Is Presup Connected to Postmodernism? Nope! #presup #apologetics #postmodernism

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today, we're going to be taking a look at the

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Convincing Proof podcast, more specifically, episode 19 of the

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Convincing Proof podcast. What is there? Yeah, so, Convincing Proof, Providing Reasons and Evidence to Trust in Christ.

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That's the, I suppose, the whole title of the podcast. And so, the title of this specific episode is

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Similarities Between Postmodernism and Presuppositional Apologetics.

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Similarities Between Postmodernism and Presuppositional Apologetics. And so, I want to take a look at this video and really use this as an opportunity for some clarification, some correction, because obviously,

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I don't agree that there are similarities between postmodernism and presuppositional apologetics in the way that the hosts of this show suggest.

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As a matter of fact, anyone who is familiar with the literature of Dr. Cornelius Mantill, Greg Bonson, Frame, people like that, will know that, of course, the similarities that are going to be drawn, as you will see, is completely inaccurate.

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If I was not a presuppositionalist and I was, say, a classical apologist or an evidential apologist,

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I would still criticize the content of this video because it is completely wrong -headed, okay?

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And so, I want to interact with this, of course, respectfully. I have no idea who this gentleman is. I apologize if he's someone

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I should know. You guys got to see things from my perspective. I do this channel when

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I have the time, so I'm a full -time teacher. I'm on spring break now, thankfully.

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I'm a full -time teacher. I'm not up on all of the things going on in the apologetics world as much as I would like, and so I don't know who this gentleman is.

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He seems like a really nice guy. I would imagine that I would probably enjoy having a cup of coffee with him and all that, right?

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But the content of his video here, or audio, rather, is something that I think needs to be addressed for the purposes of clarity, so there you go.

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So, I'm not going to waste any time because this will probably be longer than usual, maybe.

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We'll see. And I'm going to be playing this bad boy from the beginning. I may jump around.

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We'll see. I'm just going to play the thing, and then I'm going to put it on pause, and I'm going to offer my thoughts and response.

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And so, hopefully, this is useful for folks and educational, hopefully, okay?

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All right, well, let's jump right in. Let's take a look here. Thanks for listening to the

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Convincing Proof podcast. In this podcast, I want to continue the conversation from last time about the term a

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Christian worldview. If you didn't listen to that one, I would encourage you to go back and do so. I had a long conversation about this term, a

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Christian worldview, and I was encouraging folks to not use that term anymore because of all of the postmodern connotations that that word communicates.

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Now, a lot of times, Christians, Christian apologists, when they use that term, they're not meaning the postmodern connotations that often go along with that term.

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They're not using it in that sense. However, the problem is that's how they're interpreted by the culture often.

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So our culture has been heavily influenced by postmodernism, and they think in terms, more in terms of relative truth.

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And you have your view. I have my view. You have your truth. I have my truth. And so when we as Christians use that term worldview or a

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Christian worldview, a lot of times how non -Christians interpret what we're saying is that we're just talking about our opinion.

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We're just talking. Yeah. So a couple of things right off the bat here. So I agree the language of worldview does have connection with postmodern philosophy.

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I think the more accurate terminology would be metanarratives. Postmodernist terminology deals with metanarratives, and there is a skepticism with respect to metanarratives, which basically refers to a worldview perspective.

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So you definitely want to be careful with how your words are being received.

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Now, I have no problem talking about using the term worldview as long as you clarify what you mean by that.

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If someone takes the use of the term worldview as meaning it's just your opinion, then I would clarify that.

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For example, if I were to say I think that the Christian worldview is objectively true and not simply based on opinion, then, of course, the person can't receive your use of the term worldview as simply your opinion.

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They might think you're wrong, but at least they can know with clarification what you mean when you say, for example, the

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Christian worldview is objectively true. We're talking about our view, our religious views, and we're not making objective truth claims.

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We're just talking about our views of things, and we all have different views, i .e. relative truth born out of postmodernism.

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And so I would encourage folks to not use that term because it's just poor communication.

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It comes across and it confuses the people that we're trying to reach for Christ. Because when we are making claims about Christianity, we are making objective truth claims.

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In other words, we're talking about things that can be objectively true or false, kind of like I use the example of saying that the earth is the third planet from the sun in our solar system.

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That's an objective truth claim. All right. Yeah. So real quick, I just want to bring this point out.

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I think using the language of worldview is not in and of itself poor communication, right? Of course, we want to understand that words have meaning in context, right?

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So I think it's entirely appropriate to bring out the language of worldview and simply just explain what you mean when you use the term, right?

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So, for instance, when I use certain words, I find it helpful with following it up with a brief explanation of what

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I mean and what I don't mean when I use certain terms. So I don't think that there is the use of the term worldview is necessarily poor communication.

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I think with any good communication, it's just important to explain, briefly explain the context in which you're using a term that can be misunderstood.

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So if I know the term worldview is typically misunderstood, I will make sure to define what

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I mean when I use the term and what I don't mean sometimes, depending on the nature of the discussion, if I have time to explain that.

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So I don't think it's necessarily poor communication simply for using a word that could be misunderstood.

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Could be true, that could be false. I think it's true, right?

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I believe it's true, but maybe there's another planet that we're not aware of yet between us and the sun.

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So maybe we're actually the fourth planet. So my point is that when we're making claims about Christianity, we're doing the same thing.

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We're making claims about objective reality that can be either true or false. And we want to make sure we're communicating that when we make our case for Christianity.

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Now, of course, I think Christianity is true. But as I've explained, I often say, after I say

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I believe Christianity is true, I often say that I could be wrong, not because—

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Right, so I could be wrong. And I think here is what he says here, I could be wrong. I think here we'll want to be careful, right?

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I think a person who says that they could be wrong doesn't think, nor could they argue, that the

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Christian worldview is the necessary precondition for intelligibility. And that phrase, hopefully people will understand what

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I mean by that if you're familiar with apologetic discourse, especially with respect to presuppositionalism and these sorts of things.

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A person who says that they could be wrong couldn't argue that the Christian worldview is the necessary precondition for intelligibility, right?

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And an I could be wrong approach allows for categories of neutrality to come in, which

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I think is problematic as well, right? It is to hold something, for example, more authoritative, more sure than the triune

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God and His revelation. And it's here where one's theological and philosophical convictions are going to come out, right?

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For the presuppositionalist who holds God as the metaphysical ultimate and His revelation is epistemically ultimate, right?

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We're not going to place some sort of contingency or possibility above the certainty and assuredness of the triune

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God and His revelation, okay? So, again, your antennas should go up, okay?

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I'm not saying – I'm not offering too much of a detailed criticism at this point but just to point out that to say this is – it is sneaking in categories of neutrality and autonomy.

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I want you to pay attention to that. And this is not something that I'm saying is done on purpose. Sometimes people are like, well,

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I don't believe we're neutral. I don't believe that autonomous reasoning is sufficient and so on and so forth.

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But what you see when people make statements like this is that whether they acknowledge it or not, those categories do sneak in.

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Okay? So I want you to pay attention to that, okay? All right. Let's continue on. As I have doubts about Christianity, but I say that because I want people to understand we're making objective truth claims.

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We're not just talking about our personal views or opinions. So instead,

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I encourage people, instead of talking about their Christian worldview, just to talk about their Christian beliefs.

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Or they could say I have a system of beliefs or a set of beliefs about reality.

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Okay. Yeah. I think speaking about Christian worldview as a set of beliefs or a system of beliefs is perfectly fine as long as we don't succumb to a piecemeal approach and how we defend our set of beliefs.

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We'll always want to remember that our beliefs are part of the broader system, which is just a worldview.

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So if you want to talk about set of beliefs, someone could still misunderstand that as you just putting forth your opinion.

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So I don't see necessarily the problem with using worldview because when you speak of set of beliefs, that's what you mean, your worldview.

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And both could be misunderstood. Now, if you use set of beliefs or systems of belief and you qualify it, then, yeah, that's perfectly fine.

