Presup, TAG, & the Apologetic of Jesus: A Conversation with Joel Settacase

and all sorts of topics along those lines. You can definitely check out his website and YouTube channel, the

Think Institute. I think that's what it is. He'll correct me in just a few moments. Just a couple of updates.

I have some really exciting guests coming up in the far, it's like in the far future, but I get so excited that I share it on my social media anyway, because I'm just excited about sharing it.

But I have a couple of cool guests coming up in December, all the way out in December.

I have Pastor Jeff Durbin of the Apologia Church and folks who are familiar with presuppositional apologetics and the ministry of Dr.

James White. Of course, you will most definitely be familiar with Pastor Jeff Durbin. So I'll be having

Jeff here in December. Also, let's see here.

I will also have Mark Farnham. I think it's Farnham or Farnham, something like that.

He's the author of Every Believer Confident. And it is an awesome introductory book on presuppositional apologetics.

People always ask me, how can I learn presuppositional apologetics in a very simple and straightforward way?

This book, Every Believer Confident, is an excellent book for that. And so I'm happy to have

Mark on there. That's gonna be on August 25th. Also, to be announced,

I don't have a specific date, but I'll be having Brian Auten from Apologetics 315 back on the show.

We're gonna be talking about apologetics in movies. That's gonna be a lot of fun. And I was invited, along with a bunch of other apologists, to hop on Matt Slick's channel at karm .org.

Matt Slick is the president of karm .org, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. Great website, very large website, lots of articles, a lot of information to sink your teeth in if you're wanting to learn apologetics.

But I've been invited to jump on there with a bunch of other apologists. I'm not sure, I think Anthony Rogers will be there, Dr. Tony Costa, and a few others.

I'm not sure exactly which ones, but Matt's a friend of mine, and so when he asked me, I was like, awesome. So I'll be doing that on August 23rd.

And I think, I think that's it for now. Ah, okay, wait a second.

So no date now, okay? But in September, I have locked in at least he's confirmed that he's gonna come on.

We need to lock a date in. I'm gonna be having Dr. Lane Tipton of Westminster Theological Seminary to come on to talk about his new book on Van Til, Van Til and his

Trinitarian theology. So we're gonna be talking about presuppositionalism, Van Til, and Van Til's views on the

Trinity, and things like that. So that's gonna be super awesome. Once I get the date locked in there, I will let folks know.

Just real quick, I just wanna fill people in on my health. Now, I had a kind of a scare on Friday.

Sunday was my wife and I's 12 year anniversary. And so we went to celebrate on Friday.

We went out to dinner, and I all of a sudden became very lightheaded. And I started shaking.

I literally felt like I was gonna die. And they actually had to remove me from the restaurant and put me in my van, and my wife was gonna take me home.

But I said, you know what? I wanna be safe. I've never felt this thing before. Please take me to the hospital. And so my wife took me to the hospital.

I started shaking and feeling woozy. I felt like I was gonna pass out. And they gave me fluids and all sorts of things.

It was a mess. It was terrible. And then the next day, well, they sent me home that same night.

The next day, everything started out well. I went to take my son to get a haircut.

And on our way out of the barber shop, I began to feel lightheaded again and shaky again.

So I had to sit down in a store near the area, and they had to call the paramedics. And so thankfully, all of my vitals were perfectly fine.

I guess the symptoms that I was displaying was very much in line with, and this is what the doctor said at the hospital and what the paramedic said the next day, they're very much in line with what looks like an anxiety attack.

Now, that's very odd for me because I don't ever see myself as someone who is anxious. Definitely, I have no anxiety when

I'm speaking in front of people or doing anything which requires me to be in front of people doing things. And I'm a teacher, so I'm very busy, but it's not something

I typically associate with anxiety. But I hear, I'm not an expert in this area, that it could be any number of things that can bring about an anxiety attack.

So I think I had that. So it was really, really scary. I'm just recovering. I didn't even go to work today.

I just started feeling much better in the middle of the day today. And so I would very much appreciate your prayers.

I believe that God is sovereign, even when scary things happen, right? It's those moments in our lives where we have opportunity to display our trust in Christ.

He is sovereign and he has all things under control. And so I would appreciate prayers.

And I am very thankful that I'm able to be here tonight and to continue what

I'm doing. And hopefully not just this conversation, but all of the things that we do on this channel honors and glorifies

God for years to come, God willing. So just wanted to share that with folks. Well, without further ado,

I'd like to introduce my good friend, Joel Setecase from the Think Institute. How's it going, Joel? Hey, doing great,

Eli. How are you, man? I'm doing good now. I went too hot earlier today and over the weekend, but my wife has been awesome and gave me so much support and encouragement through a scary time.

So I'm doing well now. Praise God, praise God. Yeah, that's good. Well, don't tell your wife what my dad always reminded me when

I was young, which is the Bible says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing, but you're still a thing. No, don't say that.

Okay, I won't say that, I promise. So why don't you tell folks a little bit about your ministry before we kind of jump into our discussion for today?

Yeah, sounds great. So I run the Think Institute. I'm the founder and lead teacher, and I'm a former pastor who used to defend my faith the completely wrong way until God changed my attitude and my approach.

And now I defend the faith using a three -step presuppositional method, and I know your listeners will be very familiar with that term, presuppositional, or if they're not, they're about to become very familiar with it.

And I also have the distinct privilege of being able to teach that approach to others, both at the high school level,

I teach at a local homeschool co -op here in our local area, as well as in churches and conferences, and then weekly on our podcast, which is called

Worldview Legacy. And so I would commend your listeners and invite your listeners to check out

Worldview Legacy. We've got kind of a unique spin on what we do because it's the show that helps

Christian laymen to become the worldview leaders that their families and churches need. And so we're all about helping men who, primarily men, women are invited as well, but primarily men and dads, wannabe dads, who want to pass on their faith to the younger generation and are never gonna go to seminary, but want to be able to give clear articulate answers to the questions that the world is asking and to do so in a biblical way.

That's really what we're all about. Excellent, very good. Well, guys, definitely check out his channel.

Joel's actually done a couple of debates too. If you wanna see what presuppositional apologetics looks like in an actual debate context, he's debated a few atheists, one of which was

Tom Jump, who is a well -known atheist on the interwebs. And I thought you did an excellent job in that interaction.

And I don't remember the other gentleman's name, but I remember listening to it and thinking, you did a good job, so. Thanks, man.

Yeah, well, I've actually, and man, at this point between debates and sort of like moderated debates and then informal dialogues,

I think I've had like seven or eight different encounters. Had a great one with Travis Pangburn on my show, and then a gentleman who goes by the moniker of your friendly neighborhood atheist.

He and I went back and forth like five or six times. And that was a lot of fun, but by like the five or six time, it's like, all right,

I gotta, you know, like I'm not saying anything different. Right, right.

So you find another person. Well, here's the thing for folks who might think that doing debates is useless. If you know anything about debate, you are primarily not trying to convince your interlocutor, your opponent.

Now, that'd be nice if by God's grace, the person was convinced. These sorts of debates done on a public platform is very much for the audience, people who are on the fence, people who we know

God is working on through his spirit. And of course, obviously we want our debate opponents to be saved as well, but that's not our primary audience.

We want to present a clear case for Christian theism because we know many people are watching and people are at different places.

And those sorts of discussions can be used by God in amazing ways. As Joel knows, doing apologetics, we can probably do an entire show telling stories about how people have been impacted by debates and discussions and teachings and things like that.

But without further ado, before we actually start, I do want to define some terms for us. So if you notice on the

YouTube thumbnail, it is entitled Precept Tag and the Apologetics of Jesus. I just want to kind of quickly and briefly define those terms for people who are uninitiated in presuppositional apologetics.

Now, one of the main goals of this channel is to popularize this methodology, as I do think it is biblical. I think it is powerful and contrary to our classical and evidential brothers, it is a very effective apologetic.

But of course, we don't simply go for effectiveness, we go for what we think is based upon biblical principles.

So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. So presuppositionalism, my favorite definition out of everywhere that I read the definition, more than Bonson, more than Van Til himself, my favorite definition is taken from Stephen D.

West's The Resurrection Scripture and Reformed Apologetics, a test for consistency in theology and apologetics.

And he defines presuppositionalism like this, quote, "'Presuppositionalism is a school of thought "'that attempts to bring all human thinking "'into subjection to the authority of the word of God.'"

Okay, now, methodologically, presuppositional apologetics endeavors to achieve this goal by demonstrating that all human thought that does not submit to the word of God is fallacious and untrustworthy.

So that's presuppositionalism in terms of a definition and it's presuppositionalism in terms of what it is and what it's seeking to accomplish as a methodology.

And of course, I would argue that the transcendental argument, which is typically associated with presuppositionalism is a very important part of what that looks like when it is played out in an apologetic interaction.

All right, so Joel shocked the internet with a post that he put out on Facebook.

Now, why don't you tell us a little bit about the context that led you to posting what you posted, and perhaps you can clarify what you meant, and then we can kind of jump in, maybe if there's some disagreement between you and I about the relationship between presuppositionalism and the transcendental argument, we can kind of talk about that and move on from there.

