preassigned seats.

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I'm looking around for people that I think will respond well or in a crowd where I get to choose my seat or entering a coffee shop or something like that.

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We just have to stop doing that. God may put you with someone that you initially feel incredibly uncomfortable with because that person might be seed ready for harvest.

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We just don't know. The other thing I often tell people when I do conferences in churches is if you don't put this into practice in the next two weeks, like a leaking balloon, you will lose confidence of everything that you feel right now.

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Because at the end of my weekend conferences, most people are like, I can do this. And that's the goal.

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That's right. I tell them if you don't put this into practice right away, as terrifying as that might be, you're going to lose confidence in this.

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And you'll go right back to saying, I just don't know how to share the gospel. Right. So I always tell people, and this is true of myself, if I haven't had the opportunity to engage with an unbeliever for a long time,

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I start to lose confidence. And it's only through the practice. Yes, you need to study and prepare, but you've got to get out there and actually do it.

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And when you do, you're reminded of the power of it, even if it goes badly. Sure. Yeah.

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And sometimes it does go badly. And that's OK. Right. Our job is to be faithful, not perfect.

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The perfect analogy is Paul in 1 Corinthians 3. I planted a pollis water.

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God gave the harvest. So he who plants a hew waters are nothing. My only job in every circumstance in which

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I have an opportunity to engage nonbelievers to go as far in the conversation as to let me go. And if I can even just bring up Christ and they shut me down, that's still a success because now the

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Holy Spirit can use that to bother them about the fact that some crazy Christian tried to talk to them.

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So every time we actually submit to the Holy Spirit and open our mouths and speak of Christ or speak of truth or even just unashamedly declare ourselves to be

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Christian, it is a it is a win. And that's so different from the way I was taught. You didn't win. It wasn't a success unless you led them to Christ right then and there.

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And that just discourages evangelism. Every time I can move them along the way closer to Christ, that's a success.

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Excellent. All right. Well, let's let's move into some practical application here.

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So I want to be an unbeliever. I want to be right now an unbeliever. I'm going to be kind of not the intellectualist.

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I'm going to be the Scottish guy. Give me proof for God's existence. If someone were if you were in a casual conversation,

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Mark, OK, and I'm going to ask this question twice, I want you to answer in a way that would be very simple for the average person to answer this question.

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And then we'll put our different hats on and put the more intellectually astute hat on and say, how would you answer this question?

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If we're talking to someone with a background in philosophy, someone very educated, knows the philosophical lingo and various ideas that related to Christian theism and what

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Christians say, how do we navigate that more intellectually deep person?

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OK, so right now I'm going to be the guy who we have a cup of coffee and you're talking to me about your faith.

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And I say, hey, listen, Mark, why can't you just give me proof for God's existence? What proof do you have, man?

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How would you interact with me in a casual conversation and be as specific and long winded as you need to be?

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Don't feel like it just needs to be like a quick, you know, it doesn't it doesn't need to be long winded. Proof of God is the easiest is the easiest thing

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I think you can engage on. So. OK, so, yeah, you said prove God exists to me or give me proof.

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OK, Eli, what would it take to prove God to you? What are you looking for?

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I would believe that there is a God if he could show himself. It'd be nice if Jesus showed himself or perhaps

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I could see a miracle that's that's undeniably a miracle and has no other explanation for it.

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OK, so so what would God have to look like? You know, if God shows up to you in the middle of the night in a bright light, would that be enough?

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Would you believe that? I mean, it would get my attention. OK, but you're asking for proof for God in order to believe.

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So what would it what would God look like or say or do that would convince you automatically that he is that he exists?

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And would you believe in him? What are you asking for? OK, so if I went outside in the night sky and the stars rearranged and said, hey,

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Eli, this is God. I'd be like, wow, there is a God up there, something something like that, man.

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I mean, because you Christians, you guys give like these arguments and you Christians disagree with one another. I was

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I just want to see proof. So something like magnificent like that where I can't be mistaken, like this is something supernatural is happening.

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Something like that would convince me. OK, so you're saying if you went outside and the stars rearranged themselves, you wouldn't doubt your senses.

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You would just believe this must be God. Or would you would you begin to ask the question? Maybe there's planes flying overhead.

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And I think there are stars like you'd be that you'd be that quick to believe just because lights in the sky changed.

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Well, I wouldn't. OK, so if the stars rearranged and spelled my name and said, this is

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God, I know I wouldn't think it's an airplane. I mean, I would see that as kind of like legitimately miraculous.

30:24

I mean, thinking about it now, I can't possibly find I can't possibly find what another explanation for what that might be.

30:30

That'd be pretty convincing to me. OK, you wouldn't perhaps chalk it up to maybe you're having a stroke or there's something wrong with your senses.

30:38

I mean, seriously. Yeah. A lot of people have claimed to have seen amazing things.

30:43

And then later in reflection said, you know, I might have had low blood sugar. I might

30:48

I might have a brain aneurysm. The truth is, what most people really want is a definitive vision of God in such a way that it wasn't just a quick thing, but it was it lasted for a while and to do some kind of miraculous thing that was indisputable that you knew was not a trick.

31:11

And if that's what you're looking for, then can we go to the Gospels and see Jesus? Because the

31:16

Bible tells us God came down and didn't just appear to one person or didn't come down for a short period.

