July 28, 2023 Show with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington on “Reformed Theology & Presuppositionalism: How Strong is the Link?”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 28th day of July, 2023.

I want to once again thank the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listening audience for praying for my older brother, Andy. He is 75. He was taken from the nursing home where he lives last Sunday night to a hospital due to pneumonia and a urinary tract infection.

Things were looking scary a couple of times, and I was requesting urgent and fervent prayer from my listeners in regard to a restoration of my brother's health and also a miraculous work spiritually within his heart and mind in regard to our Lord Jesus Christ.

And it seems that he is improving enough where he will be likely discharged from the hospital this weekend and returned to the nursing home. So I want to thank all of you who have been praying for Andy.

I ask of you to continue to pray for him, not only for his physical needs, but also for his spiritual needs. Thank you so much. You'll never know the depth of the gratitude I have not only to God especially, but to God for you who have been praying for me and demonstrating how much you love me and this program by responding with your affirmation that you are praying for my requests.

I can never get over how blessed I routinely am by your kindness. Today, I am thrilled to have back a returning guest to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. His name is Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington. He's an author, a teaching elder at Cambodia Presbyterian Church, and a missionary professor.

And today, he's going to be addressing Reformed Theology and Presuppositionalism—How Strong is the Link? And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my old friend, Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington.

Well, thank you, Chris, for inviting me on the program. It's always been a pleasure to join with you in past episodes, so I'm looking forward to our time together this afternoon.

Why don't you explain to our listeners something about Cambodia Presbyterian Church?

Sure.

The Cambodian Presbyterian Church is, as its name says, in Cambodia. I am a teaching elder in that denomination through being friends and colleagues with the president of one of the seminaries in Phnom Penh, who is ordained in that denomination, and they invited me to join with them.

So at this point, my service is from a distance, through the Internet, with the hope that the Lord would make it possible that the teaching would become in-person as well. I think Zoom enables us to do a lot internationally that couldn't be done beforehand.

With all the troubles that we know, Zoom, the merely Zoom that can create, but Zoom as one tool among many is great, but I do enjoy in-person teaching, which of course I do as well at Penn State University, Pennsylvania State University, not to be confused with the state Penn.

It sometimes is. I teach basically history of Christianity in two different courses from the New Testament era up through just prior to the Reformation at the Abington campus. There are a multitude of campuses of the Penn State.

Yeah, in fact, their law college has a satellite location about five minutes from where I'm.

Sitting.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, I believe they have 28 campuses. So Lord willing, I'll be doing two courses for the school this fall in Cambodia. That will be one on union with Christ and another on the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament.

And my course at Penn State, which is in-person, is going to be on early Judaism and early Christianity. So it's that period of time in the New Testament. Well, the period of, you know, the intertestamental period, which we now refer to as the Second Temple period, referring to Herod's Temple.

It's the second is over against Solomon. So that will be my topic. It will be Second Temple era. So early Judaism and early Christianity discussing, among other things, the eventual parting of the ways between official Judaism and official Christianity.

My listeners who may be in or have loved ones who are in or who have loved ones who have left the Salvation Army may be interested in listening afterwards. After this live program, you might want to go back to the archives at ironsharpensironradio .com and listen to my guest, Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington's testimony of how he and his wife left the Salvation Army denomination.

And I'm not saying that to disparage any of the truly born again and wonderful folks in the Salvation Army, but it just happens to be a denomination that is in stark contrast in regard to the sovereignty of God, especially with Reformed theology.

So I hope that you do take time eventually to listen to that fascinating interview as well. Well, we are talking about a controversial issue today, presuppositionalism. As long as I've been a Christian, there has been a relatively friendly division amongst Reformed Christians over this issue.

You have Reformed Christians like the late R .C. Sproul who advocated classical apologetics or evidential apologetics, as did his mentor, John Gerstner, both of whom are great heroes of mine. I had the privilege of seeing both of them speak on a number of occasions and met them face to face and only have had Dr. Sproul on the program.