How does that sound? Yeah, that sounds great. I've also got some notes on an apologetic encounter of Jesus where I think that he uses the kind of presuppositional approach that I teach and that I advocate for.

Would it be all right if we got into that a little bit as well? Yeah, I also would like to know what do you think is the difference between the method you use, this three -step approach, and what presuppositionalism already kind of tries to set out?

I don't know if you think there's a difference. If you do think there's a difference, maybe you can hash that out for us and then we can interact a little bit. Yeah, that sounds great.

Okay. So, okay, so where do we begin? Oh, I'll talk about the post that I posted, right.

So - Why are you making the internet mad, bro? Come on, man, you're so divisive. I know, I know. The internet was so calm and placid until I posted that.

Placid, I haven't heard that word in a while. Yeah, I'm trying to bring it back. So here's what happened.

So my brother, Parker, he's my little brother, but I had to stop calling him that years ago because once he became a state wrestler in college,

I had to stop calling him my little brother because he was a beast, he was bigger than me. But he'll always be my little brother.

And he's got his own show, Parker's Pensies, definitely check that out. Very heavy on the philosophy, just excellent, excellent stuff, fascinating.

But he and I don't get to see each other as much anymore as we used to. He lives about an hour and a half away, but we still text back and forth, whether it's a

GIF or a meme or some serious apologetics discussion, philosophical discussion.

And I just texted him the other day and I don't have my phone or else, I'd look up the exact text, but I basically said, hey man,

I don't remember my exact words, Eli, but it was something along the lines of, I think I'm gonna give up on tag. Now that's typical

Sedecky's hyperbole, okay? You gotta understand how we talk to each other.

Okay. But, and he and I talked a little bit about Romans 1, what does

Romans 1 actually say and who does it say it about in terms of who is suppressing the truth and what happens to the mind and to the moral sense, the conscience, if you will, after that truth is suppressed, how far does the suppression go?

Anyway, it's a text conversation. We're not going uber deep, but we're just talking back and forth. And one of the things that I do on a semi -regular basis is

I'll get into the different Facebook groups I'm a part of and either comment, participate, engage, or just try to start conversations myself.

And so I made the heinous mistake of getting into the reformed presuppositional apologetics group and just posting that I had been thinking about this.

Like, again, using that, the Sedecky's hyperbole, I said something along the lines of, yeah, I'm thinking about giving up on tag.

One, because it's rarely effective with the uninitiated atheist or something along the, the uninitiated skeptic or non -believer, okay?

And two, now this set people off, but I stand by it. Two, I said, you don't see it in scripture.

Now, here's what I meant by that. What I meant is, and I appreciate your desire to define our terms, what

I meant is that the specific transcendental argument for God's existence, which appeals to the preconditions for intelligibility, or which talks about predication, or the transcendentals, as an argument for the existence of God, you don't see that argument in scripture.

What I was getting at, Eli, is that, look, you don't have to use a

Vantillian transcendental argument every time you go out there and defend your faith, especially if the person that you're speaking with is uninitiated.

In other words, they don't know, they've never once thought about what their grounding is for logic.

They've never once thought, they've been calling Christians irrational for years, and they've never once thought about that. And quite frankly, you're gonna have to do a lot of legwork and a lot of ground laying to get them to even understand it.

And so, I posted that, and it was like I pulled the plug out of the dam, and all the water started coming out, little by little at first.

Well, can I say something in defense of the reform to presuppositional apologetics?

Which I love those guys, don't get me wrong. Of course, no, I'm sure, it's not a crazy point.

But when you said something to the effect of the set of case hyperbole, you have to understand that when you post something on Facebook, not everyone who's reading your post will be aware of the set of case hyperbole.

Oh, for sure. You know what I'm saying? So I'm sure there were kind of like knee jerk responses, not really knowing the context and the frame of mind with which you were posting that.

So I'm pretty sure that was probably a contributing factor to maybe some of the pushback there, which

I haven't been following. I just heard a few things here and there, but I know how Facebook can be. Yeah, sure.

And I'm sure you're right, Eli. I will say some of the comments, and I think

I cleared that up in the comments. I mean, there was a pretty lengthy comment thread. But some of the comments, now this is where I started to get really perplexed, because a lot of the comments were along the lines of, there is no presuppositional apologetics without tag, specifically without the transcendental argument for God.

It's all tag. And I said, well, that's just not true. And what

I tried to do is I tried to define my terms, and I know, well, I'm interested to hear your thoughts, because we've talked a little bit about this back on the phone.

But my point was that specifically referring to the transcendentals or the preconditions of intelligibility, you don't have to refer to those explicitly every time you make a presuppositional defense.

At least I hope not, because Jesus didn't, and Jesus argued presuppositionally, as did Paul. And not once did

Jesus mention the words logic, science, morality, or predication. So I sure hope that you can argue presuppositionally without expressly appealing to those things or explaining how they presuppose

God. Yeah, so tag, that term tag, which stands for the transcendental argument for the existence of God, is thrown around very loosely.

But I do think that we need to make a distinction between tag as an argument and transcendental reasoning as a principle.

I do not think you can separate a transcendental principle from presuppositionalism, because everything we do, we reason from the principle that God is the necessary precondition.

But that said, that does not require, nor did Van Til believe that to be the case, that did not require that we had to offer, quote, a transcendental argument every time.

But we always argue according to a transcendental principle. And that is consistent with starting where the unbeliever is, having a conversation with them, and always having the background music of the

Christian worldview, and the need to be consistent with those principles, even when we talk about specific data points.

So there's a difference between giving a formal transcendental argument and talking about data points in a way that is consistent with our overall commitment to the authority of Scripture and God himself.

So regardless of what I do, if I give a formal argument, or I talk about the nature of history and whether it can be known,

I never stop using a transcendental principle, even though when I speak of history, right,

I'm not offering a transcendental argument, right? So you never stop reasoning transcendentally, but that's not the same as giving a formal argument.

So when someone says tag is not in the Bible, no presuppositionalist that I know would say that there is a

Bible verse that formally lays out the argument for tag. I think that, and I'll be quiet after this and hear your thoughts,

I think that tag is derived from biblical principles and theological teaching. So we can take, for instance, the idea of a completely sovereign

God and draw implications from a biblical doctrine of God and use this as a premise of an argument or something along those lines.

We can derive the creator -creature distinction from Genesis 1 .1, and there are apologetic applications that can be made based upon the nature of God, the nature of knowledge.

We can use the more formal language, ectypal, archetypal knowledge. You'll never use that in an actual day -to -day conversation, but there are implications there.

The biblical conception of authority as God being the ultimate, as we see that God swears by himself because he can swear by none other.

The doctrine of total depravity, the effects of sin upon the mind of man, how man distorts God's revelation, there's no neutrality, these sorts of things.

I would argue that the transcendental argument is based upon biblical principles. And in that sense, I would say it is biblical, but I would not say it's biblical in the sense that no presuppositionalist says it is.

Namely, there is a formal argument along those lines. Because basically, and I'll stop here,

I promise, we don't see cosmological arguments or teleological arguments or anything like that in the

Bible. You have principles that we can derive premises and use arguments along those lines.

So tag can be complicated, but that's all depending upon the nature of the thing under discussion, right?

Someone says, well, that's too complicated. Why don't you just use the cosmological argument? Well, use the cosmological argument, you're off running talking about potential and actual infinites, quantum physics, and all sorts of things that can get really difficult.

But as Bonson has shown, you can use the transcendental argument in very amateur ways while still maintaining that overall transcendental thrust that I think is required by the methodology.

There, I'm done. You can share your thoughts there, that's a mouthful. No, I agree with you that tag, as such, the specific transcendental argument for God is derived from scriptural principles.

And that was the one thing that I maintained in that group. I said, yeah, of course, absolutely.

Part of it could be, part of my desire to push back against some of this could be, well, one, it's because I started getting pushback.

I started, here's the thing, Eli. I started getting the kind of pushback that most of it was fine, good natured, good faith.

But then there was some pushback that was, let's just say less than optimally

Christian. I'm gonna do details, cause who cares? But, and when that kind of stuff happens,

I mean, that kind of makes me wanna fight back. Well, now I'm becoming more entrenched in my position.

But part of the reason why I wanna push back against some of this thinking is that, one,

I'm a former pastor. I ministered in the city of Chicago and in the town of Plainfield.

Yes, I've got a seminary degree, but I've never taught in seminary.

I've never taught philosophy at the university level. I'm used to working with blue collar and white collar, mostly dads who are out there trying to make an impact for the gospel in their local area.

And if I tell these guys they need to reason transcendentally, okay, Joel, I'm gonna have to translate that.

I might be able to say the same thing. But when I'm thinking about what does it mean to reason transcendentally? I'm thinking, how can

I put that in terms that the guys that I ministered to, they're not dummies. I mean, these are very well -accomplished guys.

Okay, but they're not philosophers. How can they understand it? Well, I might say something like, look, you can't abandon the

Bible to defend the Bible. You start, and I know you'd say the exact same thing. I've heard you say such things countless times.

Okay, but you start from the basis, the foundational presupposition.

I'm fine using that term, I love it. That the Bible and all that it affirms about God, the universe, and the human self are true.