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But then again, you could do that with using the term worldview and just clarify what you mean by that. I even don't recommend using the term religious beliefs because, again, it just has connotations of relativism.

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In our culture, religious beliefs are just seen as these opinions.

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They're just, well, if Buddhism helps you in your life and it works good for you, gives you purpose and direction in life, then it's true for you.

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And if Christianity is good for you, helps you get through life, difficult times, gives you purpose, direction in life, then it's true for you.

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And we don't want to say that. We don't want to come across that way. We want to make it clear that, no, when we talk about our beliefs, we're talking about beliefs concerning reality.

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I'm going to hop ahead there. Yep. So I agree. You do want to provide the context that when we're talking about the

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Christian worldview, we're not talking about mere opinion and even just mere authority claims.

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We're not simply making authority claims. We are making authority claims to be sure, but it's not simply an expression of our opinion and that's it.

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We're talking about what we believe to be objectively true. So I agree with the spirit of what he's saying there.

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Let's continue on. Podcast, that was all just review. In this podcast, I want to talk specifically about a group of Christians who have been influenced by postmodern ideas.

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And in fact, some of them even embrace it. And so I want to draw your attention to this group of Christians.

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And one of the reasons that I do this, I have a burden to do this, study philosophy, talk about more of these philosophical issues, is because I have a shepherd's heart for the church, for Christians.

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You know, as a pastor, I want to be a shepherd and protect people from wrong thinking.

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And I think there is just so much wrong thinking in postmodernism. And oftentimes it's insidious in the sense that Christians get influenced to think in postmodern ways and they don't even realize it.

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So part of the purpose of me studying, getting a PhD in philosophy, among other reasons, is so that I can understand the bad philosophy that's out there and how it's infiltrated the church and warn people about it and not to be corrupted in their thinking.

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So the group of Christians that I want to talk about that have been influenced by postmodern philosophy is presuppositional apologists.

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You might be familiar with that term presuppositionalism or presuppositional apologetics. I'll try to give you a brief explanation, a brief summary of that position, presuppositionalism.

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It's a movement within apologetics, so to speak. That's why it's called presuppositional apologetics or just presuppositionalism.

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Well, real quick, so before he gets into the presupp stuff, I want to agree with this gentleman here that there is so much wrong in postmodernism.

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Right. Again, postmodernism is a philosophical position that is skeptical towards metanarratives or, you know, object objectivity with respect to truth.

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But I think that in my estimation, the non -presuppositional viewpoints are closer to postmodernism than presuppositionalism.

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We'll talk a little bit about that in just a moment. But again, this is not only is the connection he's going to draw incorrect.

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It is vastly incorrect, and it is probably something that can be more in line with non -presuppositional views, as we'll see momentarily.

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Positionalism, it's a big, long, fancy word. I'll explain the ideas here in just a minute. And what I want to try to do in this podcast, though, is point out how similar and connected these two movements are.

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The two movements I'm talking about are postmodernism and presuppositionalism. That might surprise you, and it surprises a lot of presuppositionalists that I talk to.

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Well, yeah, it would definitely surprise Pantale and Bonson, right? So he's going to want to point out how closely connected presuppositional apologetics and postmodernism are.

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But I think Pantale and Bonson and others would be very surprised to see this connection in terms of what he is trying to suggest here.

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When this issue came up in the debate -slash -discussion between R .C. Sproul and Greg Bonson, Bonson was quick to point out when this connection was brought up, the presupp and postmodernism, those sorts of things.

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In the debate between Bonson and Sproul, Dr. Bonson was quick to point out—and

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I think he's correct, and not just correct generally speaking, he's very correct and obviously correct for anyone who knows the issues—that the term presuppositionalism, and he says this,

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Dr. Bonson says this, shouldn't even be mentioned in the same room with presuppositionalism, right?

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There is no relation, no influence in the way that's going to be suggested here. As a matter of fact, presuppositionalism—and

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I want you to get this. This is so important. Presuppositionalism is literally the extreme opposite of postmodernism.

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I'm going to say that again. Presuppositionalism is literally the extreme opposite of postmodernism.

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Postmodernism is relativistic. It's skeptical of metanarratives. While presuppositional apologetics seeks to demonstrate the objective truth of the

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Christian system. It seeks, to use Dr. Van Til's own word, it seeks the vindication of the

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Christian philosophy of life over against the non -Christian philosophy of life. To quote him directly there, that's Van Til in his book

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Christian Apologetics, the first page. It is the vindication. So in that definition of apologetics, for example, that Van Til gives, notice what is entailed in the definition that Van Til gives.

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Apologetics is not simply a defense. It is a vindication. We seek to vindicate the

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Christian philosophy of life—that phrase refers to a worldview—over against the non -Christian philosophy of life.

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And there's, again, the non -Christian worldview. And so within that definition, we have the idea of vindicating, not simply asserting or engaging and only responding to objections.

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We have the vindication of the Christian worldview. We have the issue of worldview there, over against.

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Then you have the antithesis between the Christian philosophy of life and the non -Christian philosophy of life.

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Presuppositionalists like Greg Bonson and others have explicitly stated the Christian worldview, catch this, and this is true whether you are a presuppositionalist or not.

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You can disagree with presuppositionalism, you can disagree with the transcendental argument, but at least understand the claim.

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Presuppositional apologetics tries to defend the Christian worldview and believes that the

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Christian worldview is—and Dr. Bonson has used this even in his debates— he believes the

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Christian worldview is objectively provable with epistemic certainty, such that it cannot fail to be true.

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Now I want you to ask yourself a question. Does that sound anything like postmodernism? Well, of course not, right? This claim is even stronger than any claim put forth by those within the evidential and classical school of apologetic thought, right?

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Again, you don't have to agree with it, but to compare it with postmodernism is,

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I mean, so wrongheaded it's like literally not even close. And again, if I was not a presuppositionalist,

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I would point this out. It's just flat -out false. When I bring this topic up, the connections and the similarities between these two movements, one of my goals in this podcast is to point out how closely connected these two movements actually are.

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I should say, though, maybe as a caveat, that not all presuppositionalists can be put in this camp of being influenced by postmodernism.

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I think overall, the movement itself, the presuppositional movement, has been influenced by postmodernism and shares a lot of similarities with it.

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But there are—this is always the case—you don't want to talk in too broad of generalities, and so I want to identify that there are different types of presuppositionalists.

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There are philosophical presuppositionalists. Usually they are going to be followers of Cornelius Van Til in some way, shape, or form.

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There are theological presuppositionalists. In this sense, I'm thinking of maybe more of a John MacArthur, that type of a stripe in their thinking.

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And also there's—I would describe as more spiritual presuppositionalists and hold to presuppositionalism for more spiritual reasons.

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Now, so he makes a distinction between philosophical presuppositionalists and theological presuppositionalists, but of course this distinction is not one that presuppositionalists make, at least not to my knowledge.

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I mean one of the main thrusts of the presuppositional approach is that the method itself flows out of a biblical, a biblically -grounded theology.

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It's grounded in biblical principles found in Scripture, okay? So yeah, anyone who is a consistent presuppositionalist will understand that they're apologetic, is theological in nature, and it's philosophical in nature, right?

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So it's an interesting distinction there. Now there are people who focus and have more emphasis upon these different categories, but I don't think that there is a clear distinction between them.

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I think they're connected. Christian theology and philosophy are linked together in a very inextricable way for the presuppositionalist.

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Okay, so what is presuppositionalism? Well, what all presuppositionalists have in common is that when they go about making a case for Christianity, they believe that they should start, and all

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Christians should start this way, that you should start in making your case for Christianity, you should start by presupposing that God exists and that the

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Bible is from God. Hence the term presuppositional, presuppositional apologetics, presuppositionalism. So they think you should—

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That is correct. We presuppose the existence of the triune God and his revelation. That's correct.

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You should presuppose those things. You don't argue for those things. You don't start out by getting evidence for those things. Did you hear it?

