SRR #82 | Christian Apologetics and Logic

I do a podcast.

I'm not interested in your podcast.

Justification by Faith Alone and the Polemical Stance of the Program

The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone. When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the air and combating the air.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing. It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible.

Jesus said, Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle.

Trinity Foundation Updates and the Justification Controversy

All right. I want to welcome everybody to the podcast. This is Simple Riff around the radio and my name is Tim. I'm going to be your host for today. And today we're going to be talking about Christian apologetics and logic.

And specifically, we are coming at this from the perspective of presuppositionalism. However, we are Clarkian. So we are coming at this from the perspective of Clarkian presuppositionalism, also known as scripturalism.

And I'm very excited for today's episode because of the guests that I have. I have with me Tom Giuditis from the Trinity Foundation. So, Tom, let me just give you an opportunity to say hello and welcome you to the show.

Thank you very much for having me, Tim. And it's really a pleasure to be with you. And hello, everybody.

Well, Tom, it is a pleasure having you here. I appreciate you stopping by and joining me on today's episode. And we're going to get into the subject in a little bit. But first, let me give you an opportunity to share with our listeners what's going on at the Trinity Foundation.

What's new? What can they be looking out for?

Well, a couple of items I'd like to share with you. The newest article is up at the website. It hasn't been mailed yet. It's basically the substance updated and edited of my lecture at our 2017 Reformation at 500 conference.

It was basically my lecture updated for the review for March and April. The next item I'd like to kind of plug here is we are reinstituting the Trinity Foundation Christian Worldview Essay Contest. And we did this for, I think, 10 years, 9 or 10 years.

And we took a couple of years off break. And we are reinstituting it. But we've also added we've expanded the age range. It used to be from 17 to 23, you know, high school, college age students. But we've expanded it from 16 to 25.

So if you're in grad school and need to pay off some of those student loans, you might want to enter. And maybe you'll win $3 ,000 for the first prize. The first prize is $3 ,000 plus books. The second prize is $2 ,000 plus books.

And the third prize is $1 ,000 plus books. And the contest book this year is the book The Emperor Has No Clothes, Richard B. Gaffin Jr.'s Doctrine of Justification, written by Stephen M. Cunha. This really exposes Gaffin's teaching that justification is not by faith alone, but there's more in there.

Works, basically, are smuggled in there. And this dovetails closely with what John Piper was teaching and writing in the end of 2017. He published an article in September of 2017 in which he said, basically, that justification is by faith alone, but you can't get to heaven by faith alone.

You need the fruit of faith on the day of judgment is what saves us, is the fruit of faith. Not faith, but the fruit of faith. And basically, that's a second justification. It's justification by works, by faith and works, which is the teaching of Rome.

But it's also the teaching of Gaffin and Shepard. They might use different words here or there, but when it comes down to it, the teaching is the same. There was Norman Shepard and Richard Gaffin in the Presbyterian circles.

And I see the counterparts of John Piper and Tom Schreiner in the Baptist circles. John Piper is the Norman Shepard figure. He opens his mouth and stuff comes out. He's not as careful with his words, much like Shepard, I would say.

Tom Schreiner also happens to be a professor at Southern Baptist Seminary there in Louisville, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was also up in Bethlehem Seminary with Piper for many years before moving down to the Southern Baptist Seminary.

He's had a role in training men for the ministry, much as Richard Gaffin has had a role in training men for the ministry. He was at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia for, I think, 40 plus years. And Schreiner, like Gaffin, are a little bit more cautious in their language or more shrewd, I should say, in their language.

But in essence, they're still teaching the same thing that Piper and Shepard were teaching. And so that's why I wanted to use this book as our essay contest book, because it's so apropos for this time.

So we have our Christian worldview essay contest. All the details are at our website. And the announcement of the winners will be on Reformation Day of 2018. The next thing I wanted to kind of also mention is that the Trinity Foundation, too, has begun podcasting.

Now, we only have one podcast up so far, but our host, Steve Matthews of Lux Lucid, his podcast is Lux Lucid. He has also agreed to host podcasts for the Trinity Foundation. And the first one is up at our website, and it's him interviewing Tim Coffman and Tim Shaughnessy.

