Richard Dawkins is a "Christian?"

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06:12

Non -rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

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07:56

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08:03

And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it.

08:12

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12:02

Calm of the Ninja. That's Zachary Conover. Yo. Director of Communications for End Abortion Now. Welcome everybody to the show.

12:08

We have a lot to talk about today. We are talking about Richard Dawkins, a Christian, a cultural Christian. We're going to talk about that.

12:13

We're going to engage a bit, going against my better judgment, just because we think overall it would be beneficial for the body of Christ to hear a bit of the engagement.

12:27

Leighton Flowers, we did a debate review of the Leighton Flowers -Dr. James White debate.

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And within less than 24 hours, I believe it was, I think it was less than 24 hours, maybe a little off on that.

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It did not take long. Within a day, he responded. He has like a bat, sorry, like a bat signal.

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Now you said his name, it went off. Someone's going to message him, hey, they're talking about you now. He's already got his show in pre -production.

12:53

And what I said in the last show we did as a debate review is that one of the things that's unfortunate is that Professor Flowers, at times, in my experience in seeing him and some of the claims he makes, is he'll make a claim.

13:09

It is patently false. He's wrong about it. And then when he's challenged on it, he'll just dig his heels in. And he did exactly that.

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And we're going to show that to you. And the reason why we're doing it, we thought, like, well, what's the point? It's just it's not going to be received by him.

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And it doesn't seem like it would be. And he'll just keep digging his heels and making more mistakes. He made even more mistakes when he talked about presuppositional apologetics.

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But overall, we think it's a good discussion because it really gets to what is important for us as Christians to think about God's word as a central reference point.

13:43

So we're going to engage with a couple things. Not the entire episode. We're just not going to spend that much time on it. And we're going to talk, hopefully, a bit about Charlie Kirk.

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We respect and love Charlie Kirk. He's a local guy. He knows us, loves us. We love him. But he's made some mistakes when he's talked about the issue of abolition.

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And so we're just going to engage a bit with that, hoping that Charlie sees it, and do it in a respectful way, but also say, look,

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Charlie, you're wrong about this. And Charlie doesn't like to be wrong about things and say things publicly that are wrong. So hopefully this will help with that as well.

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And so we're going to kind of dive right in. You all ready to go? I'm ready. Let's do it. Let's do it. So Richard Dawkins, one of the

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Four Horsemen, that's what they used to be called. Who was it again? It was Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, the

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Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This is when the new atheism was all the rage, 2010, somewhere around there.

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It lasted a minute. Yeah, it did last a minute. And Dawkins, of course, well -known anti -theist, not just an atheist, an anti -theist, written tons of stuff against the

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Christian God. And everyone knows that he's been one of the most vocal atheists that shows an abject disdain and hatred for the

15:01

Christian faith. However, he can't escape the image of God in him, and he can't escape the goodness of the

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Christian worldview. And so Richard Dawkins, this isn't the first time, by the way, that Dawkins has said things like this.

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So this is not super like, wow, compelling, crazy news. He's said things like this before.

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But let me get this. I don't want to do this. For some reason, this one's blowing up. It is.

15:26

It is. Where is it? Okay, how's this? Okay, I guess I do have it wide. I don't know. That's weird. I don't like Macs.

15:31

Everyone in the chat is probably like you. Top left corner. Top left corner. Thank you very much.

15:36

See? Enter full screen. There you go. Oh, there you go. Thank you very much. See, this is why we pay

15:41

Gabe. Just to tell you how to use a Mac. To tell me how to use a Mac. He's that child that you call, like, hey, how do you use this

15:47

TV remote again? So Richard Dawkins, again, vocal, vocal, very vocal critic against the

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Christian faith. He's the one who wrote River Out of Eden. One of my favorite quotes from that book is, there is no good, there is no evil, only blind, pitiless indifference.

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It's been in the chat. They've been waiting for you to say that. Yeah. That part? That very quote. That very quote.

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When is Jeff going to say that? It's my favorite quote. There you go, guys. It best summarizes his perspective. It best summarizes his perspective.

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My point in bringing that quote up, why I think it's so fantastic, is because it's a moment where Dawkins is trying to be very consistent, right, with his atheism.

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And, you know, you can read atheist ethicists across the board and even atheist biologists who try to talk about human life and value and meaning and all those different things.

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And they're just honest with it and brutally honest at times where it's like, phew, that's a dark and scary world you guys are painting there.

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But Dawkins says that in River Out of Eden. There is no good, there is no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference. Okay, so get that at the start as you listen to Dawkins.

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And then watch the image of God pour out of this guy, contrary to his claims in his writings about, you know, there's no ultimate meaning, no ultimate purpose, no good, no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference.

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But he can't live that way. He won't live that way. And here is an example of that right here.

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Well, I must say I was slightly horrified to hear that Ramadan is being promoted instead. I do think that we are culturally a

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Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I'm not a believer. But there's a distinction between being a believing

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Christian and being a cultural Christian. And so, you know, I love hymns and Christmas carols and I sort of feel at home in the

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Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense. Well, he feels at home in the

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Christian ethos because it gave him all the gifts and benefits and blessings of his entire life. I mean, when

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Oxford University was established as a Christian university, right, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Brown University, you just go down a list of like Ivy League schools and it's like, you know, all

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Christian schools started, you know, for the glory of Christ. And Dawkins, this atheist, when he was working at Oxford had to like, you know, like travel through places with like scripture embedded in the walls, you know, all over.

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It was all around him. So, yeah, like he feels comfortable in the Christian ethos because it gave him his job.

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It gave him the science that he loves and the rigorous commitment to examination and evidences and reason.

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That's all from the Christian worldview. And so, yeah, he feels most comfortable in the Christian ethos because it gave him all the blessings of his life.

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Well, I was going to say, to my knowledge, I could be wrong, but I don't think he's done any public debates since Linux, correct? I don't think so.

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The point I'm getting to is that he lost the debate when Linux pressed him on why he loves his wife.

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And to my knowledge, he's not debated publicly since that point. Oops. Yeah. All these Christian attachments and he's like,

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I don't really have a justification for it. So, here we go. Truth is that statistically, the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down and I'm happy with that, but I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches.

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Why? This is hilarious to me. Here's the problem. Here's the problem. If you get rid of the Christians, they start building the churches and cathedrals, right?

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And this is the guy that wants the fruit of something without the root of that something. It doesn't make any sense.

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He's too bright and too intelligent of a man to be making these mistakes, but he's an atheist who's at war with his creator.

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And so, he wants the fruit of a world that God makes and human value and human dignity.

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He wants all that stuff. He wants an ethical system that is meaningful. He wants beauty, truth, and goodness, and art, and all the things that the

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Christian worldview gives, but he doesn't want the root of it. He wants Christianity to kind of go away.

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You know, what's amazing here is that what he's really asking for is he's asking for a nation of Christian hypocrisy, right?

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People who don't actually believe something, but they pretend to believe that something, like they sing

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Christmas hymns and these songs, and they celebrate life and beauty and goodness and love for neighbor.

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He wants all that stuff, but he wants them to be hypocrites about it.

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No, don't really believe that stuff, but give us the fruit of it. Yeah. There's also something to be said for the, you can't separate religion and culture.

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Culture is just the public manifestation of the worship of a people. And so, I want this gospel goodness, but I don't want

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Christ. That's kind of the argument. It reminds me of the prodigal son. He just wants the inheritance of his father.

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He doesn't want his father. He doesn't want relationship with his father, but he wants all of the goodness and the blessing that comes with having the capital of his father.

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That's a very good observation. And I think, and one thing I pray for, for Richard Dawkins is that he would be brought to a place where he is in bed with the mud and the pigs and come to his senses and come back home to his father, who will gladly slaughter the fattened calf and throw a party to receive a repentant sinner.

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And there will be chorus among the angels in heaven for someone that has dedicated their lives to the opposition of everything that he stands on.

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Right? I mean, everything he stands on is an opposition to Christ and Christianity.

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And, you know, all of these things come home to roost in the fact that he is a bird nesting in the tree of the kingdom that has grown.

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Right? Like the parables talk about, right? The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It grows, starts small, grows into a large tree.

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And then even the birds come to nest in its branches. And so whatever picture you want to use, he is sawing off the branch that he's sitting on.

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He's biting the hand that feeds him. All of those get across the idea that he wants all of this goodness without the one who is good.

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Now I'm picturing him as a bird. Yeah. But that was good. Yeah, very good. So, yeah.

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So the atheist, according to scripture, if you take the scriptures as true, if you take the scriptures as the resting point for certainty and knowledge, then you'll see that this is the obvious condition of the atheist is that he'll be at war with his creator, but the image of God is inescapable.

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He knows God. He knows the true God. He's not confused about that. God himself has shown it to him,

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Romans chapter one. And so the atheist will always live in this complicated existence where you've got one foot on the creator and the other foot in the denial of the divine, and they can't live that way.

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So there's moments in their lives where you're just going to see the image of God gloriously pour through and this demand for, again, human value, dignity, beauty, truth, goodness, all those things.

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And then at the next stage, you'll see the rebellion pour out, right? God is not great in all these different things.

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Expect him to live. So this isn't shocking and surprising that he's calling himself a cultural Christian, but it's a complicated world he has to live in, right?

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Very. There is no good. There is no evil. But I sure like the goodness of the Christian worldview. And you're going to hear that right now.

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Count myself a cultural Christian. I think it wouldn't matter if we, certainly if we substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful.

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Which brings me to my supplementary point, which is that, as we know, church attendance is plummeting, but the building, the erection of mosques across Europe, I think 6 ,000 are under construction and there are many more,

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I mean, are being planned. So do you think, do you regard that as a problem?

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Do you think that matters? Yes, I do really. I mean, I, I, I, I don't,

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I might choose my words carefully. I mean, I have to choose Christianity and Islam.

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I choose Christianity every single time. I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion.

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He sees the problem with what he just said. I mean, maybe he doesn't in the moment, but this whole idea about separating religion from culture.

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Well, why not Islam? Well, because that religion produces a particular kind of culture and that culture is not friendly to unbelief because there is such a thing as forced belief at the hands of a sword.

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And that is intrinsic to the Islamic worldview. And in order to continue going on in peace and harmony and having the freedom of religious expression and the freedom of sitting down on a bench, listening to the church bells ring while I enjoy a cup of coffee and a good book, you know, mocking

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God, rejecting God, but holding onto all these Christian vestiges. I want that culture that allows me to do that. And that is very unlike the

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Islamic culture. Or any atheist culture in history. I mean, just look at, you know, look at Stalin.

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A consistent one. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want the consistent atheist culture either.

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He knows it deep down. And we talked about things that are dreadful. I'm sorry, Professor Dawkins, there's nothing dreadful in your worldview.

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There's just what is. We are stardust. We are just moving across a meaningless cosmos and we don't matter.

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There is no meaning. Nothing is dreadful. Nothing is true. Nothing is good. Nothing is evil.

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It's just blind, pitiless indifference. Isn't that what you said?