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Did you catch it? Did you catch it? Okay, so when he's giving his definition, he says that we believe, as presuppositionalists, we shouldn't argue for it.

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We simply presuppose the existence—let's play that part again. Let me see if I could—let me see if I could play that a little bit back.

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I don't want to go too back. I'm sorry. As to why they think you should presuppose those things are true, and that's what would place them in different camps of presuppositionalism.

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So, for example, the folks that I described as philosophical presuppositionalists, followers of Cornelius Van Til, they would say, look, you have to presuppose—

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All right, I'm going to go back a little bit. Let's see. And there's different motivations as to why they think you should presuppose.

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In making your case for Christianity, you should start by presupposing that God exists and that the

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Bible is from God. Hence the term presuppositional—presuppositional apologetics, presuppositionalism. So they think you should presuppose those things.

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You don't argue for those things. Okay, did you hear what he said? We don't argue for those things. Okay. Now, what is the central argument that presuppositionalists use?

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Right. It's the transcendental argument, okay?

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There is no consistent presuppositionalist that says we shouldn't argue for the truth of the

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Christian faith. Of course we argue for the truth of the Christian faith, okay? If we didn't argue, we're just presupposing it, and that's it.

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But, of course, we presuppose it and we argue for it, okay? And typically it's a utilization of a transcendental argument of sorts.

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But it is, to be sure, an attempt at vindicating the Christian philosophy of life over against the non -Christian philosophy of life, which is exactly the definition that I gave—that

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Van Til gave in his book, Christian Apologetics. Literally, the first page. First page.

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Well, start out by giving evidence for those things. You presuppose them. And we don't start off giving evidence.

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There is nothing inherent and essential to the presuppositional method that says that we cannot begin our discussion with unbelievers by giving evidence.

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There's nothing. If someone were to ask me, as a presuppositionalist, and more specifically as a

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Van Tilian presuppositionalist, what is the evidence for the resurrection, okay? Nothing about the presuppositional method will require me, then, to go into the history of epistemology and how we know what we know.

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I don't have to start with those sorts of discussions. I'm able to give the evidence, okay?

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This is, again, a popular misunderstanding, okay, is that presuppositionalists are not against giving evidence.

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We're not against even beginning with evidence. What we're against is giving the sort of evidence that caters to categories of neutrality and autonomy, because to cater to those categories is to start our apologetic in an unbiblical fashion and in a philosophically vacuous context.

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It doesn't work, okay? So, again, we need to understand that presuppositionalists believe in arguing and presuppositionalists believe in giving evidence.

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So he's completely wrong -headed here, but let's continue on. And there's different motivations as to why they think you should presuppose those things are true, and that's what would place them in different camps of presuppositionalism.

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So, for example, the folks that I described as philosophical presuppositionalists, followers of Cornelius Van Til, they would say, look, you have to presuppose that Christianity is true, that God exists, the

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Bible is from God. You have to presuppose that first in the order of thinking or in the order of presenting a case for Christianity, because if you don't presuppose those things, then there's no good reason to trust your own cognitive faculties, to trust that your own rational thinking works correctly.

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That's why I describe it as a little bit philosophical. Okay, so he's wrong here.

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So Van Til does not say that we must presuppose God because if we don't, there's no reason to trust our reasoning faculties or something along those lines, whatever he said.

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Van Til's reasons are because to presuppose God and His Word is to be faithful to Christ and give the proper place of authority to Christ in our thinking.

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Now, does he believe that if you don't presuppose God and His Word, you lose intelligibility and so forth? Well, sure, but that's not the primary reason for presupposing

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God and the Bible. The primary reason is a commitment to Scripture. Okay, so there you go.

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Okay, he says that we, well, let's continue on here. And I know he's going to say a couple of other things that I want to speak to here.

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And we'll talk more about them. But other types of presuppositionalists, for example, John MacArthur type folks, are more theological presuppositionalists.

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And they're going to make the case, for example, that, look, when we just follow the Bible, when we look at Scripture, Scripture begins,

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Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning, God. And so when you see Scripture, Scripture doesn't start out with reasons and evidence to believe that there's a

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God or reasons and evidence to believe the Bible's from God. It just starts out with presupposing that there is a God. And so that's how we should start out, because we want to follow the

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Bible. So that sounds very spiritual, right? Sounds very theological. And I'll talk later about the problems that I see with that way of thinking.

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But again, they might have different motivations for why they do so, but they share with philosophical presuppositionalists this idea that you should start presupposing those things.

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You shouldn't start out with reason and evidence. So we shouldn't start out with reason.

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So I'm going to presuppose, and I'm not going to use my reason. I'm just going to, I mean, how do you start a discussion without using your reason?

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Yeah, this is again, no presuppositionalist believes that you don't start with reason.

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It all depends on what you mean by to start with. Right. Again, Vantill and Ponson speak about this in their book and their books multiple times and in multiple places.

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But there are different notions of what it means to start with something. Right. You can start with something chronologically.

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You can start with something logically speaking. So you have what we call proximate starting points and ultimate starting points.

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And, you know, starting with something in principle versus starting with something in practice. OK, all things, all of all of the distinctions of which presuppositionalists are fully aware of.

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So, again, someone were to say, OK, Mr. Presuppositionalist, do you start with God or do you start with your reason?

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OK, well, I mean, I teach logic and it's very easy to point out that that is the to commit the fallacy of a false dichotomy.

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OK, it is not you either start with God or you start with your reason. There is the other option that we start with both simultaneously understanding the proper relationship of our reason as a proximate starting point, which

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Ponson says explicitly in his writings. And we also start simultaneously with the logically prior ultimate metaphysical context that makes the utilization of my proximate starting point meaningful.

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OK, so that's why we have a worldview and we believe things in bundles.

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My belief about reason is couched within my broader metaphysical presupposition of the triune

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God who has created and given meaning to the utilization of my reason.

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OK, so I would not say as a presuppositionalist we don't start out with reason. I would say we start proximately speaking with reason, but that proximate starting point simultaneously exists within the broader metaphysical starting point of the triune

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God who gives who gives meaningfulness to our reasoning. OK, and this is not to confuse our epistemology with with our ontology.

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OK, it's just to understand that our epistemology exists within an ontological framework.

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And so we are they are constantly in touch with one another. There is no confusion here.

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They are in touch with one another. So again, this is I think he's mixed up here. OK, so majority of time you're going to when you find somebody who's a presuppositionalist, it's almost 99 percent guaranteed that they're going to be a

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Calvinist. So a lot of that's fair. Calvinists are presuppositionalists.

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Not all Calvinists are, though. That's the difference. So you can say it forwards and backwards. So you can say it this way. Pretty much all presuppositionalists are

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Calvinists. OK, but not all Calvinists are presuppositionalists. I'll give you a point. In fact, R .C.

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Sproul, you're probably familiar with R .C. Sproul, very well -known reformed Calvinist thinker. I was a professor, wrote a lot of theological books.

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I have a lot of respect for him. I own a lot of his his works. And he was not a presuppositionalist. In fact, he wrote a book with some others against presuppositionalism as a reformed

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Calvinist thinker. His book is called Classical Apologetics, a Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a

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Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics. And I love R .C. Sproul. As a matter of fact, I have that book somewhere. Here we go.

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Let's see here. Do do do do do. There we go. Classical Apologetics, a

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Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics. And.

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Well, R .C. is not the topic of this video, but his criticisms of presuppositionalism, and I say this with all due respect,

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I love R .C. Sproul. They're not just off a little. They're off a lot.

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Again, if I wasn't and I keep having to say this, if I was not a presuppositionalist, but I understood where presuppositionalists were coming from.

30:20

I would not think R .C. Sproul's critiques of presuppositionalism were good. I just I just if I was a classical apologist,

30:28

I wouldn't think that his critiques of presuppositionalism is good. So, yeah, he does have this book.

30:34

Presuppositionalists have responded to it ad nauseum. OK, Dr. Bonson responded to it and showed clearly the misrepresentations of the presuppositional approach.