31:23

And what you're looking for is right there in the person of Jesus. So let's consider Jesus. OK, so I'm willing to consider

31:30

Jesus, but maybe you've felt this as well as a believer. But in the

31:36

Gospels, Jesus appeared to his disciples. And if he wants me to believe in him, why doesn't he just appear to people who don't believe in him?

31:46

You know what I'm saying? Have you ever as a Christian wondered like, man, I wish Jesus would appear to me. It would be something that would help me in my in my doubt.

31:54

Sure. Sure. I think everyone would like to see God. It's one of the hopes of a Christian is that we will see

32:00

God. But what I have to what I have to consider is the fact that God has not chosen to reveal himself by appearing to every individual in the way that they desire.

32:12

Rather, he came down definitively in the person of Jesus. And we have the historical record.

32:18

We have multiple eyewitnesses. So rather than demanding that God meets your standard for for proof, let's consider what he gave us.

32:27

And so let's let's talk about Jesus in the Gospels. All right. So I like what you did there.

32:32

And you did what probably some presuppositional list don't think of. And first of all, you asked me for my standard of evidence.

32:41

By the way, I tried to be one of those nice atheists who were like, I was trying to be nicer than the ones

32:48

I know. Sometimes I was trying to be nice. However, that question, what would convince me is vitally important, because what that question exposes is sometimes an illegitimate and sometimes self -refuting standard of evidence that I don't hold to in any other category.

33:04

So that is actually a very good diagnostic question to see where I was at. Now, I guess me being nice was kind of a curveball because it kind of took where you might have went with it if I gave you a more hard line.

33:15

To be honest, I don't mind whether the person's nice or antagonistic. Antagonism is fun to me because I am an extrovert.

33:23

I'm a very direct person. It doesn't bother me. I grew up in New England. We only know antagonism.

33:29

That's how we communicate. But for most people, that can be a little off -putting. But let me just say that everything

33:34

I did there, none of it's original with me. I learned that from Frame and Bonson and others.

33:40

It's the best answer I think you can give. Sure. Now, what you did there is you also – once you got past the standard and you kind of tried to just address what

33:50

I was saying that would convince me, you did what a lot of presuppositionalists don't think and you went straight to the evidence, which is not contrary to doing presuppositional apologetics.

34:00

No, not at all. So our conversation can very much on the surface look very much like what an evidentialist or a classicalist might do.

34:08

And that's not bad necessarily as long as we understand our foundations. So I like what you did there.

34:16

Can I tell you what I did there was you set the standard for what it would take to believe and I helped you get more specific.

34:23

Okay. I entered your worldview. Okay. I want to see and understand

34:29

God appearing and doing miracles. So okay, let's play according to your game. And we can do that in that instance.

34:36

And in doing that, then I've left you with no way to escape. I mean now you can bring up the fact that we're going to question the

34:45

Bible and the reliability of the gospels. But then we just move on to the next stage of this. All right.

34:50

Well, excellent. Okay, suppose the conversation went differently and I said, hey, listen, I'm willing to be convinced.

34:58

You said that you can prove that God exists. How do you prove that God exists? And I'm going to admit

35:04

I am open to any kind of proof you offer. So I'm trying not to be too biased.

35:11

I can't remove my bias, but I'm not going to say the only standard of evidence is if I can see it or something like that.

35:16

Give me a rational argument to demonstrate the existence of your God and first do it as you would explain it to a simple person.

35:26

And then we'll kind of go into the more sophisticated version of the argument. You highly overestimate my ability to do sophisticated.

35:33

I am. I am a popularizer by nature. So I do the simple much better than the.

35:39

But I'll give it a shot then. OK, so if someone wants to push further and they agree to go look at Jesus in the gospels, but then they begin to ask questions about, well, how do we know that what was originally written is still preserved?

35:55

How do we know that these historical events happen that that I'm going to use some evidentialism? And but I always use it in a presuppositional way.

36:04

I'll ask them, for example, if they say, how do we know we can trust the gospel accounts?

36:09

I'll say, OK, well, tell me how were ancient histories in the Greco Roman world written?

36:16

How do we how do we know reliable ancient histories in the Greco Roman world? And the unbeliever is going to say, well,

36:21

I don't know. I'm not an expert in that. No. OK, well, let me give you some principles. And this is where I bring in evidentialism and say, well, early attestation, multiple attestation, enemy attestation, even embarrassing reports, bringing all those internal standards that Gary Habermas gives us in cumulative case, apologetics or minimal facts, apologetics and the stuff that Jay Warner Wallace brings in.

36:51

I can say these are all the things that that all scholars, Christian and non -Christian agree on.

36:56

So let's let's put the New Testament to the to a test. And I can actually help the unbeliever get skeptical enough that they're not just going to believe anything, but then show them that the

37:07

New Testament meets the standards of historical reliability. This takes time and practice.

37:13

This takes study. But the effect of that on the unbeliever is to overwhelm them with the realization that their objections were so shallow that you can actually present arguments that go beyond what they could even imagine.

37:27

Now, if you're dealing with a history professor or philosophy professor, then they might disagree with some of your intellectual arguments or academic arguments.

37:40

But Scott often taught me this, and I've confirmed it through my own study. There's not a single legitimate challenge raised against the

37:47

Christian faith for which there are not good answers. It's just a question of how can I go find those answers where they are?

37:54

Right. All right. Well, excellent. So so you would appeal to various evidence.

