February 28, 2017 Show with Larry Taunton on “The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist” PLUS Craig Biehl on “The Box: Answering the Faith of Unbelief”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a

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Tuesday on this final day of February 2017,

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February 28th. I have in my studio with me my co -host the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

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Hello. And we have on our guest today as our guest today for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Larry Taunton.

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He is an author, columnist, and cultural commentator, frequent television and radio guest on CNN, CNN International, Fox News, Al Jazeera, America, and the

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BBC, columnist for The Atlantic, USA Today, CNN .com,

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The Blaze, founder and executive director of the Fixed Point Foundation, debater of such high -profile atheists as the late

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Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michael Shermer, as well as Muslim cleric

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Zaid Shakir. He's an organizer and has chaired debates on science, religion, and ethics at Trinity College, Oxford University, the

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Edinburgh International Festival, the Melbourne Town Hall in Melbourne, Australia, Princeton University, and the

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Oxford Museum of Natural History. Today we are discussing his latest book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, The Restless Soul of the

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World's Most Notorious Atheist. And now it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time,

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Larry Taunton. Delighted to be with you. Yes, I'm delighted to have you on the program, and I don't think that I had mentioned this to you previously before the program began, but this subject, one of the reasons is it is of great interest to me, is that years ago before Christopher was diagnosed with cancer, he had agreed to debate my dear friend

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Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a world -renowned

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Christian apologist, and the theme was to be, is

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Christianity evil, or is the New Testament evil, I believe it was actually the title of the of the debate.

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And Christopher agreed to do the debate, he actually agreed to do it, at quite a reduction of the typical honorarium he receives for this kind of a thing, and I was taken aback by how pleasant he was with me over the phone, very humorous, very apologetic to me, because I think it was a couple of months had gone by before he returned my phone call, but it was because he was out of the country and I didn't realize it, and he was very profusely apologetic that he didn't get back to me, but he agreed to do it, and then

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I actually had posters all printed up for the debate, but then sadly

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I got a a phone call from his manager or publicist, his agent,

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Jessica Fee, contacted me with the bad news that Christopher had developed and had been diagnosed with cancer.

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I think it was esophageal cancer, was it not? That's correct. Yes, and so we had to understandably cancel that debate, and David Silverman, the president of Madeleine Murray O 'Hare's atheistic organization,

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American Atheists, took Christopher's place on that same topic. But anyway, this book is a very intriguing book.

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How did you first get to meet Christopher? I'm assuming it had something to do with a debate of your own.

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Yes, I met him. We facilitated many of the high -profile debates.

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You know, when we were, you know, kind of among the first to do that, we facilitated the debates between John Lennox and his

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Oxford University colleague Richard Dawkins. I moderated a couple of those, and also some very early debates with Christopher Hitchens, and one of those was at the

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Edinburgh Festival, International Festival, in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2008, and I had not met

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Christopher. I certainly had my own impression of him, that this was a guy who didn't seem particularly personable.

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He seemed like a loose cannon, and he seemed like someone who needed to be taken down, so to speak, because he was, you know,

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Pied Piper -like, leading people away from the Christian faith. And it was there, in Edinburgh, that I met

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Christopher, and I found him a very different person offstage than on it, very much the same way that you've described him.

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He was charming. I enjoyed our conversation, and from there,

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I ended up seeing him, you know, several times thereafter, and we developed a warm friendship, and that culminated in two lengthy road trips together, one from his home in D .C.

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to mine in Birmingham, Alabama, and another one through Yellowstone National Park, after our own public debate.

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And, you know, it was all very interesting, you know, because I was dealing with a man who, on the one hand, was a very vociferous critic of the

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Christian faith, and then, on the other, had become someone who mattered to me. He had become a friend.

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And what can you tell us about Christopher's upbringing, because it is interesting. Some of our listeners may know, but many may not know, that he has a brother who is a

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Bible -believing, born -again evangelical Christian. Obviously, the two went in two very different directions in their life, but tell us something about Christopher's upbringing in England.

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Sure. Christopher was born in 49, and died in 2011, as you stated, of esophageal cancer, and Christopher's father was in the

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Royal Navy. He was a career officer, and at the age of 15, in 1964,

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Christopher declared himself an atheist, burned his Bible, and his brother Peter, who's two years younger, would do the same thing.

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And both, having declared themselves atheists, also became communists, and within that very narrow world,

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Trotskyists. And so these were guys who were very actively working to undermine

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Western democracy as we know it, certainly capitalism, and undermine notions of God and the

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Church, and so forth. And Christopher would go to Oxford University, where he would, you know, really develop chiefly his skills as a rhetorician, as a debater.

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He had been shown a real skill, a talent for public debate from childhood.

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Very early on, he was participating in plays, and in school debates, and things of this nature.

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Then he was part of the Oxford Union at Oxford University, which is a debating society, and arguably the most famous in the world.

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And there, those skills were really sharpened, and he became a journalist. Thereafter, writing for the

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New Statesman, and eventually in the United States for a variety of publications, you know,

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Slate, and Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic, and other places.

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And Christopher became a very prominent man on the left.

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He wasn't the sort that evangelicals would know, because they, of course, don't read those publications, because Christopher wasn't the sort to be on TV and such a lot.

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He was mostly moving in fairly highbrow circles on the left.

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But after 9 -11, something changed with Christopher, and he broke with the left politically, but found himself, once again, you know, their fair -haired boy, when in 2007 he published his best -selling book,

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God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything. And Christopher, as a part of the promotion for that book, issued a challenge that he would debate religious people anytime, anywhere.

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And it's then that he began really engaging evangelicals, and debating them in the

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South and elsewhere. But it wasn't the Hindu who wanted to debate him, or Muslims, or very many

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Jews, actually. It was Christians, and chiefly evangelicals. And you're right to say that his brother

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Peter, who was born in 51, Peter would become a

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Christian in 91, I think it is, in the early 90s, in any case. Also a journalist.

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But I would maybe modify the way he characterized him just a little bit.

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Peter's not an evangelical. He does not believe in evangelizing, has a very kind of quirky sort of English twist on his own

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Christianity, his faith in Jesus Christ, I certainly think is very real. But evangelicals would have a very hard time identifying with him, as I think

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Eric Metaxas discovered in an interview. Yeah, I saw that interview, and as I mentioned before the program,

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I think that was the most painful interview Eric Metaxas ever conducted. He did not look like he was enjoying himself all that much.

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It was like pulling teeth sometimes to get Peter to answer questions.

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Well now, let me take the position of your listeners for a moment, because I did not hear any of that.

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What was the problem with the debate? With the debate? Yeah, you said when

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Eric Metaxas... No, it wasn't a debate, it was an interview. An interview, okay. Eric Metaxas has a meeting that he has sometimes in New York City, sometimes in Oxford and in England called

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Socrates in the City, where he interviews all types of people, including our guest, Larry Taunton.

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And he had Christopher's brother on, who is a Christian, Christopher Hitchens' brother.

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Right, yeah. And it seemed as if, you could hardly tell, and Larry you could speak more to this with Peter, you could hardly tell if Peter is being offended or upset by questions being asked of him, because there is very little change in his tone of voice or facial expression or anything like that.

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Yeah, Peter is, you know, listen, I like Peter. And in my book,

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The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, which of course we're discussing and which, by the way, I'm pleased to say the

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Gospel Coalition named a 2016 Book of the Year award winner, that honor was unexpected and certainly one that I cherish.

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But in the book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, I have a chapter entitled Brothers, and that chapter is about the very difficult relationship between Christopher, the atheist, and his brother

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Peter, who would become a Christian, and what that relationship looked like.

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Now how did Christopher's parents and family react to his becoming an atheist?

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And of course you said that Peter actually, along with Christopher, originally became an atheist and a

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Marxist as well. How did the family react to that? It seems that there was not an especially strong reaction to that declaration.

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Peter says that, as best he could tell, his father was an agnostic.

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Perhaps he moved away from that at the end of his life, that's not entirely clear.

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Christopher's mother Yvonne would eventually commit suicide, and his father would die in 1987, so that took place before Peter would convert to Christianity.

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So both parents died while both children were still very much on the left and were themselves avowed atheists.

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But one doesn't get the impression that either parent had particularly, you know, any kind of strong religious sentiment.

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So this was the world in which they had grown up in. I think perhaps what the father found particularly embarrassing, if not the mother, was the fact that they were both communists.