30:43

Now, I know we get this a lot. It's like, well, if you critique a view, what does the other side typically say?

30:50

Well, you just don't understand the view. It's like, well, of course they would say that. Right. But and you're right.

30:56

There are people who can say that. There are people who can say that.

31:02

And it's not true. You could understand a view rightfully and disagree with the view.

31:08

But it's interesting to me that in many of the critiques of presuppositionalism, people don't understand it.

31:15

So, for example, I'll tell someone that there is no presuppositional argument in which the premise of the argument, if you if you present a transcendental argument, for example, in like a deductive form, that you can do that.

31:27

There's nothing in the argument in the premise, rather, that's also stated in the conclusion. And so it's not circular in the way that many people suggest it is.

31:35

There is an element of circularity to it, but not in that fallacious sense. And so and then after saying that, people will say my mic turned off.

31:50

One second here. Let me make sure I have my mic on the right mic. There we go. We're good. OK. People will say, you know, we'll tell them our argument.

31:59

No presuppositionalist argues this way, that the Bible is true. Therefore, the Bible is true. And then after saying that,

32:05

I'll read in the comments and they'll say, well, precept boils down to the idea that because the Bible is true, it's true.

32:10

Even after you just finish saying that, that's not what we're saying. OK, so.

32:16

So, yes, many misunderstandings, many criticisms come from a place of misunderstanding. All right.

32:22

So I don't want to make the mistake that because I disagree with them, that all that is no. Trust me, he's not understanding presuppositionalism correctly.

32:30

OK. All right. Let's continue on here because I can technically rant on this point. But nevertheless, R .C.

32:35

Sproul, we're aware of these and highly recommend folks look into critiques of of the arguments here.

32:43

OK, maybe I'll do a video on that in the future. Apologetics. So he would debate his fellow

32:49

Calvinists over this issue. He believed that it was appropriate to begin with reasons and evidence in making the case for Christianity.

32:57

And that's that's my approach as well. More of a classical or sometimes what's called traditional apologetics. So R .C.

33:02

Sproul and I would be on the same page when it comes to our apologetic approach. And traditionally, the classical apologists will begin in making an overall case for Christianity.

33:10

He'll begin by making a case for the existence of God. And then the second step would be to provide historical evidence for Jesus's resurrection and miracles.

33:17

Whereas the evidentialist, they might actually just begin straight with the historical evidences. So that's going to be a slight difference between an evidentialist and a classical apologist.

33:25

But they could be wrong. Right. So the arguments are giving the high probability.

33:31

Right. So their views seem to suggest that there are things more certain than than God himself.

33:38

OK, and that, again, we would say is problematic for reasons that obviously I'm not going to get into here, but I address them in other videos.

33:45

But let's continue. R .C. Sproul and I would both consider ourselves classical apologists. OK, well, the main purpose of this podcast, as I said before, is to point out all the connections and similarities between presuppositionalism and postmodernism.

33:58

But you don't have to take my word for it. There is a book out there that goes into this in much more detail. It's a book by author

34:04

James K .A. Smith. And the title of the book is Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Now, what's interesting about this book is that he is a presuppositionalist.

34:13

All right. I have no idea who this author is, so I have not read this book that he's referencing.

34:19

But if that presuppositionalist tries to draw the connections that's being suggested in this video with postmodernism and presupp, then

34:27

I then I would suggest that that presuppositionalist does not understand presuppositionalism.

34:33

OK, the historical influences on presuppositionalism is not postmodernism.

34:39

It's very much related to Vantill's, the influences that really can be connected to Vantill are a number of people.

34:51

For example, Benjamin Warfield, Abraham Kuyper, especially Abraham Kuyper's view of worldview and antithesis.

35:00

OK, and so you do have a heavy influence of Kuyper on Vantill. Of course,

35:06

Vantill comes out disagreeing with Kuyper because Kuyper suggests that because everyone has worldviews and because everyone has presuppositions and that there's an antithesis between believer and unbeliever, that therefore there's no way to reach the unbeliever because apologetics at this point is useless, because there's no way to transcend.

35:26

Right. There's such a great antithesis that there's no way to transcend the two positions. That's more in line with a postmodern perspective, but that's not the aspect that influenced

35:35

Vantill. What influenced Vantill was the lordship of Christ over every detail of our worldview, the issue of worldview itself.

35:44

You also have influence from Gerhardtus Voss, Birkhoff. Let me see here.

35:50

A lot of Reformed thinkers, of course. Idealism. I don't think that Vantill was influenced by idealism in the sense that he's just borrowing from idealism.

35:59

I think he's saying something very different than the idealist, but those are the views that he's interacting with.

36:05

So he does use the language of idealism, but he is not an idealist in that sense at all.

36:10

Of course, also you have the influence of Immanuel Kant. But the influence of Immanuel Kant is not the sort of influence in which he's borrowing from Kant's categories.

36:21

Of course, Vantill addresses all of this very clearly. So when we read, for example, in Vantill, the language of idealism and Kantian language and these sorts of things, that's because these are the philosophical positions he's interacting with.

36:34

Even Vantill said himself that we need to learn the language of those that we're speaking with.

36:40

But when you see the content of what Vantill's saying, there is no influence in the way that's being suggested here.

36:48

And of course, definitely not with postmodernism. Again, as I said at the beginning here, it's a complete opposite because of the nature of the claims that we're making.

36:58

Christianity is objectively provable. There is a way to demonstrate that one worldview is true and another worldview is false.

37:05

And again, you don't even have to agree with how the presuppositionalist argues for that transcendentally, but at least understand what the presuppositionalist is saying to begin with.

37:15

All right, let's continue. And so this really works well in my favor because presuppositionalist are going to, a lot of the times when

37:23

I've talked to presuppositionalist about this, they reject my argument and disagree with me vehemently.

37:29

And they don't see the connections between postmodernism and presuppositionalism because usually in their mind, they're going to think of presuppositionalism as a good thing, of course, because they're presuppositionalist.

37:37

And they're usually going to think of postmodernism as a. No, that's not the reason why they don't see the connection. They don't see the connection because they think presuppositionalism is a good thing.

37:47

They don't see the connection because any presuppositionalist who is familiar with the historical development of presuppositional thought, especially as it comes to head in Vantill and knowing his reformed influences and the non -Christian philosophies that he was interacting with, we know that postmodernism is not the influencing factor in the presuppositional approach.

38:07

Postmodernism is not the influencing factor. OK, it's not simply because, well, I don't see the

38:13

I don't see the connection between postmodernism and presuppositionalism because presuppositionalism is a good thing.

38:18

Of course not. Right. It's just that we don't see it because there is no connection in the way that is being suggested here.

38:26

The bad thing. And so they certainly don't want to. They're strongly motivated not to see any connections between the two movements.

38:32

And usually that's their the case that they try to make when I bring this issue up that there aren't any connections are not similar. They're not similar at all. But here we've got a book by a presuppositionalist who is making the case, making the case that the two movements are very closely connected and there are all sorts of similarities between them.

38:47

I think even somewhere in the book he calls them kissing cousins. I could be wrong about that. But that's kissing cousins.

38:52

Postmodernism denies objective truth. Presuppositionalism believes that Christianity is objectively provable.

38:59

You know, it reminds me of the debate between James White and Dan Barker on the topic of I think it was

39:06

Christianity borrow from pagan mythology. And of course, you have Dan Barker arguing for all the parallels between Christianity and the pagan religions.

39:15

And of course, you know, Dr. White was quick to point out. He said, look at look at all these connections. Right. You know, people in the ancient world got on boats, you know, you kind of name kind of like non -essential, unimportant connections and similarities.

39:30

Yeah. So so the way that postmodernism and presuppositionalism are similar is because they often place an emphasis on paradigms, metanarratives, worldviews.

39:40

OK. Yeah, fine. Everyone has a worldview. OK. Does that make every view influenced by postmodernism?