And I thank Tim for his work in helping Steve with that and much of the behind the scenes helping with that. I appreciate that, Tim. So look forward to more podcasts. I believe he's what we're trying to do is interview some of the writers for the articles that have been published, some of the writers behind those articles to get some more information about them and about the articles they've written.

So look for should be some podcasts coming out with Stephen Cunha, who authored the book The Emperor Has No Clothes. In the latest review, the last two pages, or I'm sorry, the previous review to mine, the last two pages were the forward and the introduction to Stephen Cunha's book as a way to whet people's appetite for the essay contest.

And he will also be interviewing Brad Zell, who wrote the article in that previous to mine, False Light After 500 Years, which really exposes much of the evangelical and even Reformed world in their wanting to be more ecumenical with Rome, etc.

So those are some new things going on, the essay contest, the podcast, and my latest review.

Well, Tom, I appreciate you sharing all of that with our listeners. And let me just say that I very much enjoyed working with Steve on the project to get the Trinity Foundation podcast up and going. So I'm looking forward to those episodes.

And let me just encourage our listeners, even if you're not eligible for the essay contest, let me encourage you to still get the book The Emperor Has No Clothes. I think that it's really important to become familiar with this controversy that is currently surrounding John Piper.

This is nothing new that just popped up out of the blue out of nowhere back in September of last year. This is a view that has been pushed by several people over the past, I'd say at least the past three decades.

And it's really important, I think, to become familiar with it, to read the stuff that has already been written about it. And so my encouragement is still get the book. And we are aware of the fact that Piper recently just came out with a response to the controversy.

However, we are still in disagreement with him. And hopefully we'll be coming out with an article addressing his view. Carlos Montijo is currently writing an article and hopefully he'll be done with that soon.

Logic as the Science of Correct Reasoning

So with that, let's go ahead and start our topic. We were talking about logic and how that relates to apologetics. And Tom, hopefully we can just have an interactive discussion. So let me go ahead and throw out the first question.

The first question is, what is logic and why should we study it? And I'll provide Clark's definition. Clark defined logic as the science of necessary inference, or we could say the science of right thinking.

But let me give you an opportunity to answer the question.

I would agree with Clark's definition. Mine might be a little bit more rough or crude, maybe. I would say logic is the rule or law of correct reasoning or thinking. And John Robbins also answered this question in terms of what logic is with a couple things here.

Let me just read from what he wrote in his article, Why Study Logic. He says, what is there in common between calculating, reading, and writing? The answer, of course, is thought. One must think in order to read and write.

Thinking, just as everything else, is supposed to follow certain rules. If we are to think correctly, sometimes we make mistakes in thinking. We jump to conclusions. We make unwarranted assumptions. We generalize.

There is a subject that catalogs these mistakes, points them out so that we can recognize them in the future, and then explains the rules for avoiding mistakes. That subject is logic. Now, in defining things, we also want to define them in terms of what they are, but also what they are not.

And this is also one of the rules of logic, one of the laws of logic, and that is the law of contradiction, sometimes now referred to as the law of non-contradiction, but it is the same law. So logic is not psychology.

It does not describe what people think about or how they reach conclusions. It describes how they ought to think if they wish to reason correctly. It is more like arithmetic than history, for it explains the rules one must follow in order to reach correct conclusions, just as arithmetic explains the rules one must follow to arrive at correct answers.

So logic concerns all thought. It is fundamental to all disciplines, from agriculture to astronautics. There are not several kinds of logic, like one for philosophy or one for religion, but the same rules of thought that apply in politics, for example, apply also in chemistry.

So logic is like the building blocks of correct thinking.

Well, Tom, one thing that I want to reiterate that you said is that logic is not psychology. Logic deals with the way in which we should think if we are to think correctly. And oftentimes I get the impression that Christians sometimes think that logic is unnecessary or it's useless.

And it's important, I think, for people to recognize that we have a moral obligation to think logically. And so I'm going to read a section from an article that I wrote titled Christianity and Logic. I write,.

It may come as a surprise to many Christians to learn that we have a moral obligation to think logically. Perhaps this is because they have not considered carefully that it is impossible to obey God if our thinking is illogical.

We often associate sinful thoughts with the vices of lust or hatred. But the truth is that all sin originates in our thinking. Although adultery and theft are commonly regarded as overt actions, their origin is in our thinking.