And you just start with that. You figure out what the Bible says, learn how to ask great questions to uncover the underlying presuppositions and contradictions in your neighbor's worldview and position.

And then there's this very simple three -step process that I always advocate for and teach. But it's really just a matter of standing on God's word and just not wavering from the fact that everything that God affirms in scripture is true, unequivocally.

Now you have to figure out what that means. Right. Not every passage is as clear as others. The apostle Peter says that, but that's how

I think of it. If I could ask you a quick, so you have difficulty, and this is a question, you have difficulty laying out a transcendental argument to a blue -collar unbeliever?

It almost seems to me that if you understand the argument, it's just as simple as asking, hey, man, how do you make sense out of your life, man, without a maker?

I wanna hear your story. Right there is a layman's transcendental argument because I don't think he's going to give me a sufficient answer.

So at that point, I'm actually laying out in very common blue -collar way, like, dude, with all the stuff that you have going on, how do you make sense out of the world you live in?

You know? No, I think that's great. And hear him. And I think that is a transcendental argument not formally laid out.

So having difficulty seeing what you're saying, like, I don't see this, it's very difficult to communicate this, but then we change the wording to a more simple way, like, how's that different?

So when you shared your three steps, it seemed like what you're doing is basically just simplifying what the transcendental argument is anyway.

Yeah, but I think we're talking about two different things. So I was just, maybe I can, maybe, let me say this and tell me if this helps clear things a little bit.

So on the one hand, I'm talking about the guys that I'm teaching the apologetic to. Okay.

I wasn't talking about the guys that I might be meeting on the street or something like that. Okay, now, let's say, you know, let's say

I am on the street. Let's say somebody goes, Christians are immoral. Okay, well, look, we can talk about morality.

That's perfectly fine. That's one of those transcendentals or that's one of those preconditions for intelligibility.

Moral law, sure, absolutely, we can do that. And that's a very common one.

Logic, it's a little bit more hard to understand, but people can understand that, sure. Science, I mean,

I love the way Jeff Durbin talks about science, you know, talking about uniformity in nature and induction and all that.

And I will often translate those terms if I'm speaking to a non -believer. But let me give you an example of a way of using, a time that I used presuppositional apologetics, which

I don't think is Vantillion tag. Even if you might wanna say, yeah, but you were doing that in the background.

Sure, that's fine. But a couple, let's say a year and a half ago,

I was down in New Orleans. I was doing some street preaching with some guys down there. Zoe White and Declaring Truth Ministries, excellent ministry,

Zoe's a good friend. And I'm down there and I wasn't preaching at the time, but I was handing out tracts, starting up conversations with people as they walked by.

Young dude, 25 years old, comes up to me and we get to talking and this guy is great, really personable, you know, smiley, happy, just the kind of guy you wanna talk to, just a nice, cool guy.

Like you, like you. I don't know, we'll see, we'll see how this conversation goes. But he goes, he goes, we talk about Jesus.

I mean, what do you think of Jesus? He goes, I have nothing against Jesus. I just haven't been convinced that, you know, that he's

God or that I need to follow him. I'm paraphrasing. Sure. And in other words, what he was saying is he's neutral towards Jesus.

Well, all my precept alarm bells start going off because there's no neutrality, right? So, what

I did was, first I told him, I said, you know, it's interesting. You say you're neutral towards Jesus.

Can I tell you what Jesus said about that? Jesus said that whoever is not with him is against him. Whoever does not gather with him scatters.

So Jesus really didn't leave the option to be neutral. You're either with him or against him. And all of a sudden this young man, his demeanor changed and he started looking more grim and he looked right at me and he said,

I could never believe in someone who said that. Right then and there, he realized he is not neutral towards Jesus.

He had a false view of Jesus and Jesus does not allow him to be neutral towards him in that way.

So what I did was I reduced his position to absurdity because he's claiming to be neutral towards Jesus, but the very words of Jesus negate his neutrality.

Okay, so I reduced it to absurdity. We continued talking. I presented the Christian worldview and invited him to believe in Jesus.

And he walked away, not yet a believer and really with maybe a bit of a more grim outlook towards Christianity, only because he realized the demand that Jesus was making on him was much more than he had made.

So really quickly, because I haven't laid it out explicitly yet, but the three steps there are, one, reduce the, here's how

I phrase it. One, show the problem with the unbelieving position. Okay, reduce it to absurdity, if you will.

Perform a reductio ad absurdum. Two, show how the

Bible solves that problem. All right, so what you're doing there, so in a sense, you're inviting the unbeliever to walk down into your basement and take a look at your foundation after you've just shown him the crack in his.

And you're doing an internal critique on the Christian position. And then three, pivot to the gospel, or as I say, show how

Jesus solves the ultimate problem. So show the problem with his position, show how the

Bible solves that problem, and show how Jesus solves the ultimate problem. And involved in step two is often a step that not all presuppositionalists take, but I like it, which is not only show how you need the

Bible in order to make sense of the very categories, but also show how the Bible lays out the rules for those categories and doesn't violate those rules.

So someone says the God of the Bible is immoral.

Well, you're gonna show them that you need God for morality, but you're also gonna show him, whatever his objection was, you're gonna show him how

God is not actually immoral. I have a question, I have a question. I'm sorry, I'm rambling,

I'm rambling. No, no, no, you're my guest, you're my guest. So everything you just said is literally

Vantillian. Like there's nothing you said, like, so like name, if you could do me a favor, so name the step one, what was the step one?

First of all, I know it's Vantillian, but it's not. It's transcendental as well. Well, okay, well, show me how, because that's one of the reasons

I wanted to come on here is so that you could explain that to me. Okay, so step one. Step one, so what was step one again?

Step one, show the problem with his position. Okay, that's an internal critique. Correct, well, yes, yes, it's an internal critique, although the way

I typically teach it is I just refer to it as the reductio ad absurdum. That Bonson uses the same language?

Right. That's an internal critique. Yes, you're doing an internal critique of the non -Christian position first. Which is a reductio.

Yes, you're reducing it to absurdity. Which is the Proverbs 20, I think it's

Proverbs 26 principle, right? Yeah, Proverbs 26. He answered the fool according to his folly. So you're right in line with traditional

Vantillian categories, and that's actually part of the transcendental argument. So there are two steps to the transcendental argument as I see it, but you can cut it up in different ways the way you present it.

It's still - No, I add a third one. Yeah, that's fine, but even your third category is perfectly in line with Vantillian categories.

So you have an internal critique. What was the second point? So yeah, so the reductio, and then the second one is, show how the

Bible solves the problem. Okay, so that's your positive case. That's how we actually - Correct, that's your positive case.

Right. And I refer to that as the internal critique of the Christian position. And the reason I don't use the same term for both is because I teach high schoolers this, and I don't want them to get too confused.

So I say, start with the reductio, then do the internal critique of the Christian position, and then step three -

But whatever language you use, you're still using internal critique of the unbeliever. You're welcoming the unbeliever to internally critique ours.

And then I think if I remember correctly, you said pivot to the gospel. Which is shorthand, the way I actually phrase it is show how

Jesus solves the ultimate problem. Right. Which is sin, the ultimate problem is sin. By the way, spoiler alert, anyone listening, the ultimate problem is sin, and maybe

Jesus took it from you. It is, it is. But that just is Vantillian presuppositionalism.

It's exactly what Bonson showed when he had an entire chapter in, I think it's Vantill's Apologetic, where he talks about the relationship between theology apologetics and evangelism.

So those three prongs, I mean, you're right there. There's nothing you said from, at least for me, I've read

Bonson, I've read Vantill. There's nothing you said that's different, except perhaps the wording and maybe emphasis, like you've split it up in three steps instead of like, you know, two steps, answer the fool, don't answer the fool.

But you're basically giving a transcendental argument. Number one, your positive case demonstrates the exclusive truth of your own view, and your internal critique gives an illustration of the truth of your view, namely that given the unbeliever's perspective, he really doesn't have a foundation for anything.

You might not be using the language logic and transcendentals, but that, I mean, you just summed up beautifully the transcendental argument and transcendental principle.

Okay, so yeah, listen, I didn't come up with this on my own. I mean, I've been reading Vantill for years.

The thinker who's most influenced me in these terms, and along these lines rather, is

John Frame. And John Frame, as you know, was a student of Vantill, articulated things a little bit differently than Vantill, but I wrote one of my capstone papers for my master's on Frame.

And man, I just love the way John Frame thinks. I mean, like everything I read from that guy's like, oh, so good, except he's a

Presbyterian, I'm a Baptist, but hey, no one's perfect, you know? And so, and then after him would be, you know,

I mean, of course Vantill, of course Bonson, and then, you know, more modern guys,

Jeff Durbin, Seitenberg and Cade, who's my friend that I've worked with, and James White, but Francis Schaeffer as well.

And Francis Schaeffer had such, I mean, if you read John Frame talk about Francis Schaeffer, he talks about how at his heart, he's really an evangelist.

And so he's a presuppositionalist, but he doesn't formulate things quite as explicitly as Vantill.

But okay, the reason why I mention all this is this, is because the way that I present things is

I'm trying to give believers a tool to share the gospel. And to share the gospel, you have to be ready to answer any objection that comes up.

