Bahnsen vs. Stein and Presuppositional Apologetics | Eli Ayala

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Bahnsen-Stein Debate

It is Friday, it's time to party. I'm your excellent host, Nate Sala, and I'm the president of a Christian non-profit organization called Wise Disciple. And here at Wise Disciple, we're all about giving you the tools you need to live effectively as Christians in today's culture.

And so, I have a very special chat with you today with a friend of mine. His name is Eli, and he runs a very cool YouTube channel called Revealed Apologetics. You should definitely check out that channel.

If you don't already know who Eli is, I'll share the link in the notes below. But I did a Debate Teacher Reacts video a couple weeks ago on the Greg Bonson-Gordon Stein debate. Was that a couple weeks ago?

Somebody fact-checked me. Maybe that was last week. I don't know. When you're in your mid -40s, everything blurs together. So, what can I tell you? Well, anyway, I thought it was a very interesting debate.

I was a big fan of what Greg Bonson did. And so, some of you reached out and said, you know what? You got to talk to Eli about this. So, I figured, sure, let's do it. So, I got Eli, and we are going to discuss the Greg Bonson-Gordon Stein debate.

We're going to talk about some of the big moments there, what Greg Bonson was really good at, if Gordon Stein actually represents atheists today. I mean, you got to think, that debate was, what, back in 1985?

We talk about all of those things, and we talk about presuppositional apologetics. Now, truth be told, at the outset of the interview, I don't think I would consider myself a presuppositional list. Okay?

I don't know if that's news to you. But maybe Eli has told me things in the interview to where I change my mind. Are you curious? Well, let's find out right now. Here's my interview with Eli Ayala. Eli, thanks so much for joining me.

We are going to jump into a very important conversation, and we talked about this. But what I'd like to do is, tonight, talk to you all about 1963 Dallas and who shot JFK for real. So, we're going to...

Wait a second. Is that not... That's not what we're talking about tonight, right? We're doing something different. That's a... Definitely not. You're already upset with me. I apologize. We should... We're off on the wrong foot already.

No, tonight, we're going to talk about the great debate with Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein. So, I'll tell you, we... You and I had a conversation right around Christmas or something like that about doing, you know, a video along those lines, and I think I had seen a portion of the debate, but never heard the whole thing, never really gave it much thought, and didn't really know about the general reaction afterwards.

And so, I have some thoughts about that. But, I mean, let's just start with, like, how did we become aware of this in the first place? How did you hear about the Bonson-Stein debate?

Well, the debate happened in, I think, 1985. So, I was born in 82. So, I was just a little baby when it happened. But I heard of the debate for the first time when I let my brother-in-law borrow my iPod.

He was actually DJing a friend's wedding. I think, if I remember the story correctly, the DJ that was supposed to DJ the reception, something happened where he couldn't make it. So, my brother-in-law was...

He needed music. They were going to put it on a speaker, whatever. And he put his content onto my iPod and never took it off. And when I'm listening to my iPod, I'm like, what is this? He's got all these podcasts on there.

And it was through that situation where I actually heard the Greg Bonson and Gordon Steinbeck for the first time. And I had already been into apologetics, but listening to that debate, I noticed that it was very different than a lot of the debates that I had listened to before.

So, it's on accident.

At what point are you into studying apologetics and maybe even becoming an apologist yourself.

When you came across this debate? Oh, yeah. I was already along my way in terms of doing apologetics. I have been defending my faith actively since high school. So, I grew up in church. So, I've been a Christian my whole life.

But it was really in high school where I started interacting with my friends and things like that. And I first got into apologetics by reading articles on the website CARM, C-A-R-M, CARM .org, the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry.

And I think that's by Matt Slick. And so, I've been reading a lot of those articles and interacting with people. So, I was into apologetics, but I really didn't get into the issue of apologetic methodology until I became more aware of the different schools of thought.

And then I began to explore that a little more. And it was that debate that really sold me on presuppositionalism. After listening to that debate, I started reading Greg Bonson's books and stuff related to that methodological issue.

And I've been a presuppositionalist ever since.

So, it's weird for me because and we talked about this before but I got saved in an interesting kind of way. I had an experience of God and then wanted to make sure that I hadn't had a lot of beans that night and had some weird gaseous reaction or something.

You know what I mean? The subjective experience of God is just that. It's subjective. So, my entryway into apologetics was to try to explain logically what it was that I felt. And so, anyway, long story short, I came in in one particular angle into the realm of Christianity through apologetics, but not really aware of debates, anything like that, until I became really a teacher and had to teach debate.