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But you can't live that way. See, the atheists will say those things, but they can't live that way because this is

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God's world and they're made in God's image. They don't want God, but they can't live without him. That's exactly right.

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In a way that I think Islam is not. I think you're going to have to explain why you say that,

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Professor Dawkins. Why is Islam fundamentally not decent like Christianity?

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Yes. I mean, the way women are treated. I mean, Christianity is not great about that. It's had its problems with female vicars and female bishops and things.

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But there's an active hostility to women, which is promoted, I think, by the holy books of Islam.

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I'm not talking about individual Muslims who, of course, are quite different, but the doctrines of Islam, the

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Hadith and the Quran, it's fundamentally hostile to women, hostile to gays.

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So? Yeah, so what? Literally the T -shirt, right? So what?

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So what, Professor Dawkins? You're acting like human beings matter. Like they have value.

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Like women have value. Now, I'm wondering, where could you get a system that says women are valuable, that they have dignity, that you must respect and honor and love them?

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Where would you get a system that says, I don't know, they're made in the image of God at the beginning of creation? Where would you get a system like that?

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That says that men and women are equal before God. Different roles, of course, but there's an equality in terms of their nature and who they are as image bearers of God.

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I wonder where you get a system like that. There's nothing dreadful about anything, and nothing is wrong in terms of treating any particular person any particular way you want.

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I mean, why not just use women for pleasure? Why not? Why not put women in the boot of men? Why not?

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Who says you can't do that? There's no good. There's no evil. There's just blind, pitiless indifference. Richard Dawkins can't help but acting like a

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Christian. Why? Because he is the beneficiary of the Christian gospel and the kingdom of Christ.

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He's the bird nesting in the branch. And two things. Given his atheism, he can't ultimately condemn the subjugation of women or of homosexuals.

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There's no moral standard to do that. But then also there's the cultural implications of the Christian worldview that we witness in history in which that's the only worldview that gives rise to the equality of the sexes because it's the only worldview that puts out in practice what the scriptures say in that men and women bear the image of God equally.

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That's the basis of grounding the dignity and the worth of men and women. So, I mean, without Christianity, you still have women existing at the whim of a man who is the paterfamilias in the household able to take her life at will.

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Like, that was the culture that Christianity came into and ultimately uprooted. It overturned that debased moral order that saw women as objects or at the very least as inferior vessels in terms of their value.

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It was Christianity that overturned that. That's right. It's the only worldview that's done that. That's right. Absolutely.

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Interesting, too, conversation just in terms of an ethical system. The Christian worldview has given so much more value to a woman, just as one example in terms of violations and victimization.

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So cultures throughout history have treated the issue of rape in different ways.

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No punishment at all, or there's just a lot of ways people have addressed it. I was watching a documentary fairly recently,

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I think in the last week, and it was having to do with a rape situation that had happened in India, in an Indian village, and their culture thinks about rape in a certain way.

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And so this interviewer was asking the village women about what's the right thing that should be done in this case of rape.

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This girl, she was like 13 years old, I think she was gang raped in her village. And the women of the village were actually arguing, well then she needs to just marry one of the rapists.

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Just marry one of the rapists. And it's just astonishing to see that way that culture would think about rape.

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Whereas the Christian worldview would say, no, no, no. The rapist deserves to die.

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Places such a high value on the woman and the crime of rape, it says the rapist deserves to die for what he's done.

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And so look at the elevation of women in the Christian culture, and the Christian worldview, and a

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Christian ethical system. And you don't get that in an atheist system, or any other kind of religious system.

30:03

It doesn't exist. So, any words before we jump into the Layton Flowers thing?

30:08

No, let's go for it. Alright guys, so let's start this conversation this way. Layton Flowers is a brother, he says he has faith in Jesus Christ.

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He's a Trinitarian. He believes the scriptures are the word of God. And so, yes, some of this is an in -house debate.

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But, it's an in -house debate with a lot of consequences. And so it's an important discussion. Layton would agree with that.

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We want to show respect and love towards him as a brother. But at the same time, we want to make sure, because this is in the public realm, and these are public conversations, that we respond properly to the claims that he's made.

30:45

And so, we're not going to go over his entire video, and we're not going to ultimately commit to a long -term back -and -forth with Layton, because we just don't have a lot of confidence, given his history, that he'll accept, ultimately, correction on these theological issues.

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I made the claim, during the episode, that Layton will make claims, he'll display ignorance in an area, and when he's confronted on it, or when he's shown to be wrong, and even egregiously wrong, he'll just dig his heels in, and just keep going headlong in.

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He did exactly that, within a day of our show, on the issue of presuppositional apologetics.

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It is bad, bad, bad. And I want to say this, with love towards Layton, you made some massive, egregious mistakes when you tried to talk about presuppositional apologetics the first time in the debate, and especially the second time.

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You should have taken time to study the issue, and to understand it before you talked again about it, because now you have left a longer record of public ignorance.

31:47

And look, here's the thing. Everybody who's listening to this discussion, I would just encourage you, listen.

31:54

Pick up a copy of, there's a number of works, Covenantal Apologetics, by our friend Scott Oliphant, he's just got some fantastic work.

32:02

Pick up Pushing the Antithesis, the Apologetic Methodology of Greg Bonson. Pick up Presuppositional Apologetics, Stated and Defended by Greg Bonson.

32:11

Is that an old copy? I think it's a newer copy. Pick up Against All Opposition by Greg Bonson.

32:18

These books are readily available. They're not big, massive tomes. Some of his stuff is. Pick up Always Ready by Greg Bonson.

32:24

That's a fantastic starter. Or, if you want to go hardcore and all the way, pick up Van Til's Apologetic Methodology by Greg Bonson.

32:34

And see, I would encourage you, read any of these books, and then listen to Layton's response, and the way he talked about Presuppositional Apologetics, and you will see, we're not being unkind or unfair to the man.

32:49

He publicly misrepresented Presuppositional Apologetics in such an egregious way, and demonstrated complete ignorance about the system that he is pretending to speak with authority on.

33:01

Layton, you made an embarrassment of your show when you talked about it, and we're going to show that during this episode.

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But before I start, just one quick note regarding one of the things I said years ago.

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We were like, we're just not going to engage in this. And one of the reasons I said was that I had seen that Layton had put up an episode where he just picked the goofiest looking picture of me.

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And look, listen, people were like, oh, you just want like a nice GQ picture of yourself. He didn't do that.

33:30

You know, that's prideful. That's not what I was saying. I don't care about any of that. It was a purposeful, mocking thumbnail that I thought, well, if you're going to treat an opponent in that way,

33:43

I'm not going to take you seriously. And so let me, I guess I'll start by giving you the example of what

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I was talking about in terms of like, well, why did I decide to not even bother engaging? And I'm going to turn this.

33:57

There you go. So this is a screenshot. I don't know.

34:03

I can't zoom in on that. But this was the thing I had seen years ago. And I was like, I can't. He was using

34:08

Princess Bride against you. Yeah, I know. Seriously, no. No wonder you're upset. I can't take it seriously. You know, it's, you keep using that word.

34:16

I do not think it means what you think it means. And then there's this picture from a sermon where somebody grabbed a shot where I'm, it makes me look like the silliest, goofiest, most ridiculous thing.

34:29

And I just thought, you know, I can't take you seriously when you're going to do things like that. And so that's what I was pointing to. If you want an even better picture of it, there's me.

34:39

There's me in the thumbnail. Okay. And so that's what I was referring to.

34:45

Okay. The obvious attempt to make me look as foolish and silly as possible.

34:51

And so, okay. So that's what the conversation was about. I do not need you to make me look good in a photo.

34:59

That wasn't the point being made, is that that is an obvious attempt to make someone look as silly as you can.

35:06

Now, thankfully, Layton has kind of taken responsibility for it here, and I'll at least let you hear him on that point.

35:15

He's even used at one time, and this is where I, and this is honestly where I just became just completely dismissive to even really trying to respond to anything

35:22

Layton says, is he put up a thumbnail to one of his videos and he found the absolute worst picture of me to make me look silly in the thumbnail.

35:30

And that's where I lost all respect. And I said, I'm not interacting with a person who engages in that kind of childish behavior and needs to be clickbaity like that and use the worst possible picture he can use of me.

35:38

I just don't take you seriously after that. And I also don't take Layton seriously. Okay. So I had no idea honestly what he was even talking about because I've always thought of Jeff as being kind of this really good looking guy with a really cool beard.

35:51

And if anything, whenever his picture was put next to mine, it would have been me thinking, I look like an idiot next to that guy.

35:58

And so I had to go search my thumbnails because I don't make the thumbnails. Caleb makes the thumbnails. So yeah, I just threw Caleb under the bus.

36:04

Sorry, Caleb. He said he's going to go remake this thumbnail because I think I figured out which one it was.

36:09

I wasn't even sure, but I think I'll show you. Let's just add it to the stage here. So I scrolled through there.

36:15

It can't be that one because he looks better than I do. Caleb had me take a bunch of these pictures so that he could make my thumbnails.

36:24

And I see these pictures pop up and I'm going, oh, I hate that. I hate most of my thumbnail pictures.

36:29

I just don't like them. The second one, the same thing. I look like an idiot and Jeff looks cool.

36:35

So I don't know. Another one, I mean, he looks fine and I have this weird look on my face.

36:41

This one, he looks really good. That's like a GQ picture for Jeff on that one. That one looks decent, just a basic headshot.

36:49

Another one, same kind of thing. And this is the one that must be the one he's referring to. And it's just, to me,

36:55

I didn't think of it. I think it was just like, it's an intense look. And I got pictures like that all over the internet with me like taking a bite out of a sandwich or doing something goofy or with a weird look on my face.

37:04

And so it didn't even register to me that that would have been offensive to somebody. I mean, I get it. My wife will not even let me share a picture with her in it on social media unless she gets to approve it first.

37:15

So I get some people are really, really into that and they don't like when certain pictures make them look bad.

37:21

But you got to balance it out. I mean, look at this next one I have of you, Jeff. I mean, you look like you're on the front of a freaking magazine in that one right there.

37:29

That's like, good night. Look at that. Another good one, another good one. That's a good one.

37:35

And there's the cool one again. Oh, so it looks like it's on numerous videos. And look, here's the point.

37:42

It looks like it was changed. So it was Caleb? He's a Caleb? Yeah. So it's good that you had

37:48

Caleb address that issue. And Leighton obviously can't be held responsible specifically for putting that up.

37:55

But the point was that years ago when I had seen that, I thought not going to engage in long -term commitment to engage with somebody who would do those sorts of things to an opponent.

38:08

And so that was the issue. But I do appreciate him taking responsibility and taking it down. He goes on to then make some excuses.

38:16

I'm just saying, yeah, I can see if you think that's clickbait -ish. I also, somebody sent me this and said, well, he kind of does the same thing.

38:24

I mean, this Catholic guy, there's nothing really wrong with that in my opinion. But he kind of has that same kind of a surprise look or like he's explaining something.

38:33

And then somebody sent me this one with the Pope looking like he was in a rugby accident or something.

38:40

I don't know. Kind of a real dark, looming figure. And yeah, that's kind of what the marketing guys do.

