Does Presupp Require Reformed Theology

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Elias Ayala, and today

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Well, we're supposed to have Emilio Ramos with us today

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But this is an awkward situation where Let me tell you something.

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This is the scary part of doing a show like this where you're reaching out to people

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To come on interviews and you get the different time differences and things like that and of course the people you're reaching out to are often super busy and You know, there's a whole bunch of things that can happen that you know make this sort of work unpredictable, so We're supposed to have

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Emilio Ramos on today and I had messaged him emailed him. I hope he hasn't forgotten

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And Been trying to call as well. So We might not have

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Emilio Ramos. It depends. He may come in he may he may actually read his text messages or check his

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You know his email or something like that But I'm gonna try my best to stall for a little bit

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Of course, if he ends up not being able to make it for whatever reason then I'll I'll maybe

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I'll take some questions or something like that and maybe I'll try my best to Look at this there.

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Okay, so I'm getting a text. Let's see here. Let me see Let's see here

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Hmm Eastern okay. One second.

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This is this is awkward one second here. I Believe the time

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I texted says Eastern comma and you confirmed comma lol exclamation point

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All right, there we go, so I think there is a mixing up of but we're in different time zones, so I think he is mistaken

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What time we're supposed to start so he's texting me back and forth I wonder if he's able to To join us.

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So we'll see if not I'll try my best to take on some questions. If you guys have any questions with regards to Presuppositional apologetics or something like this

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Daniel says what is this? What is what come on, you know, sometimes these things don't they don't they don't go off flawlessly, so I'm just gonna wait a little bit to see if he's able to connect

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Let me actually let me take I think this is hilarious let me take a screenshot of The time here we go,

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I'm gonna go boom Okay, look at this this is super awkward Let's see here

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Let's see There we go. We'll see.

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We'll see how we'll see what happens so at any rate while I'm waiting for I Think it went through here.

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Let's see what happens while I'm waiting for my guests to possibly connect Possibly not.

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We'll see what happens. I guess I can make a couple of announcements I will be having Chris bolt back on on June 6th,

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I believe if you guys you guys like the topic of Transcendental arguments we had a great episode a

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Couple of months back on the nature of transcendental arguments We get really into the thick of some of these great discussions of Methodology and the nature of the argument and things like that So you guys can check that out on the on the

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YouTube channel and on the podcast You might want to check out the podcast as opposed to the

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YouTube because I think Chris when we had him on He was unable to connect through video. So hopefully we can change that we can see his face along.

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We kind of have a good discussion But you want to check that out? We're gonna have him back on in June 6. I did reach out to Gary DeMar if you guys are familiar with Gary DeMar You you might if you follow

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American vision you will notice something very odd. Okay, and it's not a not a negative thing those of you guys who know a little bit about me and my interest in Presuppositional apologetics is that I've been greatly influenced by by dr

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Greg Bonson and so Greg Bonson passed away in 1995 but if you have been following American vision it actually

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It actually looks like dr. Bonson published a new book which is very very interesting given the fact that he is with the

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Lord right now, and so he Let's just say Gary DeMar was able to get some of the transcript one second here.

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Yeah, let's hear Yeah Comma, you're able to connect if you follow the link brother

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All right. So it looks like we will we will be having Emilio. He's coming on but yeah, so Gary DeMar took one of the talks of Greg Bonson and put it into kind of a transcript form and then kind of Put subtitles and categorize various issues so that it can come out as kind of a book

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So the book is actually a transcript of a series of lectures that dr. Bonson did and so I was given an early copy digital copy and so I perused through it and I thought that it would have been it would be a great resource for people who

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Want to learn presuppositional apologetics? So the name of the book is against all opposition and I believe if I'm not mistaken, it is available to order right now on American vision org, so if you guys are really

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Wanting to kind of dive into this stuff I mean Bonson in my opinion Bonson was really the best representation of Presuppositional apologetics in practice, of course

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He was a student of Cornelius Mantill as well And so the insights that Bonson gives and coupled with his teaching ability

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I think makes for an awesome resource anything that Bonson puts out on apologetics. You're gonna find very very Useful.

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I also reached out to dr. DeMar Because I wanted him to come on not just to advertise the book, but I he knew

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Dr. Bonson and so I wanted to spend some time discussing the apologetic legacy of Greg Bonson and maybe talk a little bit about some

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Of the personal side. I mean he knew him a little bit, you know, and so maybe we can get some interesting you know

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Side stories perhaps something that we don't know about, you know, try to get some juicy information and so Hopefully you guys can check that out.

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That's gonna be a great resource as well. I did reach out I'm trying to expand, you know get some interesting guests here.