And now I'm stepping out of that, and so now I'm looking at these things that have been established debates for a very long time, and I've been largely ignorant of the whole thing. The reason I bring that up is because I was just preparing to talk to you.

I came across something that somebody said, and I'm wondering what you think about this. Obviously, I went through the debate, and my video is what it is. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out.

But I was really impressed with Bonson. I was looking at a Christian I won't name him, let's not do that but I was looking at a Christian's response, and he said, well, basically, Bonson's strategy in the debate was just claim, claim, claim, all the way down the line.

I disagree. I was rather shocked, and I realized there is a subset of Christians out there who actually critique Bonson for not making enough arguments. Are you.

Aware of this at all? Yes, there is a common misunderstanding about the transcendental argument, which is kind of the central argument in presuppositional methodology. The critique is that the presuppositionalist is simply making the bare authority claim that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that provides the preconditions of intelligible experience, knowledge, these sorts of things.

We make that authority claim, and that's it. That's our argument. We just make the claim, and if you don't accept it, you're suppressing the truth, and that's all. That's actually not the case. The transcendental argument, as a broader argument within the history of philosophy, transcendental arguments are arguments.

They're just not the run-of-the-mill, say, deductive argument where you have a premise, a premise, and a conclusion. I do hear that a lot because people misunderstand the nature of a transcendental argument.

It's not simply a claim. It is a claim that we make. It is an authority claim that the Christian God exists, and it's objectively provable, and here's how we prove it. The way we do that is transcendentally.

Of course, you need to know a little bit about that.

Form of argumentation to unpack that. Right, right. That was one of the main contentions that Bonson gave in his opener, and I'm rather taken with it, with the transcendental argument. Maybe I can just ask you this.

Overall, what was your take on the debate itself?

Yeah. When I first listened to it, of course, I was taken aback by the uniqueness of the argument. I've never heard someone argue for the Christian God specifically in such a bold and explicit way. For example, when you have the debates that are typically done by classical apologists, if folks know anything about classical apologetical methodology, it is a two-step approach in which you demonstrate the existence of a theistic God through cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, moral arguments, taking those together.

You demonstrate the existence of a theistic God, and then you narrow the scope to the New Testament. It's a reliable document. What facts can we know about the historical Jesus? What I was taken aback was that the classical approach that I was used to, I recognized was a bottom-up approach.

You're working your way up to the conclusion that God exists. What struck me when I listened to the Bonson debate was that he was using a top-down approach. To me, this top-down approach seemed biblical also.

It's not that God is the conclusion to an argument. Rather, he is the necessary precondition for argument itself. He's saying, unless you start with the biblical God, you can't make sense out of anything.

In laying out the argument that way, I thought that was very much in line with how God presents himself. When God swears to Abraham, he couldn't swear by anything or anyone higher than himself. We take God as the ultimate authority.

Bonson seemed to really be arguing in a way that took that concept of God being the ultimate very seriously in a way that I think.

Other methodologies don't do as much. I like the way of arguing that I saw Bonson utilize. Like you, I thought Bonson actually did a very good job. The thing that I noticed about Bonson was he was a really good framer of the argumentation.

In other words, I say this quite a bit in other videos, but a debater's job is multi-pronged. One of the prongs or one of the jobs that a debater has is to narrate what is happening to the audience so that they can keep track.

In terms of helping your position out, getting the audience to adopt your framework of the way that the arguments are going and setting up the other side, so that when the audience hears the other side, they think in terms of what you've already framed.

Bonson, man, Bonson did a great job with that kind of stuff. What was the biggest takeaway moment? I mean, there was one moment where everybody just went nuts in the room. I'm sure we all noticed when Bonson said the laws of logic and everybody, ah!

What was your favorite moment?

Okay. So that was my favorite moment because it's the famous zinger, right? People can go listen to the debate and hear that. But actually, my favorite part of the debate was the opening statement, actually, because when I wanted to learn presuppositionalism and what was being argued, right?

How does Bonson argue the way that he does when he says that the proof for the Christian God is that without him, you couldn't prove anything? The opening statement lays out, in my opinion, the best summary form of a transcendental argument.

And so it helped me make sense out of not just evidence and facts, which is something I was very concerned with as an apologist back in the day, but he spoke about the philosophy of fact, the necessary context by which facts are interpreted.

