Highlight: Basics of Presup

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But the reason I want to have this discussion is because I saw somebody yesterday on my feed, and they said something like,

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I love presuppositional apologetics. I think it's very biblical. They said, but I don't think I'm gonna say that's where I'm at now, because I think that, you know, as Christians we can and need to use evidences, and evidences are a good thing.

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And I thought to myself when I saw that, hmm, he didn't understand. You know, when you say something like that, it's pretty clear you didn't understand.

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Maybe you thought, tag, the transcendental argument for the existence of God was presuppositional apologetics.

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Like, that's what it is. Tag. And if some of you guys are like, I don't know what you're talking about, go watch

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Dr. Greg Bonson's debate with Gordon Stein. Not watch, listen to. It's free, online. Greg Bonson, Gordon Stein, you'll see the transcendental argument for the existence of God in action.

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You'll listen to it a hundred times and still grow and learn from that. Or you can watch the debate that Dr.

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White and I had with two atheists at the University of Utah a couple of years ago. The Antifreeze debate.

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The Antifreeze debate. And so you can watch that and see it in motion, in action. And so the transcendental argument for the existence of God is an argument that you use against atheists, right?

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It's a way to take down the foundation of the materialist, atheistic position from a

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Christian perspective, standing on the Word of God with a Christian epistemology. But presuppositional apologetics is not tag.

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Tag, you're it? Yeah. I mean, it can get like that in a debate. Like, I got you. Tag, you're it.

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You know, and back and forth. Or, I tagged you. Right. So when someone says like, like, we say like, you know, you're not supposed to just simply as a

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Christian throw evidences out to the unbeliever, the atheist, you know, for example, and think like that's gonna do it.

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All, you know, if I can just prove historically the resurrection of Christ, well, then that'll do it. They'll, they'll buy it then.

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Or if I can just produce some miracle or something, you know, evidence of some miracle that that's gonna convince the person.

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And we recognize because we have a Christian epistemology, and that leads to a Christian anthropology of view of man and his, the fall, we recognize that evidences were never the problem for the rebel, for the idolater, for the atheist.

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It's not a matter of like, if they could just get more light, then they'll, they'll follow Jesus. We recognize scripture teaches plainly.

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No one seeks for God. Romans chapter 1 says very clearly that God is speaking so clearly through the natural order, so clearly shouting to every image bearer of God that his existence is so obvious that they are left unapologetus without a reasoned defense, because he has clearly made himself known to every single human being in the world.

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The problem is Romans 1 says that they don't want him in their knowledge.

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They don't want to know him. Why? Because of the problem of human sin. So we recognize that it's not a problem of just throwing out evidences, as though the atheist doesn't, doesn't, doesn't come to God, the true and living

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God, because he just doesn't have enough evidence. Scripture's clear. The fool says in his heart there is no

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God. The fool says in his heart there is no God. There's no sophisticated atheist in God's mind.

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God's like, oh man, I should have just given more. No, he's made himself known to everybody.

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The problem is problem of human sin and rebellion. And so we recognize that you cannot simply say, well, the problem is let's just play neutral, both of us.

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Let's see what the evidence leads us. The problem is you're dealing with somebody who is hostile towards God, non

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God -seeking, not righteous, and God calls a fool. And so the question is, is how do you actually defend the faith in a faithful way, which is clear?

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I mean, people often quote 1 Peter 3 .15, and they're like, hey, Christians need to be ready to make a defense for the faith. Yeah, they neglect the first part.

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There's something said before that, and it's you honor Christ as Lord, as holy, as God, and then you are always ready to give a reasoned defense.

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As the cherry on top, at the beginning. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so here's the issue, and when we're dealing with apologetic methodology, it's a question of what is faithful to God that gets lost, believe it or not, a lot in the study of Christian apologetic methodology, and what is actually consistent within itself.

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And so presuppositional apologetics is not simply tag the transcendental argument for the existence of God.

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We're just, where we're saying to the atheist, look, you don't have any basis that satisfies the preconditions necessary for laws of logic, as universal, as unchanging, invariant, as necessary.

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You don't have any basis for an appeal to morality. Whose worldview has a foundation underneath it that gives rise to the necessity of integrity, honesty, reason, logic, consistency, order, science, mathematics, all of that.

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Whose worldview can justify and appeal to all those things? It ain't the atheist. Hint, hint.

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It's not the atheist. The atheist doesn't have a foundation. What's he believe? Say if you take a Dawkins, he's naturalistic materialist.

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He believes all that exists is the material universe. It's just matter in motion. That's all it is. We are, as Carl Sagan says, stardust.