I never had the opportunity to have Dr. Gerstner on the show, who is also in heaven now. But they were thoroughly Reformed and yet in opposition to presuppositionalism. But it seems that lately the divide has become more intense, more caustic perhaps, especially due to the rise of popularity of Thomism, which typically is associated with an opposing view to presuppositionalism, and perhaps you can correct me if you think I'm overstating the case.

But if you could, first of all, I think it would be wise for you to define presuppositionalism.

Sure.

The term itself, I believe, was coined by, yeah, his name went right out of my head.

Cornelius Van Til?

No, he was not the one who coined the term presuppositionalism. That was from his, who was our friend who was out at Wheaton and then Oliver Buswell.

Okay.

Oliver Buswell. I knew it would come to me. He coined the term back in the 30s or 40s. And Dr. Van Til basically said, okay, we'll go with it. It's a little, it may be a little bit confusing because the term has what I would call an epistemological or subjective element and a metaphysical or objective element.

Okay.

So, and the first instance would be that presuppositionalism presupposes the truth of the triune God of Scripture and His revealed will. So that includes God and creation. Okay, there you go. We've got all of reality covered.

And there's a subjective element, which is the truth that I presuppose that has been revealed in God's word and that I embrace. And depending on what we're talking about, it could be that only one of those aspects is in view, and we've not always been good at clarifying that.

So presuppositions are not merely biases. That's often how it's understood. What I'm saying, following not only Dr. Van Til, but also his disciple, Dr. Greg Bonson, the late Dr. Bonson, and of course, the late Dr. Van Til, the presuppositional argument method is to argue from the impossibility of the contrary, the impossibility of the contrary, which means if you deny the God, the triune God of Scripture and His revealed will, then you have no way of accounting for reality and what we know about it.

So that, in a nutshell, in other words, how was I going to put it? In a nutshell, it's what's called an indirect method. In other words, it's asking, it's talking with the nonbeliever and asking how they can account for what they know about reality and their own knowledge, basically.

And specifically, your motivation for conducting today's program is a growing popularity among Arminians, or non-Reformed Christians, because not all non-Reformed Christians would call themselves that, although they usually would fit well within the historical description of evangelical Arminianism.

But there's a growing popularity amongst them to adopt a presuppositional apologetic, and yet, while you are rejoicing over that and celebrating that, you have a hesitancy over that because you believe it is not consistent and logical.

Perhaps you could further expand upon that.

Yes.

Well, I mean, basically, presuppositionalism was birthed out of Reformed theology, so that as a method, as a way of arguing, as a way of defending the Christian faith, it is built upon and dependent upon the Reformed theology out of which it arises, basically.

However, as you've already noted, Chris, it can be adopted by and has been adopted by non-Reformed Christians to some benefit, I mean, to some good effect. And when I say non-Reformed, I mean Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic.

Understand that this is not merely within the broader evangelical community, but this use of presuppositionalism has gone beyond the evangelical or Bible-believing church confines and has actually extended to Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.

And if you were to search on YouTube, you can find teachers with large followings who.

Do this. Wow.

Now, can you explain why it seems, I'm not saying that every Thomist or every devotee of Thomas Aquinas is not a presuppositionalist, but it seems by and large at least the new breed of Thomists amongst Reformed Baptists, amongst Presbyterians and others, have either abandoned a previously held presuppositional apologetic or have just received further ammunition to oppose presuppositionalism because of their newfound and growing reliance upon the theology of Thomas Aquinas.

Can you tell us what would make Thomism at odds with presuppositionalism?

Well, first of all, anybody who is following the classical method of apologetics is in some sense adopting the method of Thomas. That doesn't mean they know it or they're purposely trying to follow Thomas, but as a matter of fact, that's the method in some shape or form that he himself embraced.

Now, just to maybe add a bit of clarification, classical apologetics and evidentialism, when you're looking at the truth of the Bible, look exactly the same because basically they.

Are.

The difference between classical apologetics and evidential apologetics is that classical apologetics adds to evidentialism so-called philosophically neutral arguments about God. So they're trying to argue for the existence of a God before they look at the Bible and what it says about the God.

