PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY = False Christianity

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, hey folks, this is Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics. Today, I'm gonna be tackling a really important topic, of course if you've seen the the title, the thumbnail, this is definitely a topic that has been covered at quite a length by other apologists, but I figured why not why not throw my two cents into the arena in terms of addressing the topic of progressive

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Christianity? Okay, and so what I want to talk about today and kind of just jump right in, I mean I'll share a few things beforehand, but just to jump right in.

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We're gonna explore progressive Christianity. What is it? How to recognize it? And most importantly, how to respond to it biblically, okay?

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Now if you're a seasoned apologist and you're familiar with Christian theology and things like this, you might already have in your mind where you would go in terms of responding to someone who seems to be putting forth the ideas that are prevalent and characteristic of progressive

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Christianity, but for those who perhaps aren't equipped, maybe you kind of are just getting into apologetics and you're just or you've come in contact with someone who kind of expresses the key characteristics of a progressive

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Christianity outlook, and you're coming here to say, hey, maybe there's something helpful here that I could use when

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I talk to people who hold to perspectives that are along these lines, you know, this is the episode for you.

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We're not gonna, we're gonna keep things in kind of the, not the lower shelf, not the upper shelf, or somewhere right in the middle, hopefully.

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This is not going to be a political or attack on social justice issues.

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What I want to talk about is what progressive Christianity is, what are the key characteristics that help us recognize it, and then of course, how do we respond to it biblically, and then

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I'll offer towards the back end of this episode how to apply a presuppositional approach to engaging someone with the kinds of views that are typical and characteristic of progressive

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Christianity. Okay, now before I do that, I do want to give folks a heads up. I am experiencing some technical difficulty.

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If you can give me a thumbs up and you hear me clear and the mic sounds okay, what I hear in here, the volume is fluctuating, so I'm not sure how it sounds on the audience end, so maybe someone can give me a thumbs up and say, hey, you sound great, or hey, you sound like a robot, or whatever the case may be.

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I almost canceled tonight because I've had technical difficulties with my laptop and stuff like that, so that's just how the cookie crumbles as the saying goes, okay?

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But anyway, I'm going to be having a live stream on Thursday as well.

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I'm going to be responding to Michael Sherman and another atheist individual and some principles that they've laid out, and it's often used to critique religion and so forth, and so that's what

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I'm going to be covering on Thursday. And then I've got a whole bunch of ideas out in the future.

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I'm going to be trying to plan these live streams twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This, of course, is an exception because tomorrow, obviously, there are the debates, the political debates that, if we can call them debates, that I think most people are going to be watching, so I moved today's show to today instead of doing it tomorrow.

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So there you go. So I'm being told that my volume is fine, and so I'm just going to assume, you know, that everything is good.

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All right. Well, let's jump right in. I want to begin by sharing a quote from the great

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Christian thinker J. Gresham Machen, and I think it's very helpful and useful in setting a context for the type of things that we're dealing with today when we're dealing with progressive

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Christianity, because as King Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun.

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All of the heresies and false teachings and distortions of Christianity and the desire to be relevant in the modern culture and things like this, this is something that the church has been dealing with forever, since the beginning.

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And the temptation, the temptation to remain relevant, whatever that means, has been something that the church has had to deal with for since its inception.

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OK, so I think this this quote here by J. Gresham Machen is appropriate, especially given the fact that when we speak of progressive

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Christianity and we talk about some of its characteristics and what it tends to do to genuine Christianity, OK, I think this is appropriate.

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And so J. Gresham Machen said, what the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one

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Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity has to belong in a distinct category.

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And so J. Gresham Machen in the early 1900s and 1920s was dealing with liberal

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Christianity, liberalism. And of course, he wrote his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism. I highly recommend folks check that out.

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It's pretty cheap, but it's a very well -known book in which J. Gresham Machen does a great work in terms of comparing and differentiating

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Orthodox Christianity with liberal Christianity, if we can call it Christianity.

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OK, now applying that to what we call progressive Christianity today,

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I think is is really important. A lot of people who hear the word progressive. All right.

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And, you know, a lot of people hear the word progressive and and think that it's just about being modern or inclusive.

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You know, there's that language, those buzzwords, right, inclusivity and so forth. But when we talk about progressive

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Christianity, I think what we're dealing with is something that actually takes core

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Christian beliefs, redefines them or outright rejects them. And here's the kicker.

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And here's what we need to be concerned about. OK, it still tries to wear the label of Christianity.

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OK, and so progressive Christianity will redefine or outright reject key

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Christian doctrines and try to call itself Christianity. OK, now we need to know how to spot that because it sounds good on the surface when they say a lot of the things that they say.

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You know, you have the whole issue with homosexuality and love is love. And, you know, I remember when

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Black Lives Matter was a big thing and people talking about social justice and all these sorts of things. It's very important that we don't get confused with what the

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Bible actually teaches about, say, for example, social justice when the Bible speaks of social justice.

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But what what the Bible means by justice, OK, and how we ought to fight for those things is going to be very different than a lot of these kind of progressive movements and churches that try to adopt these platforms and so forth.

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They're not necessarily the same thing. OK, what happens when words get disconnected from biblical truth is that we begin to have problems.

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Right. What happens when people start saying things like, well, the Bible is a good book. Right. But it's not really

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God's word or Jesus was a great moral teacher. But we don't need to take everything he said seriously because, of course, and I'm sure folks have heard this before, you know, morality has to change with the time.

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You can't rely on an old dusty book to to get your morals. Right. And the funny thing is, people who say these things, sometimes they are professed

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Christians. And so you'll have professed Christians begin to diminish the authority of scripture and the things that they're saying in an attempt to cater to the world, in an attempt to be more accepting or accepted by the world.

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OK, and this leads me really to my first characteristic. If we're trying to identify progressive

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Christianity and because obviously churches who have adopted these sorts of mindsets that I'm going to be walking through, you don't see a big sign on the church.

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You know, welcome to the first progressive Baptist church. You don't see that.

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Right. Oftentimes these things come out in the teaching. It comes out in different ways. And so you want to be able to be able to identify some of the key features of what we would call progressive

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Christianity. Now, again, some of the features are characteristic of other movements that are unbiblical.

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But this is definitely some of the features that we that can be recognized from progressive

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Christianity as we see it today. And the first point is this, and I think this is so important. OK, progressive

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Christianity starts, OK, in whatever manifestation it comes with a lowering of the

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Bible's authority. Isn't that right? Every false doctrine that tries to seep into the church will will often attack the foundations.

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And that is the authority of scripture. You might hear things like, you know, the Bible is a human book. It's full of wisdom, but, you know, it's full of cultural limitations that need to be updated.

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Right. What's the problem here? OK, when you turn the Bible into just another ancient text, which a lot of these people tend to do, you lose the foundation for the faith.

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OK, the biblical teaching is that if you think about it, the Bible as God's word is not just good advice.

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It's God's word. Right. It is God's word. Second Timothy 316. Right. This is the this is the verse that came to my mind just when thinking about this.

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All scripture, all the graphite, all the writing, all scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

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If the Bible is just a human book, how do we know what's true? How do we know who God really is? How do we know about Jesus?

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OK, if the Bible is not true, what is our authority? These are all the types of questions that we need to be asking ourselves.

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And when we come in contact with people who engage in diminishing the authority of the Bible, you need to ask, you know, you need to ask those questions as well.

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OK, so this is very, very important to keep in mind. Many false teachings,

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OK, will begin with bringing doubt upon God's word and hence doubt upon the authority of God's word.

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You see this with the cults as well. OK, you know what? We have this new revelation over here. And when when you bring

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Bible verses that contradict this new revelation, well, well, you know, we can't really trust the modern translations because, you know, the

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Bible has been corrupted and so forth or it's been translated so many times and things like this. And you're right back into the thick of apologetics having to defend the historical integrity of the

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Bible. OK, and by the way, if you're a presuppositionalist, that is still an appropriate thing to to to discuss.

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A lot of people think presuppositional apologetics is a shortcut because we can we we get to just say by what standard, right?

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No, actually, that's an appropriate question to ask. But we need to actually be able to defend the integrity of the

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Bible, especially from attacks by people who claim to be Christian, yet are drawing doubt upon God's word.

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OK, now, I think the key thing is here, when you draw doubt upon God's word, that allows the flexibility to then insert to insert, you know, some new doctrine or some new redefinition of a biblical concept.