Sin is the result of intellectual error. Clark was correct then to point to such verses as Proverbs 23, 7,. Some might find this disturbing and may wish to separate logic from morality. But logic is necessary for morality as well because without logic there can be no distinction between deception and truth, good and evil, right and wrong.

It is no wonder then that the scriptures are logically consistent. If this were not the case, we would not be able to discern truth from error. If God's thinking is logically consistent and the scriptures are part of the mind of God, then it is impossible to obey scriptural commands if we contradict the Bible in the way that we think.

The reality is that we often do not stop to consider just how intellectually disobedient we can be in our thinking. It is important to realize that it is impossible to love God with all of our mind if we are illogical.

How can we surrender every thought captive to the Lordship of Christ, as it says in 2 Corinthians 10, 5, if our thinking does not reflect the logical consistency of scripture? The inescapable result of failing in this area is compromise, error, and sin.

We inevitably begin to adopt worldly and secular thinking, which is firmly opposed to the Word of God. We should recognize that every attack from the enemy is an attack on the Word of God. A clear example of this can be seen in the current debates over same-sex marriage and abortion.

We can easily infer that marriage is between a man and a woman from Jesus' response to the Pharisees in Matthew 19, 4 -5, when he answered, Have you not read, that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?

Therefore we stand in direct opposition to the Word of God if we insist that same-sex marriage is morally good. Likewise, when we insist that women have the right to abort their unborn children, then we defy God and advocate the murder of children on the altar of convenience and shame.

Those who advocate such positions stand against Christ and His Word. Professing Christians who hold such positions display an incredible amount of logical inconsistency, and as a result have no basis for believing that Jesus died on the cross for their sins.

If they do not believe the Bible when it speaks on the issues of marriage, the sin of homosexuality, and the life of an unborn child, then what basis do they have for believing the truth of the cross?

How convenient it must be to arbitrarily pick and choose what suits us. Such advocates of logical inconsistency would be hard-pressed to provide a rational reason or justification for believing that the gospel is true while rejecting the Bible as unreliable or untrue when it doesn't suit them.

And so with that, I think that it's really important to just recognize the fact that we have a moral obligation to think logically, to think rationally. And with that, let's dig into this a little bit more.

The Relationship Between God, Logos, and the Trinity

The next question is, what is the relationship between God and logic? And Tom, I'd love to give you an opportunity to respond.

Well, thank you, Tim. Yeah, we are referencing that article, God and logic. It's also, I believe, as an appendix, if I'm not mistaken, in Clark's textbook on logic. But to do this, let's think about John 1 .1.

We all know it in the English as, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The word that is translated Word in the original is logos, and that word can also mean logic or wisdom.

And so we could say, in the beginning was the logic, and the logic was God, and the logic was with God. So in that sense, we could say that logic, in a sense, is God. And I'm going to read a little bit from Clark here in this article that we referenced, Logic is God.

He is one of the subheads in there. And Clark says this, Any translation of John 1 .1 that obscures this emphasis on mind or reason is a bad translation. And if anyone complains that the idea of ratio or debate obscures the personality of the second person of the Trinity, he should alter his concept of personality.

In the beginning, then, was logic. And he goes through before that and lists all these possible translations for this term logos. And what they all have in common is this idea of reasoning or thought or logic, and so thus logic.

Continuing on in this article, That logic is the light of men is a proposition that could well introduce the section after next on the relation of logic to man. But the thought that logic is God will bring us to the conclusion of the present section.

Not only do the followers of Bernard, he's quoting Bernard of Clairvaux, entertain suspicions about logic, and there are many people today that have the same views as Bernard of Clairvaux, but also even more, systematic theologians are wary of any proposal that would make an abstract principle superior to God.

The present argument, in consonance with both Philo and Charnock, Stephen Charnock, does not do so. The law of contradiction is not to be taken as an axiom prior to or independent of God. The law, that is the law of contradiction, is God thinking.

For this reason also, the law of contradiction is not subsequent to God. If one should say that logic is dependent on God's thinking, it is dependent only in the sense that it is the characteristic of God's thinking.

It is not subsequent temporarily, for God is eternal, and there was never a time when God existed without thinking logically. One must not suppose that God's will existed as an inert substance before he willed to think.