And so laying that framework, he was able to set side by side the nature of the dispute. And it was not, I have more facts than you, or I have more evidence than you. It was a setup of worldview versus worldview.

The Christian is not arguing for the fact of the resurrection, for example, independent of a broader philosophical framework. We are arguing worldview systems. And so he laid that out in such a way where you really see the antithesis between a believer's position and an unbeliever's position.

And I think he set those parameters so well that when Stein tried to give his argumentation, he already set the framework, as you often say, of this diametric opposition between these systems of thought.

And so that helped me as a person listening to the debate to kind of see those two sides. And if atheism's true, how does he account for this? See, I'm always thinking if his system is true, how does he account for this?

If the Christian system is true, how does the Christian account for that? That framework was vitally important for me. Otherwise, I would have gotten lost in the sea of facts being thrown out at each other without the framework.

So he laid that really good context. And now everything that I do when I do apologetics is always within a context. I never speak of a fact independent of a system that allows that particular fact to have meaning and coherency.

So he's taught me, and I've learned this from his opening statement, he's taught me how to really keep in mind that every fact is understood within a context. And I think that's so important.

Yeah. No, I totally agree. And this is something that I tried to convey to my students, although I don't know if you'd ask them now, years later, if they remember this. But the bottom line is, when you are a speaker, whatever, pastor, teacher, rhetorician, debater, it really always does come back down to being a good storyteller.

You have to tell a good story, because people tend to receive the information in narrative form. The Bible is a narrative, you know? It's not a systematics textbook. And so it always ends up coming back to that.

And like I said, Bonson's a really good storyteller of the debate that everybody's receiving.

Well, I think that's why I appreciate presuppositional apologetics so much, is because it is a worldview apologetic. It is an apologetic that focuses on one's meta narrative, right? Our ultimate story.

So the very nature of the methodology forces the defender of the faith that's coming from that perspective to tell a story. Here's the story. I have a worldview, you have a worldview, right? Every fact that we engage with, any data point, is going to have to be understood within a framework.

And we are able to lay out that foundation so that when we actually get into the weeds, we have those worldview considerations always as the background music of our mind informing us what move we should make when we're.

Responding to the unbeliever's objections. Yeah. Is there anything else that you think that Bonson did really well? I mean, we spent a lot of time on how he was able to lay a proper framework for the debate.

But was there anything else that you noticed that he was like, yeah,.

This guy's really good at this? Yeah. Well, a very important point that Bonson was trying to make was he was trying to get Dr. Stein to understand the importance of induction and the fact that his atheistic worldview could not account for induction, right?

The uniformity of nature, these sorts of things. And when Dr. Stein didn't know, for example, what David Hume said about that topic and why it's an important issue to bring up, that could have actually been a stumbling block because that was a very important point, especially when Bonson's trying to show that science doesn't make sense within an atheistic worldview since science presupposes the uniformity of nature, the inductive principle, these sorts of things.

And what I thought Bonson did very well was that when Dr. Stein was ignorant as to what David Hume brought up and what the problem was, he was able to quickly narrate the issue and then present it back to Dr. Stein.

He wasn't going to let Dr. Stein escape having to answer that important question by just saying, oh, I haven't read Hume in a long time. He's like, no, no, no, this is a key issue. And so let me tell you the story.

This is what Hume said. This is why it's a problem. Now, what's your response to it? And so I thought he did a very good job sticking to that point of the uniformity of nature, even when having to explain it to his.

Otherwise ignorant opponent. Yeah, no, I like that, you know, and I think you're right to point that out. Another debater, maybe in a different circumstance, would have seen that, you know, like they probably would have intended to have those questions ready to go and they would have seen that, oh, they're not familiar with this.

Let's just move on. And no, that actually was a really good move. He actually got, didn't he get a little scolded from the moderator? He's like,.

Can you get to the question the moderator was saying? He did. I thought the moderator did a good job. But in that particular instance, I thought that it was appropriate that Dr. Bonson told the story just so that he can, because I don't think, I don't think Dr. Bonson was getting off track and like, you know, just filibustering, right?

He was getting to a point. And so he had to set up, because of the ignorance of his opponent on this specific issue, he had to set up the question. And by telling the story, here's what Hume says, here's what Bertrand Russell says.

So I think he did a good job, even though the moderator was trying to do his job as well,.

But I thought it was appropriate at the time. No, totally agree. Yeah. Well, I mean, we've been talking about Bonson. What do you think about Gordon Stein? Did he, is he the best representation of atheists?