39:46

Of course not. Right. The question is, what do we what do we say about our worldview? Well, the presuppositionalist says something that the classicalist and evidentialist doesn't, that the

39:56

Christian worldview can be objectively provable. And we could know the truth of the

40:03

Christian worldview with epistemic certainty. OK, we are not arguing that Christianity is probably true or it is the more reasonable position.

40:13

OK, we're arguing that it is the only reasonable position and that it is objectively provable and that this can actually be argued for.

40:22

That is the complete opposite of postmodernism. OK, postmodernism doesn't get you to truth with a capital

40:29

T. And much of classical and evidential apologist doesn't give you truth with a capital T. Right.

40:34

Because you could you could be wrong. Right. So, again, completely wrongheaded and very, very bad connection of this presuppositionalist he's speaking of tries to draw these connections.

40:44

I mean, I, I, I wonder I wonder how closely they've read Vantill or Bonson or Frame or anyone relevant to these sorts of discussions.

40:53

It's very, very interesting that the sort of argument that he's putting forth is that these two movements are very closely connected.

40:59

And he's saying this as a presuppositionalist. So that goes a long way in my favor of putting forth these these similarities and connections.

41:06

So not to take my word for it. Look at James K. Smith's book. And he makes a very in -depth case that these two movements are closely connected and similar.

41:13

The difference, of course, is that Smith thinks both of these movements are good things. So he is a presuppositionalist.

41:18

So he thinks presuppositionalism is good, but he also thinks that postmodernism is good. Not everything in postmodernism, but the title of the book is

41:24

Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? With the implication, as you read the book, you'll realize the implication is that you shouldn't be afraid of postmodernism.

41:30

But there's a lot of good things in postmodernism. And he goes through several major postmodern thinkers in the last 50 years.

41:37

Like? Tell us, what does this person I'm interested in, what does this person say is good about postmodernism?

41:44

In a sense, I think postmodernism is correct in emphasizing the importance of world use.

41:51

But I mean, that's a minimal point, right? I mean, yeah, we all have world views.

41:56

Okay, cool. What do we say from there? In other words, also, postmodernism presupposes neutral and autonomous categories.

42:06

Does this presuppositionalist think those things are good? I'd be interested in knowing what good is being referred to here.

42:14

Okay, draw the connection, connect the dots clearly so we can so we can see, of course, in his defense, we could read the book.

42:21

I have not read the book there, so I don't know off the top of my head. But so there you go. Here's Derrida, Foucault, those

42:27

French philosophers in the 70s and such that were really tip of the spear when it comes to postmodern thinking and shows there's a lot of good things in their ideas.

42:35

Like? And he shows how all of those good things are also found in presuppositionalism. Like? So again, don't take my word for it.

42:40

I'm going to go through and point out some of the connections. But you can also pick up Smith's book and he'll make an even stronger case that these two movements are connected and similar.

42:48

The difference, as I keep saying, though, is that I think both of these movements are wrong or incorrect. And he thinks both of these movements are good and correct.

42:55

Now, the reason that these two movements, presuppositionalism and postmodernism, are so similar and connected is that both of them are overreactions to modernism.

43:05

So to understand this conversation, understand this topic, you really need to start with modernism. So let me begin there. Now, I've got a whole series of lectures when

43:11

I teach philosophy at various seminaries. I go through the history in much more detail of all of these movements, premodernism, modernism and postmodernism.

43:17

And you can find those lectures. The last time I taught that at a seminary, I recorded all the lectures, video recorded and put them on the Convincing Proof website.

43:23

So you can watch the whole semester's worth of lectures or just whichever ones pique your interest. But let me just briefly summarize modernism and that'll get the ball rolling at least.

43:31

So modernism, if you can summarize it really quickly, really came to a head in the 1600s and 1700s.

43:36

And it was it included the scientific revolution. Sometimes people would even include the Renaissance as part of the modern movement.

43:43

But definitely by the time you get to the scientific revolution and then certainly by the time you get to the Enlightenment of the 1700s, what's often called the

43:48

Enlightenment, that is modernism in full steam. So modernism was characterized by a very strong optimism concerning our human reason.

43:56

We had a lot of success with science. The scientific revolution was incredible. Just all the discoveries we were making when it comes to medicine, technology, just in general scientific discoveries.

44:06

We just had an incredible amount of success with the natural sciences, which are just an application of our own human reason and rationality.

44:12

But what happened when we had so much success with science is that we got a bit too optimistic about our human reasoning abilities.

44:18

We started to think that we were going to be able to figure out everything. We started to think that we were going to be able to solve all of our problems ourselves with using our human reason.

44:27

We were going to solve all of society's problems. We were going to be able to solve all of the physical problems via medicine, even the aging process.

44:34

We were going to live forever. I mean, the optimism of the modern era was really incredible. You read some of the stuff that was being written in the 1700s, and they just thought we were going to figure everything out.

44:42

We're going to solve all of our problems because they were just so enamored with our human reason. The discoveries we were making, Isaac Newton and the mathematics that he developed, calculus and such.

44:51

It was really an incredible time. But that's what characterized the modern movement. The problem with it, of course, is that they elevated human reason too highly.

44:59

They began to think much more of human reason than they should have. They elevated human reason. All right. I'm going to pass this part here.

45:07

I'm going to move to. And what I really appreciate about the video is that it's segmented, so I can go to the relevant parts here.

45:13

So let's go to the let's go here. So this is a big part of how James K .A.

45:19

Smith lays out his book and shows how presuppositionalist also, just like postmodern thinkers, are, in a sense, anti -reason.

45:27

All right. So presuppositionalist, like postmodernists, are anti -reason.

45:32

I would like to see a quote from Van Til, from Bonson, from Frame, from James Anderson, from Scott Oliphant or any other presuppositionalist out there where it is expressed that we are to be anti -reason.

45:53

Right. Of course, this is false with a capital F. Of course, we're going to want to define what we mean when we say reason to begin with, right, as the term itself has a wide range of meaning throughout the history of philosophy.

46:06

Presuppers are not. I'll say this again, are not. Nowhere is it suggested presuppers are not anti -reason, but we're definitely anti -autonomous reason for sure.

46:21

Absolutely. But we're not anti -reason. Nothing in presuppositionalism suggests that we're anti -reason.

46:30

We're against reason. What we're against is autonomous reasoning, reasoning that disconnects itself from the authority of Christ as its foundation.

46:42

We deny autonomy. We deny reasoning in accordance with neutral categories.

46:48

OK, that's the kind of reason that we are against. But that is not the same as saying that we are anti -reason.

46:57

OK, we'd have to define what we mean by reason. OK. Furthermore, to acknowledge that reason has its limits, which he says,

47:04

OK, because I would acknowledge a reason has its limits. OK, presuppositionalist will be quick to point out the limits of reason.

47:11

OK, but that is not equivalent to looking down at reason as to use his words.

47:20

OK, this, of course, I think is a misrepresentation and it's linguistically sloppy, I think. And I mean that respectfully.

47:25

OK, so, for example, when I critique reason and I say reason has its limits, that's not me looking down at reason.

47:32

It's acknowledging that reason is a category of creation. I am not the creator.

47:39

I am the creation. There are limits, but I'm not looking down on it. I'm not against it.

47:45

I'm for looking at reason within the proper context. And if you're a Christian, it's looking at reason within a biblical context.

47:53

OK, understanding reason in its ministerial role as opposed to its magisterial role.

48:00

I think that's a very important distinction to keep in mind. They look down on reason, so Smith points out the similarities between postmodernism and presuppositionalism.

48:09

And one of the similarities he points out is that they're both anti -reason. They both recognize the limitations of human reason and see what is it?

48:18

What is anti -reason? Is anti -reason simply acknowledging that reason has its limitations? Right.

48:24

I mean, am I am I? I can't even use it.

48:30

What analogy would I use to acknowledge that something is limited? If I were to say human beings are limited in their knowledge, does that mean

48:37

I'm looking down on human knowledge? No, I'm describing human knowledge right as a created category.