38:47

And I'm assuming Jeff doesn't put together his own thumbnails. I know I don't. I don't. That's what marketing guys do.

38:52

They put thumbnails out there that's going to be attractive and people are going to want to click on them. So I'm sorry that that offended you.

38:59

I would hope that we would have enough maturity among us as brothers in Christ not to say

39:04

I'm not going to talk to you anymore because you put a picture I didn't like on a thumbnail or somebody in your ministry put a picture of your thumbnail in there.

39:13

That seems a little extreme in my estimation and it seems a little touchy in my estimation. But I'm not intending to.

39:20

One, I didn't do it. And two, if I knew it would have offended you, I wouldn't have ever allowed it.

39:25

I would have had him pull it down, which I am having him change it. So that's my apology. I know it's kind of a roundabout way of saying two wrongs don't make a right.

39:32

Just because he does it doesn't mean I should do it. Yeah, we don't do that. And that picture of the Pope is nowhere in,

39:39

I think, the realm of the picture in question. But just so everyone knows, that was the point.

39:45

I don't have a lot of respect for opponents that will behave in that kind of way and try to put you in as silly a light as they possibly can in order to get clicks.

39:56

And it was obviously a picture that was used in more than one place. And so I appreciate the apology, even with the excuses.

40:04

And so we can be done with that. So moving on to the next point, now that we're getting into some of the meat of the discussion, again, we're not going to engage with everything in the episode because it was a long one.

40:15

But here is the first section we're going to engage with. And here we go. You might as well feel sorry for this crowd of unbelievers because they're walking away in unbelief because secretly

40:26

God didn't really pick them. Jesus doesn't really love them. And the reason they're walking away is because they weren't picked. But that flies in the face of the context because in the context, over and over again, he says, you refuse to come to me so that you may have life.

40:36

Just like he says in Ezekiel, I don't desire the death of anyone, declares the sovereign Lord. Come to me, repent and live, holding out his hands to them.

40:43

How do you reconcile the passage over and over and over again of him longing to gather the children under his wings, but they're unwilling.

40:51

Longing to gather the children under the wings, but they're unwilling. Who's unwilling? That's from Matthew chapter 23.

40:58

And this is really important because he's going to try, he's going to try to hold on to what he did there in the debate and longing to gather the children under the wings, but they were not willing.

41:10

It's been pointed out over and over and over again that that is Jesus' indictment upon the covenant -breaking leadership of Jerusalem.

41:18

And he says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children under my wings, like a hen gathers a chicken under her wings, but you, you were not willing.

41:31

Who's he indicting? Who's he talking about? The covenant -breaking leadership of Jerusalem. He just misquoted it.

41:39

That was the point being made to you here, Layton. You misquoted it. Now, Layton's been in this for long enough to know the response to those verses and specifically the last verse that he quoted.

41:53

I do believe that Layton has done his homework in terms of probably, he's probably read the Potter's Freedom. I'd give him that.

41:58

I think that he probably has done his homework. He's read Drawn by the Father by Dr. White and all that. So I want to say that I trust that he's done his homework on this.

42:04

And so I know that he's listened to people refute the usage of that passage of scripture. And it's odd that he brings it up here in Matthew chapter 23, when

42:12

Jesus is - Okay, so it's odd. Anytime James White brings up an argument that's already been refuted by an

42:19

Arminian or provisionist, it's strange that they would bring it up again. No, it's strange that you're bringing it up and taking it out of context again.

42:28

That's what's strange, is that it's been refuted and demonstrated that you are not handling the text properly.

42:35

He's talking about the covenant -breaking leadership of Jerusalem. This is the passage, by the way, that's obvious to everybody as they read it.

42:43

On the face of it, this is the seven woes passage. Woe to you, woe to you, woe to you. Who's he talking to?

42:49

He's talking to the Jewish leadership. So when you quote it, gather your children, but you are not willing in terms of like, he's just got this broad, he's desiring so strongly, he just wants these children to come, but they're not, he's talking to them, he's indicting them, he's declaring the woes upon them.

43:06

And that was what was being said, Leighton. That's what was being said. Why? Do you think that once an argument has been refuted, that even though you don't believe that refutation, that you can't bring up that argument anymore?

43:21

And yes, I do have a video confronting James White's view on Matthew 23, 37, and I actually use

43:27

John Calvin to confront it because John Calvin takes a different interpretation. I also quote from a -

43:32

By the way, if you listen to the episode later on, I didn't cue it up here, he quotes the verse again and does it wrongly.

43:38

He does it twice, at least in this episode that we're discussing. President of Calvin Seminary or something like that,

43:45

I can't remember, Westminster Seminary, one of the big dogs, and he's a reformed guy, and he tears that view apart because James White is a very high

43:53

Calvinist that tends to remove the well -intended offer of the gospel by removing the universality of God's love or his desire for all to be saved because God would be failing in his view.

44:03

And a lot of Calvinists don't go that far, including John Calvin himself, as we'll hear from. And so, yes,

44:08

I have contended with this, but my view is the more accepted view, even among the reformed tradition.

44:17

That's what's so ironic about all of this is that so many Calvinists are so myopic in their views, they don't even recognize that many within their own tradition disagree with James White.

44:26

He's indicting the covenant -breaking Jews and the leadership of Jerusalem, and he gives the seven woes.

44:32

Jesus then says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who stones the prophets and kills those who are sent to her, how often I would have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

44:41

The whole context there is Jesus is indicting the leadership, the covenant -breaking leadership of Jerusalem.

44:47

He gives them the woes. He tells them about the burdens that they won't actually carry. He's indicting them. He is giving the woes to them.

44:53

And then he says to the leadership, he says, how often I would gather your children. He says, but you, you were not willing.

45:02

So leaders can thwart the will of God? What does that matter? Children is just another reference to inhabitants, by the way.

45:08

And even James White, I mean, even John Calvin, says that when he refers to the leaders, it includes the people as well, because all of them are culpable.

45:16

You can't blame the leadership for what the followers are choosing to follow and who they're choosing to follow.

45:23

In other words, they're all guilty of this. They're all culpable for this because they had a choice. God was willing, but they were not, which is replete throughout

45:28

Scripture, not just Matthew 23, 37. So the problem with this is that Leighton just can't ultimately come to terms with the fact that Scripture clearly teaches a divine decree, clearly teaches that God foreordains even sinful behavior of human beings.

45:50

So two premier examples that are always brought up that are never ultimately responded to in this case would be of course, the story of Joseph and the story of the crucifixion.

46:02

Make sure it's very, very clear to all of us. When we talk about the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, what do you have there?

46:09

You have the brothers of Joseph just engaging in some such serious depraved sin against their own brother, throwing him into a pit, taking that stupid coat off of him, lying to their father, saying an animal killed him and to just the grief and the pain that that would have brought, selling him into slavery, all of that wickedness.

46:30

He's in slavery, ends up being accused of rape falsely or attempted rape falsely, and then goes into a dungeon, ends up ruling essentially over Egypt and saving

46:40

Egypt and the surrounding nations. When the brothers are now confronted with Joseph many years later, what does the scripture say?

46:48

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

46:54

Equal, you meant evil, God meant it for good. It was God's sovereign meaning, plan, will, intention, ordination, decree that Joseph's brothers would sin in that way against their brother, that he would be sent away into Egypt in slavery.

47:12

That's such a wicked crime to commit. It was God's decree, God's will, God's purpose that Joseph would go there.

47:18

And yet the brothers are responsible. They meant it for evil.

47:24

God meant it for good in order to preserve many people alive. And then you move to the crucifixion.

47:30

God clearly is holding people fully responsible for the wicked thing that they did to Jesus.

47:37

The greatest crime committed in the history of humanity. The most innocent person treated in this way and victimized in this way and what's named in Acts chapter 4.

47:46

Pilate, Herod, the peoples of Israel, Gentiles to do whatever your hand predestined to occur.

47:55

And so here you have examples in scripture of God predestining even this willful, sinful acts of humans, like in the crucifixion, murdering the son of God on a tree.

48:07

God predestining that, but those people being fully responsible. So God indicts them for their sin, for their unwillingness to yield to God, to his commands, to his prescriptive will, towards his law.

48:22

God indicts people for their sin, but clearly scripture is saying while he indicts them for their sin and they're fully responsible for their sin, it says that God predestined this to occur.

48:33

And so what Leighton will tend to do is he'll say, well why is God indicting them if they're doing all these sinful things?

48:39

They can't help it, but scripture clearly teaches that he indicts them for the very things that he has predetermined to do for his glory.

48:47

They are responsible image bearers of God. They love their sin. They want their sin. They don't want

48:52

God in their knowledge and God predestines and determines it all. He does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

49:01

No one can stay his hand and say, what have you done? That's what scripture clearly teaches and Leighton just doesn't really want to contend with that fact.

49:08

He says, well why is he indicting them if he's decreed this? Scripture says God's decreed it.

49:13

Scripture says God's predetermined it. Scripture clearly teaches that in so many places that God does exactly that and they are responsible moral agents for what they're doing.

49:23

It's both and not either or. Yeah, you know, you refuse to come to me so that you might have life.

49:29

How is that in any way a refutation of reform thinking? We agree with that because they're sinful.

49:38

They hate God. They're in rebellion. You refuse to come to me so you might have life. How is that in any way an indictment upon reform thinking?

49:46

Well, not to mention there's the aspect too in the New Testament that God's covenantal judgment came upon that unbelieving generation of Jewish people and the apostles speak to this in numerous ways and come at it from different angles applying the

50:01

Old Testament text to it. You know, I can think of in Peter's epistle where he's using that verse about the stone that the builders rejected, the cornerstone, that's

50:10

Jesus. That verse is applied in the gospel to the unbelieving Jews who rejected Jesus.

50:16

And then Peter applies it in his epistle and he says that they stumble, meaning the

50:21

Jews, the ones, the builders that rejected the cornerstone because they were destined to do so.

50:28

They stumble and they disobey the word because they were destined to do so. And then the next verse is, but you are a royal priesthood, a chosen race, talking about the people of God gathered from, you know,

50:40

Jews and Gentiles, covenant people of God, the one that God is giving this glorious inheritance to that he took away from these apostates and these unbelieving people, the ones that Jesus is admonishing in Matthew chapter 23.

50:52

So I don't see a contradiction. If the challenge is, well, what difference does it make? Like whether it's the leadership or not.

50:59

Well, the difference that it makes is according to the whole testimony of Scripture, these are the people, this unbelieving generation that is under God's judgment, his righteous judgment for their rejection.

51:11

And Scripture tells us that is a rejection that is destined beforehand.

51:19

And so the problem is, I think as you put it, just simply with God's right to do that. That's right.

51:24

Yeah. Okay, here we go. And this is, I think the most important thing we wanted to engage with.

51:29

Those are mere kind of, to my mind, incidental things. Important, but incidental. This is the most important section and we decided to do this episode today continuing to engage with this issue with Professor Flowers on this, because we thought overall this would be really good for the body of Christ to think about a revelational epistemology and how do we know what we know.

51:52

Now, the claim that I made last week was that Leighton displayed that he does not know this field.