And I do think this approach can answer any objection. Eli, where I get hung up, and I think maybe where people have gotten hung up with what

I say, I'm not advocating for anything other than presuppositionalism. I just don't think you have to, all

I'm saying is I define tag as such, as an argument from the specific preconditions of intelligibility.

You can fill in that list with whatever you want. I mean, not whatever you want, but whether it's logic.

You could, intelligible experience. Sure, but specifically those transcendentals, you know, logic, moral law, the preconditions for science, that sort of thing.

You could talk about predication. That's getting a little more into the weeds, but fine. Okay, but what

I did with my friend on the street, my new friend on the street, was, you know,

I didn't say, hey, listen, man, in order to make sense of anything, in order to even have logic in the first place, or, you know, moral law, in order for there to be objective morality.

I didn't go to those transcendentals. Instead, it was a presuppositional approach.

I stepped into his worldview and showed him how it was absurd. Then I invited him into my worldview for the sake of argument. That's transcendental.

Okay, so explain. So there's literally nothing, there's nothing you're saying that's not transcendental.

But I wasn't. You're doing something that Bronson was doing in his debate with Gordon Stein.

He gave a transcendental argument. You have a formal context there. So obviously we're not going to use this in like day to day, but he emphasized one specific thing, logic.

But then in his debate against Edward Tabash, he gave a transcendental argument, but it looked different than what he gave in the

Stein debate, because his emphasis was induction. Now, if we step away from logic and induction, we can talk about any fact without using transcendental language, because we're going to communicate to someone, right?

And you're not laying it all out. Even Bonson said, we presuppose the Christian worldview, but we can only talk about one thing at a time.

So we could always buy the next cup of coffee. There's nothing wrong with sharing the little bits, what you just shared, if this is how you taught it, or this is how you use it, and then have a further conversation.

I don't always talk about transcendental categories, but my foot, so to speak, is always stepping in the category that God is my foundation.

In as much as I do that, and I ask in a generic way, hey man, I understand that, I see the world from a

Christian perspective. I know you don't share that. How do you make sense out of your perspective? I'm already now engaging in the steps of the transcendental argument, which without using the impossibility of the contrary, because I wouldn't use that in a normal conversation,

I'm still doing that without using the terminology. It seems to me that you seem that the terminology entails that, because I have to say it in this particular way of arguing, but I don't think that that's really what we're seeing maybe

Jesus doing or something like that. You're still using a transcendental principle. Everything you're saying, I'm saying yes and amen to, and I don't see any disagreement whatsoever.

Okay, so the fact that you're calling it a transcendental principle, and again, listen - I'm not calling that, that's Vantill. Right, okay, fine.

Yeah. Fantastic, and I think this is where, I don't know if you remember, but when we were on the phone the other day, you told me, you explained the difference between the transcendental argument as such versus a transcendental method or approach.

I forget which term you use, method or approach. A principle, yeah. Principle, okay. So I told you that you explained that better in like 30 seconds than,

I thought you explained it very well, I'll just say that. Well, thank you. You don't have to call me on my own show. Well, it's your show, I'm trying to, you know, we're not worthy.

How old are you, Joe? How old do you think I am? I don't know, in your mid -30s?

Oh, thank you, I'm 38, I'll be 39 soon. Okay, so I just turned 40. The reason why I ask is because you're using movie references and I feel like there's a connection because when

I use movie references to some people, it's like way over their head. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's, sure.

I was like, how old are you? He's like, whoa, wait a second. No, no, no,

I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm just curious. No, no worries, sorry. But go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah, so I'm, oh man, you threw me off.

What the heck were you talking about? That was my plan, okay. Yeah, well, it succeeded. Okay, so let me tell you, here's my point.

Someone, the fact that when you look at the way Jesus, when you look at the way, man,

I really wanna get into this example from Matthew 12. I don't know if we have time, but when you look at the way, okay, so you look at the way

Jesus defended the faith. He is, obviously, he's starting from the presupposition that God's word is always true, of course.

And if that's all we're saying, then there is no issue here whatsoever.

Sure, okay. But if you look at the way Jesus defended the truth, and let me tell you what, let me just get into the example here.

This is Matthew 12, one through 14, okay? Fine if we hop into it? Of course, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so what's going on in this passage? After Jesus heals a man who's been oppressed by a demon, Pharisees accuse him of operating by Satan's power.

Jesus then exposes their absurdity and turns their accusation around on them.

He then reveals his Messianic identity and gives the Pharisees an ultimatum. All right, so basically what's going on here, exorcisms were extremely rare in the

Old Testament period, but it was expected that when the Messiah came, at least this is the idea, when the

Messiah came, he would be like David and be able to exorcise demons.

David played his harp, exercised Saul's demon, which of course came back because, hey, David's not

Jesus, okay? What do you want from him? Okay, you can exercise it for a short period of time. Jesus can just say, leave, and then

David has to get his instrument out. Which demon is this? I think I need a guitar. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

He tried it with the accordion, that just brought more demons. So that was no good. But so Jesus heals this person who is demon -possessed and the

Pharisees accuse him of being fueled by Beelzebul.

Beelzebul is a name derived from Baal or Baal. Baal is the pagan

God worshiped by the Canaanites, the enemies of ancient Israel. It means master of the house.

So that's Beelzebul. And it's come at this point to be a euphemism for Satan. And so they're accusing

Jesus of being fueled by Satan. When Jesus does something good, they accuse him of being evil. All right, oldest trick in the book.

It's still going on today, by the way. We can get into that another time maybe. But so what does Jesus do?

Here's his three steps. Step one, he begins by stating a principle that they agree with.

Every kingdom divided against itself is headed for destruction. I have to stop right there. When you just use that word, the words, he started with something that they agreed with.

That right there is, that's a form of transcendental argument because transcendental argument starts with an agreed upon fact by both parties.

And then we ask, what are the preconditions? Now, Jesus wouldn't use that language, right? He doesn't, but he doesn't.

Okay, okay. But he demonstrates the foolishness and self -reputational nature of, right, that's literally the transcendental argument.

That's what I'm calling presuppositionalism. But I'm not, but Jesus doesn't go to the preconditions of intelligibility.

He's not going down to the substrate of human experience. He's not, you know what I'm saying?

He's using the transcendental principle, which you're just calling presuppositionalism, but I'm just saying that just is transcendental principles.

Right, and that's, and I'm afraid this whole thing boils down to just we're using different terms.

I think that's what it is. And, but the fact that you're willing to say it's a transcendental principle without calling it tag necessarily, unless I misunderstand you.

Well, no transcend, no presuppositionalist worth his salt would call applications of the transcendental principle a transcendental argument.

That, I mean, they wouldn't say that, but again, we're always functioning in transcendental categories.

Let me read you a quote. You mind if I read you a quote? No, no, I don't, but I'm gonna need you to define the word transcendental because maybe that's where I'm getting hung up or maybe that's where others are getting hung up.

Maybe that's where you're getting hung up, Elon Musk. Well, it's always arguing along with the framework in mind that God is the one who gives meaning to everything that we're doing.

And that in our disagreement with the unbeliever, that fact is illustrated, namely that there's a disagreement and that God is required to make sense out of the disagreement.

Now, how we apply that to specific data points is gonna depend on the nature of the conversation. If I'm debating an atheist on YouTube, I might use logic, something more intellectually rigorous.

If I'm talking to a guy on the street, I might use a specific application of say like a moral argument, which is transcendental, right?

Morality is, but again - It's a transcendental principle.

Yes, so when I hear transcendental, I'm thinking of those principles that transcend material reality, that are true in all possible worlds.

That's where we're disagreeing. So yes, that's the way what transcendental could be understood. I'm thinking in terms of what a transcendental argument seeks to do.

The principles upon which that's based is seen in everything you're saying. So a transcendental argument in general, if I can use kind of the technical terminology, goes something like this.

X is a necessary condition for the possibility of Y, where then given that Y is the case, it logically follows that X must be the case too.

So what you just said, Jesus started with a principle they agreed with. There we go,

X, right? So X, or I'm sorry, Y. X is the necessary precondition for the

Y. So we demonstrate the truth of Y by showing that X doesn't make sense without Y.

Now that's all kind of formal logic there, but the principle plays out in conversation, in every point that you laid out.

So whether we're talking about, and Jesus is appealing to evidences or anything like that, he never does so without using the principle behind it, even though no presuppositions would argue

Jesus is using a formal argument. But he understands the interconnectedness of everything he's saying.

I wanted to read this quote that I thought was interesting. Quote, this is what the quote says. "'When one gives up Christian belief, "'one thereby deprives oneself "'of the right to Christian morality,' for example.

"'Christianity is a system, "'a consistently thought out and complete view of things. "'If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, "'the belief in God, for example, "'one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces.

"'One has nothing of any consequence left in one's hands. "'Christian morality is a command.

"'Its origin is transcendental. "'It possesses truth only if God is truth. "'It stands or falls with belief in God.'"

Guess who said that quote? Well, John Frame.

No, Friedrich Nietzsche. Really? He understood that we can talk about, this is

Friedrich Nietzsche. It's a quote in Cornelius Plantinga Jr.'s Engaging God's World, A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living.