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I mean, you can imagine, this is a man who is in the Royal Navy, he's sworn to defend

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Britain against all enemies, and World War II, he fought against the

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Nazis, and of course, in the Cold War, our primary enemy was the

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Soviet Union. And yet, here were his own children, sort of idolizing this political model.

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So you can imagine that the father was not too pleased by that. Now, most of the atheists

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I have seen who are in the spotlight, those who are involved in apologetic interaction with Christians and people of other religions, they all seem to have a bitterness to them and an anger, as did

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Christopher, although I've met atheists or self -professed atheists in person who are not intellectuals or authors, who are very pleasant people, who don't seem to have an axe to grind or don't seem to have any anger or bitterness pent up in them, at least that they wear on their sleeve.

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But Christopher seemed to be an angry and bitter man, to even describe

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Christianity in the terms of evil and so on. What do you think was the catalyst of this pent -up bitterness that he had?

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Rather than just stating plainly that he doesn't believe God exists, there seemed to be more to it than that.

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Yeah, I think there are several factors here. One is that Christopher was a showman, and by that I don't mean to suggest that Christopher wasn't really an atheist or didn't believe much of what he said, but rather that Christopher knew that a public presentation, particularly a debate, is largely showmanship.

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It's not simply an exercise in logic -chopping, it's more than that.

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And so Christopher often played to his audience, and he knew that his fans were themselves chiefly atheists, and he often played to that.

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Now, offstage Christopher could be very different in regards to this, and by that, again,

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I don't mean that Christopher would, you know, onstage be an atheist and off it not be one.

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Rather, what I mean is that the conversations offstage were generally not hostile, and you didn't really sense a great bitterness with Christopher.

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Often he was quite interested in the issues and in trying to understand them.

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So I think that's one of the factors. The second factor is that Christopher, unlike some of the other new atheists who are generally ivory tower theorists, the academics, people who don't get out enough,

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I might say, Christopher was a journalist who was often traveling all over the world, and unsurprisingly, he encountered parts of the world where the

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Greek Orthodox Church or the Catholic Church were corrupt and were power structures that served to oppress people.

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And these were things that bothered him very much, as I think it would both you and I. I mean, we wouldn't, neither of us would pretend that every manifestation of religious belief is an authentic one.

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Rather, I often tried to urge Christopher to see religion in a much more nuanced way.

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I mean, he wouldn't want me, for instance, to assume that he's a genocidal maniac, because Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, both atheists, were.

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So we look at those things with a great deal more nuance. But Christopher was used to seeing churches that had enormous political ambition.

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Now, I will tell you that my own personal experience with Christopher was that I did not find him particularly hostile to Christian belief that he took to be authentic, provided that it did not have political ambitions associated with it.

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In fact, I want to read something that Christopher said about you, which is quite impressive.

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Christopher Hitchens said about my guest today, Larry Taunton, if everyone in the United States had the same qualities of loyalty and care and concern for others that Larry Taunton had, we'd be living in a much better society than we do.

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That is a pretty touching and moving and remarkable thing for an atheist to say about a

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Christian apologist. Well, it was very gracious of Christopher to say that, and the story behind that, which

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I tell in the book, is that the two of us were doing a television interview together about our relationship, and Christopher was asked what he thought of me, and I'll be honest,

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I braced. I thought, you know, I've seen him too often, you know, really go after people, and I thought, you know,

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Christopher might, for no other reason, just, you know, to try to, you know, stir up some interest in our debate that was going to be taking place either that night or the next night,

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I can't immediately recall, and so when Christopher answered the way he did,

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I was really quite touched. I thought it was extremely gracious of him to say that.

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Yeah, I can still remember how disarmed I was by how friendly he was with me, and how polite and respectful he was with me on the phone, and I can still remember thinking how much he sounded like Richard Burton, the late

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British actor, former husband of Elizabeth Taylor, at least a couple of times, but I can still remember when he told me that I had to make most of the arrangements for the debate with his agent

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Jessica Fee, F -S -E -E, and I can still remember him saying, quite an appropriate name for an agent, is it not?

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Fee. I can certainly agree with that.

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Christopher, I think that was called the Greater Talent Network or something. Yes, exactly, they still exist.

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That he used and she was his go -between.

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Christopher could be very charming, very charming, and he could be certainly very enjoyable to engage offstage.

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He wasn't always, but he certainly could be when he chose to be.

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And I wanted to read another little plug from another atheist, Michael Shermer, and Michael actually on Long Island, New York, a couple of years ago, debated

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Christian apologist Frank Turek, and I had the privilege of actually being the moderator for that debate.

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But Michael Shermer says of this book, this book should be read by every atheist and theist passionate about the truth.

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That's quite an interesting thing for an atheist to say about this. And Ravi Zacharias, who's been on this program, says this book will surprise and challenge you and I hope open fruitful conversation among atheists and theists alike.

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I'm gonna announce our email address for those of you who would like to join us on the air with a question for Larry Taunton.

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Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

23:34

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And we have a listener from Randleman, South Carolina, Seth, who says

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Christopher Hitchens was an atheist but also pro -life. How did he come to that stance given his unbiblical worldview?

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Was he ever challenged given that stance? And I'm assuming he means by fellow atheists, but if you could respond to that.

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Yeah, certainly. If you go to my Twitter, Larry Taunton, T -A -U -N -T -O -N, or you can go to my website,

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LarryAlexTaunton, T -A -U -N -T -O -N .com, LarryAlexTaunton .com,

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you can find an exchange in my debate with Michael Shermer on this very topic, because Shermer, you know, accuses me of being against, you know, women's rights when he says that, you know, you're pro -life, and I point out to him, you know, your fellow atheists,

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Christopher Hitchens, would actually stand with me on this particular issue. Christopher, first of all,

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Christopher never, interestingly, claimed to be especially logical in a number of his own beliefs.

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That is to say, Christopher adhered to a number of views that weren't entirely consistent with, if I might put it this way, an orthodox atheist, and one of the ways that he did as being pro -life.

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And I think what was very decisive in his thinking on this was that his own mother, Yvonne, had told him that she had had an abortion both before he was born and after he was born.

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And Christopher said that this unsettled him, because she bracketed him, as it were, with abortions, and it was just a little too close.

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It made it very real for him that she might very well have decided to have aborted him.

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Wow. That just, for some reason, reminded me of Jack Nicholson, who

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I heard was pro -life because he was raised by his sister his whole life and was under the impression that his sister was his mother, and didn't even find out until he was an adult that the woman that he thought was his mother was his sister.

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And he was pro -life because apparently his mother was considering aborting him. But one of the things that I wanted to know, if you ever asked

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Christopher, and I'm assuming you did because of your debates with him and also cordial, friendly conversations with him, how did he answer the question as to the determination of evil in the mind of an atheist when there really is no logical basis for an atheist, or even an agnostic for that matter, to determine for anyone else what evil and what good is when they believe that we have just evolved from pond scum, we're just walking bags of protoplasm basically, and why would it not be a very legitimate action for one group of humans who believe in survival of the fittest to murder another group or what have you?

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Did he ever answer the question about the... No, no, at least not to my knowledge, certainly not at my debate, and not in other debates that I saw him in, and of course

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I saw him in many. I moderated a few of them, and Christopher was very good at deflecting that question.

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You mentioned Frank Turek. Frank will tell you an amusing story of Christopher saying in debate that, you know, that Frank said to him, you know, what is the origin of evil in your worldview,

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Christopher? Christopher replied, religion, and of course the audience, you know, thought that was hilarious, and it was a very witty comment, but of course it wasn't an actual answer.

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It didn't really address the issue. It was a, you know, it was all smoke and mirrors.

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I think Christopher, over a cocktail perhaps, would admit to you what you've just said is true.

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He would probably admit to you that at the end of the day, that strictly speaking within an atheistic universe, that there isn't ultimately any meaning, there isn't ultimately any purpose other than the purpose we give to ourselves, and there's no ultimate right and wrong.

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And this is often what is attractive to many to become atheists in the first place. Thomas, excuse me,

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Aldous Huxley, you know, very famously said that the reason he wanted to be an atheist is because it liberated him both politically and sexually to do whatever it was that he wanted to do.

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Peter has said this, and you know, and that is to say

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Peter Hitchens, in a conversation I had with him in London, he said something very similar to that.

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I asked him, you know, why did you choose to be an atheist? And he said, well, to be as selfish as possible, of course.