38:00

You mentioned Gary Habermas. Now we had Gary Habermas on the show here and was funny. He told us a story in which he was at a table at a conference,

38:08

I think, with with Greg Bonson. And he presented his this is a funny story.

38:13

He presented his minimal facts to Greg Bonson. And he said, well, Greg kind of looked at him and says, you know what?

38:19

That's a presuppositional argument. And Gary Habermas was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, you are showing the absurdity of the other person's perspective, granting their skepticism for argument's sake and showing that the evidence still meets the standards that they set.

38:35

And he said, oh, that's crazy, man. You know, but whatever, if it works, you know, use it. So I'm glad you mentioned

38:40

Dr. Habermas there. He's got some great stuff. And I encourage people to use evidences and contextualize them in a consistently presuppositional way.

38:49

And they're fair game, I think. So excellent. All right. So thank you for letting me know you are a popularizer and we need popularizers because we need to bridge the gap between academia and the local church.

39:04

Right. Apologetics is not just an intellectual exercise to feel smart. There needs to be that that bridge.

39:11

However, we do need to be always ready for anyone to whoever asks us to be.

39:17

We need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that's in us. What happens when, you know, there's a young, you know, 20 year old in a college classroom and there's a philosophy professor who's saying, hey, you know,

39:27

I'm just going to be open with you guys. You know, we're going to be talking about theism and I don't find it convincing at all.

39:33

And if you're a Christian, you're going to have you're going to have some challenges in this class. I just want to throw that out there.

39:39

How would you engage or how would you encourage a young person? How would you encourage them in interacting with someone who's got a great education and has knowledge of the philosophy and science and things like that?

39:52

How would they navigate a conversation if an opportunity were to arise in which they're able to talk with a professor or something?

39:58

Yeah, this happened to me just recently. I was I started a reading group this summer at a coffee shop in downtown

40:04

Lancaster because I just wanted to have conversations with unbelievers. And I'm around Christians all the time.

40:10

So I started a Friedrich Nietzsche reading group. I advertised it as God is dead.

40:16

God remains dead. And we killed him and just invited people to come read Nietzsche with me. And it's just been amazing every week.

40:23

Different people come and the conversations are just really just fascinating to see where people are in in their thoughts about Nietzsche.

40:32

But one week, a professor of a university in the area, a professor of philosophy showed up.

40:38

And thankfully, he was the only one there that day. And we had a 90 minute throw down on philosophy and Christian apologetics.

40:44

And I'm not a I'm not a philosopher. I don't have a degree in philosophy. Obviously, apologetics intersects with that.

40:50

And I teach undergraduate philosophy and I've read a fair amount of it.

40:55

But a lot of it came down to as he presented what he thought were good arguments against Christianity. My questions were along the lines of and how does that specifically disprove

41:06

Christianity? What happens is people, whether they're bringing in history or science or psychology or philosophy, they have these general arguments.

41:17

But when really pushed. And this was the brilliance of until helping you see through the bluff, see through the confusion to see through their assumptions, which you can just go and disprove their assumptions rather quickly.

41:33

How it completely disarms them because they think their argument is a slam dunk case.

41:39

It's not even a it's not even a good case at all against Christianity. And just by asking questions like how does that specifically disprove

41:46

Christianity or how does that specifically discount this particular Bible verse?

41:52

What you find is most of the time those people cannot muster a decent argument. Yeah, that's funny.

41:58

I teach eighth grade logic and we we talk a little bit about this and analyzing whether someone's conclusions logically follow from the means of their arguments.

42:08

And so I give an example of someone who leaves the church because the pastor was caught misusing funds.

42:15

So, you know, they feel like they were mistreated. They trusted this pastor and said, oh, man, I'm not going to be a Christian again anymore because they're just a bunch of hypocrites.

42:24

Now, let's get this straight. There are hypocrites in the church. Therefore, Jesus didn't rise from the dead.

42:31

Right. It's a simple example, but my students get it. It's like there's no logical connection there. You do realize that.

42:36

And I think that's an excellent way to kind of engage with even intellectually astute people. Hey, how does that actually falsify the

42:44

Christian faith? So that's a that's a great kind of a question to ask in conversation there.

42:49

And sometimes if you're talking to a really intelligent person, maybe maybe present a difficult question and it's

42:56

OK to say, I don't know, that's a good question. We shouldn't be thrown by the fact that someone can ask us a question we don't have an answer to.

43:04

They may have thought about it for months or years and it's brand new to us. So you can't let that bother you.

43:09

Just say, OK, let me go get an answer and come back to you. Yeah, excellent. Very good. Nothing wrong with saying

43:15

I don't know. All right. I want to ask one more set of it's a question, but it kind of can branch off into a bunch of things.

43:24

But we went through providing the structure. We went through the fact that we can shift conversations to spiritual matters.

43:31

Let's move to objections raised against the Christian faith. What are the top three objections that you hear in your conversations?

43:40

And how did you navigate those objections and provide an answer? Yeah, I would say the most common one is the problem of evil and suffering.

43:49

And it is a difficult one. But all along the way in my own life, having gone through such serious health issues in the last 15 or 16 years,

43:59

I had to have a kidney transplant after years of end stage renal disease. And as a result,

44:04

I take immunosuppressants every 12 hours. Three years ago this summer, that caused a brain tumor to grow in my head and then cancer to grow in my abdomen.

44:13

Had to have the brain tumor removed. And then went through a terrible time for months of going through chemo and losing my hair, having to have surgeries.