Even Friedrich Nietzsche understood that you take morality, you take any aspect of a system, right?

And you remove it from that system, that's it. The whole Christian worldview is an interconnected system.

And when we talk about one, we're always talking about it in the context of that only has meaning given the system.

Now, when I talk to people, right? I'm not using the tag argument, but the principle is always in play given the very nature of the

Christian worldview as a system. So I'm never leaving a transcendental principle, although I may not be using a transcendental argument.

But go ahead. Okay, so morality, again, though, is one of those transcendent realities.

It's wrong to murder in all possible worlds. Murder by definition is wrong. Okay, so there's no possible world in which murder is right.

So maybe you're just gonna say this is a transcendental principle, that's fine.

What Jesus does, though, in Matthew 12, he starts by stating the principle, okay?

Jesus is not making an argument for morality or a logic or any immaterial transcendent truth.

I'm not saying he's not being logical, Eli. I'm not saying he's not being moral. Okay, what I'm saying is he's not holding up morality and saying for morality to be a thing, for this to be a meaningful category,

X must be true. God's word must be true, I must be Messiah. Here's what he, okay, so what he's doing, he states the principle and let me see if I can somehow get my train of thought back there.

This has been really good, but it's also distracting. So I'm gonna try to gather it.

While you're looking for it, I just wanna tell the audience, if you guys have any questions, we are coming up to the top of the hour soon, so we'll start taking questions if there are any, but please preface your question with question and we'll take a few of them.

If folks looked at the thumbnail a while back and the time said 9 p .m., because of my situation over the weekend,

I kind of made it earlier so that we could end earlier and I can get a good night's sleep so I can get to work. So we're coming up to the end here soon, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask away, whether it's for myself or Joel, or you want us to both interact with something, we'll try our best, but just wanted to throw that out there.

If there are no questions, that's fine as well. Go ahead, Joel. Okay, so here's what Jesus does. So they're accusing him of working for Satan and they're basically saying we've uncovered

Satan's evil plot. Satan's evil plot is he's going around casting out demons through this guy, through Jesus, in order to win converts for Satan, essentially.

This is Satan's nefarious plot. Look how he's using this guy who's this false claimant to the Messiah ship.

All right, so what Jesus does is he goes, look, a house divided against itself, it can't stand.

In other words, one, what does that mean?

That means either, I'm clearly, obviously not working for Satan because Satan wouldn't work against himself.

Satan wouldn't do the very thing that would cause his house to collapse. You don't believe that about Satan, you dummies.

You don't, that's my paraphrase. You don't believe that Satan would actively oppose himself.

In fact, that your whole accusation is look how wily and crafty this

Satan is. He's trying to trick us. Well, if Satan's working against himself, then

Satan is an idiot. And that goes against your entire argument. There's an internal consistency here.

You can have it where I'm working for Satan and Satan is therefore impotent and stupid, or you can accept the obvious truth that I'm clearly not working for Satan.

Those are your options. But either way, I'm not a threat to you. Either way, I'm not actually serving the enemy.

So is he doing apologetics at that point or is he just trying to clarify their own misunderstanding? No, I think he's reducing their position to absurdity.

He's showing them that they are absurd for believing it. Again, I think this is step one of his approach.

But see what I, so what I'm trying to figure out is how does that fit into the transcendental scheme or the -

It's at the heart of the scheme. Okay, but he's reducing it to absurdity, but what is the transcendent category or what is the -

The categories can be - What is the immaterial principle? They're not explicitly stated, but it's the unspoken framework with which these

Pharisees are coming at Jesus that are being reduced to absurdity, namely the proposition in their mind that Jesus isn't who he says he is.

Right. So they have a gap in their worldview and Jesus responding to their view, showing that it's absurdity, is kind of a way of showing, hey, the reason why you don't make sense is because you're not seeing me in the proper light.

Namely, the light of scripture. And then you see in other places where Jesus says that you believe Moses, but Moses wrote about me, right?

So I don't, again, I don't think it's explicit per se, but I think the principle is still there.

I think the difference that we're having is that when you say TAG is different than presuppositionalism,

I'm just thinking, okay, but presuppositionalism is just a transcendental principle applied to unbelief.

It's not a transcendental argument. The way it can come out and be formulated, it can be formulated as a formal argument, but we're always reasoning in accordance with a transcendental principle.

And I would agree, Jesus is using a reductio at that point, which again, is very consistent with presuppositionalism.

I love the book. I don't know if you've ever read the book by Norman Geisler. Sorry, I have to quote

Norman Geisler. He was not very friendly to presuppositionalism. He's lost half your subscribers. However, I do think he wrote a very good book entitled

The Apologetic of Jesus. And while I disagree with his conclusions and how he interprets what

Jesus is doing, I do think he did an excellent job highlighting some of the kinds of apologetic elements that Jesus would use.

For example, Jesus used the use of testimony. He used the miracles as an apologetic.

He used his own resurrection, parables to prove a point or argue a point through his various discourses, the appeal to prophecy and various forms of argumentation, which

Joel mentioned in Matthew where he's showing a reductio there, okay? All of this is completely consistent with presuppositionalism, and I would argue is just a multifaceted application to the general principle, which

Vantill would agree with, Bonson would agree with. It's the difference, for example, Joel, between someone says, well, do we have to use presuppositional arguments or can we use evidences also?

People make that mistake. When I use evidences, when Jesus uses prophecy, discourse, parables, miracles, resurrection, he does so in a way that is fully consistent with a

Vantillian method. So that's all I'm saying. So there literally may be no difference between what you say and what

I say here, Eli, because if you call this what I'm, again,

I'll just sort of repeat my method. If you call this transcendental argumentation, then there's no space between our positions.

We just use different terms. I would say you're using the transcendental principle without using a formal argument in your generic day -to -day communication, which is perfectly fine.

I think that's probably where we mostly will have to be when we're talking at kind of like the evangelism level.

So I want to tell my audience, there's a difference between the way they see presuppositionalism used here on YouTube, right?

Like we talk to people who are kind of on the same wavelength. This is gonna look very different when we talk to the man on the street, the blue collar guy that you spoke about, whether we're teaching it to blue collar

Christians or sharing it with blue collar pagans. That's right. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. So if all it is is you are, well, what

I always tell people is that you really just need two skills to defend your faith.

That's it. The first skill is you need to know how to ask good questions. And the list of questions isn't even really that long.

What do you mean by that? How'd you come to believe that? By what standard? Questions like that. Okay, is that always true?

That sort of thing. And - Frank Turek comes in. I love his intro in his podcast.

If someone says there's no truth, you ask them, is that true? I love it. It's like echoes in my ears.

That's good. You got Norm Geisler and Frank Turek, man. So this is what I like about your show.

We're all inclusive here, even though we have strong disagreements. It's all right. That's right. So, you know, man, where was

I? Yeah, so ask the right questions. And then really just know what the Bible teaches.

If you know what the Bible teaches about a few key areas, and the first person I actually heard that from, you know who it was? Votie Bauckham.

I heard an apologetics talk from Votie Bauckham years ago. And he said, if you just know what the

Bible teaches about like six key areas, you'll be fine. You can defend your faith. And so, you know,

I've got three that I typically share when I teach apologetics. But one is the nature of scripture,

I think. No, science, morality, and then the true gospel. Those are the three areas where I get the most amount of questions.

And then there are other secondary levels there as well, secondary topics as well. But if you can ask the right questions, then you know what the

Bible teaches. Well, that's step one and step two. Because ask the right questions and you will uncover the internal inconsistency.

That's all I'm saying. If you want to call that transcendental principle, that's fine. And it's a principle, and it's actually part of the argument when we formalize it.

So like - That's correct. That's correct, yeah. It is. So it's just the way that I view this particular school of apologetics, which

I think is the right one, I think is the most biblical. I just view it broader than what...

And look, it could be possible that I was misunderstanding every single person who articulated something like this.

That's very possible. But it seemed to me like there were many people who are advocating for a form of apologetic that only addresses those big

T transcendentals, those immaterial principles that, yes, absolutely presuppose

God, and I'm perfectly fine using them. But what I'm saying is when you address logic, when you address morality, when you address the preconditions for science, you are using tag proper, tag as such, which is a form of presuppositional argumentation.

That's... And I think that our terms just don't line up, but would you pretty much agree with everything I'm saying? I'll just say this. If I was standing behind you and saw you use your three points, you'd see me with cheerleading pom -poms.

I'd be like, go, Joel! You'd be like, go, Joel! Joel, Joel, hey, hey, he's gonna help us win today.

I'll have a whole cheering thing for you. Because everything you're saying is, whether you don't see the connection or not, or maybe you're kind of like, oh, maybe it doesn't make a little sense, or, eh,

I still think it's a little different. The way you're saying it is precisely how I would say, go for it.

And that's not the difference. What you're saying is not the difference between, say, Bonson and Frame. The differences between Bonson and Frame are on a different level.

But I would agree with you, actually. John Frame is a better articulator of the method, even though there's some differences in Frame, than Van Til.

Now, is he a better articulator than Bonson? Eh, I'm not so sure. But I love John Frame, and I highly recommend people check out his books.