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And this is, you know, this is the sort of thing that I think was motivating

29:22

Christopher to And we have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

29:31

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Please at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and I want to thank

29:37

Seth in Randlesman, North Carolina. You have won a free copy of the book

29:42

The Faith of Christopher Hitchens by our guest, subtitled The Restless Soul of the

29:49

World's Most Notorious Atheist. So please make sure you give us your full mailing address, and we'll get that out to you.

29:56

Compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV, as in Cumberland Valley, BBS, as in BibleBookService .com.

30:03

Don't go away. We will be right back with Larry Alex Taunton. I am

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33:07

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsett, if you just tuned us in. Our guest for the first hour is

33:12

Larry Alex Taunton, the author of The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, The Restless Soul of the

33:19

World's Most Notorious Atheist, and my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, just had a quick question about your involvement, if any, with Doug Wilson, who also debated

33:30

Christopher Hitchens. Buzz, do you have... Well, yeah, I don't... I'm not really familiar with Christopher Hitchens, and I remember a few years ago seeing that Doug Wilson was touring and debating an atheist, and I was wondering...

33:44

That was definitely Christopher Hitchens. It was, okay, that's what I wanted to find out, because I see that Doug Wilson is mentioned on the back of the book.

33:50

Okay, and Larry, do you know if Doug had developed as close a relationship with Christopher as you had?

34:01

We've never spoken, and interestingly enough, before the book was published,

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I'd had no interactions with Doug, not in an email or a conversation of any kind, but...

34:19

So I was very intrigued when I saw that he was writing the review for Christianity Today of my book as it was coming out.

34:27

And the reason I was intrigued is because I knew that Doug had had a relationship that was similar to my own with Christopher, and so when he came out and just...

34:40

He preys on this book and began his own review by saying, you know,

34:48

I was skeptical of this book coming out. What was this going to be, you know, a kiss -and -tell? What was this going to be a book about?

34:55

And he said, you know, and at the end I concluded that that Taunton had traveled with the same

35:01

Christopher Hitchens and debated the same Christopher Hitchens that I had. And I found that very affirming because I kind of wondered to myself, you know, did

35:12

I see signs of this man that other people saw? Or did I just somehow imagine all of this?

35:20

And so to hear Doug Wilson say, you know, these were all things

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I saw and experienced with him, too, I found to be, you know, particularly affirming of the thesis of this book.

35:37

And so I have since had some interaction with Doug, and the paperback version of the book comes out next week, or excuse me, yeah,

35:48

I think it comes out next week. And the book, the foreword to this book is written by Doug Wilson.

35:56

Oh great. We have a listener in Slovenia, Joe, who says,

36:04

Christopher Hitchens is quoted as saying, what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

36:13

Since Christianity is thoroughly a historical faith that can be verified or invalidated by examining the historical evidence or lack thereof for the claims that it makes, how would

36:28

Christopher have applied this quote to Christianity? Well, of course, that was one of Christopher's nice little rhetorical flourishes that gets lots of applause, and it's certainly very witty, but he often didn't go to the next step to actually examine the evidence.

36:49

He was awfully quick to dismiss without actually investigating in any real depth the historical claims of the

36:58

Christian faith. You often find with many of the New Atheists, and I say this as somebody who's engaged with or debated multiple occasions, guys like Christopher Hitchens or Michael Shermer or Dan Dennett or Richard Dawkins, I'm reasonably familiar with most of these guys, at least as it relates to their views on these things.

37:20

Not because I've read their books, but because I've engaged them. I know them personally, and what you often discover is that they don't have a particularly deep knowledge of Christian theology, much less of Christian history.

37:38

And this is highly problematic if this is a worldview you're seeking to take down.

37:50

And we have a listener in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, Tyler, who says, was

37:56

Christopher Hitchens part of the New Atheists that you keep mentioning, such as men like Richard Dawkins?

38:04

Well, perhaps you could take this time to differentiate what would be different about Christopher Hitchens than these other men that are known to be

38:13

New Atheists. Well, when we're referring to the

38:20

New Atheists, we're generally referring to a group of Atheists post -911 who are, if I may put it this way, fairly evangelical in their atheism.

38:34

That's to say they're out to make converts to their worldview. They're not just simply, you know, in a arresting posture regarding atheism, they are actively seeking to make converts.

38:52

And so we might be referring really here chiefly to the so -called four horsemen of the counter -apocalypse, as they refer to themselves, and that would be

39:02

Daniel Bennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens.

39:09

But there's a lesser group of satellites, as it were, around them, and those would be guys like Michael Scharmer, for example, and Dan Barker, and guys of this nature who are, you know, who are also out writing their books and seeking to, encouraging deconversions from religious belief.

39:36

But really, Christianity is what they have in the crosshairs, and that's the way these guys tend to operate.

39:42

So that's what we mean by the New Atheists. We don't mean that there's actually anything new about atheism. There certainly isn't.

39:49

Rather, all that's new is the marketing, the new twist on atheism.

39:58

And by the way, thank you both Joan Slovenia and Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York.

40:04

You're also both getting a free copy of The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, The Restless Soul of the

40:10

World's Most Notorious... I keep saying notorious, I get a list because of the word notorious and atheist being next to each other.

40:19

The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist. And that is a compliment of Nelson Books, and we thank them for providing these books.

40:31

And also, they will be shipped to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com.

40:38

In fact, the title, as you well know, Larry, may mislead people before they read the book, in thinking that you have written a book about a conversion experience of Christopher to Christianity, or at least theism.

40:58

But that is not the case at all. What did you mean by The Faith of Christopher Hitchens? Well, the book here, the title is meant to be provocative.

41:07

It certainly isn't meant to be misleading. And I didn't mean to imply that you were potentially being misleading.

41:14

No, no, no, I don't respond to that, because that certainly is an accusation that many atheists have made, and who love to crash the

41:24

Amazon web page and, you know, give it one star without ever bothering to pick up the book and read it, and it's because they're afraid of it.

41:32

This book is terrified, and I do mean terrified atheists from Pasadena, California, like Michael Shermer, all the way to Oxford, England, and they have lined up all their heavy artillery in an effort to discredit this book.

41:51

You should go online and watch the interview I did on BBC regarding this book, and read some of the character assassinations in places like the

42:04

New Yorker, where Lawrence Krauss, another one of the new atheists and a bit of a jerk, goes on, you know, accuses me in an article in the

42:16

New Yorker of claiming a deathbed conversion, which is laughable, because anybody who's read the book knows that the whole last chapter is written to address that very sort of silly claim.

42:29

What I'm getting at with the title is that atheists love to claim that it is only religious people who have faith, that they don't have faith.

42:42

These are people who base everything on facts and rationality, and of course if you read their characterization of my book, you immediately know that that's not true.

42:51

These are generators of fake news, and that may be fake news on the gospel, or it might be fake news regarding my book, but what

43:02

I'm getting at here is that everybody is putting their faith in something. Now, some are putting their faith in the stock market, some in Donald Trump, perhaps in Bernie Sanders, or their 401k.

43:15

Maybe they're putting their faith in a relationship. One hopes it is in Jesus Christ, but these are individuals who are gambling.

43:22

Their faith is that there is no God. There's no one to judge in the next five our actions in this one.

43:31

And so what I'm getting at with that title is, what was Christopher's faith ultimately in? And you know, without giving away too much from the book,

43:41

I'll simply say this. With Christopher, if you're looking for the key that unlocks him, the tumblers don't line up with the atheist key, and that's the thing that surprises people, because you would assume that atheism really was the thing that defined him, and it wasn't.

43:59

If you spent any time with him, you began to realize this was an aspect of his life, but it wasn't the defining characteristic of his life.

44:10

I think there were things that came to mean quite a lot more to him than that, particularly towards the end of his life when he knew he was dying.

44:18

Huh. Now, perhaps you could be more clear, as far as a foggy memory

44:26

I have, about something that Christopher said when he, after he was diagnosed with cancer.

44:35

I seem to recall him giving a friendly...

44:40

Charlie Rose. Excuse me? You're probably going to refer to the Charlie Rose interview where he says, if I convert, it means the cancer has gone to my brain.

44:51

Well, that actually is quite close to what I thought that I remembered.

44:56

What I was thinking of more in terms of that that don't believe anything you hear about me converting, because it may have something to do with medication or anesthesia or something, but...