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And that's where you get kind of the false doctrine seeping in. Remember what Jude chapter one, verse three says, right, that we are told to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered.

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And if you read on, Jude goes on to talk about how there have been false teachers that have snuck in unawares within the church.

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And this example of progressive Christianity in our day, I think, is a perfect example of that.

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And so we want to keep that in mind as Christians. We do not want to adopt a weak view of scripture because it is a strong view of scripture that will equip us to combat this false version of Christianity that seeks to undermine

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God's word and then insert its new teaching or its its new narrative. OK, so again, once you throw out the authority of scripture, everything else is going to crumble.

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And that's why folks who hold to kind of this type of progressive mindset in terms of which the authority of the

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Bible is diminished, you know, things are going to become problematic really quickly. Now, of course, people who are progressive in this sense might not think of themselves in that way.

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They'll just, you know, again, no one wears a T -shirt saying I'm a progressive Christian. But when you start talking to people and you recognize that there is a disdain for the dogmatic nature of scripture itself, your antenna should go up and realize you might be dealing with a progressive

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Christian. OK, so again, these are going to be kind of important indicators to keep in mind.

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Another important feature that's characteristic of progressive Christianity is a rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines.

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OK, a rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines. And remember, this this goes in a logical order.

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First, you doubt the authority of God's word, and that gives you the flexibility to either reject or reinterpret established biblical doctrines.

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OK, so this is where things get really sneaky. OK, progressive Christianity. Reinterprets or outright rejects the most fundamental beliefs of the

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Christian faith, you might hear things like, well, Jesus didn't really rise. From the dead, right? He just lives on in our hearts.

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Or the cross wasn't about Jesus dying for our sins. It's just a metaphor for love. You know, you hear things where central features of the

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Christian faith are watered down. OK, and this is where we need to stand firm. We need to point to the clarity of scripture.

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Right. The Bible is clear about the gospel. Jesus wasn't just a good example. He is God in human flesh.

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OK, he is John one fourteen. Right. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. John one fourteen. The word became flesh.

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That's who Jesus is. He lived a perfect life that we couldn't live. He died to death that we deserve to die.

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Romans five, eight says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

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That's not a metaphor that actually happened. And it is a central feature of the Christian faith. OK, a lot of these kind of progressive minded people, again, not all of them, because progressive

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Christianity is kind of like nailing jello to the wall. There are different versions of it and it manifests itself in different ways.

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OK, one of the ways that it manifests is this rejection of or reinterpretation of core

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Christian doctrines. OK, so, for example, when you throw out the atonement for crying out loud, OK, you throw out the resurrection or the divinity of Christ.

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You're rejecting the heart of Christianity. Right. And if Jesus didn't physically rise from the dead, as Paul says in First Corinthians fifteen, fourteen, he says our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

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Christianity, Christianity's central feature is the resurrection of Jesus and what that means in light of the scriptures that went before.

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OK, we don't get to make everything a metaphor. And this is a very interesting point here because this seems to be common even amongst unbelievers.

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I remember Bill Maher, if you guys know who Bill Maher is, he said that something along the lines of, well, you know, the problem is that people interpret the

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Bible literally when it was clearly meant to be metaphor. Really? The whole

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Bible is meant to be metaphor. I mean, this is so silly. OK, you know, you don't really interpret the

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Bible literally, do you? Well, I think it's important to understand what we mean when we say that we interpret the

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Bible literally because I interpret the Bible literally. I interpret the Bible. And don't let people get away with calling you a fundamentalist because the word fundamentalism has a pejorative, kind of a pejorative sense.

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If if you're saying I'm a fundamentalist simply because I interpret the Bible literally, we need to define our terms here.

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OK, this is important. OK, now, I interpret the Bible, OK, literally.

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But what do I mean by that? Yeah, this is so important. I interpret the Bible literally. And what

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I mean by that is I interpret the Bible in accordance with its literature. You see, a lot of these people will will cry metaphor and figure of speech and these sorts of things.

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And in doing so, they weaken central core doctrines of Christianity. But we need to understand that the Bible comprised of 66 books, 39 books in the

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Old Testament, 27 books in the New Testament. Right. It's written in different genres. And so that dictates the way we interpret the scripture and the way we interpret, you know, books of the

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Bible and portions of scripture to interpret. The Bible literally is to interpret the Bible in accordance with its literature.

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OK, and that's the way we should interpret any piece of literature. We interpret literature in light of the kind of literature that it is.

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OK, so don't let people get away with just saying this is a metaphor. That's a metaphor. Jesus didn't really do that.

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That was only to set an example for, you know, set an example for us. It's not literally true.

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OK, so we want to be very careful of the rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines.

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Now, again, you might be saying, well, how is this distinct to progressive Christianity? Isn't this prevalent in other views as well that we don't identify as progressive

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Christianity? Well, of course. Yeah, you can see similarities. Right. But this is something that I've seen in terms of people who we would identify as progressive

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Christians or what we identify as progressive Christianity. What we see is a rejection or reinterpretation of really important doctrines.

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I mean, you see this oftentimes when people reject, you know, substitutionary atonement. Now, people can reject substitutionary atonement for any number of reasons.

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But a lot of people who are Christian, you might hear people say something along the lines of, well, you know,

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I reject the atonement as traditionally understood because that's cosmic child abuse.

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OK, you'll hear something like that. Now, again, is that unique to a progressive Christian? Not necessarily, but this is definitely the line of thinking that a lot of people hold when they begin to reject core doctrines like the atonement or, you know, other features of the

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Christian faith. Right now, again, this isn't this isn't new. This is something the church has been dealing with for a really long time.

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Right. But this is something we need to be able to stand against, standing firm on the authority of God's word and standing firm on those core doctrines that are the essential foundations of the

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Christian faith. Now, you might be asking, well, Eli, how do we know how do we know what is a core doctrine?

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OK, and it's very easy to know what the core doctrines are, because the

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Bible typically gives us qualifications for those core doctrines. Or you can make inferences based on explicit teaching in Scripture and draw conclusions that a doctrine is essential and definitional to the faith.

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OK, for example, Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. Notice the qualification.

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If you don't believe that I that I'm the I am, you will die in your sins. So the qualification is if you don't believe this thing over here, you know, namely that I am the

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I am, you will die in your sins. So believing Jesus is the I am or believing Jesus that he's

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God. Right. That's a quotation from Genesis 314, where God tells Moses his name and Jesus is claiming to be the

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I am. Unless you believe what Jesus says about himself, you will die in your sins. So the deity of Christ is essential.

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OK, you know, the Apostle Paul says in Galatians chapter five that if you believe you're justified by works, you are cut off from Christ.

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That's essential. If you believe you're justified by your works, then you are violating an essential feature of the

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Christian faith, namely that we are not justified by our works. We're justified by our faith.

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And yes, I believe the Bible teaches faith alone. And yes, I believe the doctrine of justification by faith alone is an essential feature of the gospel.

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OK, I do. I believe that that's true. OK, and yet you can throw

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James chapter two and James chapter two is easily responded to is not the topic of this specific video, but we often hear, well, you know, the

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Bible. The only time the Bible mentions faith alone, it's preceded by the words not by we're not justified, not by faith alone.

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James chapter two. I have a video somewhere in on my channel addressing that. But be that as it may,

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I do think that an essential doctrine is, OK, justification by faith alone. I think we should be able to teach that, defend it and can stand firm on attempts to reformulate those doctrines, whether it's the doctrine of the

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Trinity or or justification by faith alone or whatever the case may be. OK, so, again, super important to keep in mind, trying to recognize or being able to recognize a rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines.

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All right. Now, before I go to the next point, I want to welcome folks here. Now we have kind of a bigger audience than when we started.

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So welcome, guys. We are addressing progressive Christianity, some of its key features, some of its identifying features.

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And so far we have discussed point one. It often is characterized by a diminishing of the authority of the

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Bible. Point two, it is often characterized by a rejection or reinterpretation of core doctrines.

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And I'm about to move into what I think is really a key feature of progressive

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Christianity. And I think this is probably what most people experience when they encounter someone who comes from this perspective.

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But before we do that, I want to give people a heads up. Please don't miss the live stream on Thursday, Thursday.

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And I will be if folks have been following a little bit of my interaction with Jacob Brunton, who is a a let's just say he is not very fond of presuppositionalism.

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I did a video video previous to this one responding to his claims that presuppositionalism is immoral.