So the classical method is typically a two-step, whereas evidentialism is more of a one-step right into the Bible and dealing with the historical truthfulness, et cetera.

Well, if you could share with us what are the primarily Reformed elements of theology that in your opinion are so hinged to and wedded to presuppositionalism that it would reveal that those from outside of Reformed Protestantism may appear in some level to be logically consistent, but if you press the issue to the nth degree, it really falls apart.

What would be those areas?

Okay. Now, I forgot to, before I answer that question, Chris, which is an excellent question, or a series of questions maybe more accurately, I forgot to answer. So those who are presently part of the Reformed Thomist school, and there would be many, this arises, at least in part, out of the revolution in church history and historical theology that occurred through the work of Richard Muller and some of his professors, teachers, and his students.

And so there's been a return to looking at Thomas himself. So that's, and why would that be opposed? Well, of course, if we disagree with classical apologetics, and we do in terms of our trying to argue for a neutral idea of a god and not necessarily the triune god of the Bible, then these brothers are critical of presuppositionalism, and Thomas gives them, they think, ammunition to shoot at us.

And I hold these brothers in high regard, even though I disagree with them on these particular issues. I would agree with them first on appreciating church history and historical theology, and recognizing the significance of a Thomas Aquinas, his brilliance as a theologian, his influence in the history of Western and now also Eastern Christianity, and so Thomas is a part of our, good, bad, or indifferent, he's a part of our heritage.

So it's, because his influence goes beyond Roman Catholicism, you mentioned R .C. Sproul and John Gerstner, they were both specifically attempting to build on their understanding of Thomas Aquinas.

Yes, in fact there is a documentary, or not a documentary, a lecture that I have seen on DVD, and of course that's a dinosaur in today's technology, but when I saw it, it was on DVD, might have even been on a videotape, but when Sproul was going through a lecture, a very detailed lecture, on his primary heroes of the Christian faith, there were some of his Reformed Protestant brethren who were dismayed that he so enthusiastically included Thomas Aquinas in that group.

Yeah, I think there's an interpretation of Thomas that's actually not historically accurate, coming from the influence of Dr. Gerstner, who I hold, by the way, in high regard.

Oh, I love them.

Right, in terms of his, I love that growly voice.

Which Sproul basically evolved to adopt.

Yes, now I came to Gerstner by way of Sproul, and when I heard Gerstner, I said, that's Sproul. I didn't know, and maybe it's just the Pittsburgh dialect. Now to get to your question, which would be, and a bridge to your question, would be that Dr. Van Til and presuppositionalists historically have been critical of Thomas.

So that's why Thomists are critical of us. So it's historic, there's a history there going back to, actually predates Van Til, goes back to some extent in Abraham Kuyper and in Boving, Herman Boving, who both, by the way, are well-read in Thomas, as was, I believe, Dr. Van Til, but Richard Muller himself has gone after Dr. Van Til, and that would be a project in its own right to interact with Dr. Muller, who I hold in very high regard, by the way, as a church historian.

Now, I don't want to focus too much on Thomas Aquinas today, but it seems inescapable when we're talking about this issue of presuppositionalism. Was it Aquinas' natural theology that is at the core of their opposition to presuppositionalism, or what is it?

Well, I mean, Van Til did not reject natural theology, and neither do I. It's the natural theology we hold to. In other words, you know, Roman Catholics have a doctrine of justification. That doesn't mean we should therefore reject a doctrine of justification just because Catholics have one, right?

So, in this instance, their understanding, we might say the devil is in the details,.

Right?

And so we have to be, I totally forgot the question, Chris.

I was wondering if—.

Because I was fishing there. Can you remind me of what you just asked?

Well, I'll even slightly rephrase it. Is it Thomas Aquinas' specific understanding of natural theology that is at the focal point of his modern-day disciples being opponents of presuppositionalism?

Well, that's certainly a part of it, but I would argue that, as others have, that it's actually his whole doctrine. Because he was such a—he really is a brilliant, was a brilliant theologian, and on things like how to study theology and things like that, he actually was quite insightful.