And I have a bunch of them here. Me too. I'm surprised what's in my library. I'm actually a big fan of Gordon Clark, even though I'm not a

Clarkian. People are gonna throw something at the screen. I was a Clarkian for a short while. I think most presuppositionalists, who are kind of introduced, they'll be like, oh, yeah, a

Clarkian. And then they find a Bonson debate or a Van Til lecture or book, and then they switch over. But there are not many

Clarkians running around today. But Joel, I encourage you, man, keep doing what you're doing, despite kind of maybe a semantical difference that we're having here or whatever.

I think what you're doing is excellent. I've seen, and I highly recommend people who are listening, I've seen

Joel debate. He does an excellent job arguing presuppositionally, and I would say transcendentally.

Well, you would say that. And I think he does it very effectively. So regardless of kind of the disagreements over the language and things like that, he is an excellent apologist, and I really do think you guys should support what he's doing.

So I highly recommend you guys go over there to the Think Institute and the podcast. Worldview Legacy.

Worldview Legacy, which is on iTunes, right? It's on just about everything. So wherever people, if you're on YouTube right now, you can get it on YouTube.

If you're listening later on, on your favorite podcast app, it's probably on that app as well. Right. So my final words for you,

Joel, and which is a positive, what you're doing in your three -step approach is one,

Vantillian, but the way you express it, you're doing something that many

Vantillians don't do, is you are using more simplified language to argue those points.

And that's, in my opinion, that's what we need. We can't stay in our ivory towers talking about transcendental categories and transcendental arguments and transcendental principles when there are people going to hell and need to hear the gospel.

And I think the way you communicate and teach, it has a beautiful simplicity to it that an average person can be like, yeah,

I can do that. That makes sense once you lay it out. So I think you're an excellent teacher. I think you are very good at bringing things down to the lower shelf without actually diluting what you're trying to say.

And I wanna encourage you in that. Hey, I appreciate that big time, especially coming from you. And I'm gonna blow some more smoke your way because I have learned,

I've called you before some of these debates that I've done and been like, Eli, help me remember this.

How do I articulate this again? And you have walked me through the process. And so I've learned a ton from you, brother.

And you know what else? I know we're gonna get to questions here and I'm fine on time. But the last time

I was on your show, I think it was last year, maybe last summer, but we talked about precept for the kiddos.

And I have to tell you, I don't know if I've ever told you this, prepping for that discussion set me on a course that would eventually actually very helpfully define the direction of the

Think Institute. Because we started focusing more on families and on especially with fathers leading their families in articulating and being able to answer the questions about the biblical worldview.

And there was several impetuses for that, but one of the major hinges was, or whatever launch points was coming on your show.

So that conversation was really, really good. I don't know what your audience thought of it, but I loved it. I thought it was great.

And I thought it was a topic that needed to be done. One of the questions that I get more than any question is when are you coming out with a presuppositional apologetics workbook for teenagers or like young people?

And I'm just like, I don't have time. I wish I could. So if someone wants to write it, I totally would buy it and promote it.

Can I jump in here and make a quick plug? Because you're setting me up.

I got to knock this out of the park. I am almost done with my apologetics curriculum for eighth through 12th graders.

Nice. I've been teaching it at the homeschool co -op where I've been teaching for the last year. And if I dare say this, the students have loved it.

I mean, I've never gotten such positive feedback, I think on any work in ministry that I've done more so than this, using this curriculum.

So that's going to be coming out, Lord willing, very, very soon. I'm talking with a publisher. I haven't quite decided fully on the route that we're going to go yet, but it's very, very close.

It's like 27 lessons, 28 lessons, laying out the method in very simple terms that an eighth grader can understand and apply and get excited about.

And then going through several different objections that people are going to hear on the street or from their classmates.

So yeah, it's coming. I'll have you back on and we can talk about the book and that'll be a blessing,

I'm sure. Speaking of middle school, I actually teach sixth grade Bible and eighth grade logic. And of course

I do it from a very apologetic bent. And I have this Bible box my wife has made out of a shoe box,

Bible questions. And so the thing is filled to the brim and they're all anonymous. I figured, you know what would be great to do as an episode is to go through some of these questions so that people can see what sixth graders and eighth graders ask about the

Bible and theology. So I might just do it blind. I might bring the box, take out the thing and just read the question and kind of interact so people can see what kind of questions are young people asking.

And maybe there's some kind of precept application to how those questions could be answered. So stay tuned for that. I'll do that in the near future.

I'm sure that'll be a lot of fun, but let's move to the questions real quick and we'll take a few. I can't stay up too much longer, but I'd like to thank you so much.

This has been a great conversation. So let's see here. I'm only gonna go to the ones that have emphasized that it is a question that they have.

Let's see here. I don't do a very, I'm not very tech savvy.

So I have to like literally just scroll down until I see something. Okay, let's see here.

No, that's a statement. Okay, I don't see questions. Let's see. Oh, here we go.

Okay. So Sid, thank you so much for your question. Sid is asking, Joel, what are your thoughts on reformed scholastics since they are a divination from precept, more classical?

I don't know what they mean by divination, but. That can't be, that's gotta be maybe derivation.

Oh, yes. Maybe. Yeah, divination sounds like you're conjuring up.

Like, come on, Sid. Here you are. Hagen, we need to pray for you. Everyone. We don't do. I want you to call the number on the bottom of the screen,

Sid. All right. And we will send you two bottles of anointing oil that you will rub. And I'm just kidding. Yes.

Go ahead. If you understand the question, you can go for it there. I would be guessing.

I would absolutely be guessing. The reformed scholastics. I mean, I'm familiar with that term.

I'm familiar with the tradition of scholasticism that came out of the Reformation. I do not know what they said about apologetics.

I mean, now my mind is sort of cycling through the different things that I've learned about that. Deviating? Maybe they're a deviation from precept.

Deviation. Right. So maybe, yeah. I would say that the reformed scholastics were not precept in any formal way.

You do see hints of precept throughout church history, but I think Van Til really was the first to latch onto these principles and say, wait a minute, there's a lot of good stuff throughout church history, but they've gone wrong here and see, this is where we can do it more consistently with scripture.

So if that's the question they're asking, yeah, I think, my thoughts at least,

I'd be critical of the reformed scholastics in as much as they allow for autonomy and neutral categories to sneak into their methodology.

Yeah, and Van Til addresses, it's not the reformed scholastics, but he addresses that way of doing apologetics, which was very common in his day and in the previous century.

In his book, Christian Theistic Evidences, which I'm only about halfway through, but man, he just, he just, excori, he just lays into, is it

Butler? Who's the guy that he just lays into? It's Butler, yeah. Yeah. He's the evidentialist guy. Yes.

And that way of thinking was so common back then as it is today, because we love autonomy.

We human beings think that we are autonomous. That's our default and we're not.

And so, yeah, insofar that the reformed scholastics strayed in that direction,

I would be against it. I will say, I did write, and the other one of my capstone papers on Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Edwards had, his approach to apologetics was really,

I mean, it wasn't reformed, it wasn't Vantillian necessarily, but you can tell that there's maybe some shadows of Vantill in Jonathan Edwards.

There are elements of presuppositionalism in a lot of, when I had Doug Wilson on a while back,

I loved what he said about C .S. Lewis who, he said, well, C .S. Lewis is not typically understood as a presuppositionalist, but you can see seeds of it in his thought.

He says, when atheists were behaving, C .S. Lewis is more evidential, but when the atheists were misbehaving, he was very presuppositional.

You can't even make sense out of morality of this. So it really depends. You could see seeds of it, definitely.

All right, let's move on to another question here. Thanks, Sid. Sean, okay, so is a reductio argument enough to give justified true belief, in particular, the justified part of justified true belief?

I wanna hear your thoughts on that, Joel, but I'll answer it since it's addressed to me. A reductio argument is just seeking to show the absurdity of a person's assertion.

So it's not meant to provide a justification of knowledge. It's just trying to show that, given what the unbeliever's saying or the other person's saying, they've refuted themselves.

Their position's reduced to absurdity. So I think your question, I mean this respectfully, your question doesn't make sense in that a reductio argument is not trying to be enough to provide justified true belief.

It's trying to show that a belief is actually false because it's absurd. Is that how you understand it,

Joel? Yeah, 100%. When I first read it, I'm like, oh, is that what a reductio is supposed to do?

But yeah, if you think, and I very rarely will talk about a justified true belief. I tend to kind of follow

Alvin Plantinga and talk about warrant rather than justification. And so if you think about what gives a belief warrant, you think about, well, you've gotta have properly functioning, truth -seeking faculties.

Your mind is working, your eyes are not deceiving you, your ears are not deceiving you. You've got truth -seeking faculties that are working properly, and you're functioning in a propitious environment, an advantageous environment for truth -seeking.

And so, I'm not a Plantingan, a reformed epistemologist.

Plantingian. Plantingian. Come on, bro, get it right. I'm just kidding. Well, it shows you how much I interact with Plantinga.

But what we're doing with, if you take the reductio and then you add in, as I describe it as the internal critique of the, or the positive case for Christianity, that's fine.