So, logic is there with God in the beginning. And think of the Proverbs where wisdom is personified, speaking, I was there in the beginning, with me God made the heavens and the earth. And you hearken that to what John says in John 1, 1, and the writer to the Hebrews says in Hebrews 1, Christ is that Logos that also created the world.

By him all things were created, it says. And so, he is that wisdom, Christ is that Logos, that wisdom of God, that we know that the whole Trinity, that the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were active in creation.

And it is the second person, the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was that wisdom that was used to create the world. So, logic in this sense is God, and it's God's thinking. The laws of logic are God's thinking.

God cannot contradict himself, and so the law of contradiction finds itself in the person of God himself.

Clark and Van Til on Logic and Analogy

Well, Tom, I agree with everything that you just said, but I know that there are some people in the Cornelius Van Teel presuppositional camp that might take issue or might disagree with Clark's definition.

And from what I understand, Cornelius Van Teel viewed logic a little bit different than Clark. So, let's go ahead and address that. Would you be able to speak on the difference between the way in which Cornelius Van Teel viewed logic and the way in which Clark viewed logic?

From what I can understand, Van Teel's view makes logic part of the creation, not in the person of God. And so, with that and with his doctrine of analogy, man as the analog of God, Van Teel said the knowledge possible to man and the knowledge that God has do not coincide at any single point.

Not only was that in the complaint that was written at the time of the Clark-Van Teel controversy over the ordination of Gordon Clark in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, but that's also made mention of in several of Van Teel's works, his systematic theology, I believe, in his book on apologetics.

So, for Van Teel, logic is part of the created order. It's not in the person of God himself. And so, God has his logic and the weasel words that were often used to criticize mere human logic that you would see in Van Teel and others that followed after him, saying that God's logic is higher than ours and our mere human logic doesn't get us to God, doesn't give us the truth, etc.

So, Clark's view is that logic is in the creator and it's part of what is given to man as the image of God, and Van Teel disagrees with that logic as part of the created order. That's my understanding.

Well, that was my understanding as well, and I think it's interesting because I don't think that Dr. Jason Lyle has taken this view. From what I understand, his view is that logic is the characteristic of God's thinking, and I know a lot of our listeners would be familiar with Dr. Lyle.

He was a student of Dr. Greg Bonson, who was a student of Cornelius Van Teel, and so I think that it's worth noting that not everybody has taken Cornelius Van Teel's side on this. I'd also mention that I've written an article titled, Getting Clark Right on Van Teel's Notion of Analogy, in which I defend Clark, because I think that a lot of people, especially in the Reformed community, are just prone to criticizing Clark without actually reading him directly.

I'll just pose the question to you, Tom. Why do you think that it is that some people have had this reaction to his view of logic?

Logic, Scripture, and the Westminster Confession

Well, I think, and Clark made reference to this in the portion that I read, his translation of John 1 .1, where he says logic, in the beginning was the logic, I think is what really probably grates on people, and we've probably been so conditioned with the translations, especially of Word, which I believe was a translation more in line with the Latin Vulgate than it was with the actual text.

I believe the Latin Vulgate used verbum, which does translate Word, but in the original Logos, you go look at any lexicon, a Greek lexicon, and it gives you all these options that deal with reason, with thinking, with computation, etc., all that have to do with reason, with thinking, and with logic.

But I think in the age in which we live, in the 20th century, even after the 19th century, with the rise of liberalism and so forth, and in the 20th century, neo-orthodoxy and these other things, I think you see this antagonism to reason, to logic.

And so when Clark comes along and says that logic is God, or translate John 1 .1 in the beginning was the logic, I think that really chafes many people, and they think that he's somehow making some abstract principle God, and that's not what he's doing.

But I think that's why the reaction. Interesting you brought up Jason Lyle. When he was here in the community that I was several years ago for a conference, I was able to hand him several books by Clark, which he did take, and he was familiar with Clark.

So it's interesting. So hopefully that's having some good impact on him as well.

Well, and I've interacted with Dr. Jason Lyle as well, and I'm sure he has no idea who I am, but I do consider him to be a brother, and I think that he's got some good stuff to offer. So hopefully he appreciated the books that he got from you, and he is benefiting from Clark.