But it's his doctrine of God. Doctrine of God yields a doctrine of natural theology. Here's a point. So natural theology is not natural revelation, okay? Dr. Van Til typically is lumped with Karl Barth, inaccurate—even my friend John Fesco of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, in his book Reforming Apologetics, inaccurately puts Van Til into the same group as Barth.

Neo-Orthodox?

Yeah.

Barth rejects natural revelation and natural theology, although one can argue he has one anyway, but that's a story for another day. What's going on is natural revelation is the revelation that God gives of himself in nature and in—including human nature, our consciousness, right?

Being made in the image of God, etc. Natural theology is what we think about God's natural revelation. That distinction is very important. Van Til does not reject natural revelation. Karl Barth did. Van Til does not reject natural theology properly defined.

Karl Barth did, with all due respect to Dr. Fesco. Dr .—so Thomas Aquinas, there's a whole bunch of things that are—remember I talked about how presupposition, the term presupposition, has an objective and a subjective sense?

In other words, are we talking about the God and his world that we presuppose, or are we talking about my thinking about God and his world, right? So it could be either or both together, so we need to unpack that.

With Thomas, Thomas has an epistemology, that is, a theory of human knowledge that is, if I can put it in quick and dirty terms, that's the expression one of my professors at Westminster used to use, Claire Davis.

Shout out to Claire Davis. That Thomas was an empiricist. That is, he—most of us who are familiar with Thomas Aquinas know that he was heavily influenced by Aristotle, the philosopher, as he's called, in the works of Thomas.

Well, Aristotle was empirical. He was an empiricist. In other words, all human knowledge must begin in the senses—sight, hearing, smelling, taste, feeling, that kind of thing, right?

Isn't that where the Roman Catholic understanding of transubstantiation and the mass came from?

That would certainly enter into that concept.

Accidents in substance. Accidents in substance.

Yes.

Already you can see connections to other issues that we're not technically talking about—the Lord's Supper. Now, so what that does is Thomas says we—now, that affects his understanding of Romans 1 and what Paul says in verses 18 to 32.

And you may remember that I made comments about this when we were working through Romans chapter 1, Chris. You may remember that I made an observation about that. You can read Thomas' commentary on Romans online, by the way.

You don't have to purchase it. It's free. The people who publish it in print also offer it online. But so you can go and find what Thomas said about Romans 1, 18 to 32. You don't have to rely upon me.

You can do it yourself. But he basically says that God created us with a capacity or an ability to know, but he doesn't say that God actually implants knowledge of himself in the human mind and heart, which is what Paul says.

So already you've got in Thomas a problem. And that's related because Thomas—for Thomas, knowledge of God is indirect in the sense that we can only know God through his effects in creation. We can only—remember, he's an empiricist.

So we can only know God through his effects in creation.

And let me pick up where you left off there because we have to go to our first commercial.

Break.

Yep, no problem.

Anybody who would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington on presuppositionalism, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you are in sharp disagreement with your own elders at the church where you are a member over this issue, and you'd rather not obviously identify yourself and therefore subsequently identify your church.

We wouldn't want you to do that. You might even be an elder of a church who disagrees with your fellow elders or your denomination over what we're talking about. We understand those would be reasons to remain anonymous.

But please, if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Please don't go away. We'll be right back with Jeffrey C. Waddington.

The Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at War, September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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That's royaldiadem .com. We're now back with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington. We are talking about reform theology and presuppositionalism. How strong is the link? Right before the break, we were in the middle of discussing the epistemology of empiricism.

And if you could pick up where we left off.

Sure.

We were talking about, in particular, that Thomas' doctrine of God impacts his doctrine of natural theology. He does not have a category. I think I've mentioned this before. I've not found in my reading of Thomas any reference to a natural revelation.

So revelation, discussion of revelation in Thomas is always special revelation. And there are issues, although understand that the folk who are interested in using a presuppositional method of apologetics who are in, say, the Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic tradition, I don't know in particular whether they would be, I doubt they would be influenced by Thomas, although they may be quite familiar with him.