Then what you're doing is you're showing them that it's, that you, that his belief, he doesn't have the warrant for his belief,

I think, or he doesn't have the justification. And that by making the positive case for Christianity, that the

Christian position is warranted. As a matter of fact, you can't even make sense out of the argument without the

Christian belief being true. Yeah, whatever. I'm fine with that. I know that. Don't give me the eyebrow,

Eli. I know what I'm saying. I know what I'm talking about. I'm not anti pre -sup or anti -Catholic. I'm just kidding.

I was doing it on purpose. I'm just trying to bring it down. I'm not anti that. Okay, so real quick, if you guys haven't, if there are people listening to this and haven't subscribed to Revealed Apologetics, you need to click the subscribe button.

That helps me out a lot. A lot of these episodes go straight on iTunes as well. So it's super helpful if you do a nice review, a sentence or two, like, hey, this show's really awesome.

Or, hey, this show is really terrible. Whatever you want to put, it is helpful. So I would appreciate it if you guys could do any of those two things.

Also, if you could head over to Joel's channel as well, the Think Institute and the podcast. What was the podcast one more time?

Worldview Legacy. Worldview Legacy. All right, Joel, here's a curve ball for you. A question, how do you defend our worldview against a deist that doesn't necessarily disagree with the

Christian worldview but he likes to believe in a God he created in his mind based on what he sees in nature?

Go ahead, refute deism. All right, so I like the founding fathers, but I would take issue with many of them here.

Okay, so the first question that I would have is, so you made up this deist

God. Why? Who gives you the authority to just decide what God is like?

Did you get that from somewhere? Was it revealed to you? Is it what you've ascertained through looking at science?

The world seems like a clock that's been wound up and then abandoned. And if so, I would say, well, that's not what

I see when I look at nature. So who's to arbitrate between the two of us? In other words, who gives you the right to come up with your own religion?

And unless this guy is claiming to be a prophet from this deist God or something like that, which

I think we could pretty easily refute, scripture gives us categories or criteria for what makes a true prophet.

You know, you just say, well, who gave you the right to come up with your own religion? Now, if he's advocating for some sort of like actual, like what would you call it?

Like a monistic or a Unitarian monotheism or something like that, you know, where it's like, well, it's not the triune

God of scripture. That's where you might need to get a little more technical. I'm actually, I've been thinking a lot lately.

I haven't been working on it explicitly lately, but sort of on the back burner. And that is an argument from logic that shows why logic requires a specifically triune

God. As you say, Eli, the triune God of scripture. Logic itself requires, and I've made this argument before in different like AMAs that I've done.

But again, now, if we're gonna get into the weeds, this is where I would get very transcendental as I'm defining it and say, look, logic itself requires the specific triune

God of scripture. If you're just gonna start with sort of some sort of bare deism,

I would say, what's your authority for coming up with that religion? And then all

I can say is, look, you've come up with your own religion on the very same, on the same level of authority that you've come up with that,

I reject it out of hand by fiat. I reject your God. What are you gonna do now? What are you gonna say? No, you can't.

On whose authority? You came up with it out of whole cloth. I reject it, period. So thankfully the

Christian worldview, then I would go into the Christian worldview and say, well, the Christian worldview is based on, it's not just based on my own opinion and precious feelings.

It's based on the revelation of God. And we could get into how the revelation of God is self -authenticating and how you need it to make sense of anything else.

Yeah, and so the question is, how do you defend our worldview against a deist that doesn't necessarily disagree with the Christian worldview?

He does. Oh, that's right. Oh, yeah. He does disagree with the Christian worldview and you need to point out that he's like,

I don't really disagree with it, but, and then his but is gonna lay out everything that is actually in conflict with the

Christian worldview system, right? Sometimes I don't agree with the Christian worldview, but I wanna believe this other thing.

And this other thing that they say they wanna believe in is actually in conflict with the Christian worldview system. That's right. You gotta show that he's actually not, he actually is disagreeing.

You want to, as Van Til told Bonson in a personal correspondence once, he said that, Greg, you always need to remember to push the antithesis.

Right in this statement here, there is a blurring of the antithesis with the apparent agreement of the

Christian worldview, but in reality, the very next sentence that talks about him liking to believe in a

God he created in his mind based on what he sees in nature is antithetical to the Christian worldview system.

And so you want to push that disagreement so that person cannot have a safe space, so to speak, in thinking that there is this general agreement, so let's move on from there.

There isn't an agreement and you need to press that fact. That's how I would address that as well as what

Joel said as well. But by what authority, I don't know if he was doing it on purpose to stay away from the popular phraseology, but one might say, by what standard?

That's still a fair phrase to use. I still use it there too, so I'm just messing around.

All right, here's a comment from the Urban Reformed Apologist. This is Ricky Roldan from the

Reformed Presuppositional Apologetics Facebook group. He says, I would agree with that, even despite our kind of disagreement on what that looks like.

I still think you're doing an excellent job simplifying it for folks, the everyday person, and that's what we really want to do.

Praise God. And one of the things I appreciate about a lot of the well -known presuppositionalists is that they're also churchmen.

Bonson was a pastor. Van Til also pastored for a while. This stuff needs to be brought to the average believer so that we can bring it to the average person.

We can't just always stay on the internet debating about it, so I think that's an important thing. Peter W.

says, That sounds like it might be addressed towards you.

I don't know. Well, I have some thoughts, but you're my guest. Sure, okay. Unless you want me to give my thoughts and you share afterwards, that's fine as well.

No, I'm happy to address it. So this is where I draw heavily on John Frame, and the first thing you have to do is let's reduce this down, the problem of evil.

What is evil exactly? What ultimate standard of good is evil negating or is evil the absence of?

And that's gonna expose the vacuity or emptiness of, you gotta be careful with this argument.

Let me just back up a second. If someone is asking why their grandma just died, man, put your arm around him and tell him you love him and that you're praying for him, and can

I tell you about the hope I have in Jesus? You know, can I walk with you through this and can I share with you how

God has been with me when my son got cancer, when my wife got cancer, when my other son got MRSA, when my son needed a heart transplant?

Can I walk with you through this? And I'm gonna share how Jesus comforted me and how

Jesus has given me hope through the darkest times of my life. Can we do that? Because that's a legit answer if someone is really asking this from a deep place of existential dread.

Okay, but if we're just talking philosophical, how could a good God allow evil? Okay. Well, we're gonna have to define evil and evil is meaningless apart from an absolute, universal, immaterial, knowable standard of goodness.

It has to be a knowable standard. It can't just be one that is out there somewhere that's inaccessible to us.

It has to be one that we all have access to. And that is the kind of standard that you can't get, I believe, from any system apart from Christianity.

Now, again, if someone posits some other system, then we'll have to deal with that particular system and the flaws in it by asking good questions.

But now let's make the positive case from Christianity. Let's submit Christianity to an internal critique.

And this is where I draw on John Frame and Greg Bonson. Yes, I'm eclectic too. I like to bring the different soldiers together to form one army.

Yeah, I love Frame. Yeah. Oh, no, I know, I know, but those two didn't agree on everything. Sure. But okay, so on the one hand, you've got

Romans 9 .20. Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?

Shall the clay say to the potter, why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some vessels for noble use and some nobles for ignoble use, or whatever the word is?

You know what John Frame calls this? He calls it the shut up defense. And I love that because it's like,

I think Doug Wilson says, shut up, he explained. You know. So, and I think

Frame says it that way as well. But that's good because it puts things in perspective. Look, who are you? Are you

God? Do you have any, God could explain this to you and your head would explode. Your little pea brain would break if God tried to explain to you the reason here.

You're clay, he's potter, you don't question God. That's one. The second perspective on it is this.

It's Romans 8, 28 through 39, which says that God works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

God uses evil for good. Genesis 50, 20. What you meant for evil,

God meant for good. Not God used for good, God meant it for good. It's the same verb.

God is the perfect author so that he gives the characters in his story, the ability to do evil.

And it turns out that God intended that for a good outcome all along. The gospel is the ultimate example of that. The worst thing that ever happened is the innocent son of God was crucified like a murderer and bled and was tortured mercilessly.

And that turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened because that's how Jesus saved the world. So we can deal with the, we call this the greater good defense.

God uses evil for greater good. And then the third one is God is with you in your suffering.

Now, this is a special promise for believers, those who have been born again, those who are regenerated and given the

Holy Spirit from God. And this is where I can get very personal and I can talk about the things that I just alluded to where God has been with me in my life.

And this is where I would make, this is a very easy transition to saying, you know what? There's sin in the world.

There's suffering in the world. We live in a world that it's the exact way that the Bible describes it.

There's a lot of suffering and that suffering is ultimately due to sin. And you know what? We have the remedy for sin.

You wanna know what it is? 2000 years ago, a man named Jesus Christ died for the sins of people like you and me. Would you like to know him?

Would you like to know the eternal life and the peace that he offers you right now? It's a very, it's just a natural transition to go into a gospel invitation.

So that's how I answer it. It's a little long winded. I probably, if I didn't have that much time on the street, I wouldn't say all that, but. No worries.

No, that was excellent. And we also need to, just from a logical perspective, there's not just one problem of, there is not one problem of evil argument.