You know, could he have done a little bit more research? What do you think?

No, he's not the best representation of atheism. There is clearly more sophisticated versions of atheism and both in literature, and even just rhetorically people being able to argue their points with more sophistication.

I think he is a low hanging fruit. Now that is not to say that the debate between Dr. Bonson and Gordon Stein, Dr. Stein was not useful. It is useful, not because Dr. Bonson is debating an intellectual juggernaut.

He wasn't. It is useful in that it allows people for the first time to see what the presuppositional method looks like in actual debate. You see, there are people who we will argue with other Christians about what's the proper apologetic methodology.

And so people will argue theory. And of course the classical tradition has not only theory behind it, but practice. We've, we've seen what classical apologetics looks like in, in real interaction. We have, you know, the William Lane Craig debates and, you know, the Frank Turek's and all that, the evidentialist school up until that point in the, in the eighties, I don't think anyone really saw what the presuppositional approach looked like in an actual debate situation.

And I think in that sense, it was helpful even though Dr. Stein was not the best opponent. I mean, golly, as I'm a presuppositionalist, if I was a classicalist, my, my intestines, my stomach turned when I heard him try to just so, so easily, you know, refute some of the traditional proofs for God's existence.

I mean, he butchered a cosmological argument. He butchered almost every argument that he tried to refute. So I don't think it was the best. But I do think he's typical of say, like the generic, like online atheists that one might encounter.

That's not informed, that really doesn't respect the theistic tradition. And so it's very easy for them to kind of hand wave some of the arguments based upon their limited.

Understanding of them. Well, let's get ourselves into trouble. Eli, what, what I noticed was there was a moment and I'm trying to remember exactly what Stein said, because he said something like, well, in cross-exam, you know, which is all supposed to be leading questions to, you know, expose errors and flaws and etc.

But like he said something, he asked a question like about a problem that he perceived with the Christian worldview. And then Bonson answers the question and Stein goes, well, I will show you later that that is actually the case.

And I heard that and immediately thought was, oh, my gosh, that's Aaron raw, or however you pronounce it, R and raw, R and raw does that quite a bit. There was some things that Stein did. I was like, oh, my gosh, that's Dilla hunty.

Like, so, you know, I do see these guys, do you think so now this is speculation, Your Honor, like, do you think that, like, are these guys going to the same school? Like, how.

Do they? Are they arguing this way? I think, okay, so if I remember the context correctly, the point that Dr. Stein wanted to get back to was he was going to bring up the euthyphro dilemma. And this is, yes, if you think about it, right, he was saying, you know, how can you how can God be good?

And he kind of botched up the euthyphro dilemma. But that's basically what he was trying to get at. And I think the problem with using this is that it's dead. Philosophically, people on the internet use it, but no one in academia of any note is trying to argue, for example, the logical, you know, logical incoherencies between God's goodness and these sorts of things.

Even when you come to like the problem of evil, for example, problems of evil take more of like a probabilistic flavor, as opposed to kind of like a logical incoherency between the idea of an all good God and they're being evil in the world.

The euthyphro dilemma is so easy to answer as a Christian, that it's surprising that atheists still use it. And Christians will simply respond that goodness is not an arbitrary decision on God's part, nor does God appeal to a standard above himself.

Goodness is a reflection of God's own nature, as you know, right, we split the horns of the apparent dilemma, and show that goodness is just a reflection of who God is, it's not arbitrary, it's not above him, it's just who he is.

And so there you go, there's no logical incoherency. Now, you might not agree with that, you might say, well, you know, but there is no logical conflict. And in the philosophical literature, this has been cast aside, yet people who are on the internet continue to use like, old school arguments that people in academia aren't really using anymore.

I hear you, man. I hear you. The other day, somebody brought this up again. And it's like, it's amazing. It's like, why does this keep getting brought up? Who created God? You know, like that whole thing is if and they're very, when this is thrown out at Christians, it's almost like you can see the confident smiles like gotcha.

You know, yeah, it's not who created God. It's.

Oh, yeah. Well, who created God? It's one of those like, we've never thought about it before. Even even Stein's formulation of the cosmological argument is based upon just a common, you know, the internet wasn't around back then.

But a common internet atheist, you know, presentation, everything that exists has a cause. I don't know of any cosmological argument that has a premise that says everything that exists has a cause because that would right clearly initiate against our own position if everything has a cause, and not have the cause.