44:22

And then my intestines split open. Oh, my goodness. I've been hospitalized. I actually tried to count the other day and my wife reminded me

44:29

I missed a few. So I know what it's like to suffer. I know what it's like to come to the point of thinking you're going to die.

44:37

But the truth is when you get down to the question of the problem of evil and suffering, there's some aesthetic answers.

44:47

If there is no God, if the Christian God does not exist, then there's no purpose in suffering whatsoever.

44:54

But people intuitively, because we're made in the image of God, because we know things are not the way they're supposed to be, cannot abide by that answer.

45:02

They want there to be meaning. That's why they're mad at God. Another thing I just heard recently by Tim Keller that was so good is when you talk to people who raise this question, you can't tell them,

45:13

I know why God allowed this in your life. I don't know why. But Keller says, I know why. I know the reason.

45:19

I know. How do you say it? I know the reason why he or why he didn't. I know.

45:25

I know why the answer. I can't even think of it. I know what the answer is not. There we go.

45:31

I know what the answer is not. The answer is not that he doesn't love you, that he doesn't care. And he talks about the fact that some people in evil and suffering need to hear a ministry of truth like Jesus gave

45:41

Martha and some a ministry of tears like he gave Mary. So that's the major one that comes up.

45:49

Even if people have other more significant objections, that's wedged in there somewhere. And it's a very powerful argument, not so much logically, but emotionally.

45:59

Yes. Right. Even in the philosophical literature, there's a distinction between the emotional problem of evil and the logical problem of evil.

46:07

And so it's important to kind of keep those distinct and recognize that emotional problems are powerful, but they have no bearing as to the truth of whether God exists and whether there's an inconsistency within it.

46:21

One of the things we need to realize is if you're dealing with a modern minded person, they want arguments.

46:27

If you're dealing with a postmodern or sometimes premodern thinker, the arguments don't matter to them.

46:33

They want emotional satisfaction. And that's where we can take them to Jesus and show them that he is the meek and lowly shepherd who calls us to come to him and lay our burdens on him.

46:45

And sometimes they don't need an argument. They just need to know does God care and has he promised to make things better?

46:51

Right. And the Christian worldview has resources to answer both the emotional and the intellectual. So. Right. So very good.

46:57

All right. So what's another objection? So we have the problem of evil, and that's a common one. If you're an apologetics, people are going to be familiar with that.

47:03

What are some other good objections? Well, good objections people have raised in conversation with you. Yeah. The aesthetic argument that, as Nietzsche said and Carl Truman has said, they just find

47:15

Christianity to be distasteful for a number of reasons. For the abortion question, for LGBTQ issues, for what they consider to be repressive sexuality.

47:27

That is becoming more and more a common objection I hear. So it's not intellectual at all.

47:33

It's the aesthetic. I find this to be distasteful. I could never believe this because, and really

47:40

Carl Truman in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self has shown that people who go this way have idolized self and therapeutic and fulfilling desires.

47:52

They bought into Freud and Nietzsche that says suppressed desires are inauthentic. And so you have to help them to find that freedom is found in living in accordance with our design and not in accordance with our desires.

48:07

Okay. And let's try one more. What is a common objection? Maybe what about people who bring up issues of inerrancy, apparent contradictions in the

48:19

Bible? As a presuppositionalist, is there a specific way you come at that? Or do you kind of have a generic way where, you know, you address the objection or just head on just reconciling it?

48:31

How do you navigate those kinds of conversations? Yeah. And none of this is new with me or unique to me.

48:38

Asking, can you give an example of where you think there's an error in the Bible? Many times when people do show you that kind of thing, you can often point out, well, it's not a contradiction or it's not an error.

48:50

And this is the reason why. One of the most interesting conversations I ever had was on an airplane with a guy who told me that he respected

48:58

Jesus because he was a great man, except that one time he sinned. And I said, what do you mean by that?

49:04

And he pointed out what he thought was a sin. And I just explained this. This is not a sin by Jesus. And he quickly conceded the point.

49:11

And that was the end of that. And we were able to move on to other things. And so I can also point out the fact that people have modern expectations and acronistic expectations they place on the text of Scripture.

49:25

Well, it should say this. Or why doesn't it say that? And I can point out that you're placing your modern expectation.

49:31

Take the text at face value in its historical context. And it's not a problem.

49:36

So just learning a few of those kind of things helps to quickly answer what some unbelievers think is a slam dunk case against the truth of Christianity.

49:47

All right. Excellent. Well, all apologetic encounters should aim towards presenting the gospel either at the beginning and then defending when there's objections or addressing questions head on and eventually getting to the gospel.

50:02

At some point, the gospel needs to be a central focus. That's where we want to be. We don't want to be wallowing in the intellectual revelry of just the fight.

50:11

You know, it's so much fun sometimes to intellectually combat someone else. But we want to get to the gospel.

50:16

So how do you shift from your argument answering objections to, as the description on Amazon here has it, present the gospel of Christ in all its glory and rationality?

50:29

What does that look like, Mark? Again, there's no hard and fast rule. But what I seek to do in conversations when

50:36

I have time with someone to, as Paul says in 2

50:42

Corinthians 10, destroy their arguments, tear down the strongholds enough to the point that they are beginning to see and admit and concede points.

50:51

And then I begin to show that here's the crumbling worldview. And then here's Christ. So, OK, you couldn't answer this question.