51:59

Now, let's be honest. There are a lot of things that I don't know as well.

52:05

I mean, I think we should all try to take the posture that when someone asks us a question about something we don't really know the answer, we haven't studied it, we can just say,

52:14

I don't know, I'll get back to you. There are many times I think the best thing for us to do is simply say, I don't know.

52:19

I'm actually, I'm scared at times when someone asks me a question about something in the Old Testament or even in the book of Revelation that I haven't come really to nail down yet to really fully understand,

52:31

I'll get scared. I'm not going to speak on that. And someone will say, well, really, what do you think? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that out.

52:36

I haven't come to a conclusion on that, because I don't want to teach people falsely and lead people astray, but I also don't want to leave a record of ignorance.

52:44

And what I said was, is in the debate, Leighton displayed that he has not done work in this field at all.

52:50

Now, look, I respect Leighton. Leighton's an intelligent guy. I think Leighton's actually a really handsome guy myself.

52:57

He got some good salt and pepper going on there. I do love him as a brother.

53:03

God calls us to that. But Leighton, completely face -planted here.

53:08

Leighton does not know this field. And look, all I would challenge you to do, I'm humbly asking you to do this. You don't have to take my word for it.

53:15

If you're a friend or fan or supporter of Leighton, I would just ask you, do a couple things.

53:20

Listen to some of Bonson's lectures on presuppositional apologetics, or this will be fun for you.

53:25

You'll probably rather enjoy this. And Leighton, you should do this as well. You really should. You should have done it before you spoke on this.

53:33

Go on YouTube, it's here. Listen to the debate between Dr. R .C. Sproul and Greg Bonson.

53:39

I think it's about two, three hours long on the issue of apologetic methodology. Leighton shows that he's never heard that.

53:47

And if he has heard it, then he's lying about presuppositional apologetics. Because if you have heard it, and you make these kind of mistakes, you shouldn't do that.

53:56

And so you should have done that. You should listen to the debate between Sproul and Bonson on the issue of presuppositional apologetics.

54:02

Listen to that debate. Listen to some lectures. Read any of these even shorter books on presuppositional apologetics, and you will come to the same conclusion.

54:11

This is not a field that Leighton has spent any time really trying to examine. I made the claim,

54:18

I don't think he's even read a single book on presuppositional apologetics, based upon what he said and the comparisons he tried to make, and especially the episode a day later where he did exactly what

54:30

I said that he does, which makes engagement with him something that I don't really want to do.

54:37

He digs his heels in, and he just made it so much worse. Leighton, when you finally do study presuppositional apologetics,

54:46

I wonder if you'll take this down. I wonder if you'll take it down. You've probably got friends that are presuppositional apologists.

54:55

Go and ask them. Go and ask them, because they'll tell you the same thing I'm telling you. You displayed abject ignorance about presuppositional apologetics, and what you did here was embarrassing, and so we're going to talk about that.

55:09

That seems to think that you're responsible to incline your ear in here so as to live. Dr. White says it's just a passive reality for the ones who were picked, and if you were one of the blessed ones to get picked, then you will incline your ear to here because he'll cause you to incline your ear to here, so all the ones who don't incline their ear to here, we can just say, well, they must not have been picked.

55:23

Again, never established in the Scripture at all. It's just presupposed, but we should expect that from a presuppositionalist because that's what presuppositional apologetics is all about.

55:31

Notice I just used textual arguments referred to a Scripture passage which parallels with John chapter 6 about inclining your ear, eating the food so as to live.

55:40

In other words, what comes first? Eat so as to live. Incline your ear and listen so as to live. Backing up my interpretation.

55:47

So that's a textual argument. Using other text to back up my textual view, okay?

55:53

And again, the strongest arguments are usually ignored by your opponent. And so instead of going over that, they go over my comment about presuppositionalism.

56:02

No, Dr. White already refuted your exegesis, your attempted exegesis in the debate there, so there was really no reason to do that because anyone can just pull up the debate and listen to it themselves.

56:13

Yes, you tried to appeal to the text, but you disconnected the text. And so Dr. White had already thoroughly refuted your understanding of the text.

56:19

And so that's why there's really no point. People can go watch the debate. Listen. Well, not only do they presuppose everything when they debate atheists, they presuppose stuff when they debate theology, too.

56:29

So the error he made here is he just tried to say, well, it's like presuppositional apologists.

56:36

They just presuppose these things. They presuppose them with atheists. And they do it over here. They just presuppose their Calvinism. It showed that you took two categories of thought and you smashed them together, blended them together, demonstrating that you don't know what presuppositional apologetics teaches, what transcendental argumentation is about, what a revelational epistemology is.

56:55

You demonstrated that you've never spent time in this field, a time that you should have spent in it before you spoke about it publicly, and you pontificated and pretended like you knew what you were talking about it.

57:04

And then 24 hours later, you pontificate again and try to pretend like you know what you're talking about, displaying absolute ignorance.

57:12

Anybody can do their own work on this. Read any of these books, listen to lectures, and you'll discover at the very early stages that Professor Flowers has not done the work in this area.

57:22

Tell me that you have no idea what presuppositional apologetics is about without telling me that you have no idea.

57:30

Presuppositional apologetics is something that's more in a very ancient tradition about a philosophical way to approach the question of epistemology, a theory of knowledge.

57:39

How do we know what we know? And it has to do with the... Yeah, how do we know what we know? Gnostics taught that God, in a sense, gave you the secret knowledge to know stuff.

57:48

In other words, God, the deity within Gnosticism was the one, that's what's called Gnosticism. It's the knowledge, the secret knowledge that's given.

57:56

And Jeff, as you're famously known for saying, you've got a little Gnosticism in you. Wow. That's a jump.

58:02

Wow. This is stunningly bad that he just invoked

58:09

Gnosticism when talking about presuppositional apologetics. Leighton, you made a massive mistake here.

58:19

Presuppositional apologetics teaches that there is general revelation that gets through.

58:26

That revelation is public, right? God writes that book of general revelation.

58:32

In creation. And the same author of the book of general revelation or natural revelation, the same author of that book gave a book of special revelation.

58:42

Both of those books, written by the same God, are all public books.

58:49

There's no secret. There's no secret knowledge. And so, when he tries to invoke

58:55

Gnosticism, which taught this secret knowledge, and when he's talking about presuppositional apologetics, brothers and sisters, that is so foreign to presuppositional apologetics because the claim of presuppositional apologetics is that God's revelation gets through.

59:13

It gets through in general revelation. Romans chapter 1 very clearly teaches that the revelation of God, they know

59:21

God. God has shown it to them. It's public. They can see in what has been made.

59:27

It is screaming. The heavens declare the glory of God. God gives this public knowledge of himself to every image bearer of God in general revelation.

59:37

The problem is not that the light doesn't get through. The problem is not that the knowledge doesn't get through.

59:42

That public knowledge, not secret knowledge. The problem isn't that that knowledge doesn't get through. It's that what?

59:48

Romans 1 says, they don't want him in their knowledge. They don't want to know God. And so what they do is they suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness, and they switch

59:58

God for an idol, some other kind of God, to worship the creeping things, the created things.

01:00:05

They go for the creation over the creator. That, however, is public. Nothing is secret.

01:00:12

There's no comparison to Gnosticism. The fact that you tried to make that comparison, Leighton, shows that you don't know this field.

01:00:18

You never studied this field. You have made no attempt to understand because you just made one of the worst blunders

01:00:25

I've ever seen you make. And you ought to be embarrassed by it. You really should be embarrassed by it because now, that is a public record of ignorance that you've put on your channel less than 24 hours after I make the claim that you'll make a false claim, get refuted, and you'll dig your heels in.

01:00:41

Leighton, this is not good for you. What you did here in trying to say presuppositional apologetics is like Gnosticism.

01:00:49

Presuppositional apologists have always argued that God's revelation gets through, that it's public, that it is knowledge that cannot be avoided.

01:00:57

It is God speaking. The heavens declare the glory of God. There's that book of revelation, and then there's special revelation, which is also public, not secret knowledge.

01:01:08

And you invoke Gnosticism talking about presuppositional apologetics. It's unbelievable.

01:01:14

I mean, it's actually, the more I think about it, the more, the two couldn't be further apart.

01:01:20

Yeah. If Gnosticism is just merely, like the, you know, Christians tried to baptize, you know, their beliefs with Gnosticism and there's a syncretistic aspect of it in which, you know, like let's take this philosophy, this heresy, and give it some

01:01:36

Christian terminology and that results in the division of the two realities, the upper story and the lower story, that says that the values don't touch the facts kind of thing.

01:01:44

Right. And it's like presuppositionalism is precisely the opposite of that because it assumes the authority of God's word at the outset, and then it insists on the fact that God's word must be brought to bear on the unbeliever's thinking.

01:01:57

Right. Every aspect of it. With no neutrality. With no neutrality. Yeah. Because presuppositionalism assumes that every human being and everyone's thinking, there's a network of assumptions going on there that inform and evaluate our opinions about everything.

01:02:12

Right. And unless we challenge those at the root, that's how we actually change a worldview because God ends up changing the heart through the proclamation of the gospel.

01:02:21

Right. But in the defense of Christianity through presuppositional apologetics, what we're challenging there are those untested assumptions.

01:02:30

Right. Right? That result in, you know, people making claims about science and morality and, you know, ethical structures and systems and laws of logic and things like that.

01:02:40

What we're doing with presuppositional apologetics is we're just bringing scripture to that and say, hey, license and registration.

01:02:47

That's right. Like, how do you account for using these things in your worldview apart from starting with God's word?

01:02:55

And that's where Bonson got the impossibility of the contrary. That's right. You cannot do it apart from scripture.

01:03:01

If you don't start with God's word, you become a fool and your reasoning is reduced to ash. Yeah. And God's word is the truth and we're gonna demonstrate to you with evidence and reason that unless you have

01:03:14

God's word at the foundation of your thinking and knowledge, you do not have the preconditions necessary to actually justify anything that you're doing.

01:03:24

Your appeals to science, your appeals to observation and evidence, your appeals to rationality and laws of logic, like we did at the beginning of the episode today.

01:03:35

Richard Dawkins appeals to things that are dreadful and not good for society. You don't have the preconditions necessary.

01:03:42

You don't have the foundation underneath you to actually make the claim you're making in any kind of meaningful and justifiable way.

01:03:49

You can't talk about women being hurt in a system if you fundamentally believe that they are a cosmic accident, they're descendants of bacteria, that their ancestors were fish and they're just stardust.

01:04:00

Your system doesn't allow for that. You must start with God's word because unless you have

01:04:06

God's word at the start of your thinking, you can't make sense of any of these things in your experience.

01:04:12

That's the point. A revelational epistemology. It's not gnostic at all because we're assuming here that everyone, the unbeliever included, knows is standing on God's ground.

01:04:20

You're assuming what scripture says that everybody knows. Yeah. It says in Romans 1, they know

01:04:27

God. Where's the secret knowledge coming from? Yeah. It says that every image bearer knows

01:04:33

God. Creation is shouting. Their conscience is shouting. God has shown it to them.