48:45

I'm not looking down on it. I'm not against knowledge in any way. Right. So I don't think that's a proper a proper comparison or connection there.

48:54

Reason not as this great end all be all. And so there's there's one of the similarities. So there's a sense in which postmodernism and presuppositionalism, as I would say it, this isn't

49:04

Smith. This is me saying that I would say they're both overreactions to modernism, whereas modernism elevated reason too highly.

49:10

Presuppositionalism and postmodernism come along and they put reason too low. They look to they have too low of a view of reason.

49:18

They think of reason too lowly, if you will. They denigrate human reason. Now, presuppositionalist that I've talked with about this, they'll come back to me and they'll say, well, we're not anti reason.

49:26

And maybe that's not the correct term. They just have a lower view of human reason, a lower view than I think we should have of human reason.

49:33

As I said before, I think there's more of a middle ground position. We don't elevate reason too highly. But I think presuppositionalist and postmodernist go too far the other direction and they look down on reason, human reason too much.

49:43

I'll give you an example of that. Here's one of the ways that presuppositionalists talk about this and explain how they think that apologists like me elevate reason too highly.

49:53

And I think they're mistaken. I respectfully disagree with them on this issue. But, for example, they'll say that my approach or even

49:59

R .C. Sproul's approach to apologetics elevates reason too highly. It makes reason human reason superior to God, makes human reason superior to God's word, the scripture.

50:09

And I think this is just a faulty way of thinking. So let me try to explain what they're saying and then I'll respond to it.

50:15

The presuppositionalist will say, look, we don't want to start with human reason. We want to start by making an appeal to the non -Christians reasoning abilities.

50:21

We don't want to start with human reason. We want to start with God, as I said before, or God's word, sometimes they'll say. So that's why they're called presuppositionalist.

50:27

They want to say that we should start off by presupposing that God exists, presupposing that the Bible is from God. That's where we should start.

50:34

And if we don't start there, if we don't start by presupposing those things, if we start with reason, like in my case, R .C.

50:39

Sproul, case, if we start with evidences or rational arguments that there is a God, then we're actually elevating reason too highly.

50:46

We're making we're putting reason above God. Now, I'd like to I'd like for someone to present a quote where presuppositionalists say that,

50:54

Van Til or anyone like that. OK, again, I think he's confusing the idea of what it means to start with.

51:02

OK, no presuppositionalist says you first trust God, you know, then you trust the

51:09

Bible and then you can trust your reason. That's that's not what Christians are presuppositionalist are saying.

51:16

OK, so let's hear what he has to say here and then we'll interact a little more because I think he has more to say here, because we're starting with reason instead of starting with God or God's word.

51:25

And so they will accuse us, people like me or R .C. Sproul, in elevating human reason above God. And sometimes we'll say things like you are you are making human reason the determinator of truth instead of God.

51:37

You're saying that human reason is what decides determines what is true instead of God determining what is true. So they want to be really, really careful about not elevating human reason too highly.

51:45

One of their philosophical arguments for doing this, besides the argument I've laid out already about if you do apologetics my way, starting with reason and evidence that you're elevating reason above God, above God's word.

51:55

Another more of a philosophical presuppositionalist will say, look, if you don't presuppose that God exists and that the

52:01

Bible is from God, then you can't even trust your own human reasoning abilities. So think about that for a moment. It might be easier to think of the belief system of naturalism.

52:10

So naturalism usually is associated with the idea that there is no God and all that exists is the material, physical universe, hence the natural world, naturalism.

52:19

And if that's true, if that belief system is correct, that there is no God and we were just cobbled together through that haphazard process of evolution, then we really wouldn't have good reasons to trust our own human rationality, our own human reasoning abilities, our own cognitive faculties, because, and a lot of people have pointed this out, including

52:35

Charles Darwin himself. This goes back to Darwin, famously called Darwin's doubt. He pointed out that if we were just cobbled together through an evolutionary process, why think that this process has created in us an ability to know truth accurately?

52:47

That's not what nature selects for. If you believe in natural selection, the evolutionists are very clear that natural selection chooses.

52:53

Right. Not consciously, but the selection that nature makes is usually in the form of harsh environments. Right. So in a cold environment, nature is going to select.

53:02

This is we're actually believing. Know more about it. But that's just a case in point of a belief system that would tell us the more philosophical presuppositions comes along and they say, look,

53:12

Christianity is the only belief system that guarantees or that that would cause us to trust our cognitive faculties are working properly because we were created by a

53:21

God to to know truth. And so if you don't presuppose that, you can't even get the ball rolling, so to speak. If you don't presuppose that God exists and the

53:27

Bible is from God, you can't even trust your own rational thinking process, your own reason, your own cognitive faculties.

53:33

And so you have to assume God exists in the Bible. Right. So so we believe that the presupposition of the train God and his revelation of the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience, for knowledge and so forth.

53:43

Right. But no presupposition says you first have to trust God and then you have to trust and then you can trust the

53:50

Bible and then you can trust your reason as though there's this like chronological order here.

53:56

Right. This is no presupposition. It says this man tells address this. Bonson has addressed this. I've addressed it a quintillion amount of times.

54:04

OK, obviously, you need to use your reason to reason about God.

54:10

However, it is not, as I pointed out before, an either or you either start with God or you start with with reason.

54:20

OK, and this is the claim, right, that we confuse the order of being with the order of knowing. OK, we're often accused of conflating ontology with epistemology.

54:30

OK, in other words, this kind of objection puts forth the idea that when presuppositionalists assert, for example, the necessity of starting with God in epistemology, they're mistakenly intertwining and confusing ontology and epistemology.

54:44

And it's it's argued that while it may be acceptable to start with God as an ontological foundation of of all being or something along those lines, the proper starting point in epistemology should be ourselves or our our faculties.

54:57

OK, now, of course, there is and I'll say this again and I'll go through this slowly. OK, when we address this objection,

55:04

I think it's important to recognize the crucial equivocation based on the phrase start with.

55:12

Right. The presupper believes you start with God, then you draw conclusions about this, then you can trust you start with that.

55:21

That's that phrase is being equivocated upon, OK, because it can be used in different senses.

55:26

And I think it's important to make the distinction between what we can call temporal and logical order.

55:34

Proximate and ultimate starting points, starting with something in practice versus starting with something in principle.

55:42

OK, when claiming to start with the entire Christian worldview, the reference is to a logical order for us rather than a temporal one.

55:50

And the equivocation becomes evident when the objector asserts statements like, well, you have to rely on your senses before you read the

55:57

Bible or, you know, where before. Right. You have to start with your senses before you read the

56:02

Bible, where before, in this sense, signifies a temporal order in what the critic is saying.

56:07

However, the focus, I think, should be on the logical order, while our senses, reason and logic may precede temporally.

56:18

Right. God and revelation hold preeminence over those other beliefs logically.

56:24

OK, and so we start with our faculties temporally, but we start with God logically. Our faculties serve as the proximate starting point, while God constitutes the ultimate starting point.

56:35

In practice, we may start with our faculties, our reason. Right. But in principle, we start with God.

56:43

OK, this is not some weird, you know, caveat on my this stuff is laid out in Bonson and Vantill.

56:50

Right. We're not confusing ontology with epistemology. We're very familiar with the two categories and how they interrelate with each other.

56:56

We're not making the claim that's being suggested here. All right. Let's continue.

57:04

The Bible is from him, and then you can trust your reasoning, your rational processes, your cognitive thinking. So that's the order.

57:09

That's one of the reasons how Vantill and other philosophical presuppositionalists argue that things should be done in that order.

57:15

First, you presuppose God, then you presuppose the Bible is from God, and then you can trust your rational thinking. So that's part of how they say, hey, we're not against reason.

57:24

So you don't trust your reasoning. First, you have to presuppose God and then you can trust the

57:30

Bible is from God and then you can trust your reason. I mean, who argues this way? Presuppositionalists never argue that way.