45:09

Yeah, yeah. Very, very similar kind of things. And, you know, one of the things, this is something

45:15

Doug Wilson pointed out, and I think it's quite fascinating. Christopher seemed to be preparing his fans, his audience, not for the possibility that someone else would claim that he converted.

45:34

Rather, Christopher seemed to be preparing them for the possibility that he,

45:40

Christopher Hitchens, might say something that gave the impression that he converted.

45:46

And I think that's endlessly fascinating. It's as if Christopher himself feared that he would convert.

45:56

Did he ever explain, like for instance, I have even heard

46:02

Bill Maher notorious agnostic, who many people identify as an atheist.

46:10

I heard Bill Maher at one point, I don't know if he's changed his opinion and become even more clearly in a state of unbelief, but he at one point,

46:21

I heard him say that he identifies himself as an agnostic because to claim to be an atheist would mean that you're claiming you have all knowledge.

46:30

And did Christopher ever see that that was a dilemma for him, to call himself an atheist? How could he possibly know for certain that God does not exist unless he had all knowledge?

46:42

No, at least I never saw that. I think Christopher was in awe of scientists like Richard Dawkins, who, you know, would say that he was on a scale of one to seven,

46:58

I think he says in The God Delusion, that is Dawkins, he says that he would put in, and seven being that he's certain there is no

47:09

God, and one being he's certain that there is a God, that Dawkins said he would put himself as a six.

47:15

And he thinks there's about as much likelihood that there is a God as there is a flying spaghetti monster.

47:21

So I think Christopher would probably, you know, put himself at a, you know, there's an interesting interview that he gave to The Atlantic towards the end of his life after his diagnosis with cancer, in which he begins to speak of a kind of possibility that there might be an intelligent in the universe.

47:43

But he then quickly follows that up and says that he doesn't believe that anyone, you know, really speaks on behalf of that entity.

47:52

Now this is the kind of language of someone that is not a very orthodox atheist, when you begin speaking of these kinds of things.

48:03

So Christopher, you know, often broke ranks with those on his own side, but he called himself an anti -theist, which of course meant that he wasn't merely atheistic, but rather was actively against the idea of gods, and hence was, you know, at least in part making his living by attacking them.

48:27

Now would you agree, sometimes I am uncomfortable as an evangelical

48:33

Christian, sometimes I am uncomfortable with fellow conservatives, and perhaps even fellow

48:42

Christians, who want to make the case for the beauty of religion, and the beauty of pure and simple theism apart from Christianity.

48:59

And I have a problem with that, because although I could not say that religion is the root of all evil, as Christopher might claim,

49:07

I believe that all other religions do lead to evil, other than the one true religion that is taught in the

49:16

Scriptures as being the religion of Jesus Christ, and faith in him, and him being the

49:24

God -man who paid the penalty for the sins of his people on Calvary, and turned away the wrath of his father away from us, and rose again, and ascended and is seated at the right hand of the

49:38

Father. That religion, I believe, is the only true religion, and I think that sometimes people go overboard trying to defend religion and theism in general, whereas the atheists on some points have valid points when it comes to the evil of religion.

49:55

If you could comment on that. Yeah, well, you know, first of all, let me say that I agree with you wholeheartedly.

50:02

Frederick the Great said, see who would defend all, defend nothing. And I think

50:08

I've seen people do the very thing you're talking about, where they endeavor to defend religion.

50:16

I make it very clear in an interview, a lengthy interview, with John Stossel on Fox, I made it very clear

50:25

I'm not here to defend religion. I'm here to defend biblical Christianity, not religion.

50:33

And to this extent, I agree with the New Atheist. Listen, I'm an atheist as it relates to every religion save Christianity.

50:42

So I am just as skeptical as they are of the claims of the

50:50

Koran and the Hadith and of the Buddhists and the Hindus and the

50:56

New Agers and so on. I am, I don't, I am with them in their views as it relates to those religions.

51:05

I just think that at the end of the day, they go one religion too far, and they failed to see that, you know, that among all the grails, as it were, there is a true one.

51:16

There is a real one, and that they have failed to identify it.

51:22

And so this is our task. This is our challenge, is to try to help people see the truth claims, and that is to say, the true claims that the

51:34

Christian faith makes, as it is expressed in Scripture.

51:40

And so, you know, I think it's highly problematic to defend religion in general.

51:48

And listen, I would say that anybody who attempts to do so is setting themselves up for a blowout loss with any debater of the skill of a

51:58

Christopher Hitchens. Well, I know that you could only be on with us for the first hour, and I do want to make sure our listeners have your websites.

52:07

LarryAlexTaunton .com is one. Larry Alex T -A -U -N -T -O -N is one.

52:13

And you also have Fixed -Point .org. That's Fixed -Point .org.

52:21

Any other contact information you care to share? Yeah, just, you know, you can follow me on Twitter, Larry Taunton on Twitter, or as you mentioned,

52:31

LarryAlexTaunton, T -A -U -N -T -O -N .com, and it's been a joy to talk to you.

52:38

Well, it's been a joy to talk to you, Larry, and I definitely want to have you back on the program, and frequently, if your schedule permits and if you're interested, because it was a joy to interview you.

52:48

Well, thank you so much. Listen, gentlemen, you have a good day. You too, Larry. And don't go away, folks, because we have, for the second hour, something that does relate to our first discussion.

53:00

For the second hour of the program, we have Craig Beal. Dr. Craig Beal is going to be joining us any moment,

53:07

God willing. He is the founder of Pilgrim Rock, a ministry which develops courses and other material to boost the believers' joy, comfort, and faith in Christ and Scripture, and to nurture in believers and their children a

53:23

God -honoring and intellectually defensible worldview that can survive and thrive in the face of sophisticated attacks of unbelief.

53:32

So he's going to be joining us after the break, God willing, to discuss his book, The Box, Answering the

53:38

Faith of Unbelief. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

53:46

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages with Dr.

53:53

Craig Beal and Answering the Faith of Unbelief. Thank you for watching.

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But, as I said, our guest today for the second hour is

01:06:46

Dr. Craig Beal. He is a first -time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, founder of Pilgrims Rock, a ministry which develops courses and other material to boost the believer's joy, comfort, and faith in Christ and Scripture, and to nurture in believers and their children a

01:07:02

God -honoring and intellectually defensible worldview that can survive and thrive in the face of sophisticated attacks of unbelief.

01:07:09

He is an instructor for the Unbreakable Faith course at the Lancaster Bible College Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia, and we are discussing the box,

01:07:21

Answering the Faith of Unbelief, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

01:07:27

Craig Beal. Dr. Beal? Hello, Dr.

01:07:33

Beal? Well, this is interesting. We have a problem with Dr.

01:07:40

Beal. Dr. Beal, are you there? We have a problem with our connection, or perhaps we are going to have to go to another commercial break because Dr.

01:07:50

Beal is not with us. So, I am going to go to one more commercial break, and perhaps

01:07:58

Dr. Beal can call us back in the meantime. Don't go away.

01:08:03

We'll be right back after these messages, God willing, with Dr. Craig Beal.

01:08:12

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am

01:08:18

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

01:08:27

We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

01:08:33

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how

01:08:38

God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things. That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the

01:08:46

Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either. We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

01:09:01

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

01:09:08

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750.

01:09:15

Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled,

01:09:21

Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org, that's providencebaptistchurchma .org,

01:09:28

or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Shopper's Iron Radio.

01:09:35

Dr. Beal, are you with us? I am. Much better. Thank God for that, and let me introduce you to our co -host, the

01:09:44

Rev. Buzz Taylor. Hello. Hello, Dr. Beal. Yes, sir.

01:09:50

Oh, sorry about that. I was expecting you to say hello to Rev. Buzz Taylor, our co -host. Yes, I am here.

01:09:58

Well, I haven't helped Buzz in a long time, so... Well, Dr.

01:10:03

Beal, tell our listeners something about the Pilgrims Rock. Well, Pilgrims Rock was started a few years ago to develop curriculum for churches.

01:10:15

It's college -level teaching in the classroom, online courses that exalt the infinite excellence of God.

01:10:25

And apply a presuppositional, Vantillian apologetic to the way we present our truth.