I find that a lot of people who read Clark for themselves don't necessarily get caught up in what I would describe as an echo chamber of criticism against Clark. So hopefully he is benefiting from what Clark wrote.

So with that, let's go ahead and get into the next question. The next question is, what is the relationship between logic and scripture? And I found that it was interesting that Clark, in his book titled God's Hammer, basically points out that the Reformers used the law of contradiction in their interpretive method.

He writes on page 107,. What is clear in one passage can be understood by a comparison with other passages is nothing other than the application of the law of contradiction. Logic, therefore, must have been the only test that the Reformers could have used.

And Steve Matthews also had something good to say about this in his book. Steve Matthews is the gentleman who is doing the Trinity Foundation podcast, and he also has Lex Lucid. But in his book, titled Imaging a Vain Thing, you can find this at the Trinity Foundation, he writes,.

This irrational method produced, as it must, an irrational superstitious understanding of the Bible. The Protestant Reformation, believing that God was not the author of Confusion, rejected this equivocal method and insisted that a given passage of scripture have but one meaning.

The Bible could be read and understood by the same means that one could read and understand other writings, the principal tool being the laws of logic. This approach to scripture was given confessional status by the Westminster Assembly.

Section 1 .6 of the Westminster Confession of Faith establishes logical inference as the primary tool of biblical interpretation.

Quote,.

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture.

And so there we have it, that we are to make valid deductions from scripture, not just believe the things that are expressly stated. So, Tom, can you just give us your thoughts on this?

Yeah, this is a subject, logic was a subject that used to be taught at the seminaries, that ministers were trained in it. Think back to the Puritans, Isaac Watts, a great hymn writer, actually wrote a textbook on logic.

The Puritans studied logic. God does not contradict himself, therefore his revelation to us does not contradict itself. So thus, if we have what seems to be a contradiction, what Van Til and others would call a paradox, Clark famously said, it's just a charley horse between the ears.

Something must be wrong with our thinking about those two passages that might seem to contradict. We have a false interpretation, a wrong interpretation for the scripture as the mind of God. Paul said we have the mind of Christ, and he's talking about the scriptures.

The mind of God, the mind of Christ, the scriptures, do not contradict themselves, because God does not contradict himself. So thus, in our own age, as I said, logic probably is not taught at seminaries, much less Christian colleges and so forth.

But it was important not only to the reformers, but even the Puritans, and probably up through much of the 19th century. And it's only, I would say, within the latter half of the 19th century through the 20th century, and even on into this 21st century, that this deprecation of logic has happened.

And what has it done? It's opened the floodgates to all sorts of false interpretations, mystical interpretations, etc. Because of this deprecation of logic, what you've seen happen also is that systematic theology is basically thrown under the bus in favor of what's called biblical theology, or the historical redemptive approach, etc.

And while this denies that God is logical, he's not going to contradict himself. And so to subject systematic theology, which we're trying to look at the whole of Scripture and see what the teaching is on each of what we call the loci of doctrines, we want to see what the Scripture says as a whole and build our doctrine on that.

That's downgraded in favor of what's called, again, biblical theology or historical redemptive. But this leads to all sorts of teachings that contradict sound biblical doctrine from our systematic theology.

A case in point, we've been talking about Piper and Gaffin and so forth, is this teaching on justification. A person can be justified by faith alone, but that's not enough to save him. He must add his work somewhere in there.

Well, that's foreign to the Scripture. That's a man-made insertion of false teaching. And Paul pronounces his most severe criticism and curse, anathema, on those who would teach another gospel. He has choice words for those that teach false doctrines, but no other place does he actually bring down God's curse than on those who would change the gospel and teach another gospel, which is not another gospel at all.

So, logic is very important in that regard.

Well, I think that you're absolutely right to point out how important logic is. And for those who might be tempted to disparage logic, John Robbins writes, this is in the article that we've been referencing, Why City Logic.

He writes,. The opponents of logic must use the law of contradiction in order to denounce it. They must assume its legitimacy in order to declare it illegitimate. They must assume its truth in order to declare it false.

They must present arguments if they wish to persuade us that argumentation is invalid. Wherever they turn, they are boxed in. You see, for those who wish to disparage logic, it is very likely that they don't understand that they cannot present an argument or make an argument intelligible without first assuming the law of contradiction.