01:04:41

Romans 1. Gnosticism, Layton? You should have taken more than 24 hours, brother.

01:04:49

You should have taken more than 24 hours to respond because you demonstrated that you don't know this field and you spoke on it publicly and 24 hours later you did it again and you just made even more mistakes.

01:05:04

You tried to say Gnosticism when talking about a system that fundamentally denies the claims of Gnosticism.

01:05:12

Yeah. I was just going to say quickly that to respond to the one point I think we addressed it in that show but the thing he's accusing us of is what he's doing.

01:05:23

Right? So he's accusing us of presupposing Calvinism in the text.

01:05:28

We're like, well, the only thing we're presupposing is that God's word is our objective standard for all truth.

01:05:35

That's what we're presupposing. That's a good point. But he's presupposing his view of soteriology into the text and then he's accusing us of doing the same thing but obviously he's missing what presuppositionalism is.

01:05:48

He's confusing categories. Exactly. The first category of revelational epistemology, look, everyone who's studied epistemology, you've been to college or whatever, you took advanced high school classes in epistemology or maybe you've just done it for fun on your own.

01:06:00

You've learned about a rationalistic system. You've learned about empiricism. You've learned about systems that are more about experience.

01:06:07

It feels good for me. It works for me. You could even talk about Bentham's utilitarianism.

01:06:13

That's how I know. Like, it increases the most happiness for the most amount of people. You have all these different systems of how we know.

01:06:19

How do I know that this system is right? How do I know this is right? And you've got, of course, a revelational epistemology. The issue here is revelational epistemology.

01:06:27

It's how do I know something? How do I know something is true? What's the root? What's the foundation? How do I actually have knowledge? How does it make any sense?

01:06:33

How does the world view coherence? He's confusing that discussion with a secondary discussion about a

01:06:39

Christian system that assumes the truthfulness of God's word and says, well, in this category, like, what's the proper exegesis?

01:06:46

What's the proper conclusions we can come to based upon the text? That's a separate category in discussion, and to bring those things together shows that, brother, you don't know what you're talking about here, and you pontificate, and you pretend like you do, and you make even more egregious mistakes.

01:07:04

And this is where we think the Manichean roots of Gnosticism influenced Augustine in his later development.

01:07:11

When you listen to Augustine earlier when he's debating Fortinatus, he sounds like he's debating a Calvinist in a lot of ways because Fortinatus is a

01:07:17

Gnostic, and he's saying a lot of the same arguments that we are, which is why John Christosom quotes from John 644 in his homilies saying that Manicheans leap onto this text claiming that we have no power of choice.

01:07:29

In other words, John Christosom, contemporary before even Augustine, is acknowledging that the people who are using

01:07:35

John 644 as their proof text are the Gnostics, and this is exactly what the problem is, that there's knowledge, this epistemology within Calvinistic presuppositionalism is

01:07:44

I don't need to spend all day long trying to convince people to be saved like Paul does in Romans chapter, Acts 28.

01:07:51

I don't have to spend all day long trying to persuade them using argumentation and reason because Again, tell me you don't understand presuppositional apologetics without telling me you don't understand it.

01:08:05

I mean, when you open up Always Ready by Greg Monson, it's like a starter work, it's going to go into 1

01:08:12

Peter 3 .15, and it's going to go into the command to always be ready to give a reasoned defense to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that's within you.

01:08:22

Brother, our church name is Apologia, reasoned defense. So to make the claim that somehow presuppositional apologists are like,

01:08:32

I don't need to defend this, I don't need to reason, I don't need to give argumentation. Can I just be honest here and just say this is really interesting to me, this claim being made about presuppositional apologists.

01:08:43

And all I'm going to ask is that friends and others of either Layton or us, just think about what's being said here.

01:08:51

The claim is being made that presuppositional apologists don't feel like they need to reach out and reason with people and defend or to try to be convincing or winsome to people or anything like that.

01:09:03

And it's like, well, wait a second here, he's talking about Dr. White. Dr. White has almost 200 public moderated debates.

01:09:12

Most of them, the vast majority of them are with opponents to the Christian faith, whether it's Muslims or atheists or Roman Catholics or Unitarians.

01:09:22

The vast majority of those debates are not in -house debates, they are with opponents of the

01:09:28

Christian faith. Does that sound like somebody that's not trying to provide a reasoned defense for the Christian faith? Myself, my own limited past in this area is

01:09:37

I have four public moderated debates, every one of them with unbelievers and atheists.

01:09:44

So this claim being made, presuppositional apologists don't think they need to do all this stuff. They don't have to reason, they don't have to do all these things.

01:09:50

Is that why we have more street credit than you, Layton? I mean this respectfully to you, more street credit than you when it comes to debates with unbelievers?

01:10:00

I mean, I would just ask everyone just peruse through the feed of Apologia Studios, look through there.

01:10:08

There's probably about 2 ,000 videos there and I don't even know how many videos are there of us on the street engaging with Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, engaging in public debate, talking to agnostics, talking to atheists on the street, engaging.

01:10:24

I would say, I'll do this in terms of the methodology of the Apostle Paul and the

01:10:30

Book of Philippians. Accusations are being made and so Paul says, okay, you want to throw out the resume?

01:10:35

Let's throw out the resume. I would challenge everyone to do this. Look through Layton's feed and see how much of it is invested on the issue of Calvinism and Reformed Theology.

01:10:46

Look through his feed and see who he's arguing with. See who he's debating with. Look through the feed of Apologia Studios or Alpha Omega Ministries and see how much of it is dedicated to actually engaging with the unbelieving world.

01:11:02

And I would say that you'll see that in terms of this discussion, either our ministry or James' ministry takes this by a landslide.

01:11:15

So I would say, who's doing the most engagement with the unbelievers, reasoning with them, defending the

01:11:21

Christian faith, reaching out to them? At Apologia Church, by the grace of God, every day of the week, we have members of our church body out proclaiming the gospel outside of abortion mills, going to downtown

01:11:36

Phoenix, going to downtown Tempe, going to ASU. Did I ever say abortion mills?

01:11:41

Yeah, going to Mormon wards locally. We just had members of our church spend two weeks outside of the

01:11:47

Easter pageant at the Mormon Temple in Mesa, Arizona, on the street, handing out tracts, getting in conversations.

01:11:53

This is just absolute misrepresentation. It is complete misrepresentation.

01:12:01

Either they're going to be regenerated or they're not by unilateral work of God. And what's my argument going to accomplish that regeneration wouldn't accomplish in and of itself?

01:12:09

I just preach the word and let the chips fall where they may and move on. Now you should have known, as a, quote, reformed minister, past tense, you should know that reformed people believe that God doesn't just ordain the ends, but also the means.

01:12:26

And he commands us to go preach the gospel to all the world. He commands us to provide a reasoned defense for the faith.

01:12:33

And we know that it is the gospel that is the power of God for salvation. So we go out and we proclaim

01:12:39

His glory, His supremacy, and His gospel, and we call people to repent and believe.

01:12:45

That's why, because God has ordained the ends as well as the means, and the means is our proclamation of the truth, our defending the faith, and our telling everyone about Jesus.

01:12:56

And so that's why we do what we do. You're misrepresenting the system you say you once believed.

01:13:02

This has been brought to your attention so many times, Leighton, and you just won't be corrected on it. And it's very, very unfortunate.

01:13:09

And you're misrepresenting here presuppositional apologetics, also blending that together a little bit with reformed theology.

01:13:15

And you just, you just, you got it wrong, Leighton. An honest question for him, even that last thing he said, and let the chips fall where they may.

01:13:22

Who determines where the chips fall? Yeah. Do the chips, do the chips determine where they fall on that?

01:13:28

Well, and, in light of that, scripture teaches that God is the one who grants faith.

01:13:36

It's a gift. Faith is a gift. And so I go preach the gospel, we go preach the gospel, and we know that God is powerful enough to save even the most hardened sinner.

01:13:46

It says that you were dead in your trespasses and sins, but God, but God, but God made you alive together with him by grace you've been saved.

01:13:54

You were dead, God makes you alive. And so we go out to a field of dead people, and we preach the gospel, and Christ gives life.

01:14:03

God gives faith, Philippians 129. God is the one who grants repentance. 2

01:14:09

Timothy 2, 24. That's right. So first, you were just talking about Luke and Proverbs. The lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision that's from the

01:14:15

Lord. That's right. So we can throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall. There you go. Because if they're elect, then they'll believe it because they'll be regenerated.

01:14:23

And if they aren't, they won't. Takes the pressure off. That's the way a lot of Calvinists actually make those kinds of claims when they're talking about why evangelism is so much better in their worldview because it takes the pressure off of them.

01:14:36

And is the pressure meant to be taken off of us, according to Scripture? And there's the man -centered system again, rearing its ugly head.

01:14:44

No, the pressure off, no, it's the hope we have in the power of God. It's the hope we have in the power of God.

01:14:52

God is able to raise the dead. And so when I go proclaim the gospel, I know that God's purposes will never be thwarted.

01:14:59

And God will do all that He pleases. No purpose of His can be thwarted.

01:15:04

And I go in full confidence that if God wants to raise a dead sinner, He will raise the dead sinner to His glory and for His kingdom.

01:15:11

That's what God will do. That is not taking the pressure off of me. It's actually putting the hope and confidence in the right place, in God and not in me, the creature.

01:15:23

This is once again the man -centeredness of Leighton's perspective just rearing its head once again.

01:15:30

Darrell Bock It's about blood on your hands and these kinds of things what Paul's talking about, of being the watchman in Ezekiel and all these kinds of things.

01:15:37

Okay, so I'll bite. Ready? Blood on your hands and watchmen. Let's do it again by appealing again to the

01:15:44

Apostle Paul's methodology in Philippians when his ministry is being attacked. He gives his resume. Okay, alright, so let's do it.

01:15:51

Give the resume. So, blood on your hands, being the watchman, the question should be asked and it should be asked objectively.

01:15:57

Everyone stand above it, look at the conversation happening, and then compare the ministry, the resume, of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Apologia Church.

01:16:06

He's saying, like they don't really feel like they need to be doing these things and their methodology says you don't really need to care about these things and then go, wait a second,

01:16:12

I see a lot of Mormon videos, I see a lot of Jehovah's Witness videos, I see a lot of engaging with agnostics, I see a lot of public debates,

01:16:19

I see all of this on that channel, going out preaching the gospel at abortion mills, they're engaged every day of the week out on the streets trying to preach the gospel to unbelievers,

01:16:27

Dr. White's extensive ministry in this area, the books that he's written, engaging with Mormonism, the

01:16:32

Quran, his public debates, almost 200 of them across the entire world, and ask the question, who looks like the watchmen?

01:16:41

Who looks like the ones that they're actually out and engaging and believing that evangelism is something that we're supposed to be doing?

01:16:48

And then compare that to the ministry of Leighton Flowers and I think you'll see that Leighton Flowers has a complete investment on the in -house debate of Reformed theology, it's what it's really all about.