50:58

Here's the Christian answer. Would you agree that that's rational? That makes sense? And you want to set those two things in contrast.

51:06

The problem with too many people, and I see this all the time when I'm teaching in undergraduate apologetics, they think that the way to do it is to jump in with a monologue.

51:16

And I just have to get through the monologue and convince this person. Maybe I can talk them to death, and then they'll just concede and get saved.

51:24

But until I can cause some self -doubt and to show them that their worldview can't answer, maybe even the very objection they've raised against Christianity, once they begin to realize the weakness and the fault lines within their worldview, now they're ready to begin to have me say, well, as a

51:44

Christian, here's what I believe. Do you see how that makes sense? And it's kind of like once I've cleared the road of some obstacles, now

51:53

I can drive forward. And the mistake a lot of Christians make in their zeal is they want to jump right in and tell them all about Christ.

52:00

They don't listen. They don't even engage interest as this person just hoping I'll go away. But when you've shown an interest and you've intrigued them by tearing down some of their confidence, now they're willing to listen.

52:13

And that's why in my book I talk about so many conversations I had that went on for hours because I drew the people in, and then they were willing to listen.

52:24

That's right. And if you don't get to the gospel, that's okay. It is okay.

52:29

Because if a person cuts you off and says, you know, I don't want to hear any more about it, Paul had that reaction in Acts 17.

52:38

Salvation is a work of God in the world. Our engagement with unbelievers is God inviting us to participate in what he's doing for our joy.

52:46

So if my opportunity ends before I can get to talking about Jesus or presenting the full gospel, it's okay.

52:53

It's a seed planted. The Holy Spirit's the one who's going to take them, take that truth and bring them to the next step or draw them closer to belief in Christ.

53:02

So I don't have to worry about it. I'm just planting or watering. Sometimes I get to harvest. But in my life, mostly what

53:09

I do is plant and water and very hard ground and till it up a bit for the next person. Excellent.

53:15

And sometimes you get the opportunity, as Greg Bonson says, to buy the next cup of coffee, right? Sometimes like, hey, man, let's talk about this some other time.

53:23

So and I've had experiences in my life where I've had prolonged relationship with unbelieving friends and throughout long time of conversation person.

53:32

Eventually I was able to see the harvest of that person. But it's okay if we don't. So excellent.

53:38

Very good. Well, I've really been enjoying this again. I've been talking with Mark Farnham, the author of Every Believer Confident.

53:45

You can purchase that right now on a Kindle for seven dollars and forty something cents and for fifteen dollars.

53:52

If you like paperback, I know some people like the smell of a brand new book. I don't have time to read my physical books.

53:58

As I said, I was talking to Mark before I read my phone, read me everything. So but it's definitely available for you guys.

54:05

Totally worth it. Definitely check, check, check out Mark's book there. Now, I'd like to move our discussion here to some audience questions.

54:13

We have some questions here. We'll try to get to all of them. I do apologize if I skip one.

54:19

I promise I'm not skipping it on purpose. We'll go in order here. And there are some questions, but luckily there's not so many that we can't get to most of them.

54:30

So congratulations. Enough for good content on a video, but not so much that we get to, you know, we'll skip a bunch of them.

54:37

So. All right. So account. That's a very random name for someone there.

54:44

So account revealed apologetics. Am I open to debating one of the smartest atheists on Discord?

54:49

That's for you, not me. Yeah. Well, how do you know this person is the smartest atheist?

54:55

I mean, how do you gauge that? That's an interesting statement in of itself. No, I'm not doing debates right now.

55:00

I'm a full time teacher. I have three little kids. And when I do my show, I literally do it while jumping off from doing something else.

55:08

I don't have a lot of time. I like to prepare. I have a couple of debates that people can watch on YouTube, but I don't do a lot of debates.

55:16

So maybe in the future I'll consider it. But no, there's the answer. And congratulations for being the smartest person, smartest atheist on YouTube.

55:25

That's awesome. OK, so let's see here. Alyssa Scott asks, would you,

55:32

I suppose this is for you. Would you be against reading this book for Audible? I will buy it immediately.

55:38

Have you thought of putting this out on Audible? I'm actually about to close a deal with a voice actor to record my book on Audible.

55:47

So that will probably be done in the next couple of months. All right. Excellent. Awesome. A lot of people love

55:52

Audible. There's a lot of apologetic material out there, too. We need more presuppositional stuff. So that's really good to hear.

55:58

Jay Wise asks the question, Dr. Farnam, could you provide details on your curriculum for the listeners?

56:06

There has been no one more pressing on me to get this apologetic curriculum published than Jay Wise.

56:16

So I appreciate that. I began writing a curriculum about seven or eight years ago, worked away on it steadily.

56:23

It's been in editing now for almost two years, but it will be released sometime in the spring by Positive Action for Christ Publishers in North Carolina.

56:35

You can go to their Web site, Positive Action for Christ. There's no information on the Web site yet about the curriculum, but they are a curriculum publisher.

56:44

I have received the mock up of the cover. The teacher's manual is done. They're just trying to finalize the student manual, and with a lot of the supply chain backups, they have not printed that yet.

56:58

So if you can count on spring 2023, hopefully there will be something on the Web site there.

57:04

But it is a 35 -week curriculum with a full teacher's manual, student manuals, full color, at least on the covers, and I think two color on the inside.

57:15

And it is written entirely from a presuppositional viewpoint. The first half of the curriculum takes you through at a basic level.

