Crash Course in Presuppositional Apologetics: Ulitmate Authority

Ultimate Authority in Presuppositional Apologetics

Hey everyone, John here from LordNoMore .com. Welcome to a crash course in presubpositional apologetics. This is our first video, and it's a relatively short one because it's a pretty easy concept, I hope.

And that is the concept of ultimate authority. To understand anything in presubpositional apologetics, you must first understand one thing, and that is that there is an authority which is ultimate. What does ultimate authority essentially mean?

Well, basically it means this. The kindergartner, who asked a question to his parents, he says, mom, why why is grass green? And the mother says, well, because of photosynthesis. Because the green has chlorophyll in it, and the chlorophyll carries oxygen, and she explains the scientific elements.

And then she thinks that'll satisfy the kindergartner, and the kindergartner says, that's interesting. Why does a plant need oxygen? And so then the mother tries to explain how all living things need oxygen to survive, and how fuel is required in order to live, and so he says, well, that's interesting.

Why is fuel required to live? And then the mother has to try to explain that, and you see what's happening. Every time the mother answers a question, the child has another one, and he asked the question, why?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Pretty soon, where is that going to end up? Well, for most parents, probably because I said so. But ultimately, there's an authority, and that authority is either God or it's man. It's either theonomy or autonomy.

Those are the bonus words. So, if we look at the ultimate authorities of the world, what do we see? We have worldviews, essentially, that start with a foundation of ultimate authority. For Christianity, the ultimate authority is the Word of God.

For Islam, that ultimate authority is the Quran. For the Mormons, that ultimate authority is the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's teachings. For the rationalists, it's rationality. That's what they say their ultimate authority is.

The real question is, which one can account for the preconditions of intelligibility? How do you know which ultimate authority is correct? And that is in our next video.