01:10:37

So it's a quasi -theological, presuppositional apologetics ministry where we're showing that unbelief is irrational and unreasonable, and it's rooted in blind faith, whereas Christian faith is supported by all of reality, of course

01:10:53

Scripture, and that it is most reasonable, it's consistent with science, and that both faith and faith,

01:11:03

Christian faith and unbelieving faith are rooted in presuppositions, the

01:11:09

Christian presuppositions being consistent with reality, Scripture, and justifiable, whereas those of unbelief are irrational and reasonable and unsupportable by all of reality.

01:11:21

So it's designed really to build up the saints and to prepare them for the types of arguments they'll meet in the world.

01:11:28

Originally it was designed for college, well, for high school kids graduating from homeschool going into college, and then we found out that a lot more adults are interested in it as well, so we sort of expanded it out from there.

01:11:40

Perhaps even though we have done full programs on presuppositionalism and giving very in -depth explanations on what that is, if you could give a brief summary for our listeners who are unfamiliar with that term.

01:11:55

Yes, so a presupposition might be called an ultimate faith commitment, or an ultimate faith assumption.

01:12:03

So the two most basic presuppositions that are out there are that God and His revelation form the ultimate standard of truth, and He, as the

01:12:15

Creator, Sustainer of all things, to whom we owe all things, apart from whom we have nothing, is our ultimate object of faith.

01:12:22

And the other ultimate presupposition that's out there is human opinion and the human ability to answer ultimate questions, which, of course, is the fallen perspective.

01:12:37

So presuppositionalism basically gets to the root of the issues of faith, and that belief and unbelief are both matters of faith, they just have different objects of faith, and that issue is whose object of faith is justifiable, warranted, reasonable, and supports, can deliver on the good, so to speak.

01:13:00

And so we don't assume that the natural man has the ability to believe apart from God's grace and God working in their heart, but we do believe that an apologetic should challenge the ultimate object of faith of the unbeliever and show that they do need to repent and turn to Christ.

01:13:21

And tell us something about the course you teach, Unbreakable Faith. Well, Unbreakable Faith is built on the perfections of God, and so what it does is it builds a presuppositional apologetic on the perfections of God.

01:13:38

So starting with, in the beginning, God, God is self -existent, uncreated, and then God is self -sufficient,

01:13:44

God needs nothing. We start from there and we build a Christian worldview rooted in the fact that we depend upon God for all things.

01:13:52

In the process, we exalt the infinite excellence of God's perfections and show that the

01:13:59

Christian worldview is eminently supportable, consistent with reality, and of real joy to the heart, and that any other worldview really stands on thin air.

01:14:11

So that's the way we've done it. It's a way of taking Van Til and simplifying him, but also rooting him in Scripture and, most importantly, in the nature of God.

01:14:22

Making foolish the wisdom of the world is what you're about.

01:14:30

And let me announce our email address for those of you who would like to join us on the air with a question for Dr.

01:14:36

Craig Beal. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

01:14:43

And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

01:14:49

USA. And what is the, or should I say, what was the catalyst for you to write this book that we are discussing today,

01:15:01

The Box? Well, it goes all the way back about 14 years when

01:15:07

I started teaching apologetics at various schools and I taught it as a graduate course for a while.

01:15:17

And over the years, the questions kept coming from the students and I kept refining it and changing it.

01:15:23

And then in my doctoral studies, I studied apologetics under Scott Oliphant and William Edgar.

01:15:31

And Scott was always telling us we need to simplify Van Til so that people understand it.

01:15:37

Because it's an amazingly powerful technique, very God -honoring approach to Scripture.

01:15:43

I mean, it's essentially a biblical epistemology, a biblical worldview that exalts

01:15:48

God. And so I made it my end to try and understand it well enough that I could simplify it, make it available to high schoolers and others, so that they wouldn't have to go get their own

01:16:00

PhD and labor trying to read Van Til in order to understand him.

01:16:05

I wanted to be able to exalt God with his technique and applying also sort of an

01:16:13

Edwardian approach of Jonathan Edwards as well, that exalts God and deals with the affections and make it available to everybody.

01:16:23

And not everybody has time to really wrestle with these things. And if you can show them how simple it really is when you boil it down,

01:16:31

I think it's a very powerful technique. We have

01:16:36

CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, what are the most commonly asked questions from unbelievers that you personally have faced as a

01:16:48

Christian apologist and as a Christian in general? The most...

01:16:55

well, let's see. I think there's several, and the types of objections that...

01:17:02

Is CJ talking more about the types of objections we get or something that would make them be more prone to believe?

01:17:10

Well, I'm assuming since he is saying that these are unbelievers questioning believers, believers such as yourself,

01:17:18

I'm assuming that's what he is referring to, challenging. I mean, if CJ wants to send a clarifying email, that's fine.

01:17:26

But you could just answer what you assume he's asking. Okay, well

01:17:31

CJ, what I think you're asking is the types of objections they make to Christianity. And one of the most common is, how do we justify statements like,

01:17:43

Jonah was in a fish for three days, the entire human race and the kinds of animals were all saved in an ark, and these sorts of things.

01:17:53

Or the sun stood still, if he's familiar with that movie, Inherit the Wind. A lot of wind in that movie.

01:18:02

That was about the Scope Smokey trial with Spencer Tracy playing the antagonist to the creationist attorney.

01:18:15

Yes, and it was interesting. I'm surprised. I mean, we came out looking like a bunch of wife -beating, kid -beating, gluttonous derelicts by the end of the film, which wasn't a terribly good portrayal of the

01:18:31

Scopes trial by any stretch of the imagination. But in that trial they brought up certain things. You know, how can the, if God made the sun stand still, wouldn't the continents all pile up on each other if he stopped the rotation of the

01:18:44

Earth and that sort of thing? Well, all of these types of objections all really are rooted in the idea that either that God doesn't exist, or if he does exist, he's subject to the limitations of that which he created and sustained.

01:18:59

So in other words, God is no higher than us, or he doesn't exist. Well, if your starting point is an infinite

01:19:07

God who spoke and made the universe, and who upholds every atom, quark, and molecule in the universe every moment of every day, then his power is infinite, and miracles are very, very small by comparison.

01:19:21

So when we get up in the morning and we see a sunrise, we see everything holding together, and as Hebrews 1 tells us, you know,

01:19:28

Christ holds all things together. And Colossians 1 as well. When we see that, we're inundated with images of God's genius and power.

01:19:39

And the miracles of Scripture are absolutely nothing by comparison. So when somebody says to me, well, you guys are silly, and you're unscientific, or the old, we stand on science and reason, and you guys stand on, you know, blind faith.

01:19:53

Well, the fact of the matter is, everybody reasons according to faith, and everybody uses reason.

01:19:59

It's just we have different objects of faith, and then when you get down to it, theirs is irrational and ours is sufficient to all of reality.

01:20:07

But we don't operate and argue according to their worldview.

01:20:12

We challenge the worldview and the assumptions of their worldview, and the assumption of their worldview is the universe sort of operates on its own, and that God doesn't control the universe every moment of every day.

01:20:23

But a miracle really isn't God intervening into the universe. A miracle is God doing something different at a particular place, at a particular time, for a particular purpose, usually to display his glory, to authenticate the message of the apostles, or whatever.

01:20:40

But it's not him involving himself in a self -operating universe.

01:20:46

The universe is upheld by him every moment of every day. So when unbelievers, that's one of the most common challenges to our faith, is the ridiculousness of, you know,

01:20:58

Balaam's donkey talking. Well, a God who can speak and uphold every electron in the universe every moment of every day can make

01:21:06

Balaam's donkey talk. And he can put Jonah in a whale for 300 years and give him, you know, a suite with a radio and a nice kitchen and everything else if he so desired.

01:21:18

And he could have saved the entire human race and every animal kind there is in a thimble if he so desired.

01:21:28

But he didn't. But he's given us every indication, every display of his power every moment of every day, such that the miracles are absolutely reasonable and to be expected in light of who

01:21:43

God is and what he does. So, C .J., I hope that helps. That is one of the—that one seems to stumble

01:21:51

Christians. And I think Christians in academia sometimes are a little embarrassed by some of the miracles of the

01:21:56

Old Testament and try to explain them away as if they're some sort of—I mean, on the worse side of it, they call them myths.

01:22:04

And a little less worse than that, they say, well, they're just stories used to make a theological point.

01:22:10

And there's no need to go there if your starting point is an infinite God who can do anything. And they're quite reasonable.