01:16:59

I would say, alright Leighton, show us the street credit, alright, you're saying you believe all this, that you're the watchmen, blood on the hands and all the rest, but where's the investment of your ministry in actually engaging with the world?

01:17:10

Where is it? Right? I mean if we're going to compare resumes here and you're saying that the presuppositionalists don't really believe they have to do this, well then how come we're actually the ones doing it?

01:17:19

How come, how come over the last couple of hundred years, the greatest, most powerful missionary movements that have happened have been from the

01:17:29

Reformed? I mean, do we need to bring up the First and Second Great Awakening?

01:17:34

Those were Reformed movements through and through! I mean, Jonathan Edwards, Whitfield, I mean, these

01:17:42

Reformed folks don't believe, like, I don't really believe I need to be involved in this, I mean, brothers and sisters, history defies the claims that are being made here right now.

01:17:52

We're supposed to feel the pressure of the call of the Gospel, the urgency to get the word out because people's lives depend upon us spreading the good news of God's love and provision and so we want people to know about His good news because we want more people to come to Him in faith so as to be reconciled.

01:18:08

I mean, that's kind of the urgency of Scripture and the reason that I think more evidential or classical approach apologetics is a better model for epistemology, how you come to know things, you can be reasoned with.

01:18:21

You can be persuaded. The word persuasion is used almost twice as much as the word predestination but yet gets a fraction of the attention by the

01:18:27

Calvinistic brethren and yet persuasion is what apologetics is all about. There's a lot of conflating going on there.

01:18:37

Layton, brother, this was bad. It was really, really bad.

01:18:45

The presuppositionalist is arguing transcendentally. The presuppositionalist is arguing from a revelational epistemology that says to the unbeliever who tries to use reason that that reason that you're appealing to is a

01:19:01

God -given gift and can't be made sense of apart from God's own revelation and word and God as the starting point.

01:19:10

If you don't have God as your starting point, then your reason can't be justified.

01:19:16

Presuppositional epistemology is arguing against reason. They're not arguing against evidences or persuasion.

01:19:23

Layton, you are demonstrating that you've never read a book on presuppositionalism. This is embarrassing,

01:19:30

Layton, because the presuppositionalists aren't arguing against the use of reason or against the use of evidences.

01:19:37

Again, brothers and sisters, I would just challenge you, go and listen to the debate between Dr. R .C. Sproul and Dr.

01:19:44

Greg Bonson on presuppositional or apologetic methodology. Go listen to it, and you will come back to Layton's comments here and just say, well, that is an astonishing mistake to make.

01:19:54

A really, really bad one to make. So, here's the point. Presuppositionalists, well, you can look.

01:20:02

Frame has written on this. Poythress has written on this. Bonson has written on this. They've talked about the grounding and foundation of even the teleological argument, the cosmological argument, all those arguments and saying that you can give those arguments, but you must do it without neutrality and with a proper grounding.

01:20:22

So, listen, here's the thing. Empiricism has to be seen. It has to be observed. The presuppositionalist says, great,

01:20:28

I believe that. You need evidence. You need witness. You need proof. That's a Christian worldview kind of thing. The presuppositionalist doesn't say evidences are bad, don't use evidences.

01:20:37

We say that you shouldn't use evidences pretending neutrality with the unbeliever.

01:20:42

You need to challenge the atheist who says that evidences are important and empiricism is a thing and say, can you explain to me exactly how you can get the uniformity in nature, how you can get the principle of induction that the future will be like the past, which is the very foundation of empiricism.

01:21:01

How do you get that if this is a cosmically indifferent universe and that this is just time and chance acting on matter?

01:21:08

How do you get that? Because you see, what we would say is that you actually can't have the principle of induction, you can't have uniformity in nature apart from the sovereign

01:21:17

God who carries everything along to its intended destination, which is why science was given its big pop and its blowup because of the

01:21:26

Christian worldview. I mean, we announced at the beginning of the show as we were talking about Dawkins, all the

01:21:31

Ivy League schools, you know, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, these amazing schools, they were

01:21:37

Christian seminaries and Christian organizations and Christian educational institutions. They gave rise to all this stuff and this thinking.

01:21:44

So the point is is that you're saying empiricism, observation, the principle of induction is a

01:21:51

Christian thing. And you can't have it in any meaningful way apart from God and we're saying reason and the use of the laws of logic.

01:21:59

Laws of logic are immaterial things and yet they're universal, they're abstractions, of course, and they're invariant.

01:22:08

They are unchanging. They're the same in Iceland as they are in the UK and in North America.

01:22:14

And so the challenge being made to the unbeliever is how can you make a claim that is meaningful with epistemology that can make sense of your appeal to reason?

01:22:25

We're not saying don't reason with the unbeliever, we're saying challenge the unbeliever at the point the image of God is pouring out.

01:22:32

You are appealing to evidence. You are appealing to facts and truth. You are saying that we must tell the truth about evidences and not lie about them.

01:22:39

You're saying that we need to use reason. You're saying that the laws of math are real and need to be held to and we need to do it correctly, but how do you do that with your rejection of God?

01:22:49

It's an epistemological challenge, Layton, that you show that you just have no idea about.

01:22:54

And that's pretty persuasive, if I might add. Yeah. Challenging the unbeliever to make sense of everything in life, including every bit of knowledge that they have, apart from scripture.

01:23:06

And I think more than anything, the presuppositional approach demonstrates this, that at the end of the day, as Bonson said, it's the apologist's job to shut the mouth, but only

01:23:16

God can open the eyes. And that approach, better than any approach that I've encountered, actually does the work of leaving the unbeliever without a defense and exposing their main problem, which is the simple suppression of truth.

01:23:28

Yes. And that makes room, guess what, for evangelism. Yeah. That's where the proclamation of the gospel goes.

01:23:34

And we're going to show that in just a moment here, in terms of apologetic methodology. The presuppositionalist says no neutrality,

01:23:41

Christ says you're either with me or you're against me, scripture teaches very clearly the fool says in his heart there is no God, it says in scripture that the fear of the

01:23:48

Lord is the beginning of knowledge, it says that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and so you need God's word at the start.

01:23:55

You need God's word at the start. Let me play a little more of this so you can see where we're getting at with this. So you'll see the difference in apologetic methodology.

01:24:02

Trying to help people see the truthfulness of the scriptures and who Jesus is by appealing not only to what the scriptures say, but also to the evidences, what's evidentially true among all of the extra biblical resources that are available to us.

01:24:19

And there's no reason that those can't be tools in the tool belt, and oftentimes presuppositionalists will neglect using those tools because they're

01:24:25

Calvinist. No, the presuppositionalist will say that we have to have a commitment to Christ as Lord in our hearts as we are providing a defense for the

01:24:37

Christian faith. So what we're saying is this, is that our defense of the Christian faith needs to be done as Christians, committed to his lordship without neutrality.

01:24:45

And so what we're saying is that you shouldn't go into a conversation with, say, the rabid unbeliever and pretend neutrality with the unbeliever.

01:24:54

You shouldn't go into a conversation with the unbeliever and let's pretend like God's word is not true.

01:25:00

Because how does that make room for evangelism? How does it make room for evangelism if I'm going to defend some general deity?

01:25:07

You've already conceded the point that this is a more sure word that I must submit my entire life to.

01:25:13

Yeah. Because you've gone into the encounter assuming that it's up for grabs, that it might not be true.

01:25:18

Maybe God's not who he claims to be. Maybe his word isn't actually true. I'm not arguing that Jesus is who he claimed to be.

01:25:23

Let's just see where we You don't get to, you need to repent, change your entire way of thinking, your entire way of life and come to Christ on your knees from it might be true.

01:25:37

Maybe it's true. Or I'm not certain it's true. Yeah. Hang on, guys, because you're about to hear one of the world's leading apologists that's not presuppositional say exactly the things that we just said.

01:25:47

Because they presuppose the way in which somebody knows something is through this secret downloading of knowledge through this work of regeneration.

01:25:54

Nope. There you go. Once again. Did he just say? Secret downloading of information.

01:26:01

Nope. General revelation is public. God's knowledge gets through and the scriptures and the proclamation of truth is public.

01:26:08

No secret knowledge there. And you also just confused epistemology in terms of a grounding of how you know what you know and a foundation for certainty.

01:26:17

You confuse that with regeneration. Yeah, that was the part that struck me. You just confused two completely different categories,

01:26:26

Leighton. Leighton, you got this so wrong and I mean this, I mean this truly humbly and respectfully to you.

01:26:33

Send me your address and I will send you out of my own pocket. I'll send you some basic works on presuppositional apologetics and so you can at least do the time, put the work in so that you don't make these mistakes again because Leighton, you made some serious mistakes here.

01:26:50

You just got it wrong and I'm not the only presuppositionalist you need to listen to and believe on this.

01:26:56

You can contact any of these authors, except for Bonson obviously. You can contact your friends who are presuppositionalists.

01:27:03

They'll tell you that what you did here was a serious error. And that's not something that obviously those who are non -Calvinist would agree with.

01:27:11

Preconditions of intelligibility, it has to do with the foundation of how you know and so presuppositional apologetics is very simply, here's for the audience, very simply that God is the reference point for truth.

01:27:20

That when God speaks, what he says is the truth. That God's word... Good. Amen to that.

01:27:26

When he speaks, speaks with authority, it is the truth. A self -attesting authority. And so what we don't have the right to...

01:27:34

Okay. It's easy to say you agree. It's easy to say, of course, because that's a basic Christian commitment.

01:27:40

God is the authority. He's the only God. When he speaks, he has a self -attesting authority. It is easy for us to check the box as Christians on that truth.

01:27:48

It is much harder to actually have a methodology with apologetics that actually bears that truth out. And you're going to see that in a moment here.

01:27:55

...is reason our way up to God. What we have to say is that Scripture is very clear. It's abundantly clear that Jesus says,

01:28:01

I am the truth. Scripture teaches that Christ is the foundation of all knowledge, that in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

01:28:08

Again, he's not saying anything that's uniquely within his perspective or something that a evidential or classical approach person would disagree with.

01:28:17

Oh, of course. Of course, any professing Christian will have to acknowledge the

01:28:23

Scriptures that I was just quoting. But it is unique in terms of apologetic methodology to actually work that out in the defense of the

01:28:32

Christian faith. And I'm about to demonstrate that to you right now. Scripture says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

01:28:38

Scripture tells us very clearly that God's word is the truth, that God is the truth, that his when God speaks, doesn't have authority.

01:28:44

Let me just say that that's the easiest way. That when God speaks, does God's word have authority? Is God's word true?

01:28:50

Now, here it is. Ready? In reference to the unbeliever, is God's word the truth, and is it the foundation of all knowledge, despite the unbeliever's rejection of it?

01:28:59

And the answer to that, every Christian should answer in the affirmative. Of course God's word is the truth, regardless of their objection. So, therefore, you shouldn't try to show them evidences of why it's true?

01:29:09

And there you go. Another example of mischaracterizing the presuppositional approach by saying, so you shouldn't show them evidences?

01:29:19

Is that why you have so many presuppositional apologists debating the unbeliever, providing evidences, and giving a foundation?