I would like to just interject here something from Clark's article on God and logic in terms of the relationship between logic and scripture, just to bring this even more home. He says,. Therefore, the law of contradiction as such and by itself is not made the axiom of this argument.

So, those who would say that Clark just exalts logic are really not reading Clark carefully. He's not making the law of contradiction or logic his axiom. He has a different axiom, but he uses the law of logic to deduce the applications of that axiom, the theorems, etc., much like geometry.

And so, continuing to quote here from Clark, he says,. For a similar reason, God, as distinct from scripture, is not made the axiom of this argument. Because how do we know God except through the scripture?

He says,. Undoubtedly, this twist will seem strange to many theologians. It will seem particularly strange after the previous emphasis on the mind of God as the origin of all truth. Must not God be the axiom?

For example, the first article of the Augsburg Confession gives the doctrine of God and the doctrine of the scripture hardly appears anywhere in the whole document. In the French Confession of 1559, the first article is on God.

The scripture is discussed in the next five. The Belgic Confession has the same order. The Scots Confession of 1560 begins with God and gets to the scripture only in article 19. The 39 articles begin with the Trinity, and scripture comes in articles 6 and following.

If God is sovereign, it seems very reasonable to put him first in the system. But several other creeds, and especially the Westminster Confession, state the doctrine of scripture at the very start. The explanation is quite simple.

Our knowledge of God comes from the Bible. We may assert that every proposition is true because God thinks it so, and we may follow Charnock, Stephen Charnock again referenced here, in all his great detail, but the whole is based on scripture.

Suppose this were not so, then God, in quotation marks, as an axiom, apart from scripture, is just a name. We must specify which God. The best-known system in which God was made the axiom is Spinoza's.

And he goes on through Spinoza. So we start with scripture because scripture is what gives us the knowledge of God. So that is his axiom. Clark's axiom is not logic. It's not even God as an undefinable term, but it's the scripture which gives us the information, the knowledge of God.

Right, and you know it's interesting that Clark was criticized by his opponents as being a rationalist when really all he was doing was presenting Christianity as a system of belief that was in fact rational.

If he's a rationalist, then so are the writers of the Westminster Confession.

Right, right. And you know, Tom, one of the things that I want to bring out here is that I had heard somebody at one time make the claim or say something to the effect that this whole idea that we're supposed to believe the things that we can deduce by good and necessary consequence was something that the reformers came up with, was something that the reformers invented.

And that's not true because we get this in scripture itself. We see that Jesus himself deduced the resurrection from the tense of a verb. And so we have this example from Christ. And basically what Christ was saying was that his hearers were obligated to believe the resurrection as well.

And I know that this is a reference. It's in Matthew. I was trying to look it up earlier. I wasn't able to do it. Do you by any chance have that on hand?

Deducing the Resurrection from Scripture

Yeah, it's Matthew chapter 22. And I'll start at verse 23 and read through verse 32. This is when the Sadducees come testing the Lord. And the scripture says, The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him, saying, Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.

Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. Likewise, the second also, and the third even to the seventh. Last of all, the woman died also.

Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her. Jesus answered and said to them, You are mistaken, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven.

But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, and here's the quotation from Exodus, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And he makes the argument from, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Not I was, but I am, in the verb tense. So therefore, all live unto God.

And so he deduces, as Tim was saying, he deduces the resurrection from the verb tense.

That is incredible that Jesus corrected his opponents by deducing the resurrection from the tense of a verb. So that really, I think, highlights how important logic is. And here we have the Logos, the logic or wisdom of God, setting the example.

Logic in Apologetics, Rational Revelation, and Ad Hominem Reply

So next we want to talk about how understanding and using logic is necessary in order to defend the faith. And going back to Gordon Clark's book, God's Hammer, on page 106, Clark writes, with regards to defending the Bible as rational, he writes,.

In this case, a rational revelation is one that preserves the distinction between truth and falsity. It is, in its entirety, self-consistent. Christianity is under no obligation to justify itself as rational in any other sense, for the history of philosophy has shown that all other senses or systems result in skepticism.

Therefore, to claim that election, or the atonement, or any other doctrine is, quote, irrational, is nothing more than to assert that these doctrines are distasteful to the objector. The accusation is not a substantiated intellectual conclusion, but an emotional antipathy.