57:37

So, again, I'm not I mean, this respectfully, I'm getting animated here. If I'm if I'm if my voice seems to be getting louder is because my mic is fluctuating from high to low volume.

57:47

And when it goes low, I feel like I have to speak a little out. I don't mean to raise my voice here, but I would challenge this individual to provide a quote from Vantill from Bonson in which they they hold to the position that there is this kind of temporal ordering.

58:08

Well, first, you have to do this and then you have to do that and then you can trust your reasoning.

58:13

No presupposition is worth their salt argues that way. That has never been the presuppositional position is definitely not the position of Vantill.

58:22

And so I think this is this is a gross misunderstanding. OK, I'm sorry.

58:28

All right. Let's continue. Begin with reason. And that's part of how they they make that case. So now let me respond to their,

58:35

I guess, accusations against my form of apologetics. No, we don't.

58:57

No, we don't. No, we don't. We are very well aware of that accusation. This isn't a new accusation that like when someone's well,

59:04

I think you're really confusing the order of knowing with the order of being with the order of knowing the presupposition like, oh, my goodness.

59:10

Well, I never really thought about that. This is all addressed in Vantill, Bonson and other places. OK, this isn't new.

59:16

OK, we do not confuse. We know precisely those categories and we know precisely how they interrelate with one another.

59:23

OK, it is the misunderstanding here is on this gentleman not understanding what presuppositional actually says on these issues.

59:30

This is confusing ontology with epistemology. So ontology is the order of being. So you can talk about it in terms of, you know, what's what's more valuable in and of itself.

59:40

Right. Is a human being more valuable than a cockroach? Let's say that would be a simple way to think of ontology.

59:45

What's what's first in the order of being or what's more valuable? What type of being is more valuable? A cockroach or human being or God.

59:52

God is going to be more valuable than both. But epistemology is more about the order of knowing. So epistemology is a study of human knowledge.

59:57

And how do we go about knowing things? How do we know that? How do we know that two plus two equals four? How do we know that rape is immoral, for instance?

01:00:03

How do we know anything? How do we know that God exists? And there's a certain process in how we come to know things.

01:00:09

And so it's going to be important to think through how we go about knowing the things that we know. That's the study of epistemology. And I think what the presuppositional has mistakenly confused here are these two orders.

01:00:18

The order of being in the order of knowing. So I would say, you know, clearly, without a doubt, God is first in the order of being right.

01:00:25

So when it comes to God versus humans or human reason, God is ultimately superior, infinitely superior than us in value, in being in every way, shape or form.

01:00:34

In ontology, God is superior to us and God's word is superior. I'm going to stop there. I'm going to move forward here in this section where it says, is the

01:00:42

Bible presuppositional? OK, because everything he's going to say here is what I've addressed. No, we don't confuse ontology with epistemology.

01:00:48

We're very well aware of the accusation. And it is clear that this gentleman does not understand

01:00:55

Vantil or has not read Vantil in any meaningful way.

01:01:02

Now, if he has read Vantil, then I would say he has grossly misunderstood Vantil. And of course, I know Vantil was not the best of communicators, but I mean, this topic is addressed,

01:01:10

I think, very clearly. So folks who know Vantil and are familiar with the literature will know that this has been addressed multiple times.

01:01:18

And so I don't want to spend too much time here. So here's his last section here, or second to last section. I'm not going to deal with his comments on,

01:01:26

I think it's Francis Schaeffer. And he says a little part in where he talks about Francis Schaeffer.

01:01:33

I won't address that. But let's talk about his last section here, second to last section on, is the

01:01:39

Bible presuppositional? As I said earlier, there are some people that hold to presuppositionalism for more,

01:01:46

I guess I would say theological reasons. These would be folks who would be John MacArthur or similar, and they would say things.

01:01:52

Well, one of their arguments would be, look, that's how the Bible starts out. I don't see the distinction here, too. Vantil believes we are presuppositionalist because of the

01:02:01

Bible. Bonson believes that presuppositionalism is biblical.

01:02:08

I mean, to make a distinction between philosophical and theological, every presuppositionalist understands apologetics as a biblical category.

01:02:17

And so they argue for it biblically. Now, Vantil does not.

01:02:22

I think he argues for it biblically, but he doesn't do so explicitly and even expresses his desire, wish to do that more clearly.

01:02:30

And I think Bonson has provided lots of material with respect to the biblical foundation for the method. But I wouldn't make the distinction between the philosophical and theological.

01:02:38

I think every presuppositionalist, if we're talking about presuppositional apologetics within a

01:02:43

Vantilian tradition or anyone else, I mean, it's not a purely philosophical view.

01:02:49

I mean, one of the one of the main things that presuppositionalists kind of put out there is that we believe it is a biblical approach to doing apologetics.

01:02:57

So it's a weird and odd distinction that he makes here. Yeah. All right.

01:03:03

Let's continue here. Just starts out presupposing there is a God doesn't start with arguments for the existence of God, evidence for God or miracles.

01:03:09

We don't give arguments. Just presupposes Genesis one, one in the beginning God. And so that's how we should start out in our thinking and making the case for Christianity.

01:03:15

And I used to think that way for years. I would consider myself that sort of a theological presuppositionalist starts out.

01:03:21

The Bible just starts out presupposing there is a God doesn't start with arguments for the existence of God, evidence for God or miracles or anything.

01:03:26

It just presupposes Genesis one, one in the beginning God. And so that's how we should start out in our thinking and making the case for Christianity.

01:03:32

And I used to think that way for years. I would consider myself that sort of a theological presuppositionalist. But I came to realize that even though that's how the

01:03:38

Bible begins, that's not how the Bible began. I'll say that again. Even though that's how the Bible begins, that's not how the

01:03:44

Bible began. Think about the process of how the Bible began. The first author of the Bible was

01:03:50

Moses, and he first encountered God at the burning bush. I remember that story. You can look it up in Exodus four.

01:03:56

God spoke to Moses through the burning bush and gave him messages to give to the Israelites to give to Pharaoh.

01:04:01

Right. He's going to rescue the Israelites from Egypt, take them to the promised land. But Moses, when

01:04:06

God told him all this, Moses was concerned there in Exodus four. You can read the account yourself. And one of the concerns Moses had was, what if they don't believe me?

01:04:13

What if the Israelites won't won't believe that I really had heard. And I can anticipate where he's going. Well, what if they don't believe me?

01:04:20

Well, here are some miracles you can do. And look, Moses gave miracles. Now, no presuppositionalist says worth their salt.

01:04:30

I don't know who he's referencing here, but no presuppositionalist says the Bible does not argue for the existence of God.

01:04:37

Therefore, we shouldn't argue for the existence of God. I want to say that again.

01:04:43

No presuppositionalist worth their salt ever says that the Bible doesn't argue for the existence of God.

01:04:51

Therefore, we shouldn't argue for the existence of God. Now, it is true that the Bible does begin in the beginning

01:04:57

God. It doesn't argue for God there in Genesis. OK, but it is logically fallacious to therefore draw the conclusion that therefore it's inappropriate to argue for God.

01:05:10

OK, we don't believe that we shouldn't argue for God. Hence, the transcendental argument.

01:05:19

It is an argument. Now, he's going to appeal and I haven't gotten there yet, but I can

01:05:26

I can smell it. I could smell it coming. Right. Well, Moses did miracles.

01:05:32

You could even suggest that even Jesus showed Thomas, look at the nails, the nail prints in my hand.

01:05:37

You see, the Bible teaches evidence. Let's see if that's where he goes. Let's see.

01:05:43

Right. My my spiritual gifts are going to start kicking in here. Right. From God, what if they think

01:05:48

I'm just making these messages up? So what did God do? Well, God gave Moses evidences, evidences that he could share with Israelites to give them proof that he really.

01:06:00

And so presuppositionalist, we shouldn't share evidences. Right. That's is that is that the implication?

01:06:06

Right. Then we shouldn't share. Is that what we believe, that we shouldn't share evidence? Of course not. Right. You see, unlike the classicalist and unlike the evidentialist,

01:06:16

I believe everything is evidence for God. Everything is evidence for God.