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And so I provided a point by point refutation for each of his points. And then

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Jacob Brunton offered a brief response via a video on Twitter, and I'll be responding to his response.

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And so I'll be doing that in the near future. Hopefully, folks will keep their their eyes out for that one. But nevertheless, let's let's continue here.

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And if you do have questions, I will try my best to answer the questions towards the back end of this episode.

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OK, if you see me continually adjusting my mic, my volume keeps fluctuating, so I don't know what's what's happening here is this technology and we're live.

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So that's just how it goes. Right. You just got to roll with the roll with the punches. Technology is great when it's working.

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When it's not working, you know, it can be a little frustrating as long as you guys can hear me.

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That's you know, that's fine. All right. So here is another key feature of progressive

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Christianity. And I think this is the one that most people are familiar with, and that is an emphasis upon personal experience over the

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Bible. OK, per personal experience over the Bible.

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Now, again, do you have to be a progressive Christian to place your personal experience over the

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Bible? No, but that is definitely a key feature that we often see.

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OK, you'll hear things like, well, I just follow what feels right to me or I feel that God is speaking to me.

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It's almost like a personal revelation sort of thing. I've had this spiritual experience. And so, you know, that's my truth.

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It's almost like a almost like a postmodern relativistic flavor of Christianity.

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But of course, that doesn't really work within Christianity because Christianity is quite dogmatic.

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Right. You know, things aren't up to our personal experience. OK, you know, the problem with experiences is that they're subjective.

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Right. What feels right to you may not be what's actually true. Isn't that right?

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OK, we have to be very careful of that. Proverbs 14, 12 says that there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

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OK, if your experience contradicts the word of God, it's your experience that needs to change, not the scriptures.

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And a lot a lot of times with these folks is everything is being run by the emotions.

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OK, and sometimes we need to metaphorically speaking. Now I'm speaking in metaphor. We need to smack people upside the head with truth.

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This is so important. OK, you're it sounds like a cliche and we hear it all the time.

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You know, people like Ben Shapiro might say this, but truth doesn't care about your feelings. That's true. That's so true.

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It doesn't it doesn't care about your feelings. It doesn't matter about your experience. Does your experience correspond to what the

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Bible teaches? Because if your experience contradicts the word of God, then away with your experience.

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Well, but it's my experience. Yeah, but experience has to be interpreted. This is why it's so important to keep in mind the issue of worldview.

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This is why I place such a great emphasis on worldview in this channel. Even your personal experience is worldview dependent in terms of how you interpret it.

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OK, this is so important. And so we want to be careful. Right. A key feature of progressive

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Christianity is this emphasis over experience, over the authority of Scripture.

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OK, Jesus didn't call us to follow our hearts as the song goes.

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Listen to your heart when it's called. Is it calling for you? I don't even remember that song came out, man.

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Oh, man, that that's probably the theme song for all of progressive Christianity.

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Right. Although it came out before progressive Christianity came along in the form that we see it today.

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But so there you go. Jesus didn't call us to follow our hearts. Right. He called us to follow him.

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OK. In John 14, six, he says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.

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Truth is not something you create. It's something you submit to. I'll say that again. Truth is not something you create.

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It's something you submit to. Jesus Christ didn't say I have the truth. He says, I am the truth.

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OK, this is really important. So we need to understand what we need to listen to what

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Jesus says, not what what what our emotions are telling us. OK. And it's often this fluffiness with respect to emphasizing experience over Scripture that then also leads to the redefining of the biblical categories of love and justice.

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Isn't that right? Love is love. We will often hear and some churches who support that whole mentality will say things like this.

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OK, love is love. And I was just talking about this with my with my students. OK, and I asked the students,

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I said, is love good? Is love good? And this is my my logic class. We talk about these sorts of things in logic class.

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And I ask I ask my students, is love something that's good? And most of the students will raise their hand.

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OK, almost 90 percent of the students raise their hand. And I asked I asked the kids, well, think about this. Is love a good thing?

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And the answer to that question is it depends because the goodness of love is going to be dependent upon its object.

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The Bible says don't love the world. It's not good to love sin. It's not good to love evil.

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And so we can love darkness over the light. And in that sense, that kind of love is not a biblical love.

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And so when someone says love is love, we need to ask them, what do you mean by that? What does that mean?

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You see, because if you claim to be Christian, then love needs to be defined within a biblical context.

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OK, now, love, I think, is one of the most misunderstood concepts in our culture today.

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And progressive Christianity distorts it even more. OK, you'll often hear things that Jesus was all about love.

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He didn't judge people and neither should we. Now, of course, if you're well seasoned in the scriptures, you're going to you're going to be very quick to point out the importance that Jesus didn't just say, you know, don't judge people.

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There's more to the verse. Right. Jesus says, you know, first remove the log out of your own eyes so that you can remove the speck from your neighbor's eye.

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And so it's not telling us not to judge. It's telling us not to judge hypocritically. Right. That little detail is important and actually takes the steam out of that popular concept that Jesus says don't judge.

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And so you shouldn't judge. OK, so we are to judge, but we're to judge wisely and non hypocritically.

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OK, was Jesus all about love? I mean, I don't even know what that means. He was all about love.

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I mean, Jesus is is is also the one who condemns the Pharisees and calls them, you know, children of the devil.

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OK, does that mean he didn't love his enemies? No, of course he loved his enemies. But when you say he's all about love, it almost gives this impression that Jesus never talked about hard things or he never condemned things.

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Yeah, Jesus was about love, but he also flipped the money, the the the money changers tables over and made a whip and started whipping people and kicking them out of the temple.

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Right. That's what Jesus did also. OK, and so people will say things like, you know, he didn't judge people.

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Neither should neither should we. Again, someone who says that obviously is not acquainted with the biblical teaching.

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And if they are acquainted with the biblical teaching, what are they going to do at that point? Well, they often reinterpret or reject certain portions of scripture that they don't like.

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These are, again, key things to hold on to. OK, now, reality,

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Jesus did talk a lot about love, and I'm not denying that, but he also called people to repentance. Right. Isn't that true, too?

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OK, it's not just love. This is the problem with a lot of churches today. I mean, completely independent from progressive

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Christianity, there's a problem in the church today when there is an overemphasis upon one of the attributes of God to the exclusion of other attributes.

29:40

Right. God is love, but he's also holy. He's also righteous. He's also just.

29:45

And all these all these other things that we need to keep in mind. OK, but when we overemphasize one attribute of God, then we have a miss.

29:54

We have a mischaracterization of who God is. OK, and just from a logical perspective, you think about it.

30:03

True love doesn't mean accepting everything that people do. OK, it means wanting what's best for people according to God's standard, not our own standard.

30:16

I'll say that again. True love doesn't mean accepting everything as it is, accepting everything that somebody does.

30:22

It means wanting what's best for people according to God's standard, not ours.

30:27

And John 8 -11, Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery before you before you say anything. OK, that's a textual variant.

30:34

Fine. It's a textual variant. But the point still stands. OK, Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery, neither do

30:41

I condemn you. Go and sin no more. Now, if you don't like that passage because it's a textual variant, go to another passage where Jesus tells someone, go and sin no more.

30:49

All right. Jesus didn't just love people and just say, you're fine the way you are. He encouraged people to go and sin no more.

30:55

All right. So Jesus spoke the truth, but he spoke the truth in love and emphasized the importance of repentance and a transformation as well, which, of course, is initiated and worked through by the

31:07

Holy Spirit. We get that right. But the point, I think, still stands. Love without truth, if you think about it, really isn't love.

31:15

It's enabling. OK, a lot of this progressive mindset is, well, you just got to love people.

31:21

And by loving people, it means accepting what they do. OK, and that's just that, again, love without truth isn't love.

31:28

It's enabling. And that's not true love. OK, and justice. We talk about justice, for example.

31:33

Biblically speaking is not about aligning with whatever, you know, whatever cultural movement is popular at the time.

31:40

OK, it's about standing on God's righteousness, which calls us to love our neighbor and confront sin.

31:46

OK, that we need to confront sin. This is what progressive Christians don't tend to focus or preach on sin because what they're diminishing and reinterpreting those categories.

31:58

OK, or they kind of remove hell, you know, out of the picture. Right. People will will reject the traditional understanding of hell and God's judgment.

32:06

Why? Well, because God's loving. He wouldn't he wouldn't do that. OK, so you get these sorts of, you know, these sorts of things that kind of come into play here.

32:15

So now how do we respond to people who hold to this now? Now, again, progressive Christianity, these are just the characteristics that I've identified.