So again, he was very sloppy, he did not properly represent the arguments that he was critiquing. And of course, the killer, he didn't address the argument that Bonson presented. I mean, why are you trying to refuse cosmological arguments and teleological arguments against the person who's using a transcendental argument?

He doesn't Bonson doesn't even, not only does did Bonson not use those arguments, he doesn't use them like Bonson. I disagree with Bonson here. But Bonson thinks that the cosmological arguments a bad argument.

Oh, like he doesn't. Yeah, so he critiques. Now I disagree with him. I think it's a good argument. But he never uses it. So he would help you would help you know, Stein refute the cosmological argument because none of his arguments depend.

On that particular argument. Well, I mean, again, you you it's a great observation here. And as I was going through the video, I mean, my thought so I mean, my weird brain is filled with pop cultural references and lots of movies and stuff.

But I mean, to go to 11 proofs in the sloppy manner that you identified that Stein did. It reminded me of that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is trying to find Marion in the crowd of and all of a sudden, there's a guy with a sword.

And then he starts like doing all this crazy like sword work. And he just pulls out a gun and shoots him like, it's so useless. But you know what Christians do the same thing. Christians do so much work.

And in and at the end of the day, the the arguments and evidences that they use go right around the person or right over their head. And it's it's not even directly dealing with what they're talking about.

Right? Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah, they were really.

Bad. They're really sloppy. And it shows in my opinion, because this is common, especially on the internet, it shows not a lack of intelligence, but a lack of respect for the philosophy that they're critiquing.

They they think so lowly of theism, that they don't do any work in understanding the arguments. And so they think it's as simple as just hand waving it and presenting it the way that they do. You know, faith member when trying to find faith.

He says that right is believing something with insufficient evidence. I'm like looking in the dictionary, which where did he look? Where's that definition? I've never heard defined in those categories at all.

But to him, that's what faith is. Faith is you just believe stuff and there's there's no evidence for it.

Well, that's but that's what I mean. That's our and raw. I mean, if you go back to the what is it the inspiring philosophy are in raw debate at some bar, which seems like a really.

Fun place. You say, remember that debate back at the university? I was like that debate back in.

The bar, the bar, some bar. No, but he's like he defined faith that way in inspiring philosophy. Michael, Michael, Michael Jones. Yeah. Called him out on it, which is what he should have done. So that's that's very good.

There was the last time that the who created God thing floated out there on the Internet. I typed back a comment, very tongue in cheek, but like, well, if God created the universe, who created category errors?

And then I just left it at that. So that's fantastic.

Well, if anyone's interested, I actually I actually revealed apologetics is on TikTok and I have a short little video responding to a bunch of, you know, atheists arguing the who made God. It's pretty funny.

So if folks want to check it out, it's like two minutes long. TikTok. Now, what is that? It is. No, I'm kidding. TikTok is the sewer of social media. I was warned not to make an account like you don't want to go on TikTok was you know what?

They're centered there, too. I mean, let me go on TikTok and see if I could make a video or two. So, right. Yeah. It's not the best platform to do apologetics because it's not a lot of you have a lot of time, but it can be done.

And I've heard a lot of people say that, yeah, we need Christians.

Even on TikTok. Eli, I totally agree with you. If I could just figure out half of what's going on on my phone these days as I'm in my mid 40s,.

I would join you. We have the red. We have the product red. Look at this. This just turned into.

An Apple commercial. Hey, nice. Look at that. I knew we were friends for a reason. There we go. Well, OK, so we're obviously talking about the Great Debate and we're talking about Bonson and all the things that he did really well.

But let's talk about his methodology, because this is totally in your wheelhouse. And I'd like to maybe just investigate a little bit further for maybe my listeners who are not too familiar. But let me just ask you a very basic question.

You tell me everything that comes into your head about it. What is presuppositional apologetics?

OK, well, first, many presuppositionalists don't like the word presuppositional. It's confusing and it sounds complicated. But if I were to simplify that mouthful presuppositional apologetics and this might sound pious language, but I honestly think that this perfectly summarizes the presuppositional method.

The presuppositional method is an apologetic methodology which seeks to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, even the thoughts of the unbeliever. OK, now that's very key. OK, now I just quoted a scripture there.

OK, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. The presuppositionalist believes that that includes what we bring under the obedience of Christ. That includes the way we think, the way we reason, the way we engage with unbelievers.