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I did reach out to David Bonson Greg Bonson's son Which I have not gotten a response

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A lot of people when you guys see the show and I have some really great guests on people think

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I have some kind of special connection With a lot of these people. I I actually don't

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I know almost none of these people personally. They just have been gracious to Respond to my emails

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So it just happened to be that they have all responded in close proximity and so it has made for some great content back -to -back and so You know that that's that's that and we had

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Jason Lyle on the last show and that was really set up rather quickly I got in touch with You know the person who sets up his interviews and speaking engagements and we ended up having something you know

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The next day so that kind of worked out in an unexpected an unexpected way.

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So So yeah, so we'll hopefully we'll get Gary DeMar to talk about the book Chris Bolt back on to talk more about a presupposed presuppositional methodology, maybe compare it

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Okay, all right, we're live now comma, but I'm stalling a bit comma lol exclamation point

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Just follow the link whenever you catch a moment brother. I know you guys now know how

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I text I do my you know my My voice to text sometimes it doesn't come out correct.

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So at any rate, okay So with that out of the way, there are a couple of other people. I'm looking to get on Some people have given some really good

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You know ideas as to who I should have on topics and I'm definitely going to try and you know get folks on that people really do enjoy and And You know and that will find a great benefit in discussing these issues what

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I do appreciate about what? This has turned into Independent of just having guests on and stuff as I think this channel is is doing well in the sense that we've been able to cover presuppositional apologetics applied to a wide variety of issues and And I think that's very very important Okay, one of the things that I that I had in mind when

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I wanted to do this channel was to not only promote presuppositional apologetics as a biblical approach as an effective approach

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But also I wanted the opportunity for for Misconceptions about the methodology to be cleared up.

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Okay. That's why I especially had great response with the show with dr Michael Kruger when we talked about presuppositional apologetics in the canon and I actually received some personal

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Emails expressing how much they appreciated that show because dr. Kruger was able to kind of in that episode

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Explain the role of where evidence fits in to the presuppositional method. And so this is a common Misconception about presuppositional methodology that you know evidence is really just kind of useless.

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We just talk about world views and We can't really get into the nitty -gritty of some of these issues. And so hopefully these episodes have clearly

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Demonstrated otherwise and again at the end of the day if you Are not a presuppositional list and you don't agree with presuppositional ism

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Okay, you know we disagree and and I'm not minimized minimizing that disagreement

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But as long as you understand what you are rejecting if you reject the presuppositional methodology

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Then I think that there is there's progress. Okay, because I don't believe that people who don't

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Hold to a presuppositional methodology. I It's not the case that I it's not that I think they're

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Christian Obviously, I have Christian brothers and sisters who don't hold to presuppositional apologetics

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But it's um, it's important that we understand the differences and that we continue to pray and support one another

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Even if we might not agree with the methods we employ we might have different understandings of how we interpret the relevant biblical text

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You know ultimately I think I'm right, you know, I think the presuppositional method is is the biblical method

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And I don't hold to a classical method, but at the same time we can still

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We can still appreciate The value that each of these methodologies offer one another even though we may not agree in all of its intricate

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Details. Okay. So I think that's very very important to keep in mind. All right. All right.

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Well Let's move on. Okay. I mean hopefully Emilio will come on I'll try to address some of these questions, you know

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Okay, wow, you know last interview I did with dr. Lau we did have a lot of questions But it took some time for the questions to to come on So I'm looking on the side chat here.

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It seems like there's a lot of questions here. No, you didn't miss Emilio Emilio I think there was a miscommunication in the time because we're in different time zones.

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Okay and so hopefully He's gonna be able to jump on but until then you're stuck with you're stuck with me.

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All right Okay, so let's take a look at some of these questions and I'll try my best to answer some of them to the best of my ability

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And and just a side thing before I before I start I have to say that I'm quite impressed with a lot of the questions that people are asking and I'm not speaking of the questions that come from people

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Who don't like the methodology and they're just trying to you know Refute the methodology or ask a question to show like well, this is why it doesn't work.

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That's fine You know, that's part of the learning process I've been impressed with a lot of people who have been struggling in Understanding it and their perceptiveness with the kinds of questions that they ask and so keep asking those questions

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Even if we can't answer a question. I mean, I'm I look forward to being stumped only because I'm really hoping to Identify The weaknesses in my understanding so that I have something to look into study for and then firm up understanding and then use my

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My teaching and my opportunities to share to explain those things, but great opportunities because of these videos

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I was invited To teach a class on apologetics at a school out in Michigan And so we're able to take

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Q &A from high school students and college students. So had a great opportunity there and we have

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Followers of the YouTube channel from all over the world. I've received messages from Australia the Philippines Vietnam All expressing interest in presuppositional apologetics.