32:25

OK. But the shape that it takes, whether a church that is progressive and builds an entire platform on promoting certain political narratives or social narratives,

32:36

OK, these sorts of things, churches that do these can look like a whole bunch of different things.

32:41

Depends on what their emphasis is. Right. It's not this, you know, there's no list of things that says progressive

32:46

Christians or progressive Christianity is this, this, this, this, this, this, this. Right. OK, it's going to differ from, you know, church to church, person to person.

32:55

But in general, if we kind of know what to look for, you know, how do we respond? OK, this is key.

33:01

So how do we deal with this? Right. How do we respond when someone says, well, you know, the Bible isn't isn't authoritative in the way that you think.

33:07

That's kind of an outdated view. We need to change with things or Jesus is a great moral teacher, but his morality is a little outdated.

33:13

And so I think God would he loves us so much that he would want us to change with the times. Right. And so therefore, then you insert false teaching.

33:21

Right. Well, here's some key points I want to I want to kind of give to you simple. They're not overcomplicated.

33:27

OK, when you're talking to people who come from this mindset, OK, first and foremost, you want to point them to the authority of Scripture.

33:36

Well, they don't accept the authority of Scripture. I don't care what they accept. OK, I don't care when the atheist doesn't accept the authority of Scripture.

33:43

That doesn't make the Scripture superfluous. And it doesn't make the Scripture inappropriate to quote. OK, we are defending the

33:49

Scripture. If you want to get into the details as to why the Scripture is authoritative, go for it. Right.

33:54

But we want to call people to the Scriptures. Don't argue on the basis of opinion with them. OK, right.

34:01

Remember that passage in Proverbs, don't answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be a fool like unto him. But then answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

34:09

OK, we don't want to do that. When the when the progressive Christian wants to reject the authority of Scripture, that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that we succumb to that and then throw out the authority of Scripture.

34:24

If the progressive Christian wants to argue their point and throw away the authority of Scripture, that is going to be detrimental to their view.

34:32

For if you lose a foundation of authority and truth, what are they standing on when they make their progressive

34:37

Christianity talking points? OK, right. It's going to be human opinion versus the authority of God's word.

34:43

Show them that the Bible is reliable and that it's authoritative. Right. When they're when they're doubting whether we should understand the

34:51

Scriptures as inspired, go into Second Timothy 316. Right. There's nothing wrong with those. Those are traditional passages, but I think they're very useful in discussion.

34:59

When you're talking to a progressive Christian, hold firm on core doctrines. Do not waver.

35:05

Stand firm on those clear, essential features of the Christian faith. And defend them, be able to defend them.

35:12

Don't just say they're wrong. Give them reasons why they're wrong by defending those doctrines that they're attempting to reinterpret or redefine.

35:19

You know, you need to be able to grapple with the text and show, you know, well, they're wrong. OK, as simple as that. When it comes to the clear, essential features.

35:26

Right. We want to be clear about the gospel. We want to be clear about the divinity of Christ, his death, his resurrection.

35:32

Right. These aren't just theological ideas. They are the heart of Christianity. OK, very, very important.

35:38

You also want to when you're having discussions with these folks, you want to keep the conversation centered on truth.

35:46

OK, it's easy to get sidetracked by emotions or cultural pressures. But we have to remember that truth doesn't change because culture does.

35:54

Right. Jesus said in John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.

36:00

OK, so you want to be very, very careful. OK, we don't want to get sidetracked. We don't want to get over emotional.

36:05

We want to think logically. We want to think biblically and we want to argue straightforwardly in a way that stands firm on the authority of God's word.

36:13

OK, now what does that look like from a presuppositional perspective? I'm going to get to that in just a moment.

36:19

OK, and here's an important part that is so easy to forget. OK, and I've I've I've repeated this so many times on this channel and I'm going to repeat it again.

36:30

When you're talking to a progressive Christian or you're talking to someone who has a distorted view of the

36:37

Bible and they say all sorts of crazy things, OK, like, you know,

36:43

Jesus was gay or David and Jonathan were gay. And the Bible teaches homosexuality.

36:49

And so this is, you know, all these sorts of things are the word homosexual didn't appear, you know, in the

36:54

Bible. It's on the you know, whatever year it was in the late eighteen hundreds or whatever. I don't remember the exact year when you hear things like this to try to justify, to try to justify, you know, something that's unbiblical.

37:06

OK, you need to have patience. You need to be compassionate in discussion.

37:12

We don't want to treat the topics that the person is bringing up in a cavalier way. We want to be compassionate, compassionate, but we want to be firm.

37:20

All right, look, we're not out here to bash people or simply win arguments. We are here to win arguments. We're not trying to lose in a discussion because we're fighting for the truth.

37:28

But it's not simply about winning an argument. Right. We care about people. We want people to come to know the truth, which ultimately sets them free.

37:35

Right. John, eight thirty to love them. Don't compromise on the truth that the truth set them free.

37:41

OK, now, of course, if you feel like they're not being persuaded by what you're saying, you know, take courage.

37:47

Right. If you believe in the sovereignty of God, then you know that the the the fact that someone agrees with what the

37:56

Bible is teaching as you're defending it. Hopefully you're defending it biblically. That's going to be the work of the spirit in that person's heart.

38:02

And so you need to be praying for that person. You need to be compassionate, but you need to be firm, logical, biblical and straightforward on these issues because there are very important issues.

38:11

There are matters of spiritual life and death. OK, now, progressive Christianity, again, tries to sound appealing by focusing on things like inclusivity, personal experience.

38:21

But it really leads people away from the truth of the gospel. We got to be equipped to recognize it and to respond with the truth of the scriptures.

38:29

Right. You need to be bold. You need to stand firm on God's word. Do not remove yourself from the firm foundation of God's word.

38:36

And remember, this is important. OK, I don't I'm not against progress and changing with the times with respect to certain things.

38:47

OK, but we need to remember something. Christianity doesn't need to progress in order to be relevant.

38:55

God's truth has always been and will always be sufficient. OK, when someone says, oh, you're stuck in the past again.

39:04

Because the Bible is an is old, doesn't make it false. OK, I mean, this should be obvious, right?

39:13

Christianity embodies the unchanging truths of God. And so we don't need to update it.

39:19

What we need to do is proclaim it. And then, of course, learn how to apply biblical truth to new situations.

39:28

We do not change the Bible in light of new situations. Rather, we submit to the authority of scripture and we seek to apply these ancient truths that God has given us to new situations.

39:41

And because the word of God is living, it is sufficient to do just that.

39:48

OK, now I hope that is helpful. OK, I'm not finished yet, though. Let's kind of make some presuppositional application here.

39:55

I think this will be useful and appropriate given what we tend to focus here on the on the channel here.

40:03

OK, once again, if you do have a question, I will try my best to get to the question at the top of your question at the top of the hour.

40:08

What is really helpful to me is if you preface your question with question. I say that all the time. People ask questions and they don't preface question with question.

40:16

Preface your question with the word question so that I could differentiate it from what seems to be a debate between Catholics and Protestants in the chat.

40:24

If I see that correctly. So, yeah, there you go.

40:30

All right. Well, that's just the nature of YouTube. That's just the nature of going live. So I hope you guys are being nice.

40:37

OK, all right. So how on earth do we precept progressive Christianity? OK, so now that we've laid out what progressive

40:44

Christianity is and how it deviates from biblical truth, let's take kind of take it a step further.

40:49

Right. As a presuppositional apologist, I want to equip you to critique progressive Christianity from a worldview perspective.

40:57

OK, if you remember, I'll read that quote from Jay Gresham Machen again towards the beginning of the show here.

41:04

Jay Gresham Machen said, I think it's appropriate for where I'm going to go next. Machen said, what the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one

41:13

Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity as to belong in a distinct category.

41:23

I want you to think about that, because when we're dealing with progressive Christianity in whatever flavor it manifests,

41:31

OK, we're not dealing with a genuine version of Christianity.

41:36

We're dealing with an entirely different worldview. And so progressive

41:41

Christianity is open to worldview critique because you're not simply critiquing.

41:47

Biblical Christianity, when you when you redefine or reject core essential doctrines which are definitional to the

41:55

Christian faith, you're no longer talking about Christianity at that point. OK, and so let's talk about this.

42:01

If you've been following my content, you know that presuppositional apologetics doesn't just critique individual beliefs.