There are multiple problem of evil arguments. There are a couple of things you could say. There is no problem of evil given

Christian theism because on Christian theism, right? Someone says, you know, Christian theism has a problem of evil.

That's an external critique, not an internal one in which you hypothetically grant the truth of the Christian worldview and then try to show that evil is a problem given the truth of Christianity.

Now, given the truth of the Christian worldview, there is no problem of evil. God has morally sufficient reasons for the evil that he allows.

That's it. From a logical perspective, that might not be satisfying to someone, but the very fact that it's even remotely possible, it follows that there's no logical contradiction.

So we wanna make a distinction between logical problems of evil, which tries to show that there is a logical incoherency between the existence of the

Christian God and evil and emotional arguments, which have no bearing on the truth or falsity of a position, but they're kind of just showing, you know, like this is a huge emotional problem.

How do you surmount this? Well, from a Christian perspective, it really doesn't matter how one might go about doing that.

It's irrelevant to the truth of Christian theism. So again, any number of ways to respond to that argument.

I think Joel did a good job there. Let's see, we'll take a few more and then we will end the stream here.

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I don't know if I skipped anything. Eli, have you had a conversation with a reformed

Thomist on apologetics? That's a random question. And have you noticed that they argue from neutrality yet deny it because most of them adhere to the

Westminster Confession of Faith? I have. How do you break through that barrier? Joel can answer too. It was a deviation, not divination.

Sorry, must repent. Apology. That's awesome. I have not had a specific conversation with a reformed

Thomist. All I would say, here's the thing. When Van Til accused classical apologists of the reformed flavor of allowing for autonomy and neutrality in their apologetic methodology, he was not saying that these people knowingly did so.

You had people who were reformed, who wanted to be consistent, who sought to be consistent, but did not.

Somewhere in their methodology, Van Til says a skunk has snuck into your house.

And so in his writings, he tried to point out, hey, you're doing great work, but there's this thing that you're allowing into your method, i .e.

autonomy and neutrality that you need to expel, right? So there are many reformed Thomists who will say, hey,

I affirm the Westminster Confession of Faith and look, I can do apologetics the way that I'm doing and I don't believe in neutrality,

I don't believe in autonomy. Then we need to just say, like Bonson said, right? Name that tune. Let me hear you defend the faith.

And we can examine whether or not their methodology allows for these categories that we think are very inconsistent with the

Westminster Confession of Faith and with a presuppositional approach. And of course, whether it's consistent with scriptural principles, most importantly.

So how do you break that barrier? Is loving, gentle, patient conversation, not having a faction mind, especially between Christians over these, like how to defend the faith.

Why are we like screaming at each other? Like, why can't we just be like, dude, I kind of disagree. Like, let's kind of brainstorm and talk about it.

We can't do that. The internet, people don't know how to do that. You need to step away from that mindset and just learn to have a conversation and be okay that by the end of the conversation, the reformed

Thomist says, no, I still disagree with you. I'll be like, well, Lord be with you. May he bless both of our attempts to do what he's called us to do.

And we stick by our convictions. They stick by their convictions and we both will be held accountable before God.

Why do we need to drag debates out on Facebook pages and insult people and things like that?

It is beyond me, but there you go. Those are my thoughts. I vented a little, so I apologize, but what do you think there, Joel? No, it's good.

Okay, I have something to say real quick, but I need to point of clarification. Yeah. Would a classical foundationalist, what's his relationship to a reformed

Thomist? I don't know. I just know that in Thomism, there are some CAD, there are some different understandings between the relationship between faith and reason.

And that's related to the role of natural theology and all these other things. So there is definitely a relation there, but it really depends who you're talking to, so.

Yeah, okay, okay. So I'll put that aside. All I'll say is I interviewed

Jeffrey Johnson, who is the president of Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

Yep, I've had him on the show before. Yeah, yeah, and he did a really good job.

He wrote that book, The Failure of Natural Theology, The Failure of Natural Theology. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he really lays into Aquinas and his over -reliance on Aristotle.

And really, I mean, he thinks, Jeff Johnson, I think, thinks any reliance on Aristotle at all is over -reliance on Aristotle.

And so I was very convinced. I was probably convinced beforehand, but I think

Jeff Johnson does a really good job in his book and in the various podcasts. Someone could listen to your episode, someone could listen to my episode of World's View Legacy.

But yeah, I think Jeff Johnson does a great job. I am just not a fan of Thomas Aquinas.

I can recognize his absolute brilliance. I really can. Thomas Aquinas on the back of the shirt, not a fan.

Great to meet you. Okay, I had John D. Woodbridge from my church history professor at Trinity at Ted's.

And he made this great remark. He said something about how Aquinas used to write five books at once as he was walking along.

He would, to each different scribe, he would start and stop his books as he was walking along.

And Dr. Woodbridge said something along the lines of, can you imagine what Aquinas could have done if he was actually devoted to like actual biblical exegesis in teaching?

Like, can you just imagine what God could have done with that mind? But the fact is he wasn't.

He was over -reliant on classical Aristotelian philosophy. And I think that was his downfall.

You're right, he assumed neutrality. He had a very, very limited and unbiblical view of the noetic effects of sin and the effects of sin on our ability to think and reason.

And look, Aristotle had some great things to say, I think. I mean, I like what he said about logic, but he's not a good basis for apologetic.

Yeah, and Thomas Aquinas, I mean, I'm with you. I'm not a huge fan, but I mean, there's definitely golden nuggets to learn from, even just the quality of his life.

I mean, I love reading biographies of various thinkers and stuff. And for that reason, there's a lot to benefit.

And even some of their intellectual observation, I mean, he was a genius. But at the base, there are some fundamental disagreements that I think are important for Christians to keep in mind.

We're gonna take one more question here. Oh, good. Can I just tell me one more thing about that? Absolutely. If, you have to remember that Aquinas was writing at a time when 99 .9

% of the people were some sort of Christian theist, right? So if you look at it from that perspective, and I think

Dr. Woodbridge pointed this out as well in that class, like 10 years ago, but if you think about it in terms of like, okay, we all already accept

Christian theism. Based on that foundation, are there good, like, can we make observations about the world and sort of like confirm and corroborate our already preexisting belief?

I say, yes, absolutely. As a Christian, I already believe that evidence is a meaningful category and a possible thing.

So what evidence you got for me, Aquinas? And now we can look at his five ways and we can say, all right, yeah, there's, you're right.

There's some golden nuggets there because I'm already a Christian. Yep. Okay, excellent. There's one more question here and then we're gonna wrap things up here.

Richard Cox, thank you for your question. Richard asks, in Bonson's debate with Sproul, just in case people don't know,

Greg Bonson debated R .C. Sproul. I mean, that's news, not news to me and anyone who listens to the channel, but if you're a

R .C. Sproul fan, you're like, wait, what? They actually debated over the topic apologetic methodology and it can be found on YouTube and it's an excellent debate, an excellent debate.

You see the intellectual prowess of both Dr. Bonson and R .C. and it was a wonderful brotherly debate and intellectually rigorous as well.

So folks wanna check that out. But in Bonson's debate with Sproul, it seems like Bonson said he did not believe in mediated revelation, only unmediated.

Any thoughts on this? Are you familiar with the debate yourself, Joel? I know that I've started listening to it. I've never finished it.

I can't speak to this question. Oh man, okay. Well, you definitely gotta check it out. It's really good. I do, I do. I can't quote anywhere from Bonson's work, but to my knowledge,

I don't believe that Bonson disagreed with mediated revelation. He may have held to both.

So the knowledge of God is immediate. It is innate, right? But also there's a knowledge of God when you open your eyes, right?

When you open your eyes, the heavens declare the glory of God. That's immediate, right? Knowledge of God being mediated to us. But you couldn't even make sense out of that without the already immediate knowledge of God that you have.

So there was a point of dispute in the debate whether Calvin was reflecting more of a immediate knowledge of God or an immediate knowledge.

And Bonson was saying, you know, I think Calvin was emphasizing the immediate. There was a point of dispute there.

So I think he would hold to both. Don't quote me on that. I know that's my position. If you open your eyes, there's knowledge of God all around you.

If you pluck your eyes out and you no longer can see, you still know God because it is made up in your very constitution.

I would agree with Calvin there where you cannot even properly understand yourself without looking beyond yourself to the

God in whose image you were made. So - Sensus divinitatis. Yes, that's right. So, all right.

Well, before we close out, Joel, is there any last thing you'd like to say before we close things out?

No, just, well, yes. Go subscribe to my podcast, Worldview Legacy and listen to the episode with Eli and my brother

Parker and then listen to all of our other episodes as well. That's it. All right, well, thank you. And dude,

I have to say, thank you for having me on the show. We've gone later. This was almost like a last minute thing.

We just talked about this a couple of days ago. And I really, really appreciate what you do and the caliber of guests that you have on your show.

It's really excellent. And like I said earlier, you've helped me articulate my own apologetic and helped me out with some debates.

So big, big supporter of what you're doing, Eli. Appreciate you immensely. Well, I appreciate that, brother.

Well, I'll have you back on to take on some sixth graders and eighth graders. Love it. Talk about doing the

Q &A thing there. So - Cool. All right. Well, that is it for this episode.