01:29:28

Is that why? Also why you have a lot of unbelievers not wanting to debate presuppositionalists too, because we don't, they don't play the evidence game and give the unbeliever the authority by which to judge

01:29:40

God from the dock. Yeah. And look, I just challenged you to do this. There is a debate we did, it was a year ago, with two atheists, one was an agnostic, ethicist, basically an atheist, at the

01:29:54

University of Utah. Pastor James and I did a debate with them. They were really frustrated in that debate because we did not go into it with neutrality.

01:30:02

These guys have done debates before with Christians who approached it with neutrality, and they loved it.

01:30:09

They got to just go on and on and on, and they were never challenged at their foundation, and so we were able, actually, to call them to repentance and say, look, we're

01:30:16

We were able to take the legs off their system from an epistemological standpoint.

01:30:22

I would just encourage you guys to go listen to that debate. If you want to see how presuppositionalists are engaging this kind of conversation, go watch the debate from Dr.

01:30:31

White and I from about a year ago at the University of Utah, and you'll see that the claims that Leighton is making here are just fundamentally false.

01:30:39

We are reasoning with these men. We are providing evidence in this debate. And so Leighton, again, is displaying that he does not know this field.

01:30:47

It's just a different kind of proof. It's an indirect proof, really, the reasons, the evidences are challenging the unbeliever to account for their system, given their rejection of God.

01:30:56

Right. Because that's the conclusion that some presuppositionalists, especially extreme versions of presuppositional apologetics, conclude.

01:31:04

Not all presuppositionalists are the same, by the way. But that's the point. It's just, if you're talking to somebody who doesn't presuppose that the

01:31:11

Bible is right or true, just arguing that it's true because it's true is just circular reasoning. Oh boy.

01:31:21

Leighton, look, if you have other friends that are presuppositionalists, show them what you said here.

01:31:27

Show them what you said here and say, was I accurate? Well, that debate will be helpful. The Sproul -Bonson one especially. Yeah, it's true because it's true.

01:31:35

No presuppositionalist argues like that. We reject that. That's not how, that's not how we believe that this works.

01:31:41

And again, everybody go listen to the debate between Dr. Sproul and Dr. Bonson where all these issues get fleshed out.

01:31:47

I mean, maybe you could be talking kind of in the realm, maybe of like a Clarkian apologetic methodology, but you are certainly not talking about a transcendental approach or covenantal approach or a

01:31:58

Vantillian way of looking at this conversation. It's true because it's true that no presuppositionalist argues like that.

01:32:05

You just, you once again mischaracterized it and that is not at all what presuppositionalists would say.

01:32:13

Not, it's not argumentation. It's, it's, it's true because God is true because God says it.

01:32:18

Well, how do you know that? Because it's true. Brother, this is bad.

01:32:26

This is complete misrepresentation. When you're talking about an ultimate in epistemology, an ultimate grounding for knowledge, there's no way to avoid circularity when you're talking about ultimate.

01:32:42

So for example, for example, if I say to the rationalist, he's rationalist in an epistemology, he's

01:32:49

I know because of reason. And I say, okay, can you give me a reason for reason being the foundation of your system of, of how you know what you know?

01:33:00

He's going to, you see the circle after you go back to is that if that is your grounding for knowledge, you have to come back to that foundation, right?

01:33:09

Account for that without using reason. Necessarily. If you are going to say this is how we have certainty.

01:33:15

The, the, the empiricist will go about it a different way. Now, some people will hitch up rationalism and empiricism together for an epistemology, right?

01:33:22

But the empiricist, and by the way, for some of you guys who are new to this conversation are like, well, I don't even know what you're talking about right now. Empiricism is essentially observation.

01:33:29

I know because I tested it, I saw it, and that's how I know something is true. I've got to see it, smell it, touch it, taste it.

01:33:36

That's how I know that it's true through that experience of testing and observation.

01:33:42

But do you see the point when you're talking about an epistemological system, when you're talking about that as a grounding, it is by necessity something that has to be circular because if it's the ultimate foundation of knowledge, you cannot appeal outside of it.

01:33:57

The moment you appeal outside of it, that other thing is the ultimate foundation. That other thing is, right?

01:34:04

And so when you're talking about an epistemological foundation for how you know something is true, how you gain certainty, it is of necessity circular.

01:34:14

It's not a, as presuppositionalists always say, it's not a vicious circle or an illogical circle.

01:34:21

It is a necessary circle when you're talking about ultimates in epistemology and guess what? Everybody does it.

01:34:29

Including Jesus. In their epistemological system, the rationalist goes to circularity when they talk about rationalism as the ultimate.

01:34:37

It's a circle because they're saying that's the ultimate foundation. But the presuppositionalist challenges the rationalist by saying this, you can't just have reason as your ultimate foundation because you haven't even justified that as ultimate and as a necessary precondition to know.

01:34:57

Because what is reason to the person who's a descendant of an African ape? What is reason but just brain gas and biochemical responses happening in their brain?

01:35:08

Have you ever seen a law of logic? Have you ever touched one? Smelled one? Weighed one? Where are these laws of logic?

01:35:15

Can I feel it somewhere? Is it growing somewhere in the desert? Do you see the point? If they have a system that's materialism where all that exists is matter and they appeal to rationalism as the ultimate way to know, it's right to ask, what's laws of logic, where are they at?

01:35:32

Are they universal? Are they unchanging? Are we obligated to hold to these laws? Where can

01:35:37

I find a law of logic? What color is it? Do you see the point? So you challenge the epistemological foundation of the rationalists and show them that they can't have that as an ultimate because their system militates against it.

01:35:50

But from a Christian perspective you have a foundation that can make sense of laws of logic.

01:35:56

You have a foundation that satisfies the preconditions necessary for laws of logic because you don't just have a material universe, you have an immaterial.

01:36:04

You also have the mind of God. You also have God as the foundation, a God who doesn't contradict himself, who's the same yesterday, today and forever, a

01:36:11

God who cannot lie, he cannot engage in logical contradiction. Our thinking is supposed to be a reflection of his thinking.

01:36:17

So the Christian worldview is the only worldview that has a grounding for laws of logic and reason. So guess what we get in the

01:36:23

Christian worldview? We get the goodness of rationalism, the goodness of empiricism. We get all that because we have

01:36:29

God as the reference point. We have a foundation to make sense of, which is what

01:36:34

Zach brought up a minute ago. We have the impossibility of the contrary.

01:36:40

You can't reject the Christian worldview. It is the foundation of all knowledge and all truth, all beauty, all goodness.

01:36:47

It is the impossibility of the contrary. It is transcendentally demonstrated. It's just circular reasoning.

01:36:55

Objection to it or their resistance to it. So John asked as well, what... By the way, this is

01:37:00

William Lane Craig for those that can't see the screen that's about to answer this question about presuppositional apologetics, and listen to what he affirms and then what he denies.

01:37:07

What are your thoughts on presuppositional apologetics? I think that the central insight of presuppositional apologetics is nicely captured by Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology, which says that certain beliefs, like the existence of God or the great truths of the

01:37:25

Gospel, are properly basic for us and are grounded in the testimony of the

01:37:30

Holy Spirit. With that, I wholeheartedly agree with presuppositionalists. But I think it's a terrible mistake to say that the way you argue for Christianity's truth is by presupposing its truth.

01:37:41

That is a classic example of reasoning in a circle. P, therefore P. And that's just worthless as an argument.

01:37:48

And Khalid, they can close. Okay, so... Yeah, and William Lane Craig has demonstrated his own ignorance about presuppositional apologetics.

01:37:55

I'm glad that he affirms the coherence of Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology, that when you have the word of God, it is properly basic, it is the foundation and grounding of all the other beliefs and things you can argue for.

01:38:09

And so, Plantinga is a presuppositional apologist of sorts, and he's just, he's actually framed it in a way that makes more sense in academia.

01:38:18

And so, he's taken presuppositional apologetics and he's taken it and put it in such a way that actually is quite compelling and helpful for academia and the world of philosophical discussion.

01:38:29

But Plantinga would argue against William Lane Craig here in terms of what he's saying with properly basic and presuppositional apologetics.

01:38:37

And so, But I don't think Leighton even understands that conversation, and William Lane Craig clearly doesn't understand it himself when he tries to say it's just a circle,

01:38:45

P therefore P. That's, again, not Reformed Epistemology. We're not making that kind of an argument.

01:38:51

It's not P therefore P. It's without P in coherence. And without P, there is no P. Yeah. I would agree with William Lane Craig on that point.

01:38:59

Arguing that something is true because I think it's true is not Reformed Epistemology.

01:39:12

You did it again, Leighton. You are just misrepresenting across the board. No presuppositionalist says it's true because I think it's true.

01:39:22

It's the grounding of all truth. Without it, you don't get truth. It is the only meaningful way to actually have truth.

01:39:30

It's not true because I think it's true. You misrepresented again, Leighton. Argument, okay?

01:39:36

It's like saying, if I'm right, am I right? Which is exactly what James White does in the debate, which is ironic because these guys are presuppositionalists, have just explained that they hold a presuppositional apologetics by explaining a lot of things that even

01:39:50

William Lane Craig and other evidentialists and classical approach theologians and apologists would just affirm, right along with them, but not affirming the methodology of just saying we argue in circles.

01:40:02

Okay, so let's test that claim. Brothers and sisters, you've heard the misrepresentations from Professor Flowers, and you've heard, of course, the affirmation of the scriptures in terms of Christ being the truth, and in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and the fear of the

01:40:20

Lord is the beginning of knowledge. You've heard all that. Now, let's see, let's see if the classical apologist is actually holding onto those truths in their methodology.

01:40:31

Here is someone that Leighton's a fan of, William Lane Craig, in different contexts, defending the

01:40:38

Christian faith. Okay? Here you go. I encourage unbelievers not to think of the

01:40:45

Bible as divinely inspired. Over... Does that sound like you believe that scripture is the foundation of all knowledge, that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge?

01:40:56

Does that sound like someone who is with Christ or against Christ? In their methodological experience, in how they're defending the

01:41:04

Christian faith. I encourage people to not think of this as divinely inspired. How are you going to get them to repent?

01:41:11

How are you going to call them to repentance? Right? We're going to pretend neutrality in that sense, and just see where the hostile, rebellious, sinful mind goes with the evidences.

01:41:21

Does scripture say that evidence is the problem and light is the problem? Not in Romans 1. It says that they know the true

01:41:27

God but they don't want him in their knowledge so they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. What am I going to do? Just give them more neutral evidences where I can just, just brute facts that they can just suppress those along with the rest of the facts of all of creation?

01:41:39

By the way, public revelation. It's key because what we're talking about here is approaching fallen man in two different ways.

01:41:46

One of those is approaching him like he is in a neutral standing and another is approaching him believing what

01:41:53

God says about him. Instead of what God says or what he says about himself. Like, well,

01:41:59

I just don't know. Like, let's, let's work it out. Let's reason and maybe I'll believe in your

01:42:04

God. You know? Like, you know, I'm not hostile against God but I'm not for him either.