42:07

It gets to the foundation of a person's worldview and exposes inconsistencies. And that's where we're going to want to go here.

42:13

OK, so how do we critique progressive Christianity presuppositionally? Well, it's all about exposing the fact that without God, without the

42:22

God of the Bible, the very beliefs that progressive Christians hold to fall apart. You see, you can't make sense out of love.

42:28

You can't make sense out of justice or truth without a biblical foundation. OK, now, again, when we get to the issue of a rejection of the

42:36

Bible's authority, right, this is going to be kind of bread and butter for the presuppositionalists. Right. Presuppositional apologetics starts with the truth of Scripture, starts with the truth that God's word is the ultimate authority.

42:46

And if we don't start with the Bible as our foundation, we're left trying to make sense of the world based on human opinion, which, of course, is the shifting sand.

42:54

Right. It's always moving. It's always changing. Now, progressive Christianity often starts by saying something along the lines of, well, the

43:01

Bible is a great book, but it can't be the final authority. Right. Or or we reinterpret what it means for the

43:06

Bible to be the authority and all these sorts of things. But be careful. Once someone shifts the sands of the of Scripture to human opinion and to the subjectivity that's prevalent in this line of thinking.

43:18

Pardon. OK, things begin to crumble. OK, now here's where the the standard presuppositional question becomes appropriate.

43:29

OK, when someone doubts the authority of the Bible, OK, you need to ask them.

43:37

By what standard are they making that claim? Now, I know that's become cliche now in the interwebs, right, whatever, but in real life, that is a super helpful question.

43:47

When someone makes a claim about the Bible, by what standard are they making that claim? By what standard do they have a right to reinterpret the

43:55

Scripture? OK, or by what right do they have to reject certain portions of Scripture? When someone says, well, we don't need to take the

44:01

Bible literally, I ask them, well, how do you know that? What's your basis for truth? And you'll quickly find out that the authority shifts to human reasoning or personal experience.

44:10

OK, but here's the problem. If truth is based on human opinion, it's always going to be changing.

44:16

Right. What's true for you might not be true for someone else. And then you're left with really with chaos, with no ultimate truth, with no objective foundation.

44:24

Now, this is very different from the Christian perspective because the Christian worldview starts with God's revelation as the unchanging foundation.

44:30

Psalm 119, verse 160 says, the sum of your word is truth and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

44:37

Right. Without this foundation, the very concept of truth falls apart. The Bible isn't just a helpful guide.

44:42

Right. It's the only standard for knowing what's true. And so when someone rejects the truth of the Bible or rejects its authority, then they're standing on some other authority.

44:52

And so as a presuppositionalist, you're going to want to expose what that authority, what that authority is.

44:58

Right. When you reject this portion of Scripture, what are they standing on? They're going to be standing on some other foundation.

45:05

And you're going to want to expose that foundation, because sometimes the person who holds to this progressive mindset might not themselves be aware that they've shifted foundations because not everyone thinks in terms of worldview and quote unquote foundations and things like this.

45:19

And this is what you're going to want to do in terms of listening to the good advice that has been given to us by Cornelius Van Til.

45:25

You want to be epistemologically self -conscious and you want to make the progressive

45:31

Christian that you're interacting with epistemologically self -conscious. You want them to be self -conscious and aware that they have a foundation and that it's impacting how they are interpreting the issues at hand.

45:44

OK, and so we want to draw the discussion to a worldview level. Right. And show the distinctions between what they're saying, their worldview and what the

45:54

Bible is saying, a biblical worldview. OK, and that might require you to argue the text. You're going to have to argue the text sometime.

46:01

You can't just make these statements and sound cool when you're saying it. You actually have to interact with what they're saying.

46:07

Now, another presuppositional issue with progressive Christianity is that it often redefines God in a way that's inconsistent with how he has revealed himself.

46:16

Right. You might hear things like, you know, God is love, so he wouldn't judge anyone or God is too loving to send people to hell.

46:23

Right. But here's the inconsistency. All right. And here's the question you want to ask. How do you define love without God's revelation?

46:31

Right. How do you define love without God's revelation when you say, well, God is love, and so he wouldn't do and then you fill in the blank, what he wouldn't do is ironically something that the

46:40

Bible says he does. OK, the Bible says God is love, but it also says, you know, that he sends people to hell.

46:46

Right. So it's not an either or it's a both and. And so you want to cause someone to say, well, if God is love, you ask them, what do you mean by love?

46:55

And they have only two choices. They could define love subjectively or they can define love biblically.

47:02

If they define love subjectively, then you can say, well, I just disagree with your subjective opinion.

47:08

I think the Bible says this. And so there you go. But if they're trying to define it biblically, then they're going to have to consider what all of the

47:15

Bible has to say with respect to properly understanding what love is all about. OK, it's very, very important.

47:21

Right. That's why we want to stand on the foundation of scripture. Now, if you're trying to redefine God's love apart from the

47:27

Bible, you're going to end up with a God who's basically just a reflection of your own ideas or the cultural values of the time.

47:32

Right. The presuppositional critique here is simple. Ask, how do you know what God is like?

47:38

And if you're not getting your understanding of God from his word, then you're just making it up as you go along. And it's basically you're creating a

47:44

God of your own invention. OK, and so the Bible shows us the Bible shows us shows us a

47:52

God who is both loving and just. Right. His love doesn't cancel out his justice.

47:58

Romans 326 says that God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. And so you can't separate

48:04

God's love from his holiness without creating a contradiction. And the God of the Bible is and this is key because he's the

48:10

God of truth. He is also consistent. He doesn't change. He doesn't change based on our feelings or cultural trends.

48:15

You know, that's the foundation we stand on. It is the immovable God who's revealed himself in scripture.

48:23

All right. Now, another issue that we're going to have another issue with progressive Christianity is how it deals with morality.

48:29

OK, and when I say how it deals again, it's all going to depend on who you're talking with because you have people coming from different perspectives within this broad umbrella we might call progressive

48:38

Christianity. And so you'll often hear something that love means and affirming whatever makes someone happy or comfortable.

48:44

Now, someone wouldn't say it outright, but that seems to be the implication as to how many people use the term, you know, love or things along those lines.

48:53

But here's the question that we're going to ask. Right. What's your standard for right or wrong? If morality is just based on what our culture says,

49:01

OK, because we need to we need to meet the culture. We need to stand on. We need to change with the times. Right. If morality is just based on what our culture says, then morality is constantly shifting.

49:11

And what's considered right today could be wrong tomorrow. That is different from the Bible, right, in the Bible, in the

49:16

Bible, the Bible gives us an objective standard of right and wrong because it's grounded in God's character, which is itself unchanging.

49:25

OK, but from a human perspective, forget about it. We turn things all upside down because we're constantly changing things.

49:31

Right. Isaiah 520 says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. And this is what happens when morality is grounded in the ever shifting sands of human opinion.

49:42

OK, and so from a presuppositional perspective, we want to expose the fact that progressive

49:47

Christianity in the various forms that it comes, OK, has no objective basis for morality when it starts standing on issues of morality.

49:55

And if it claims to have a foundation, an objective moral foundation, they're going to have to get that from the scripture. And you're right back into the thick of it, debating the text, which is where we want to be.

50:05

OK, we want to bring the person back to the discussion of what the Bible actually teaches. OK, so if morality is just based on human preference or societal changes, right, then it's not really morality.

50:17

It's just opinion of what people think. Right. What's right and wrong. OK, but from a biblical perspective, morality is rooted in who

50:25

God is. It doesn't change because God himself doesn't change as scripture teaches us. Or Malachi three, six, a good passage for that.

50:32

Right. Without God, progressive Christianity can't provide a solid answer to the question of good and evil.

50:37

And if it claims to do so, OK, then it's going to have to define those things within biblical categories, because if they're claiming to be

50:43

Christian, then what's the authority? Right. How can you be a Christian when the scripture is not your authority?

50:49

That's an interesting question. OK. All right. OK, so there's a lot more that I can

50:56

I can go through. But my my kind of my parting advice to folks is when you are having a conversation with someone who comes from this kind of outlook, right, you want to be able to ask good questions.

51:09

All right. Don't automatically go into like debate mode. Right. The questions like, by what standard are you determining that's true?

51:16

That's a good question. You don't have to say it in some mean way. But like, hey, when you say love is love and what's your standard of love?

51:22

Can you define love for me? Right. Or when someone says, I believe God is like this or I believe God is like that or or God wouldn't do this, that or the other thing.