And so I like how Dr. Scott Oliphant has defined presuppositional apologetics. I don't know if this is original to him, but I really liked how he phrased it. Presuppositional apologetics or just apologetics is Christian theology applied to unbelief.

So that when we're speaking with the unbeliever, what we bring to that is what we believe about what the Bible teaches about the nature of the unbeliever, the nature of man's reasoning, the effects of the fall upon man's mind, the fact that the Bible teaches that all men actually know that God exists but is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

I believe that biblically, but I don't throw that away because I'm talking with someone who doesn't believe the Bible. You see what I'm saying? So I come with that theological and biblical baggage because it's a foundation, right?

That's the word of God. And I argue in a way that is consistent with that. Now, of course, other apologetic methodologies will say probably that's probably what they're trying to do to some extent as well, but the presuppositionalist would probably argue that the presuppositional methodology does it more consistently for various issues that we can get into if you want, but we don't have to.

So I would say that presuppositional apologetics is a top-down approach to apologetics. It is to start with the God of the Bible and argue that unless you start with God and his revelation, you can't make sense out of anything.

And so with that form of argumentation in place, you can talk about anything. We can talk about art. We can talk about science. We can talk about.

Philosophy because we would argue that God is necessary for all of it. Yeah. So you mentioned scripture, 2 Corinthians 10 .5 is what I imagine you were quoting there or paraphrasing. Is that right? I believe so.

Can we unpack that a little bit more maybe? We are striking down arguments and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. How does... Because I'm hearing...

Bringing every thought captive. That's the... Every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. You have this concept wrapped up in the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our hearts and minds. So 1 Peter 3, verse 15, which says to set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts, always being ready to give a reason for the hope.

We know this passage. Now this passage in 1 Peter 3, 15, for example, many people focus on the always be ready to make a defense. But what the presuppositionalist wants to point out is that prior, the prerequisite for always being ready is to set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts.

Now, biblically, the heart has been associated with the mind, the center of one's being, that faculty of the intellect that goes into decision-making. Jesus Christ is to be set apart as Lord over that.

So everything we think, everything we do in terms of our reasoning process must be submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And the way that plays out in the apologetic engagement is very important because in light of the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our minds, we do not argue with the unbeliever in such a way where we put God on trial, rather the unbelievers on trial, and he needs to give an account for the things he thinks he knows, independent of his maker.

And so we try to push those points in our discussion with them.

So, I mean, this is great because, so let me just be very transparent because I don't think in any video I've really given, I guess, my view or a characterization of my view on this issue. And largely I don't want to do this because I guess as I do more of these videos, I'm realizing that I'm kind of becoming an avatar for Christians from various flavors and persuasions.

And so if I'm going to sit here and talk about a debate and who did better and whatnot, I get the sense that I just, it's not necessary for me to categorize myself in a certain way because I know that immediately as soon as I do, people are going to be dismissive and then they're going to, I'm not going to hear what he has to say.

But I will say this, very briefly, I, when I first became a Christian, cut my teeth on the writings of Francis Schaeffer. He has had a seminal influence on me who, I mean, I guess he would be a flavor of a presuppositionalist along with Van Hill.

Right. And so if I am friendly to presuppositionalism or the presuppositional approach, it's Schaefferian. I mean, first state evangelism to me is very reformed in its epistemological approach. That is that just like what you said, it's not our job to sit here and try to give a ton of defense for the existence of God and all those things.

It's the person who's making the claim that Christianity is not true. It's their job to back themselves up. And that's why the methodology that we advocate for here at my ministry is very Socratic in its approach and it puts the burden of proof as much as possible on the person that we're talking to.

So, but having said all that, I don't fancy myself a presuppositionalist. There's a few things holding me back, which is why I guess we're having this conversation because maybe you're going to change my mind tonight.

You know, I'm open to that. So, well, even though it's the work of the Lord.

To overcome that total depravity. So, well, that's right. That's just my grimy Calvinist.

Humor coming out. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, that's good. That's good. Well, so and you will find me in total agreement. So I'm asking you a question where I'm a friend. So don't take the don't get the wrong idea.

Sure. How am I going to some critics would read into Van Til I've read this they've read into Van Til maybe unjustifiably that he basically argued that non-believers couldn't know anything that there is a I'm trying to remember the phrase like a noetic effect of sin on the non-believer such that their knowledge has been deleteriously affected and we get that from like Romans one the suppression of truth that Paul describes there, you know, and in other words of non-believers knowledge has been badly affected.