57:24

It's designed for upper high school into adult level. So it covers a lot of what's in my book for the first 10 lessons or so, but in much greater detail.

57:35

And then after that, we dive into all kinds of questions like historical reliability, science, logic, trying to think what some of the other topics are, but a number of topics.

57:48

So 35 weeks worth of school curriculum. In a couple of years, it will be adapted for church curriculum, broken into two 15 -week lessons.

57:59

So it is progressing slowly. I would encourage you, a few people, teachers like Jay Wise have gotten an advanced copy to use to teach as a test case because of his persistence.

58:16

But it will be available for spring. I know another teacher that might be interested in getting one.

58:23

I have to stop offering test copies because the publisher is not happy with me about that.

58:30

The year 2023 -2024, it will be fully available. That is awesome.

58:36

The question that I've got asked the most on this channel is when will there be a curriculum available for teenagers or laypeople?

58:44

So that's definitely meeting a need. I know I can't write it because I don't have the time. So I thank God you're writing it, and it sounds like it's going to be awesome.

58:51

So folks should really keep their ear out for that when it comes out. Jay has another question. I'm kind of going in order here.

58:57

He says, Dr. Farnam, how would you recognize implementing TAG, Transcendental Argument for God, in practical apologetics?

59:04

So kind of like a transcendental argument in kind of common conversational form. That's a great question.

59:10

So I believe in TAG. I follow a few presuppositional groups on social media and heard that some people are abandoning it.

59:20

It is a complex argument in one sense, but it's also very simple. I use it practically by taking specific human experiences and asking the unbeliever, how do you explain this in your worldview?

59:37

Take, for example, our belief that there is beauty and ugliness in the world and that the world is not the way it's supposed to be.

59:44

Everyone intuitively feels that way. So I take little bits and pieces like that issue.

59:50

Or I might ask someone, how do you explain that people have a longing for meaning and suffering?

59:57

If we came about through blind, random process of time and chance, then there really should be no mourning over suffering.

01:00:06

You know, zebras see one of their fellow zebras killed, they observe for a little while, they move on.

01:00:11

Why is it that we intuitively mourn and think the world is not supposed to be that way?

01:00:16

And my argument is there's no other logical, rational explanation except the Christian faith.

01:00:22

So if you break tag down to human experiences, and I think Josh Shatro in his book,

01:00:28

Telling a Better Story, has really kind of moved this argument to the next level.

01:00:36

Everyone who studies Van Til knows that he said his thoughts and ideas need to be expanded further on.

01:00:44

And some really good interpreters and expanders of Van Til have. And I think Josh Shatro's book,

01:00:50

Telling a Better Story, he gives us all these narratives by which people live and shows that only the

01:00:57

Christian faith can make sense of these narratives and these intuitions and human experiences.

01:01:03

Excellent. Thank you for that. Apologetics101 asks, is Mark a Calvinist? Yes. Although I never use the term when

01:01:13

I teach apologetics, it's unnecessary. Because I speak to a lot of Arminian groups.

01:01:22

Here's the strange thing. I've never had a Presbyterian church ask me to come in and do apologetics. It's always the

01:01:27

Arminian churches that want to do it. And all I do is take them through Romans 1 in an extended lesson, talk about the knowledge of God every unbeliever has, the suppression of the truth, and some of my other lessons, we get into the need of the

01:01:43

Holy Spirit. And I very rarely have anybody pick up on that. They're just convinced by the

01:01:48

Scriptures. I don't use the term in my teaching because I don't see it as necessary.

01:01:55

I want them to be convinced by the Scriptures. Excellent. Thank you for that. Apologetics101 does have a more specific question here.

01:02:05

Dr. Furnham, do you use more advanced areas of presuppositionalism, such as the problem of the one and the many or personal identity over time?

01:02:13

You ever get into those more sophisticated areas of discussion? Yeah, I mean,

01:02:18

I read stuff like that and I study that. The problem of the one and the many is huge. When I teach philosophy,

01:02:24

I hit it over and over again with my students and show how different philosophers in the history of Western philosophy try to answer that question.

01:02:31

I rarely trot these out in a conversation with an unbeliever. There's all kinds of stuff like this, philosophical issues that I spend a lot of time reading on for background knowledge.

01:02:43

And in the rare exceptional case, I might come across someone that wants to talk about that. I have at least a working knowledge.

01:02:50

It's not the kind of thing that you need to employ on a normal basis.

01:02:56

But to have a knowledge of those things, all kinds of things in philosophy, actuality and possibility and properly –

01:03:07

I'm trying to remember the phrase from Plantinga. Thank you. Properly basic beliefs and proper functioning faculty.

01:03:15

All those things are really useful to have in the back of your mind to shape your answers, but I don't typically use those in a conversation.

01:03:23

Okay. Yeah. Neither do I. I talk about them here on the channel because it's an area that people want to –

01:03:29

Oh, yeah. It's really good stuff to know. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Fernando Medina asks,

01:03:35

What would it take to convince you that you are wrong in your belief in God? Yeah. That's a question

01:03:41

I really came across recently. Are we close -minded for saying that there's no evidence that could count against the

01:03:49

Christian faith and therefore we are in essence sealed off from counter evidence?

01:03:55

But see, this question implies the idea that evidence is neutral and therefore could undermine my belief in God where every belief system, every worldview has explanatory power, but it has their limits.