51:30

I mean, it's a good question to ask. Well, how do you know what God is like if you're not relying on scripture? And they're just going to give you their opinion.

51:37

When they say, well, I am relying on scripture, then show them the scriptures that contradict their distorted view of God.

51:43

See how that works. OK, so you always want to point people back to the scriptures. OK, so progressive Christianity, again, as we mentioned at the beginning, diminishes or tends to diminish the authority of the

51:55

Bible. And once they do that, they from an apologetics perspective, I mean, they've lost their foundation.

52:01

And so there's you know, there's an opening for us to kind of attack. And I don't mean attack and kind of like an aggressive way.

52:08

I mean, just from from a from a discussion disagreement perspective, there is a weakness in a position that claims to be

52:15

Christian but removes the foundation. And I think there is a strategy to be used there in terms of exposing that with the hopes that you can point someone back to the scriptures and get back to what what the word of God says.

52:26

OK, so so there you have it. Progressive Christianity, when we examine it from a presuppositional perspective, it doesn't hold up because the foundations are rotting.

52:35

They are not strong. They are based on the ever shifting sands of human opinion. And so we as Christians want to stay rooted in the scripture.

52:42

We want to stand firm in the truth and always remember God's word is sufficient. It doesn't need to evolve to fit the times.

52:49

Christianity is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago because it's built on the unchanging truth of God's revelation.

52:57

All right. All right. Well, that's a lot. I know that was a lot. But that's my take.

53:03

Again, progressive Christianity is a broad umbrella, but it takes many shapes and forms, especially with respect to political narratives and political platforms that people have used to promote.

53:17

They would use it within the you know, they'll use the church to platform these kind of social movements and try to justify what they're doing biblically.

53:25

Again, the church isn't against social justice and all these sorts of things and inclusivity. But what do we mean by those terms?

53:31

That's going to be very important to keep in mind. All right. Well, it's the top of the hour here. Let me try to get to some questions here.

53:39

Scott Terry, thank you so much, man, for your super chat. I really appreciate that. Thanks for the twenty dollars.

53:45

He says here, I'd like to contribute to the Send Eli to the SES Apologetics Conference Fund.

53:50

So we have a good presuppositional is there to show our Thomas friends a civil and well -meaning representative of Van Til.

53:56

I appreciate that. Thank you so much. If I went as an audience member, I'm not sure how much

54:01

I can get done other than just having off the cuff discussions with, you know, the speakers that are also having off the cuff discussions with other people as well.

54:10

But that would be cool if I was able to go. A lot of things aren't held on my side of the woods, so to speak.

54:17

All the cool conferences I don't really get to go to because it requires me to travel so far and it is expensive and things like that.

54:24

So I do appreciate the sentiment there, Scott. Thank you so much for your twenty dollar super chalice.

54:30

Get to the super chats first and then I'll try to scroll down for some more questions. Scott Terry, man, thanks again for five dollars, bro.

54:39

OK, OK, I see. All right, Andrew, thanks for the four dollars. Really do appreciate it.

54:45

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's try to get back to the top. You guys are awesome. I do appreciate it.

54:51

And Scott, we get it. Scott Terry, you love revealed apologetics. Thank you so much.

54:58

I really do appreciate it. This is very, very, very helpful. Thank you. Scott says,

55:04

Eli, is there an ironic relationship between post -millennial Christians wanting to progress towards the kingdom and progressives wanting to progress away from it?

55:13

Is there an irony? Yeah, I think that there is an irony. And again, Scott, I think the important point here is what do we mean by progress?

55:20

OK, I think one of the most helpful questions we could ask to navigate these types of conversations is what do you mean by that?

55:27

OK, when someone says, well, I believe in progress. What do you mean by progress? Well, I believe in progress. By what standard do you measure what is progress?

55:36

Is your version of progress truly progress? By what standard? You have to have a standard in order to know whether something is progressing or regressing.

55:46

It's kind of like when the atheist says, you know, Christianity has held back the progress of of humanity, you know, for whatever reason they give.

55:56

And of course, we need to ask the question, well, by what standard? What standard do you measure progress? Right.

56:01

So those are the yeah, I do think there's an ironic relationship. Of course, post -millennial Christians believe that we as believers are to participate in the progress, right?

56:11

Conquering the world for Christ by the proclamation of the gospel, of relying on the Holy Spirit to change hearts, the proclamation of God's word.

56:19

And so for us, that's progress. But of course, progressives have a different view of progress. And the question remains,

56:25

Scott. Whose understanding of progress is the correct understanding of progress?

56:31

And I would argue that the biblical view of progress is, in fact, progress. How do we know it's true? Well, we have to argue for Christianity.

56:38

And I think that's a very important part of Christian apologetics, right? We're not simply proclaiming the truth.

56:43

We're defending the truth. And as Cornelius Van Til said when he defined apologetics in his opening pages of his little book,

56:51

Christian Apologetics, he says apologetics is the vindication of the Christian philosophy of life over against the non -Christian philosophy of life.

56:58

That definition is so key because apologetics involves not just proclaiming the truth, but vindicating the truth.

57:06

And so so there you go. So, yes, I do think there is an ironic relationship there. That's a good observation. Let's see here.

57:16

Let me see. Did I get all the super chats? I want to give a shout out to super chat folks.

57:23

I think I got all the super chats. Now we have to go to the other ones here.

57:31

OK, should I start top to bottom or bottom? OK, well, we'll start from the top.

57:37

Maybe I'll go random because I don't know if I could address everything, but we'll see. OK, let's see here. All right, superpower man.

57:46

What's the link between progressive Christianity and Black Lives Matter? Well, I think that there is that there is a link when you see churches adopt the mindset behind Black Lives Matter and then they incorporate that into their presentation of the gospel.

58:05

Does that make sense? So when we take a movement like Black Lives Matter and then we smack a label

58:12

Christian, right? Well, this, you know, this social justice movement is biblical because the

58:17

Bible teaches us that we need to fight for social justice. OK, and that's not necessarily the same thing.

58:24

OK, we fight for social justice, but the way we go about it is going to be very different than how the world thinks we should go about it.

58:32

OK, so I think the problem is when people, when churches take social movements and make them the platform,

58:38

OK, for the preaching of the gospel and then they link these things. Like almost like if you don't hold to this view, are you even

58:46

Christian? Right. That I think when the link is made in that way, then we have a problem.

58:52

Yeah. Thank you for that. Let's see here. Looking for the questions.

59:05

This is a question or a statement here. I interpret the Bible literally is circular and subject to a core tradition.

59:12

I'm not sure what this person is getting at, but to interpret the Bible literally is not circular.

59:17

Because circularity is the feature of an argument. When I say I interpret the Bible literally,

59:23

I'm not making an argument. I'm making a statement and then I'm defining what I mean. So when someone makes a statement and uses a term that has some level of ambiguity, then what is required in logic is to offer what we call a precising definition.

59:37

Now, precising definition is a definition that helps clarify an ambiguous term. And so when I say

59:43

I interpret the Bible literally, that is ambiguous. And because what do you mean by literally?

59:48

When people say, well, you interpret the Bible literally, they often have an understanding of that, which means, well, you have this wooden interpretation of the

59:57

Bible. Of course, that's not what we mean. We define clearly what we mean by literally and we offer the precising definition.

01:00:04

What is my precising definition? Well, I interpret the Bible literally. And what I mean by that is

01:00:10

I interpret the Bible according to its literature. OK, I acknowledge genre,

01:00:15

I acknowledge literary devices, hyperbole, metaphor, right? These sorts of things.

01:00:21

And so we take all those things into consideration when we're engaging in hermeneutics and exegesis and all these sorts of things. So that's what

01:00:26

I mean by it. It's not circular. It's not subjective either. OK, I mean, when you say subjective,

01:00:33

I mean, this is very interesting. What people will will say, well, if you interpret the Bible literally, this person disagrees with your interpretation.

01:00:39

How do you know which one's correct? And I think that commits a fallacy. Because the existence and I've said this multiple times on this channel, the existence of multiple interpretations does not negate the existence of a correct interpretation, nor does it negate the reality that you can be justified in the specific interpretation that you're offering.

01:00:59

All right, we can justify your interpretation by following rules of grammar, rules of hermeneutics and so forth.

01:01:04

And whether someone agrees with you or not does not diminish the justification you provided.