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So this is very very exciting For me because that was one of the primary goals is to promote the methodology

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So it's really cool to see people engaged and interested from all over the world. So so with that said

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Let me take a look at some of these questions here. All right, so we have a question What is the precise relationship between Reformed Anthropology and the noetic effects of sin?

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well, yeah, there is a Very important relationship if we can kind of define our terms when we're speaking of the noetic effects of sin

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That is relating to the issue of the effects of sin upon the mind. Okay, and so within a

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Reformed Anthropology we believe that man is made in the image of God And that image of God is affected by the fall

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Okay, the image of God if we were to reflect the image of God as One amongst many things the rational capacity.

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There is a moral element that has been thrown into the loop given the fall of man and so Within the doctrine of total depravity, for example

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Man is suppressing the knowledge of God that he has and so man functions in accordance with the image of God man

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Thinks, you know Rationally in one sense they try to think logically because that's an aspect of thinking

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God's thoughts after him But in their sinfulness, they suppress the knowledge of God that they have and so they interpret the world contrary to The knowledge of God they have within them.

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So there's a very important relationship between Our theology our particular Reformed understanding with regards to the nature of man and the effects of sin upon that man

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There is a very close Union between those two aspects. Okay.

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Now this is I think unique to the to the Reformed understanding and it is because of the particular understanding of of The noetic effects of sin upon man within the

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Reformed context This is actually one of the contributing factors as to why we do the apologetic that we do the presuppositional apologetic so again

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Our apologetic is very much rooted in a Reformed understanding of these issues and not just the issue of the noetic effects of sin, but of it's also related to the understanding of The creature the creator creature distinction, right?

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It's related to our broader Worldview our broader theology, you know issues of providence, you know

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God's providence and how that relates to things of induction and understanding the laws of nature All of these things are kind of related and I think that's the beauty of theology, right when we speak of systematic theology we understand that every doctrine that we are

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Expanding upon and looking at the biblical data. They're connected to other aspects of doctrine and so this is there is a relationship between the

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Reformed understanding of man and Our understanding of how sin has affected man's mind.

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Okay, it hasn't removed the image of God The natural man is in the image of God and he thinks

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God's thoughts after him to some degree but there's this element of suppression the effects of sin affecting what man does with the tools that God has

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Created him with that instead of honoring God and giving thanks to God They suppress the truth about him in the ways that scripture kind of lays out.

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Okay All right. Well Emilio is trying to message me here. I'm gonna you're gonna catch me doing my little voice the text here

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Don't forget to put the link in Google Chrome not Internet Explorer So now you see the behind this

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I have no behind the scenes. I you know, I was gonna do I was actually gonna take a picture of my desk Everyone sees like the books and it kind of looks like oh,

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I didn't like this cool little office The setup is pretty ghetto here. I'm gonna let you know right now my computer in order for it to kind of Be measured up to my face.

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It is actually on a pile of books Okay, I have a one two, three, four five six books underneath my

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My laptop just to get the angle here By the way those books provide a firm foundation for my laptop the book that is holding all of the other books and Now is giving a foundation for my computer.

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You want to know what book it is? It is Van Til's apologetic readings and analysis I needed a thick book

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So I put the thick book in there and then all the other books are stacking on it So that's kind of a little bit of irony in all of this.

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So At any rate. All right So let's let's take the next question and hopefully Emilio will pop in and he can join me and then we'll start the major Topic of our interview today.

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Okay Daniel asks a very profound question. What is this? What do you mean what is this, okay

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Okay, so here's another question by Daniel what do you think is the best book on precept of apologetics, okay well in My a humble opinion the best book on presuppositional apologetics is by no means the first book that someone should

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Should look into when they're engaged in this It just happens to be my favorite because it's it's it's comprehensive nature and that is of course

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I just mentioned it now. The book is resting underneath my computer. It is Van Til's apologetic readings and analysis

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Pardon, and basically this book was written by Greg Bonson and it is a collection and categorization of the writings of Van Til And all of the major Points of his apologetic are given commentary by dr

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Bonson in which he explains the areas where Van Til was very unclear if anyone knows anything about the writing of Cornelius Van Til one of the

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Criticisms of Cornelius Van Til's writing style is just how laborious it is

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It's very difficult to read Van Til and really get at what he's You know what?

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He's getting at he uses the language of a bygone philosophical era. I mean his

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His context really is, you know, the philosophical idealism and the things that he was critiquing

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And so he speaks with a nuance and a specific way of describing things

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It's very different than the more analytic school of philosophy, which is more point -by -point premise -by -premise sort of way of communicating.