01:04:09

Only the Christian worldview can fully explain all of life in this – all of human experience and life in this world.

01:04:18

And I have to acknowledge that God's reality is the ultimate metaphysical reality.

01:04:24

And any other piece of evidence or any other argument simply cannot compare to the comprehensive nature of that answer.

01:04:33

And so I'm not worried about what science is going to find or what history is going to find because all that has been presented against the

01:04:41

Christian faith thus far has failed remarkably to in any way undermine confidence in that.

01:04:49

So it's more of an interpretation issue. You cannot interpret anything you encounter in a rational sense apart from the

01:04:58

Christian faith. And atheism is one of the easiest to debunk because almost everything they argue, every piece of evidence they argue for contradicts their fundamental worldview to begin with.

01:05:09

I agree. Yeah, excellent. So the question itself has an embedded neutrality principle in there.

01:05:16

Presuppositionalists reject for biblical reasons and we reject for philosophical reasons.

01:05:21

There's no such thing as neutrality. So that's an important thing. You've identified a presupposition embedded in the question.

01:05:29

And truthfully, that just takes practice. And this is why reading widely is so helpful. I read a lot of atheism and unbelief to try to discern what is the hidden presuppositions here.

01:05:41

And neutrality is always there. We somehow encounter the world with no preconceived biases.

01:05:48

We have direct access to that external object and our knowledge corresponds perfectly with it.

01:05:54

All that's been disproven in the world of philosophy. So to assume neutrality is to just,

01:06:02

I hate to say this because I don't want to sound rude, but it's to be ignorant of philosophy because even philosophers acknowledge that, especially the postmodern philosophers.

01:06:10

They really point out the fact of our biases. Sure. Excellent. Thank you for that.

01:06:17

Davinsky Makalensky asks, Mark, how would you use precept to a Catholic believer?

01:06:23

If you answered this, sorry, it just dropped in. It's a good question.

01:06:30

Apologetics with a Catholic believer more goes to the arguments of what

01:06:36

Scripture clearly says. I know there's a lot of historical arguments about at what point different beliefs in Christian orthodoxy were developed and at what point different beliefs in Catholic history developed.

01:06:49

But with a Roman Catholic, I just want to get them reading the scriptures. This is how my mother became a

01:06:54

Christian. Both my wife and I were born into Irish Catholic homes. And it was when someone opened the

01:07:00

Bible, which my parents, my wife's parents were not allowed to read to see the actual word of God, which they believed the

01:07:07

Bible was the word of God. Clearly talk about salvation by grace through faith was all it took for them.

01:07:16

So you don't actually have to do a whole lot of presuppositionalism because most Roman Catholics believe in God, believe

01:07:23

Jesus died on the cross for their sins, believe the Bible is the word of God. It's more of an issue of showing them the words of Scripture and helping them to go back and ask your priest about this.

01:07:34

Right. Yeah. And Dr. Bonson mentions this in some of his lectures. The question was this, this was asked.

01:07:40

So when we do presuppositional apologetics, we don't use presuppositional apologetics with the atheist, but then we throw it out when we argue with other religious perspectives.

01:07:49

We always maintain a presuppositional commitment to our authority and we seek to expose the presuppositional authority in our opponent.

01:07:57

So Catholics have their authority. We have our authority. They believe the Bible, not

01:08:03

Sola Scriptura, of course, but that is enough of common ground. We go to the Scriptures and we try and show through the

01:08:09

Scriptures that there is a conflict and tension between the Scriptures and the Roman Catholic Church's interpretation.

01:08:16

Now people will argue, well, they have their interpretation. You have your interpretation. But we need to remember that the existence of multiple interpretations does not negate the reality that there is a correct interpretation, nor does it negate the reality that the correct interpretation can be demonstrated.

01:08:32

So we continue to point people to the Scripture, argue from the authority of Scripture, and we pray that God removes the heart of stone and gives the heart of flesh.

01:08:40

So presuppositionalism can be applied to Roman Catholicism. Yeah, let me say it this way. Depending on all different kinds of beliefs, whether they're non -theistic or polytheistic or cults or Roman Catholicism, you use different degrees of a presuppositional approach, but they come out differently.

01:09:00

So someone who denies the existence of God altogether, you have to deal with presuppositions overtly, constantly.

01:09:09

When you can agree with someone that the Bible is God's Word and Jesus died for their sins, yes, you do recognize their authority is the

01:09:18

Catholic Church or the Pope or their local priest, but you already have the epistemological common ground of the

01:09:26

Scriptures, and so you don't see it quite overtly there. But it's still there. You're right.

01:09:31

I hope no one mistakes my or takes my words as saying you can just jettison it when you're dealing with Roman Catholics.

01:09:40

No, no. No, no. I don't think that was a good clarification. Apologetics101 asks, how does someone go about inviting you on their

01:09:49

YouTube channel? Well, I guess they can reach out to you. Yes, my website is simply apologeticsforthechurch .org.

01:10:01

But this message looks like it's addressed to you, not me. Oh, okay.

01:10:07

All right. If anyone wants to reach me, it's apologeticsforthechurch .org. Yeah, I guess that's true.

01:10:13

Yeah, I love coming onto people's channels and talking about apologetics, so you can just email me at revealedapologetics at gmail .com

01:10:21

and just let me know what you have in mind, and we'll see if we can make it happen. I'm totally down to do it.