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That's all we are. Stardust, bumping into stardust, and if you read Richard Dawkins, that's my favorite quote of his because it is devastating.

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If you read Richard Dawkins in Blind Watchmaker, no, River Out of Eden, he says there is no good, there is no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference.

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Really? Is that how you teach your science classes, Dr. Dawkins? There is no good, there is no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference.

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So you lie freely, willfully, in your science lectures.

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You just make stuff up. You lie about evidences. He'd probably say, oh, I would never.

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I would never. Right, because you're made in the image of God, and you know your worldview is patently false, because though you claim that human beings are nothing but African apes that descended from bacteria, all that stuff, in the long chain of nothingness, and nothing matters.

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Although you say that, you don't live that way. You decry injustices and all the rest.

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So here's the point. Transcendental argument for the existence of God is a way of getting at this important element in that discussion with the atheist, is that apart from the

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Christian God, you can't know anything. Apart from the Christian God, you can't prove anything. If you don't start with the revelation of God, you do not have the preconditions necessary to make sense of all that you're saying and all that you're doing.

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However, that's not all presuppositional apologetics is. It has to do with philosophy.

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I mean, when you talk about apologetics, the defense of the faith, you're talking also about philosophy, because it has to come with apologetic methodology.

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And what does philosophy primarily contain, at least? It has a clear portion of it that deals with metaphysics.

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That was the older term everyone used to use, metaphysics. Now, most people say ontology. That's the doctrine of being.

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What is real? What is this? What's the nature of reality, right? What actually is real?

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Ontology. Philosophy also deals with epistemology. Epistemology, you know, big word.

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Don't let it throw you. All it means is a theory of knowledge. And guess what? Everybody does it and engages in it every single day of their life.

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You might think, like, what do I care about epistemology? Do you claim to know things? Then you're doing epistemology.

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It's an authoritative claim inherently, too. You're pointing to the source of how you know what you know.

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Right. Who says. Yeah, exactly. Because you could take this discussion to the highest level, right, seminary level, college education, that kind of stuff, master's level, you know, doctorate level.

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You could take that discussion of epistemology way up there. Or you could bring it down to the street level to, say, walk down to ASU and ask the guy wearing a dress and a beard.

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How do you know that this is moral? Yeah, that this is good. That this is good. And he's gonna give you epistemology.

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He's gonna tell you how he knows, right? Well, I feel like a lady. I feel like this.

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I feel, or whatever, or it's the community, they say, we determine the truth, whatever. So epistemology is how do you know?

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Right. This is what kills me about this discussion. When you get into this discussion, this is what kills me.

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You ask any Christian who loves Jesus in the walls of the church building, at worship, any question, how do you know that?

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And they'll say, well, because God says here, and because God says here, and because God says here. So the answer for the

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Christian in the walls of the church is always because God says. But you take that same Christian, unfortunately, out into academia, and all of a sudden they stop saying

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God says. He becomes a relativist. Yeah. All of a sudden he stops saying God says. Like, we're afraid to say, because God says.

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Because God says. But the unbeliever doesn't accept that, Jeff. He doesn't accept the Word of God as the standard, right?

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And it's like, well, who says? Like, who says that God's standard is not binding upon him?

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Him? The rebel? Who's the authority? Right. The rebel? What does God say about him? That's the question.

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Yeah, God says that he doesn't believe. Him or God? God says he doesn't believe him. And he says, and here are the reasons why. That's why you can say, look, self -deception is a real thing.

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Of course, self -deception is a real thing. We're not saying that the atheist is secretly going, yes, I really do believe in God. Hehe, I'm just gonna pretend.

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We're saying they're self -deceived. It's what the psalmist says. Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart.

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He flatters himself in his own eyes so that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. That's a good one.

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The noetic effects of sin, the effect of sin on our reasoning processes, self -deception.

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So I know the atheist says he doesn't believe in God, needs more evidence, but the Bible says he's got enough light and evidence, the problem is actually his sin.

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So epistemology is a part of philosophy. Then you also have another part of philosophy, and that is ethics.

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Ethical questions are part of philosophy. So you've got at least ontology or metaphysics, you've got epistemology, and you've got ethics.

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That's sort of like the baseline of what sort of comes out of the philosophy discussion. As you get into the discussion of apologetics, you have to deal with this question of epistemology, because look, you're debating with somebody and you're both making knowledge claims.

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So now you're in the realm of epistemology, and the question is, A, what's faithful to Jesus? B, what's consistent?

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And what we're saying, if you're a Christian, is that it's a revelational epistemology.

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We shouldn't be afraid to say that. I know with certainty, because God says.