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So It can be very difficult So I would say Van Til's apologetic if you want to get a nice Comprehensive commentary on Van Til by someone who knew

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Van Til very well Greg Bonson That is an awesome book to get also everyone knows, you know, Always Ready That's a great book if you're just starting off But as I mentioned at the beginning

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Gary DeMar over at American Vision has just released Against All Opposition Which this is a collection of transcripts of Dr.

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Bonson's apologetic lectures and they're put in book form with chapter categories and study and discussion questions

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So I have I've received an early copy of this Gary, Gary like I know him

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He's been on the show by the way a while back Then you could find that episode on the the podcast, but I had him on earlier months and months ago and we

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Talked a little bit about Bonson and Presupp and he sent me over a digital copy and so I read at least half of the book and so you guys are really wanting to get your hands into some of The the useful ways that presuppositional apologetics can be used.

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I highly recommend this book Against All Opposition And the reason is that the way

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Bonson wrote is not necessarily the way that he spoke as a teacher Purely from a teacher's perspective

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Bonson was an excellent teacher. And so you are Going to be reading within the context of how he taught using some of the helpful analogies and examples he used in the classroom

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Okay, so Emilio is reaching out to me one second. Let's see here Did you follow the link on Google Chrome?

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Yeah, we're having technical difficulties here nobody I can't text really fast, okay

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So, okay How about let me see this here How about you call in and I put you on speaker?

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Would that work we'll see if we can do it together.

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Well, we'll make this work folks. We'll make this work Let's move on. Let's move on. And so what does

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Alyssa Scott asks? What does tag stand for? That's a good question Well, if you're not if you're not into all of this apologetics lingo a tag represents the transcendental argument

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For the existence of God. So the trans T Transcendental argument a argument for the existence of God.

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So that's what tag stands for. Okay Kieran says awesome. I love the

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Chris Bolt interview. So did I as actually People have asked me what my favorite interview is

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I don't know if I can put my finger on a favorite but definitely the one with Chris ball We cover some really interesting aspects of transcendental argumentation

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So if you guys haven't listened to that one, I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode Definitely some good stuff.

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All right Here we go, we have another question in I'm in I'm new to presep

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Okay, what's your answer on how do you know the Bible is true? Well, this can be easily seen within the context of How do we know that?

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Christianity is true I mean if you understand the nature of the transcendental argument if we can sum it in its in its popular

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Formulation kind of this is just a catchphrase that needs to be transcendentally defended but oftentimes

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Presuppositionalists will say something to the effect that the proof for the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true you

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Couldn't prove anything at all And so the very gist of the argument is to show that unless the

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Christian outlook on the world is correct Then one wouldn't have a foundation for knowledge for Logic for intelligibility or whatever.

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Okay. So when you're asking the question, how do you know the Bible is true? And when you say

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Bible you mean by that there's 66 books of the Bible, which is the foundation of the

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Christian faith Basically, the answer is going to be the same that the Bible is true Transcendentally if it wasn't true, you wouldn't have it.

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You wouldn't have a foundation for knowledge intelligibility or what have you Okay. Now, here's a word of warning for people who use this phrase.

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Okay, and this is very popular on It's very popular within popular discussions online is that when we say something to the effect that The Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for intelligibility and knowledge, you know foundation for logic or whatever

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It's not enough to merely state that okay. You actually have to defend that right?

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We're not making this I believe it's true I believe there is no other foundation that can ground knowledge intelligibility and logic

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But we need to go into more detail as to what does that what does it look like? And so there's gonna be more legwork

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Apologetics is not, you know Presuppositional apologetics is not just this silver bullet approach where we just say these statements and then all of a sudden, you know

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The unbeliever disintegrates in our presence right and there's just not of course not right. We're speaking with people

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We're speaking with people who have questions And and we are people ourselves. And so even though we might be arguing

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Faithfully biblically and we are laying out the gist of the argument. It doesn't mean necessarily that a

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We've been adequately clear so that the person who is listening to us understands what we're saying

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Right, and the person might honestly not know what you mean when you say these statements Okay So for example if I were to say the proof of the truth of the

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Christian worldview is that if it were not true You couldn't prove anything at all. I mean the first thing that a person might think is well, wait a minute

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You know, I don't believe in Christianity, but I I could prove things you see So sometimes it's just an issue of I don't understand what you're getting at with, you know

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This methodologies argument you're presenting and so it's going to be incumbent upon the believer to kind of go into some of the details

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And work through that with the person. Okay, we have to be very careful not to be so impatient with people

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You know not every atheist or unbeliever or skeptic or whatever Not all of them are just internet trolls who are just trying to get on your nerves, you know