01:22:19

So, hopefully that helps. Well, thank you, C .J., and you're going to get a free copy of The Box, Answering the

01:22:25

Faith of Unbelief by our guest, Dr. Craig Deal. So, please make sure you get us your full mailing address.

01:22:32

It's kind of interesting. You mentioned how the secularist or the unbeliever would scoff and laugh and mock at the idea of Balaam's donkey speaking, and yet they would have us believe that we evolved from pond scum or monkeys.

01:22:54

Yeah, it's really—I mean, one of the most potent arguments against the evolutionary worldview is just ask them to explain it.

01:23:02

From beginning to end and how it all works. And it is really quite—there's a book out there that says,

01:23:08

I don't have the faith to be an atheist. Well, it really takes a huge leap of blind faith to believe that worldview versus a worldview where everything in the universe displays the power, genius, glory, goodness, love, from the relationship of a family to the food on our table, to the sunrise, to the birth of a baby, anything and everything, our worldview is sufficient as an explanation of it all.

01:23:36

Whereas the unbelieving worldview is utterly irrational in its explanation of it all, and none of which can be demonstrated at all by the scientific method.

01:23:47

So, interesting. Good point. Well, one of the things that I have heard as a

01:23:54

Christian, and even as a talk host from people who are unbelievers, is that they really do not believe it is possible for us to trust in the authenticity, accuracy, and reliability of this book we call the

01:24:16

Bible, which is actually a compilation of books, that is thousands of years old.

01:24:22

They just cannot believe that there is any way that through the centuries, going through many scribes and translators and so on, recognizing that humans are fallible and make mistakes in everyday life, that passing on the

01:24:47

Bible to us centuries later, thousands of years after it was originally penned, we could have no confidence that these are even actually the words of the people that we claim have written them.

01:25:02

How do you respond to that as a presuppositionalist Christian? Well, there are several ways to go about it.

01:25:11

A lengthy discussion of textual criticism usually doesn't help.

01:25:19

I mean, it helps a little bit because they are really not looking for that. They are just using it as an excuse.

01:25:27

But there are good textual arguments for the number of manuscripts and how close they are to the timing versus every other ancient manuscript we have of every other book that we hold as authentic.

01:25:41

I mean, there are all of those types of arguments that are very, very excellent. But more importantly, the authority of Scripture.

01:25:52

If Scripture could be judged by a higher authority, Scripture would not be the highest authority.

01:25:59

So if there is some other standard out there by which we must judge Scripture by, then

01:26:04

Scripture is under the authority of whatever that is we judge its authority by. And Edwards deals with this handily in Religious Affections.

01:26:15

And he says there's not one in a hundred Christians who have ever come to Christ by the sort of historical, textual, critical arguments that we present for the validity of Scripture.

01:26:26

And they're all good, and they're well and excellent. And every seminarian should study those things. But if somebody can look at a sunset and the birth of a baby and a flower and a butterfly and say, that came about by time and chance, which is an obvious suppression of the truth in unrighteousness because they don't like the implications of what those things display of God's power and genius.

01:26:51

So the ultimate issue, and Jesus put it this way in John 7, 17, he says, If any man is willing to do my will, he will know whether these words of mine are of God or they're really just of me, they're human words.

01:27:04

So it really comes down to an issue of the will. And Scripture itself, if somebody can't see the glory of God and what

01:27:11

He's done in creation, they will never see it in His Word on paper.

01:27:19

Because in Scripture, and you can get in, you know, 66 books, you know, how many, what is it, 40 authors over 1 ,500 years, and all those sorts of things.

01:27:29

But what is displayed there, as Edwards puts it, is of a very divine, sublime nature that is so easily understood as the difference between, say, reading

01:27:41

Shakespeare and Milton versus GoDogGo. But the unbeliever doesn't see it because they don't like what it says.

01:27:48

They have no taste. They have no sense of the beauty of God's holiness as it is reflected in Scripture, as it covers and makes beautiful all of God's attributes and all of God's works and the most glorious being in the person and work of Jesus Christ, an infinite

01:28:08

God humbling Himself infinitely to suffer infinite wrath to purchase our happiness forever at infinite cost to Himself.

01:28:18

Well, if they can't see the glory of God in that, and they call it foolish, a la 1

01:28:23

Corinthians chapter 1, well, there's no argument I can give them textually of the glory and the divinity of Scripture because they're not going to see it because they don't see it in every other avenue and sphere of reality that screams at them.

01:28:39

So what I would do with people who do that, I say, okay, well, when was the last time you read it? And usually they haven't.

01:28:45

Sometimes they have. And then I would go to Romans 1 .18 and following. In fact, I've had discussions with people, and cut me off if I'm going too long.

01:28:53

I can go forever on this. In fact, we have to go to a break, so why don't you pick up after Romans 1 .18 when we return.

01:29:01

Okay, sounds great. And if anybody else would like to join us, now is the time because we only have less than a half hour left after we return from the station break.

01:29:11

So please email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I know my co -host,

01:29:17

Buzz Taylor, has a question, so don't forget what you were going to ask him, Buzz. And we will be right back,

01:29:24

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01:32:47

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the second half of the program today is

01:32:53

Dr. Craig Beal. We are addressing his book, The Box.

01:32:59

And the subtitle of the book is Answering the Faith of Unbelief. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr.

01:33:06

Craig Beal, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

01:33:11

And before Reverend Buzz Taylor asks his question, you are continuing with a thread of thought,

01:33:18

I believe, starting with Romans 1, verse 18. Yes, and just from my own personal experience,

01:33:26

I can remember one gentleman that I worked with for many, many years, and we went back and forth for three years on every issue you could imagine.

01:33:35

And one day he came into my office, and I opened up the Bible, and I just had him read Romans 1, 18 and following.

01:33:41

And he turned bright red. And it was more accomplished in that five minutes of him reading

01:33:47

Romans 1, 18, to say I think it was like 24, than in two years of trying to reason with him to accept the reasonableness of our faith.

01:33:59

Scripture sort of exposed his heart, that he was suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, that he knew in his heart that God exists, and that he was refusing to give him thanks.

01:34:10

And the Word of God is active and living and sharper than any two -edged sword. And the sooner we get to it in dealing with an unbeliever, the better.

01:34:18

And for me, the apologetic method, Ventillian method, is most helpful when it does sort of lead us that direction so we can get them to where they really need to be, which is in Scripture itself.

01:34:31

And Scripture can defend itself, as old J. Vernon used to say, J. Vernon McGee, you know, you don't defend a lion, you just let it out of the cage.

01:34:39

Yeah, I think Spurgeon might have said that before J. Vernon McGee did. I think.

01:34:48

Buzz Taylor, you have a question. Well, you were mentioning before about Scripture being the highest authority, and I just think it's probably good to enlarge a little bit on that, because most people, when we confront them with the truth of Scripture, will say something like, well, for example, you know, the issue of creation.

01:35:07

Well, let's just both come at this with an open mind, let's pretend that we don't know, and we're going to look at laws of logic and so forth to come to conclusions to see who's right and who's wrong.

01:35:21

And the fact is that that's absolutely impossible, but what we're saying in such a scenario is that the laws of logic dictate the accuracy of Scripture, being lord over the laws of logic.

01:35:36

Right, and the very fact that we can come together and discuss it because we're using reason, logic, we're assuming the world's going to be here for the next 10 minutes when we have the discussion, etc.,

01:35:51

etc., so there's a whole lot of presuming the Christian worldview going on even to discuss whether or not

01:35:57

God exists. And logic itself, of course, is given by God and is a coherent thought of God, but it's in the hands of fallible, finite people and can't tell us ultimate things.

01:36:15

For instance, that God's uncreated, the cosmological argument does not prove that God is uncreated.

01:36:22

Well, yeah, it's a very useful tool, of course, the laws of logic, but then they turn around and try to use it against the

01:36:31

Christian worldview. And, of course, that would be...

01:36:37

I don't know about Van Till as much as I know Greg Bronson has referred, in teaching

01:36:43

Van Till, about answering a fool, not to answer a fool according to his folly, lest we be like him.

01:36:50

And if we assume there is a higher authority than Scripture by which we judge the Scriptures, we are answering a fool according to his folly and becoming like him.

01:36:59

We're assuming a worldview that does not believe in the supremacy of Scripture. By the way,

01:37:05

I just want to give a quick shout -out to Tyler in Massachusetts, Long Island, because he was asking if that was a good summary of presuppositionalism and you kind of stole his thunder by already mentioning that.