01:01:10

It just means that a person disagrees with you. Now, with respect to divine truth, whether that person accepts your interpretation, if you're accurately representing a biblical teaching, that's going to be a mixture of both your ability to argue well and the spirit of God working on that person's heart.

01:01:26

Right. I can prove I can show you in Scripture that the Bible teaches that Jesus is divine. But if you interpret the

01:01:32

Bible in a way that Jesus isn't divine, you're wrong. Well, he disagrees with you. I don't care if he disagrees.

01:01:38

You can disagree that two plus two equals four doesn't mean that your two plus two equaling nine is just as good as my two plus two equal four equals four.

01:01:47

You see, human language, I believe, is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth.

01:01:53

If you disagree with that, then you fall into some kind of linguistic agnosticism, which I think is self -refuting.

01:01:59

OK, so we can't trust human language to be a sufficient mechanism to convey truth. Then how do you argue about anything?

01:02:05

Much less move. Let's move away from the text of Scripture. The words you use, right, if people misinterpret words that are spoken.

01:02:12

So are we going to say that we can't understand, you know, what people are saying because we have different interpretations of what people are saying?

01:02:18

That's silly. Yeah. So I'm not sure what you're getting up there. But just to answer this, I don't think that it's circular because circularity is a feature of arguments, not statements.

01:02:29

All right. Let's see here. Let's see.

01:02:36

Moving along. I don't know the context for this, but this is funny.

01:02:45

We don't need magical black robed wizards with their holy smoke getting between us and the simple gospel message.

01:02:50

I have no idea what the context is that because I'm not following the stuff that's in the chat. But I just thought that sounded funny.

01:02:57

All right. Let's see here. Looking for questions. Looking for questions. This is a silly.

01:03:10

All religions equal false. How do you know? That's a that's a huge statement, right?

01:03:16

All religions equal false. All religions are false. And you know this. How? Of course, he doesn't give an explanation, doesn't even give me something to bite on for crying out loud.

01:03:24

Right. Right. There's no evidence for religion. Well, even if there were there were no, I would disagree with that.

01:03:30

But if it were true that there were no evidence, the absence of evidence doesn't equal the evidence of absence. So that wouldn't logically follow as well.

01:03:36

So I'm not sure what this person's saying, but that's a big claim. At least he kept it brief. That's that's fair. Thank you.

01:03:43

All right. Let's see here. OK, listen to your heart.

01:03:52

Yeah, popular song back in the day. Let's see here.

01:04:11

OK, here we go. Christian Catholic media says exactly works matter. Matter for what?

01:04:18

Matter for what? With what? With what? With what? We're going to have a core disagreement there.

01:04:26

Romans four or five. But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

01:04:33

But to the one who does not work, there's work, but believes there's faith. One is negated.

01:04:39

Make sure I put the right finger down. One is negated and the others left. It's faith alone. Right. We're justified by faith alone.

01:04:47

Right. Before God. We're justified before others by our works, as James chapter two clearly, clearly teaches.

01:04:53

So. All right. Let's see here. That's another.

01:05:05

This is why Protestantism is now woke. I mean, that's a broad statement. I mean, there's a lot within Protestantism, not all

01:05:10

Protestant, not all forms of Protestantism is woke. And there are various segments of Catholics, Catholic churches that are woke.

01:05:19

So what? Right. I mean, I could point to you, I can point to you a Catholic church that has a nice, bright rainbow flag and uses that as the platform for their church.

01:05:28

Yeah. Their churches on the other side doesn't prove that one side is false or or true or whatever. Let's see here.

01:05:40

Sorry for the silence of those who listen through podcasts, I have to search this massive.

01:05:48

Massive comment section to get to some questions. Eli is obviously being paid by the

01:06:01

Trump campaign to attack progressives the night before the big debate. Well, I'm not getting paid.

01:06:08

And evidence that I'm not getting paid is that I'm having technical difficulty. You guys might hear me fine, but there's all sorts of wonky stuff going on in here.

01:06:15

And my laptop, I think, might be possessed by the devil. So, yeah, if I was getting paid,

01:06:21

I would have better equipment. That's awesome. Let's see here.

01:06:34

Just bear with me trying to get to the question. A lot a lot of interaction in the text, but no questions, which is fine.

01:06:41

That's fine. All right. Let's move along here. I want to there are some things that I'd like to cover if I have time to get to it.

01:06:52

But we'll have to see if there's questions. Looks like there's just a lot of engagement here.

01:06:57

That's OK. Moving quickly, moving quickly.

01:07:09

It looks like there's Catholic Protestant debate for crying out loud. The topic isn't even on Roman Catholicism.

01:07:17

I mean, I mean, why can't we just keep the things on topic?

01:07:22

Yeah. Right. Oh, gosh. Protestants reject scripture. Yeah, sure. This is a kind of like staple, like surface level assertions here.

01:07:33

Let's see here. Oh, OK.

01:07:46

So it looks like there's just Roman Catholic and Protestant debate.

01:07:52

That's fine. I mean, whatever. Yeah. Jonathan Myron, you said you need to try to get John MacArthur on.

01:07:57

Yeah, that'd be awesome. I don't know how to reach him. And I don't imagine he would have the time for little old me, although that would be pretty cool because I have a bunch of questions

01:08:07

I would ask him. That'd be a dream interview. That would be a cool interview to have. Yeah. If anyone knows how

01:08:13

I can get in touch with him or if you know a guy who knows a guy, let me know. I'll definitely be down for that.

01:08:20

All right. Let's see. Oh, boy.

01:08:41

Have you ever dialogued with Catholics? Yes. In person. I have never had Catholics on the show.

01:08:47

I really don't do because they typically turn into debates. I don't typically do a lots of debates. I have a couple of them out there, but never debated a

01:08:54

Catholic. Not my expertise. I know enough about Catholicism that I know why

01:09:00

I reject it. And I do have conversations with Catholics who are friends and people that I know, but haven't had anyone on the channel before.

01:09:10

So let's see here. OK. All right. Well, it looks like.

01:09:17

Let me see. All right.

01:09:24

I can't really see anything. OK, here we go.

01:09:32

Eli, have you ever changed your mind on the interpretation of Scripture? Why is not the progressive

01:09:39

Christian allowed their interpretation of Scripture? Yeah. So there's a good question.

01:09:44

Yeah. So people are allowed their interpretation of Scripture, Gabriel. There's no no one's prohibiting someone from interpreting the

01:09:53

Scripture a certain way. The question is, is the does the interpretation actually correspond to reality?

01:09:58

Is the interpretation correct? OK. And there's this weird idea that, well, we just can't know what the proper interpretation is.

01:10:07

And I fundamentally reject that assumption. I'm not saying you're making that assumption, but people make that assumption.

01:10:13

And I reject that assumption. All right. There are things that are in the Scriptures that are difficult, non -essential areas, important, but not definitional to the

01:10:20

Christian faith. And I've changed my mind on a number of issues. But with respect to the essentials. No, I have not.

01:10:26

Right. I still believe Jesus Christ is the son of God. He's God in flesh. I believe in the Trinity. I think that's what the

01:10:31

Bible teaches. And there are people who don't interpret the Bible that way. I think they're wrong.

01:10:38

And I don't think it's simply my opinion that they're wrong. I think that the on those key issues, it can be demonstrated that they are wrong on those on those points.

01:10:46

So, yeah, progressive Christians can have their own interpretation. It doesn't mean their interpretation is correct. And so if you're going to have an interpretation, you must be willing to defend that interpretation.

01:10:55

Kind of reminds me of the people who say, you know, the Bible said the Bible teaches that there's nothing wrong with a loving homosexual relationship.

01:11:05

Right. And then they'll go through certain passages and interpret them in certain ways so as to make the case that the

01:11:11

Bible is all for loving homosexual relationships. Well, you can you could have those interpretations.

01:11:17

That doesn't mean interpretations are correct. Does it? I think there those are wrong interpretations and those interpretations can be refuted with correct interpretations.

01:11:26

So, again, it's not an issue of not allowing someone to have an interpretation. I just don't think that the Bible is a subjective mess that you can't know what it what it says with respect to the essential features of what it's of what it's teaching.

01:11:37

So thanks for the question there, Gabriel. Let's see here. All right.

01:11:54

OK. All right. I think this is a good place to stop. Then there is a lot of a lot of good friend

01:12:06

Nick Jones. Nick Jones still selling those courses, are you, you charlatan?

01:12:11

Well, yeah, of course I'm selling the courses. That's how I pay the bills. And that's how I get things like my wonky microphone and my headphone fixed.