01:10:26

I love doing stuff like that, so I appreciate it. Here's our last question, and we got through all of them.

01:10:34

So awesome. So here's a question. How do you respond to the atheist claiming certain things in reality are brute facts?

01:10:39

So we don't really need God. There are certain facts that are just brute facts. We don't need God to understand what those facts are all about.

01:10:47

I would say, what are those brute facts? How do you tell the difference between a brute fact and a fact that needs interpretation?

01:10:54

And give me a good argument because I'm unaware of any arguments. Again, scientists who might make this argument show their lack of knowledge of philosophy.

01:11:06

One of the big questions in philosophy is, how do we know that the thought in our mind and the words we use to describe it have any correspondence whatsoever to that external reality?

01:11:17

And most people don't know this, but most scientists have no working knowledge of philosophy.

01:11:22

They're completely unaware of the issues. A great example is Richard Dawkins. When the

01:11:28

God delusion came out, I read that cover to cover, and I was learning philosophy at the point, and I'm like, how can this brilliant scientist be so ignorant of some of the most basic ideas in philosophy?

01:11:40

But he is. He was. And many people who are scientifically minded, because they're dealing with the empirical, think that philosophy, dealing with the rational, is a lesser way of knowing, when in reality, they're not aware of their own scientific presuppositions.

01:11:58

They're not even aware of the problems in philosophy, so they end up saying things that every philosopher rolls their eyes at.

01:12:04

Yeah, excellent. Yeah, that was a terrible, terrible book. Even atheists admit that was a terrible book.

01:12:11

It was very entertaining. Yes. Van Til also had something to say about brute facts.

01:12:17

Van Til famously said that brute facts are mute facts. Facts do not speak for themselves. They require interpretation.

01:12:23

Interpretation requires a system of a worldview to be made sense out of. So when someone says such and such is a brute fact, maybe like logic, or you might hear some people say online, reality is reality.

01:12:34

It's just reality. They're not really saying anything, right? What reality is is going to be based upon your presupposition.

01:12:42

And if you don't define what reality is and you just say reality is reality, that's just tautologous. You're not telling us anything.

01:12:48

I can say a blark is a blark. There we go. Or brute facts are established by saying, well, that's just the way they are.

01:12:55

Cool. God exists. That's just the way it is. So where do we go from here, right? So we need to challenge the presupposition that people bring to the idea of facts.

01:13:03

As Van Til says, we need to have a philosophy of fact. Everybody has it. So we want to be able to bring that out in discussions of that nature.

01:13:12

Well, Mark, is there anything you'd like to say before we close this conversation up? I'd like to say thank you. This has been excellent, and I think it's going to be useful for people.

01:13:19

But are there any thoughts you'd like to leave with folks? Yeah. So my book is Every Believer Confident.

01:13:24

I have a video series as a companion coming out for this for small groups and Sunday school classes.

01:13:31

On my website is a free study guide to go with the book. It's also been translated into Spanish and available on Kindle.

01:13:39

I got to get that for my dad. OK, that's so cool. Yeah. I also co -authored a book called

01:13:44

Talking About Ethics, A Conversational Approach to Moral Dilemmas, published by Kriegel. If you want to, it's written from the perspective of three friends, one

01:13:53

Christian, one atheist, and one, I forget what the other character is.

01:13:59

But they work through different ethical issues. We're getting ready to land another contract with Kriegel, writing a book called

01:14:08

Talking About Worldviews, Philosophical Reasoning. So I'm a generalist, so apologetics is my main focus, but philosophy and ethics are other areas that I'm into as well.

01:14:19

So those can be a help. On my website, there's all kinds of different resources. It's not like a

01:14:26

CARM or other thing where you have dozens of articles. I write a blog. I have a podcast.

01:14:31

My main ministry is going into churches on a weekend and helping the average ordinary

01:14:36

Christian gain confidence that they can engage any unbeliever they meet effectively with the gospel in the course of a weekend.

01:14:43

So that's primarily what I do, and we're hoping to train up some interns to also do what

01:14:49

I do. But that's my main ministry outside of the college. That's excellent. Well, Mark, this has been an honor and a pleasure talking with you.

01:14:56

This has just been a very pleasant conversation and informative, and I know that folks will go back and watch this multiple times.

01:15:04

I'm not surprised we got here. My show sometimes goes up to two hours, so one hour and 15 minutes is doable.

01:15:09

If you're driving to work or something like that, people can get this in and enjoy this conversation. I'd like to say thank you so much for this conversation.

01:15:17

It's an honor to be on your show. It's my pleasure. Well, folks, just as a heads up, on September 22nd,

01:15:22

I'll be having Dr. Lane Tipton from Westminster Theological Seminary to talk about his book on Van Til and his

01:15:29

Trinitarian theology. And, of course, that's out in September, middle towards the end of September, but there will obviously be more shows before then.

01:15:38

I have a box that my wife made for me entitled Bible Questions, and my sixth -grade students,

01:15:45

I teach sixth -grade Bible at the school that I work at. They have filled that box with a bunch of questions, and they're anonymous.

01:15:50

I thought maybe it might be a good idea. Maybe I'll do an episode where I'll just answer questions from sixth -graders so you can kind of get a feel as to what kind of questions kids ask.

01:16:00

So I thought that might be good. I'll let you guys know when I do that. But that's it for this episode.

01:16:06

Thank you so much, Mark, and thank you, everyone, for listening in. And until next time, take care and God bless.