01:37:18

So anyway, did you have anything further to add on that, Dr. Beal? Well, I mean, if somebody wants to use logic as a sort of measuring tool as to the validity of Scripture or the truth of Scripture, they have to account for the existence of logic in the first place, which is, so in other words, they're going to use something that can only exist because God is coherent in His thinking and the world is organized and sustained by God in order to prove that God doesn't exist.

01:37:48

It's the same sort of irrational argument that goes on with denying miracles. They assume an ordered universe and universal fixed laws, which are impossible and cannot be generated by time and chance, but they assume the

01:38:03

Christian worldview by assuming an ordered, fixed universe to deny a change in that universe a la miracles.

01:38:11

Well, you know, which one is it? So they're being rational and irrational at the same time, but they have to borrow from our worldview even to argue against it.

01:38:21

We have Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Shepherds Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina, who asks, what are the two most important aspects of the presuppositional method of Dr.

01:38:35

Van Til that comport with the Bible? The two most important?

01:38:42

That's what he's asking, yeah. At least in your opinion, of course. Good judgment.

01:38:50

In my opinion, I think that the beauty of Van Til's approach is you can start anywhere.

01:38:59

So it's not in terms of, I think the transcendental critique is sort of at the heart of the method.

01:39:08

In other words, when dealing with an unbeliever, we can go onto their soil for the purpose of an argument, but what we're really doing is we're challenging their ultimate faith commitment and their own ability to know ultimate truths or to answer ultimate questions.

01:39:30

So I would say at the heart of his method is the transcendental critique. Now, how does that tie into Scripture?

01:39:37

Well, indeed, if God is the creator and sustainer of all things, and apart from him nothing could or would exist, then the transcendental critique is throwing it back on the unbeliever and saying, okay, we presuppose

01:39:52

God as behind all things because of the impossibility of the contrary. And Van Til argued that consistently, that any worldview apart from the

01:40:02

Christian worldview, beginning with God as creator and sustainer and giver of all knowledge, truth, and authority, and ethics is irrational and impossible.

01:40:11

So when we use the transcendental critique or when we ask a simple question, how do you know what you say you know, and challenge their ultimate faith object, which is their own ability to answer ultimate questions, we are bringing to bear

01:40:25

Scripture's description of reality, i .e., in the beginning

01:40:31

God, to the unbeliever. And we can go to Scripture anywhere and everywhere.

01:40:36

God is the source of truth. God is the source of knowledge. He's the one who gives all knowledge. His knowledge is inscrutable. His knowledge is infinite.

01:40:43

Apart from him we can know nothing. And so you can go anywhere and everywhere with that. But I think that's probably at the heart, and if any of the

01:40:53

Van Til professors are listening here, they can grill me later, but that's probably at its heart.

01:41:04

And then maybe secondly, that apart from a revelation of God being

01:41:10

Scripture in its totality and in its parts, we cannot possibly know him, period.

01:41:16

I mean, everything else reduces to the speculation of a person who doesn't even know what's in my garage, and that's the whole point of the book,

01:41:23

The Box. The neighbor, Mr. C, is asking Mr. A, well, what's in my little brown antique box?

01:41:29

And Mr. A says, I don't know. Mr. C says, well, does God exist? And Mr. A says, absolutely not.

01:41:34

He says, well, on the one hand you're admitting your limitations, and you don't know what's in this little box that's in my hand, but on the other hand you're presuming omniscience and saying that God doesn't exist.

01:41:44

Well, the whole idea is Scripture says we're created and dependent upon God for all knowledge, knowledge of God's truth, knowledge of ethics, anything, knowledge of who he is, what he's done, apart from which we're left with our human limitations, we're left with the problem of the one and the many, we're left with not knowing anything or having no basis or ultimate authority by which we can judge anything or interpret anything apart from our own limitations of our own self.

01:42:12

And Van Til likened that to a man made of water in a bucket of water in a bucket made of water climbing out of the bucket of water on a ladder made of water.

01:42:21

It's like you can't get away from your own finite fallen limitations to get away from it to make an objective judgment about it.

01:42:29

So that, I mean, anything and everything in Scripture that points to God as the source and sustainer of anything and everything, including knowledge, truth, authority, knowledge of who he is and his works, is central to the

01:42:44

Van Tilian technique and points right back to the first verse of Scripture and consistently is affirmed from beginning to end.

01:42:55

Long, long dancing explanation, but I hope that helps. Well, whatever you want to call your explanation, for some reason it transported my co -host into the third heaven because I've never seen him so happy and enthusiastic.

01:43:08

He got a thumbs up on that one. Yeah, he just said that he was giving you double thumbs up. I had him on mute when he was saying that, and I think

01:43:16

I should keep him on mute more often. Brother Buzz, appreciate that.

01:43:26

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, I'm not sure whether or not your guest is a

01:43:34

Calvinist because he did not yet identify his theology, but I'm assuming when all is said and done, there must be a miraculous work of the

01:43:44

Holy Spirit in anyone's mind and heart in order for them to even view the

01:43:51

Bible as God's word and to trust their very life and eternity in it.

01:43:59

Absolutely. No argument with that. But see, the thing is, when you're dealing with an unbeliever and they ask you a question, it's nice to give them a good audience and to have an answer.

01:44:12

You know, 1 Peter 315, have an answer to everyone who asks you for the hope that is in you.

01:44:19

Be able to have a reasonable answer to their query and point to Christ. So all of this presupposes the fact that apart from God opening their eyes, if they will not come to Christ, they will not come to faith.

01:44:33

Yes, 1 Corinthians 1 .23, but we preach Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness.

01:44:43

And the only thing that can change the minds of the

01:44:48

Jew or the Gentile about this Christ that we preach and about this gospel and about these holy scriptures is to have a supernatural work of God miraculously done to them.

01:45:01

They need to have a heart transplant from Jesus Christ himself, don't they? Absolutely, and if you read the works of Van Til, he bled sovereign grace.

01:45:12

And one of his books is an exposition of Calvin himself on all of these issues. So he's very, very

01:45:18

Calvinistic. I don't like the use of the term Calvinistic. I sort of go with Edwards on that. I think I agree with him on the five points for sure, which were not him, which were subsequent to it.

01:45:28

But yes, I'm in full agreement with sovereign grace, and apart from God we can do absolutely nothing.

01:45:37

Amen. And we have, let's see. Oh, by the way, Arnie in Perry County, you have won a free copy of the book that we are discussing today,

01:45:48

The Box by Dr. Craig Beal. So please make sure you give us your full mailing address so we can have that shipped out to you.

01:45:56

Compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com.

01:46:04

And we look forward to hearing from you again with other questions in the future. Thank you for participating in today's program.

01:46:14

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know,

01:46:24

Mormons will typically say when we ask them about why they think the

01:46:30

Book of Mormon is truly of God that they have a burning in their bosom.

01:46:36

Sometimes evangelical Christians have a response that is no better. Is there a way that we can convey this is truly the

01:46:46

Word of God by not using subjective feelings that could be the result of having a bad meal at midnight?

01:46:57

That is an excellent question. I have Mormons in my family. Oh, wow,

01:47:03

I didn't know that. Yes, we've talked at length about the burning in the bosom, and I reflected his comment about the, how do you know it wasn't heartburn, and you're basically basing your eternal destiny on possibly a bad jalapeno or something.

01:47:19

So that's a good point. So it's not the subjective. See, at the base of all of this,

01:47:27

I mean, in ten minutes explaining the ultimate authority of Scripture can be a little bit difficult, but at the base of all of this is, in the beginning,

01:47:36

God... Now, there's all sorts of internal critiques you can do between Christianity and Mormonism and showing how they bastardize the

01:47:43

Bible and how they hold to the authority of Scripture, quote -unquote, rightly interpreted.

01:47:49

And so you can just go right straight to the Scriptures and show them where they're inconsistent with it, and you can go back to their history and show where they have made all these prophecies that are false and all of that.

01:47:59

What we're saying is that if they're going to hold to the authority of Scripture, then we can go to Scripture.

01:48:05

But your question is getting to the point of, okay, is there an objective, outside -of -ourself, sort of definitive proof of the authority of Scripture?

01:48:19

Well, yes, it is Scripture itself. And Edwards puts it this way.

01:48:26

If you can put a flower in somebody's face, and if they don't have a sense to see its beauty, there's no argument you can give them that's going to give them any better sense of the beauty of the flower than seeing the flower itself.