But the brothers in reform circles who have rediscovered Thomas or have discovered him for the first time, they are correct that you can't bring Thomas and presuppositionalism together. Not that you can't learn things from reading Thomas.

It's just that there are different ways of defending the Christian religion. Thomas wants to defend an ambiguous theology of a God, but not—at least when it's natural theology, it's not necessarily the Christian God, but a God.

And then when he gets to special revelation, he can be more particular. Or as we would argue, from the beginning, the God that we presuppose is the triune God of Scripture, not a non-existent God who is, according to the Scriptures, an idol.

You know, what you're saying actually is making me realize something that I've noticed, and I don't want to broad brush, but there is a tendency amongst evidentialists and those who embrace classic apologetics to be so more concerned.

It seems like their primary concern in the field of apologetics is just to convince atheists to become theists, to believe that there exists a higher power, a God, etc. But that isn't really sufficient at all, is it?

No. You may remember some years ago when Dr. Sproul, again, who I hold in very high regard and am sad to think that he's no longer with us, so that he himself is not sad.

And he's no longer an evidentialist.

Right. He's in the presence of the great and glorious triune God, his risen Christ. But you may remember, and I think he mentioned this, the British atheist Anthony Kenny, who was a well-known philosopher.

If you study the history of Western philosophy, the name of Anthony Kenny will be familiar because he's edited philosophical encyclopedias. Well, he became a theist, and I don't remember at this point, you know—.

Oh, it could be Anthony Flew. Yes, okay. Same thing. I mean, Anthony Flew also is—I mean, when you're talking about Oxford and Cambridge philosophers, they're all interactive. Thank you, you corrected me.

It's Anthony Flew who became a theist. I don't know what kind of theist he became. And you're right. The Great Commission says—Jesus said in the Great Commission in Matthew 28, to go into all the world and make disciples of the nations, that is, disciples of Christ, not converts to generic theism.

Because there is no generic deity. There's only one God in three persons. That's the only one that exists. That's the only one, as Christians, we ought to defend.

Amen. And one last thing about Aquinas, unless you want to bring him up for any particular reason. Unless I'm misunderstanding the defense of Aquinas by many who, at least previously, were doggedly, unashamedly, unwaveringly Protestant and vehemently opposed to the false gospel and religion of Rome.

They are giving Thomas Aquinas a pass, it seems to me anyway, merely or primarily, perhaps, because he existed three centuries before the Council of Trent. And Trent was really the official departure of Rome into apostasy, where although there were apostates in Rome for centuries prior to that, this is where it became dogmatically official that they were an apostate church, because they officially apostatized the true gospel, or those who adhered to it, and declared dogmatically a false gospel.

And am I making sense?

Yeah, exactly, Chris. What you've got, and the point we could make, is that the Council of Trent, sometimes referred to as the Tridentine Council, they're the same thing. That they are actually making official the teaching of Thomas Aquinas.

They say so. They say on the altar with the Bible and the Summa Theologiae, the Summa Theologiae, Summa Theology, basically.

So basically, even though he lived three centuries before Trent, he had the same...

Well, he's Roman Catholic!

Yes, he had the same gospel that Trent would later define.

He's not the inventor of transubstantiation, but he offers an argument for it, of course, turning Aristotle on his head. But that's, again, another issue. But back to, you know, what are the issues? Well, if God cannot be known except by his effects, that's, you know, in one sense, of course, no duh, revelation is an effect.

But he means more, he's saying that he's denying what I think the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, 18 -32 is actually teaching. Knowing God, they refuse to honor God or to worship him, which is Paul's argument in the latter half of Romans 1.

And they think that Paul is saying that God created Adam and Eve with the capacity to know him, whereas we argue, in fact, that he created us knowing him, not that merely... Of course, to know God means that we have the capacity.

There's no debate about that. But we're saying that God actually created us knowing him because he created us to be worshiping beings, worshiping beings of him. And this is borne out all the time because why are there idols?