01:06:23

And because everything is evidence for God, I can share anything as evidence for the maker.

01:06:30

That's not inconsistent with presuppositional apologetics, because there is a distinction that needs to be made between the use of evidences, which presuppositionalists have no problem doing, and the use of evidentialism as a methodology or classicalism as a methodology or anything along those lines.

01:06:53

OK, these are clear distinctions. OK, when I use a when I use a data point with an unbeliever, if I appeal to some evidence,

01:07:01

I am not ceasing to be presuppositional. I am being presuppositional and I'm presenting the evidence in a way that is consistent with my presuppositional framework.

01:07:12

And so it's not a it's not a proper distinction to say that, well, the Bible says, look, it uses evidence as though the presuppositionalist never read that in the

01:07:21

Bible. And it's like, oh, I guess, you know, of course, we're familiar. Right. But of course, these evidences are not presented as though, you know, the people receiving the evidence are these neutral, autonomous people that are just following the evidence wherever.

01:07:38

No, they have a worldview background that gives them categories to recognize a revelation from God.

01:07:46

OK, presuppositionalists don't deny that. OK, so we're not against using evidence. And I have no problem pointing to examples in the

01:07:52

Bible where people use evidence. It's the neutral and autonomous use of evidence. OK, same thing with reason.

01:07:59

We're not anti reason, but we're anti autonomous and neutral reason. OK, those distinctions aren't being made here.

01:08:05

And I think they're they're vitally important to understanding the issues they had heard from God. And God himself used that term in Exodus four.

01:08:12

You can read it. God said, here are evidences. And the evidences that he gave Moses were the ability to do miracles. He gave Moses several different miracles that he could do as evidence.

01:08:20

And then that began the process of Moses communicating God's messages, which then were written down, of course. And what we have is the first five books of the

01:08:25

Bible. And that's the beginning of how the Bible came to be. So even though God is first, right, God is first in the order of being and God's word is first in the order of actually knowing that there is a

01:08:35

God or knowing what messages really are from God or not, the process begins with evidence. Even God said so in Exodus four.

01:08:41

Yes, God gives evidence. That's right. No one is denying that. That's not denied by presuppositionalists at all.

01:08:48

Evidences that the Israelites would know then that Moses really had heard these messages from God and he wasn't making them up. So I think, well, according to God, you don't have to take my word for it.

01:08:55

I think it is completely appropriate to begin with evidences. God did. Moses did. And I've got a lecture on this on the YouTube channel where I go through.

01:09:01

Can we can we begin with evidences as a presuppositionalist? If someone says, give me evidence for God, am

01:09:07

I allowed to give evidence for God or do I say, well, I can't give evidence for God because I'm a presuppositionalist. Right.

01:09:12

And the assumption is that the presuppositionalists don't use evidence. And when they use evidence, they're no longer presuppositional.

01:09:18

That's just that's just false. Right. It's not even close. It's not even close to true. It would show this is how

01:09:23

Jesus began. This is how Paul begins with evidence. And so I think it's biblical, it's appropriate, spiritual, it's theologically correct to begin with good reasons and evidence.

01:09:31

That's how the Bible began. And I think it's biblical to start with neutral categories of neutral understanding of reasoning to presuppose neutrality, to presuppose the autonomy of the human reason.

01:09:39

Is that is that biblical? Right. That's that's the issue. That's what we're that's what presuppositionalists are taking issue, not with the simple use of reason and the use of evidence.

01:09:48

I think that's how we can and should begin when it comes to believing Christianity is true and making the case for others that Christianity is, in fact, true.

01:09:56

So if you want to dive into this more deeply again, I would recommend the book by James K. All right.

01:10:01

We're going to stop there. So. All right. So, yes, there this video is riddled with misunderstandings and misrepresentations.

01:10:10

And of course, I don't believe for a minute that it is intentional by any means. This person seems like a genuine person.

01:10:16

He's sharing his his thoughts and reflections on the issues. And that's perfectly fine. But for people who want to understand presuppositionalism, you're not going to find anything useful here in this video on the convinced.

01:10:31

Well, the audio, the convincing proof podcast. I would highly suggest that you take a look at the writings of Mantel and Bonson and what others have said with respect to these issues and read it for yourself.

01:10:43

When you read it for yourself, you will find out that these have no purchase whatsoever on connecting,

01:10:51

I think, inappropriately connecting presuppositional apologetics with postmodernism. Again, it is the complete opposite.

01:10:58

And so I would I would like to reiterate what Dr. Bonson said to R .C. Sproul in their debate that postmodernism should not even be mentioned in the same room with presuppositional apologetics.

01:11:08

They are extreme diametric opposites and you do not draw proper connections between them simply by pointing to the fact that they both placed an emphasis on the importance of worldviews and things like that.

01:11:19

Presuppositionalism does not look down on reason to identify limitations in human reason is not equivalent to looking down on reason.

01:11:28

It is to understand reason and its proper creaturely a creatureliness in its proper creatureliness context.

01:11:36

OK, and we do not reject or look down on reason. We we argue that reason should be understood in its proper context, and that is in the context of a

01:11:47

Christian understanding of reasoning. OK, we believe that you begin with the God of the triune

01:11:53

God in his revelation, but that beginning is not a temporal beginning. It is not a temporal start with it is a logical order.

01:12:01

OK, as we made the distinction between temporal starting with logical starting with starting some starting with something in principle versus starting with something in practice.

01:12:09

So this whole issue of the ontology and epistemology confusion is, again, he is misunderstanding what presuppositionalists are saying.

01:12:19

Presuppositionalists are very well aware of this criticism and have responded to it ad nauseum.

01:12:24

So, again, not an accurate depiction of presuppositionalism, what we argue for, and it is an illegitimate attempt to connect postmodernism with presuppositional apologetics.

01:12:38

So there you go. That's all I've got here. That's just about the end of the video.

01:12:44

There's a couple of minutes left here. He talks a little bit about Francis Schaeffer and James K.

01:12:51

Smith or something along those lines. But I'm not going to address that there. Well, those are my thoughts.

01:12:57

I hope that they are useful and beneficial for those who are interested in this topic. And what am

01:13:04

I doing next? There's another video coming up next. I'm on spring break right now, so I'm putting stuff out because I have the time.

01:13:12

So hopefully I'll be able to put some more stuff out there. I think I think

01:13:17

I'd have to schedule it. But I think I'm going to have Seitan Bruggencate on to talk a little bit about a video that critiques presuppositionalists, presuppositional apologetics.

01:13:28

And it was a video put out a couple of years ago on capturing Christianity. So I'll let you know when that comes out. And I'm looking forward to that one.

01:13:34

And yeah, that's it. So if you like this video, you found it helpful. Be sure to like subscribe if you haven't subscribed already and share if you think this information is valuable.

01:13:45

Now, one thing I do ask when we talk about different apologetic methodologies, especially like when people interact in the comments.

01:13:52

Please, people who are classical apologists, evidential apologists and presuppositionalists.

01:13:57

We are brothers in Christ. So please have meaningful interaction and debate in the comments.

01:14:04

But be sure that when you're arguing for the the for your method, do so in a consistent way.

01:14:11

Right. With gentleness and respect. OK, so have respectful interaction, respectful debate. And that's helpful.

01:14:17

I think that's that's useful. And I'm sure if I was sitting down with with with this gentleman here in this podcast, we would have a really nice, respectful discussion.

01:14:26

OK, I see him as, you know, a brother in Christ. And we have disagreements.

01:14:31

They're important disagreements. But, I mean, we don't have to kill each other over it. Right. He seems like a nice guy.

01:14:37

I try to be a nice guy. And I think we should try to be respectful in the midst of our of our disagreements. I want to encourage that if there is discussion in the the comments section of this video.

01:14:48

All right. All right. Well, that's all for this episode, guys. Thank you so much for sticking with me for one hour and 14 minutes until next time.