01:48:38

Now, that may not satisfy an unbeliever as to the authority of Scripture.

01:48:44

And so you can get into the manuscript evidence and you can show how, you know, compare the manuscript differences in the

01:48:50

Book of Mormon and all of that, how it came about and how it contradicts Scripture and actually affirms the first sin in the

01:48:56

Bible and everything else. But ultimately, Scripture is its own objective, its own self -authenticating authority that people will see it or they won't.

01:49:11

And there's nothing I can do to convince somebody who denies the glory of God and looking at a sunset other than them seeing the sunset and anything and everything else.

01:49:23

And so nothing, no argument in any book will satisfy the unbeliever who is operating according to a false set of assumptions through which they view anything and everything in the world.

01:49:35

So with the Mormon, we have to challenge their ultimate faith assumptions that they're placing their faith ultimately, and I've had this discussion many times, ultimately they're placing their faith in Joseph Smith and his interpretation of Scripture.

01:49:51

And I've asked them, are you willing to place your eternal destiny in the hands of this man who not only received revelation that all the creeds of Christendom are an abomination, well, why are they an abomination if you're still using our hymns and you're using our

01:50:07

Bible? So it's a complicated question, but we're not saying that it's my subjective burning in the bosom that makes

01:50:17

Scripture authoritative. We're saying that Scripture bears its own authority objectively in the reality of what it is that I don't see by virtue of blindness as an unbeliever and can only see by virtue of God opening my eyes.

01:50:31

Now, no unbeliever is going to accept that. What can you do?

01:50:37

I mean, you're stuck. You can go through all the textual criticism and the amount of manuscripts that we have and anything and everything else and ultimately if somebody doesn't see the glory of God and Christ and the issues of justification and everything else, they don't see the beauty of that, then

01:50:53

I really don't have any other argument I can bring to them other than challenging their ultimate faith commitments and many, many, many other things to point them to Christ, but ultimately none of those will, they will all fall on deaf ears until God opens their eyes.

01:51:09

Amen. Amen. And isn't it true that one of the beautiful things about presuppositional apologetics is that it is a means by which

01:51:18

Christians can keep the unbeliever that you are communicating with on track and not allow that unbeliever to derail you and take you off chasing rabbit trails in different directions, which is the tactic of the typical unbeliever, even if that is an unconscious tactic, it very often has the believer, especially a novice in the

01:51:45

Christian faith, tied in knots. Wouldn't you say that presuppositionalism helps us to avoid derailing our conversations away from the gospel itself?

01:51:57

Absolutely. We want to keep it focused on the fact that their unbelief is rooted in their faith, in their own self, and their own interpretations of reality, and that's irrational and unreasonable, and they're placing their eternal destiny in their own ability to answer ultimate questions that no atheistic philosopher has been able to answer from day one, and they can't answer because they don't know what's in their neighbor's garage or in the box in front of their face.

01:52:26

They're just placing their trust in an unworthy object of faith. And so if we understand that they're throwing out red herrings and they're throwing out distractions to get us away from the ultimate issue, and as Van Til put it, he says they will do anything and everything to guard the ultimate issue of their denying the obvious and their having placed faith in themselves that is an irrational faith.

01:52:49

They will do anything and everything to guard their ultimate presuppositions through which they interpret all of reality.

01:52:55

And he says when you go after those, he says you will have a riot, you will have war, you will have persecution, they'll call you names or whatever else, or deflect, but the believer just has to know that they're one step ahead or five steps ahead of the unbeliever as to what the real issue is and not allow themselves to get distracted, always knowing that it is only the

01:53:17

Word of God and the Spirit of God and a vision and a sight and a sense of the infinite excellence of Christ and the sufficiency of His work on the cross and satisfying for our wickedness and believing any and every stupid thing that's come our way as a way of suppressing the truth and avoiding the truth that confronts us everywhere.

01:53:37

And we need to be very, very Christ -focused, God's glory focused, and understanding the absolute inability and deadness of the unbeliever so that we never stray as if we're arguing with somebody who's objective, neutral, and it's just a difference of opinions.

01:53:53

It's not. They are not neutral in any way, shape, or form. They're hostile to God and the sooner we point that out in a way that they see it, which, again, is very difficult to do because they avoid it like the plague, but the better we are because then we're showing them exactly what they need to repent of, not just smoking.

01:54:13

They need to repent of setting themselves up as an ultimate authority over and above God Himself and bow the knee to Christ.

01:54:23

You know, Chris, I can see right now that one hour is not enough. Yes. Well, we already spoke before the program that we're definitely

01:54:31

God -willing, of course, having Dr. Craig Beale back on the program in the very near future, although the date that we originally chose we later found out

01:54:41

Dr. Beale could not be on, and so we have to work that out as to the best date for Dr.

01:54:47

Beale's schedule. That was you, right, that contacted me and said that our next date is incompatible with your schedule, right?

01:54:55

Right. Dr. Beale? Yes. Okay. I want to make sure that our listeners know how important this book is by reading the endorsements of a couple of friends of mine that my audience is most likely very familiar with.

01:55:14

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, a friend of mine for over 25 years, he says,

01:55:22

Craig Beale's The Box is a useful and beneficial introduction to doing consistent biblical

01:55:29

God -glorifying apologetics by responding to those who reason from a naturalistic or humanistic worldview.

01:55:38

In a day when the Christian faith is under fire from all sides, such a resource is most welcome and needed.

01:55:46

And then my other friend, who I've known, actually longer than I've known Dr. White, Dr. Fred Zaspel, who

01:55:53

I've known since the late 1980s, he has said, This is a wonderful help.

01:56:00

Its reasoning is tight, but it is popular enough to be helpful for virtually anyone.

01:56:06

Really a nice work. And I want to make sure that I give our listeners the website.

01:56:13

If you did not win a copy of this book today and you wish to purchase it, go to pilgrimsrock .com

01:56:22

pilgrimsrock .com and this book is available there among other books by Dr.

01:56:28

Craig Beale. And I want you, Dr. Beale, now to have at least two minutes of uninterrupted time where you could just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

01:56:42

Well, God as the source and sustainer of everything, in our other book,

01:56:50

God the Reason, we talk about the fact that there's nothing that explains reality when you've removed the only possible explanation.

01:57:00

So if you take a 2 plus 2 and you eliminate 4, then you have the history of Western philosophical thought, atheistic

01:57:09

Western philosophical thought, trying to answer ultimate questions apart from the only one who makes life meaningful, who answers every ultimate question, and to whom we owe all glory and honor.

01:57:22

So having been created by Him, we owe Him everything. He owes us nothing. Apart from Him, we have nothing.

01:57:28

To Him belongs all glory and honor. And to top it off, because we've gone astray,

01:57:35

He has sent God the Son and voluntarily came down to pay the penalty for that contempt we've had for God and not giving

01:57:44

Him what He deserves in His infinite excellence. And He did it at infinite cost to Himself out of love for us and the joy set before Him, which is us in Heaven rejoicing with Him forever.

01:57:54

And there can be no greater message. There's nothing foolishness in, nothing foolish in the message of Christ.

01:58:00

When Paul's talking about foolishness in 1 Corinthians 1, he's talking about from an unbelieving worldview that is darkened, that is missing the boat of infinite excellence that is fully displayed in the person and work of Christ.

01:58:13

So we have nothing to apologize for. We don't need to bend the faith or twist doctrines to make them acceptable to an unbelieving view that looks at infinite excellence and calls it stupid.

01:58:25

Why would we want to make, to conform the glory of the gospel to a world that despises that which is infinitely excellent?

01:58:35

We can't. We need to point out their sin for their own good and point them to the infinite excellence of their

01:58:42

Savior, that they would embrace Him in faith all on their knees and give glory to Him, repent of their all subject of faith, that they might too join all of us someday worshiping at His throne in infinite happiness forever.

01:58:59

Well, I want to thank you so much for being our guest today, Dr. Beal, and I look forward to having you back.

01:59:05

And in fact, if you could stay on the line after we go off the air so I can, with my calendar open, get you rescheduled for the second interview.

01:59:16

Okay, that'd be great. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater

01:59:26

Savior than you are a sinner. I thank everybody out there who joined us on the program today with your questions for our guests.

01:59:36

I apologize to those that we did not have enough time to get to your questions. God bless you, and we hope to hear from you tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.