01:42:09

Right? Whereas Jesus just doesn't leave room for that. That's right. Fifty percent of evangelical pastors think that the world is less than 10 ,000 years old.

01:42:20

Now, when you think about that, Kevin, that is just hugely embarrassing. We're not arguing for Christianity tonight.

01:42:27

I haven't presented an argument, a moral argument for Christianity or even for the

01:42:32

God of the Bible. What are we doing? What are we doing here? So does, does apologetic methodology matter?

01:42:41

Does the grounding of epistemology matter? It matters greatly. He's not making an argument for the

01:42:47

God of the Bible, then what are we doing spinning our wheels? Are we trying, who is actually keeping the gospel front and center?

01:42:53

Theism doesn't save anybody. Right. Only the God of Scripture saves people from their sins.

01:42:59

Yeah. So there is a tremendous concern here for the evangelistic aspect of this.

01:43:06

How do you get to evangelism by proving a bare proposition of a

01:43:13

God? Mm -hmm. Right? This God of classical theism or just this general deity.

01:43:18

Like, even if someone agrees, like, yeah, I believe in a higher power, they don't have the content necessary by which to have their sins forgiven.

01:43:27

There needs to be the explicit proclamation of Christ and the call of repentance and faith, but we can't get there if we're just proving theism.

01:43:36

Yeah, or general theism, and that's that point. So earlier the argument being made by Professor Flowers was that the presuppositionalists aren't really concerned with, like, going out and reasoning and defending and all the rest, but actually what you're seeing here is the presuppositionalists.

01:43:49

I would just say, look, compare the debate of Dr. Bonson and Gordon Stein with these kinds of discussions from William Lane Craig.

01:43:59

Compare the two methodologies. One keeps Christ at the center, the gospel at the center, so that there's a proclamation of God's truth.

01:44:08

It shows that this is really a sinful suppression of truth going on, that you shouldn't even have access to the tools of reason and evidence and all the rest without my

01:44:14

God, without the Christian God. And compare that to sort of like this. Like, I'm not here presenting an argument for the

01:44:20

Christian God. I'm presenting an argument for the I haven't even said that the Bible is true. Is that really a foundation for knowledge?

01:44:26

That we can somehow get at truth apart from the one who is the truth?

01:44:32

And is it faithful to our Lord to present his truth that way? Set Christ apart as Yahweh in your hearts.

01:44:43

That's the first part of 1 Peter 3 .15. So, the charter verse of all Christian apologetics starts with this.

01:44:50

Set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts. Always being ready to give a reason defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that's within you.

01:44:58

Yet do it with gentleness and respect. I want to ask, that's a public discussion defending the

01:45:04

Christian faith. Is that setting Christ apart as Lord? When you say, I'm not here defending Jesus.

01:45:10

I'm not here even saying that the Bible is true. I'm arguing for a general theism. Listen to this.

01:45:15

Over half of our ministers really believe that the universe is open and that it's only around 10 ,000 years old.

01:45:23

This is just scientifically, it's nonsense. You ought to rejoice in my argument tonight and just say,

01:45:31

I'm going to be a theist, but I'm not going to be a biblical theist. Does that sound like that leaves room for the gospel? I'm going to be a theist, but I'm not going to be a biblical theist.

01:45:39

You should rejoice in that. My argument tonight wasn't pointing you to Jesus. It was just a general theism.

01:45:46

Brothers and sisters, is that setting Christ apart as Lord? Is it? Is that pretending neutrality?

01:45:52

Yes, it is. And so, yeah, I find that methodology entirely deficient.

01:45:59

I find it deficient epistemologically. There's no grounding for William Lane Craig's arguments there, in there either.

01:46:05

And I find it deficient in how it disconnects evangelism from apologetics.

01:46:11

From the presuppositional approach, we would say you have to have apologetics and evangelism together.

01:46:19

They have to be together, not apart. We're not trying to disprove

01:46:25

Allah's existence. We are arguing for generic monotheism that is affirmed by Jews, Christians, Muslims, deists, and theists of many sorts.

01:46:36

Does that sound like a defense of the Christian faith? Does that sound like it leaves room to call people to repentance and faith in Jesus?

01:46:43

Does that sound like you're challenging unbelievers there and their sin and their need for Jesus? The whole argument being made against presuppositionalism a minute ago from Dr.

01:46:51

Flowers was that they're not concerned with evangelism. They're not concerned with reaching out and reasoning.

01:46:57

Actually, we're the ones arguing that you have to have evangelism hooked up with your apologetics so you can call people to life in Jesus.

01:47:05

And here, William Lane Craig demonstrates with his apologetic methodology that he's willing to abandon a revelation of epistemology and just lead people to a general theism.

01:47:16

So does apologetic methodology matter? It matters a lot. Are you certain that God exists?

01:47:21

No! I love to play this. You laugh every time. More than once.

01:47:28

Okay, ready? Yeah. So the presuppositionalist argues that the only grounding for knowledge is in God as a reference point in his revelation, that it's true and we shouldn't pretend neutrality and we can't know things apart from God.

01:47:41

You can't, right? And that certainty is found in God's revelation that Jesus is truly the

01:47:47

King of the Earth and you need to repent and you need to believe. And here is William Lane Craig.

01:47:55

This was actually here, I believe, in Arizona. I think it was here in Arizona. Krauss. Talking to Lawrence Krauss, professor at ASU, atheist professor at ASU, and sorry,

01:48:06

Krauss asks William Lane Craig, are you certain that God exists?

01:48:11

And I want you to see where epistemology matters and apologetic methodology matters.

01:48:17

Here you go. Are you certain that God exists? No! Are you certain that God exists?

01:48:24

No! But Leighton said a minute ago, all these classical apologists, all these guys, they would affirm all these verses about the fool says in his heart there is no

01:48:35

God and in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And here you have an example of one of the world's leading apologists who is not presuppositional saying that he is not even certain

01:48:47

God exists. Yeah. It's just the difference between theory and application is what it comes down to.

01:48:54

That's right. I mean, when the rubber meets the road and you notice how happy Krauss is, good. Good.

01:49:00

Good. Thank you for that. Good. Presuppositional apologists would not reason in that way or make that claim.

01:49:08

Would not do so. So does it matter? It matters greatly. I think we'll stop there for today. We are going to do a bit of an after show talking about one more point with Leighton.

01:49:17

We'll just do that for our supporters and our ministry supporters to let you guys know how much we're grateful for all of you guys being a part of this ministry with us.

01:49:27

So there you go. We threw that out because we thought it'd be important for the body of Christ, not so much for the engagement of with, you know,

01:49:38

Professor Flowers and to continue that discussion, but to really engage with what you just saw, that apologetic methodology matters a great deal.

01:49:47

That's the overarching thing we wanted to communicate here is that it matters how you defend the faith.

01:49:53

It matters how you think about and how you know what you know. And so we thought this would be a benefit for you guys.

01:49:58

We are not going to extend this conversation into the future. We thought that'd be enough. We needed to make a correction and what we claimed was that Leighton will make mistakes and then when he's challenged on them, proven me wrong, he'll dig his heels and he'll make it worse.

01:50:12

And that's what he did. That's what he did. He misrepresented presuppositional apologetics.

01:50:17

He showed that he does not know this field and he's willing to speak on it even though he doesn't.

01:50:23

And so I want to thank you guys all so much for listening today. We know it was a lengthy one. We hope it's a benefit to you guys. A couple of super chats.

01:50:30

Christ or chaos. Thank you, Christ or chaos, for that blessing. Super important.

01:50:36

Leighton Flowers and Idle Killer did a video last night on infant damnation. They brought up Matthew 26 -24. It'd be better if Judas was never born in their discussion and it seemed they weren't presupposing he was human from conception but when he was born, double check that.

01:50:48

I'll see if I can take a look at that but we're probably not going to engage that conversation publicly. Aaron Perryman, thank you for that blessing.

01:50:57

I was late to the show. Not sure if you mentioned the time location for Louisville. I'm in Kentucky and plan to come.

01:51:02

My pastor is interested for our church. Do you have more info yet? Yes, Aaron, if you go to my Facebook page, you will see a link to the event itself.

01:51:13

It's limited seating. I think it's almost full so you're probably going to want to do that very quickly. It is in Shelbyville which is right outside Louisville.

01:51:21

April 16th. It is in the evening. I think it starts at 5 o 'clock. And it's at Ref Church in Shelbyville.

01:51:30

But again, the link is on my page. Definitely go to it. I'm going to be there in a week and a half. Love to see you there.

01:51:37

It is getting full fast. They just have limited space. Reform Mike, when

01:51:44

God says he does all that he pleases, how does this work in God's decree of sickness and evil? This doesn't make those things good, but that God is free.

01:51:52

Well, again, we kind of already addressed this today in the show showing how

01:51:57

God's decree works out for the good of God's people, for God's purposes, even in the midst of a fallen world.

01:52:05

You had two examples I gave earlier on about Joseph and his brothers selling them into slavery and what

01:52:11

God did there. You meant it for evil. God meant it for good. And we talk about the event of the crucifixion.

01:52:18

Same thing there. All these people did evil, but God meant it for good. It was God's predetermined plan to do that.

01:52:25

And God has a purpose. He promises in all that he does, he makes sick, he makes alive, he kills.

01:52:32

Scripture teaches that. God is the sovereign over all of creation, even a fallen sinful world, and it says in Scripture that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

01:52:43

That's the promise of God. So yes, God is even glorified in sickness. And that's, of course, the unfortunate reality of a fallen world, but God is not thwarted by it.

01:52:55

And God works together as perfect plan and purposes even in the midst of the brokenness of creation. So, great name.

01:53:07

Jeff, you sometimes talk about nominalism as in the pejorative. Is the opposite of that realism or what?

01:53:12

And is there supposed to be a balance or just whatever the opposite of nominalism? No, actually, when

01:53:18

I talk about nominalism in that context, I'm talking about people who are Christian in name only, right?

01:53:25

So you have, you know, churches that sort of like are just about the ritual. It's Christian by profession only.

01:53:32

It's just in name only. It's not in real commitment. And so what I'm really trying to chastise there is as much of what we see in the

01:53:40

West of nominalism is Christian in name only. And I think that a good example of that is what we did at the beginning of the episode today with Richard Dawkins, right?

01:53:48

Cultural, a cultural Christian, not a real believing Christian. Well, there's nominalism for you. So, I think that's it, guys.

01:53:55

Again, just a couple minutes. We're going to jump over to the After Show at Apologia Studios. Sign up for all access.

01:54:01

You guys will be able to access all of that content. We're going to engage with just one more piece over there.

01:54:10

It's actually an important one that I think will be a blessing to you guys. So, thank you guys so much for listening. Be sure to get your, be sure, if you like the discussion today on Christian apologetics, go dive headfirst into it with a

01:54:23

Bonson U account at ApologiaStudios .com. It's completely for free, and just devour everything you can on apologetics and epistemology over there.

01:54:31

Thank you guys so much. We're grateful for you. I'm the Ninja, and that's

01:54:36

Zachary Conover, Director of Communications for End Abortion Now. We'll catch you guys next week.