01:12:19

Yeah, those things cost money. So, yeah, still selling those courses. So thanks for expressing your interest.

01:12:25

Yeah. OK, there we go. All right.

01:12:31

OK. All right. This is a good place to stop here. Let's see.

01:12:39

Are you what?

01:12:46

Oh, my goodness. Some crazy stuff here. Let's see here. All right.

01:12:52

Yeah, there's too much. What do you say, Jackie Griffin?

01:13:00

I'll just pick the real questions. There are some really wacky, wacko questions there. But Jackie says, would you say the root would you say is the root of what would you say is the root of progressive

01:13:13

Christianity, selfish ambition, sin? Well, in any view that seeks to change the word of God for some other foundation or to cater to the culture,

01:13:26

I think that is rooted in sin. It is rooted in a distrust of God's word.

01:13:33

And it could be a mix of selfish ambition, a desire to be accepted by the call. It could be any number of issues.

01:13:40

But I do think at the root, it is an issue of sin or even deception.

01:13:46

Someone might be deceived by these ideas because they're ignorant of what the scripture teaches or they haven't been equipped with what the

01:13:51

Bible actually says so as to ward off false doctrine. I mean, I've always said this before. A key thing to that helps us avoid falsehood is being familiar with the truth.

01:14:01

And there are a lot of people who are not being taught the truth. And so they fall, they kind of make, you know, fall into these pitfalls.

01:14:07

Now, I'm not saying that someone in this movement is necessarily not saved or can't be saved.

01:14:14

That's not what I'm saying. You know, there are people who fall into error. But I would say that the root of it, you know, people who push these ideas and question the authority of the

01:14:24

Bible and redefine and reject very that I think is is found is grounded in sinfulness.

01:14:30

I really do. Yeah. Thank you for that question. Let's see here.

01:14:38

Oh, that's a good Jonathan says, Jonathan Miron says, if if if one has no questions, it means you did a good job, you like.

01:14:46

Oh, thank you. I hope that's the reason. I think that two people are too busy debating Catholicism and all that kind of stuff.

01:15:01

All right. Again, not related, but I guess tangentially related. OK, mighties are like, hello, mighties are like, hello, thank you for your question.

01:15:09

Mighties are like ask, do you think the impossibility of the contrary is a restatement of God is the necessary precondition?

01:15:18

Two transcendentals is a precondition. Well, no, the impossibility of the contrary is simply a phrase that we use to highlight the nature of our transcendental argument.

01:15:30

So the argument itself is not simply the statement, the impossibility, the contrary. What we're saying is that a position is true and that that position is justified transcendentally.

01:15:42

When you reject it, you have to presuppose its categories. So it's true, you know, kind of like if I could use a simple thing, like if someone were to reject logic, well, you have to assume logic in order to reject logic.

01:15:55

So I would say that logic is binding by the impossibility of the contrary. Reject it. You have to affirm it. And so that's kind of what we're saying.

01:16:03

But obviously, with the more of the details that I've fleshed out in other videos. So we're not simply making the statement.

01:16:08

We're not simply saying, you know, God is the necessary precondition because God is the necessary precondition.

01:16:14

That would be a tautology. And that is not the nature of a transcendental argument. Right. X is the necessary condition for Y.

01:16:20

Y, therefore X. That's it. That's the structure. And we justify that by showing its transcendental necessity.

01:16:28

How is that done? That's done indirectly by showing that when the position is rejected, you have to presuppose its categories.

01:16:36

OK, so you have a two sided, two sides of the coin of demonstrating transcendental argument. Number one, when we argue that the

01:16:42

Christian world is the necessary precondition for all the transcendentals, intelligibility and things like that.

01:16:48

On the one hand, it is incumbent upon the Christian to then lay out, given Christian assumptions and Christian presuppositions and Christian revelation that the necessary preconditions for intelligibility are met.

01:16:59

OK, that's that's that's our job to show that given Christianity, those conditions are met. And because we're arguing necessary preconditions, you could only have one necessary precondition.

01:17:10

That's what it means for something to be necessary. So if Christianity does, in fact, provide those preconditions, it follows logically that it is the only position that does so because you can only have one necessary transcendental foundation.

01:17:21

And then the other side of that coin is to give illustrations as to why this is true. We're not simply saying, look,

01:17:26

Christianity meets those conditions. The conversation is over. We could critique other worldviews as to provide illustrations of how competing worldviews don't work.

01:17:40

Now, again, you can claim that. But if a Muslim were to say, well, I think Allah is the foundation.

01:17:46

There we go.

01:17:56

I think I'm not muted anymore. All right. Does that make sense, Mighty Zarlak? Even if you might think like, well, the presuppositionalist fails in that project.

01:18:03

That's that's what we're trying to do. So when I say that, you know, when it when along comes, the Muslim says, well,

01:18:08

I have an authority that can account for these things. They can say that. So so here's here's what is not a critique of the transcendental argument.

01:18:15

This is not a this is not a critique. Ready? When someone says, oh, well, the Christian says that Christianity is the necessary precondition, but anybody can make that claim.

01:18:24

The reality that other people can make a transcendental claim is not an argument against the

01:18:30

Christian making the transcendental claim. OK, I admit openly a Muslim can use a transcendental argument.

01:18:38

OK, an atheist can use a transcendental argument. A Buddhist can use a transcendental argument.

01:18:44

It's not an issue of who can use the argument. It's whether the actual worldview in question can actually make good on the transcendental claim.

01:18:53

So someone could say, I'm a Muslim and I believe Allah can provide the necessary preconditions and we'll say, OK, so let's jump into it.

01:18:58

And then we engage in worldview critique when they offer their attempt to justification in like fashion, when the

01:19:04

Christian offers his attempt to justification, he then also has to answer the objections and and interact with the details of that dispute.

01:19:11

And that's kind of the the project as to what it would what it would look like. But to simply answer your question, no, it's not as simple as saying, you know,

01:19:20

God is the necessary precondition because God is the necessary precondition. OK, hope that helps. Even I know mighties are like, you're not going to agree with the overall project that I'm speaking to.

01:19:30

Hopefully that makes sense in terms of answering your question. All right. All right. OK, so we're going to we're going to end here.

01:19:40

OK, because it is a little I see some now I see questions. Let's see here.

01:19:47

What are you going to do? When are you going to be back at HRBC?

01:19:55

Hope Reform Baptist Church. Oh, I mean, if you invite me, I'll be back. Or when I visit my family, then

01:20:02

I always try to connect with my good brother, Anthony Uvenio. But I love my brothers at Hope Reform Baptist Church.

01:20:09

I'd love to be there. Maybe you guys could invite me out and I can come and we can maybe do something.

01:20:15

So you let me know. All right. Anthony has my contact information. We can make that work if that's something you guys are interested in.

01:20:21

Love you guys over there. Let's see here. Christian Catholic, who is the

01:20:31

Protestant authority? That's easy. Jesus and his scripture. Yeah, well, that was easy.

01:20:39

OK, there we go. That was easy. You need that button. Well, that was easy. All right.

01:20:47

All right. So we're going to call it a quits here. OK, we're at an hour and 20 minutes. Got to wake up early and get to work.

01:20:54

So I hope this was helpful and useful for folks. There are people, obviously, there's some different discussions going on.

01:21:00

That's perfectly fine. Be sure to keep it respectful. I greatly appreciate that. But we'll call it a quits for tonight.

01:21:08

I'll be back live on Thursday dealing with a very interesting topic, which

01:21:13

I'm not going to get into now. But if you're interested, I'll see you on Thursday at nine p .m.

01:21:18

Eastern and in honor of our good friend Nick Jones, who loves this channel so much.

01:21:25

If you're interested, this is thank you, Nick, for reminding me to. If you're interested in in supporting

01:21:32

Revealed Apologetics, you can do that by either sending in a super chat, as some have done in this live stream, or you can go to the donate page of RevealedApologetics .com

01:21:43

and you can go to the donate page and donate there. Or you can order an apologetics course or two apologetics courses or apologetics conferences.

01:21:51

Those all can be purchased on RevealedApologetics .com. And the information to all that is in the description of the of the this video here.

01:22:00

So thank you, Nick, for reminding me, as always. Nick will donate. That would be hilarious.

01:22:06

I'd love for Nick to donate. That'd be great. So so there you go. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.

01:22:12

I really appreciate all of you. And I hope you guys have a great night. All right.