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There are those out there, you know, but not everyone is like that. And so Nor is our average apologetic encounter gonna be something done over the internet, you know

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It's an amazing reality that many people are willing to say things on the internet that they would be willing to say

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When you're face -to -face with them, you see but when you're face -to -face face with someone most of the time it's not under such a

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People don't tend to argue in the same way they do on the internet And so you're gonna have more of hopefully a more respectful conversation you know, they're able to read facial expressions and body language and there's more of a somewhat hopefully a respectful interaction between the two parties and so So, I think we need to be willing to go a little deeper than some than we sometimes do and stay away from just Presuppositional tropes and platitudes that we really need to make sure we understand

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The nature of what we're arguing for and walk the unbeliever through that and engage in a respectful back -and -forth

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Remember first Peter chapter 3 verse 15 says to set apart Christ as Lord in your heart Always being ready to give a reason for the hope that's in you yet doing so With a gentleness and respect so that that's a very important key to all of this

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Okay. All right. Let's take on the next question here. Eli. Can you go more into some of the reasons you believe the unbeliever?

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Oh, oh, I think we have Emilio Ramos on let's see if this works. Okay. Hey, brother.

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How's it going? I'm doing all right.

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Are you having some difficulty connecting there? I don't know why it wouldn't take to be it wouldn't take to to this to this link and It wouldn't it was not allowing me to use my microphone or my camera.

27:29

I Tried everything on my settings and stuff So I have to I'll have to go back in and and get some help with that because I'm kind of like you

27:39

I'm not much of a techie. So not sure your audience can hear this, but if you can make it work Yeah, yeah, let's let's see

27:48

Let's see if if folks can give me a thumbs up or in the comments Are you able to hear

27:54

Emilio on my phone? We're gonna do this in a little getaway But we'll make it work just like Hollywood says there are the

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Broadway the show must go on right if you guys can You guys can put in the comment if you could hear him.

28:06

Okay, and then we will You know, we'll take it from there. So I got a couple of thumbs up Yeah, some people are doing thumbs up here

28:15

I got a text the audio is good I Should probably talk a little bit.

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So make sure people can hear that. Yep. They say they can hear you Okay. All right, so so good.

28:26

All right. Good. Yeah. All right, so I'm going to put this question on well I mean, let's see here.

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So Eli, can you go more into some of the reasons you believe the unbeliever cannot know he exists? Okay, I understand the problem with Descartes syllogism and I have a few other arguments myself

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Okay, let me answer this one question real quick. And then we'll start and we'll we'll we'll join you into the conversation

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Because we're having some technical difficulties Yeah, so it so my argument is something like this if I just to popularly put it out there

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All right So the proof of the of the the Christian worldview is that if it were not true you couldn't prove anything at all And so some or you couldn't know anything at all and someone will say well, what about my own existence?

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I think therefore I am Okay now you have a couple of criticisms of Descartes syllogism here number one that it is intrinsically circular and that the conclusion is embedded within the starting point

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So you you have the the syllogism I think therefore I am

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You got some circular issues there, but even if we were to grant like fine Maybe it's not fallaciously circular

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We if I were to be nice and I woke up one morning have a cup of coffee and I was like, yeah I don't wanna argue that point The problem with this is when you start with existence

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Independent of a broader worldview context to be perfectly honest. I don't even know what

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I means. What is I? You need a broader metaphysical context that can define the

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I otherwise I would be a meaningless Concept. I don't even know what it what is what does it mean to exist and then be able to differentiate yourself with other objects?

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It would seem to me that you'd have to have knowledge of a broader metaphysical context to even make sense out of that Number two, even if you are presupposing your own existence

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You're not just merely presupposing your own existence when you say I think therefore I am and you speak that proposition

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You're also presupposing the laws of logic because language presupposes logic

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And so the person who says well, I don't start with anything except my existence and work from there Well, they're not really just starting with themselves

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They're starting with other metaphysical commitments that are embedded within that very statement And so whatever worldview they're gonna be starting with it's gonna have to be able to ground

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All these other things also if you start with yourself There's no way to logically move from I exist and therefore there is the reality of the external world

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And so if you start with Descartes, I don't see how one could Escape what is called in philosophy the egocentric predicament

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There's no way to get outside yourself. If I even granted that you're able to define yourself without a broader metaphysical context

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So again, that's just a thumbnail sketch of where I might go with someone who holds to that position But obviously that's a much broader conversation that we don't have time to go into in detail here

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So I hope that is sufficient Chris and with without further ado. I want to welcome brother

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Ramos on the show Good to be with you Eli. I apologize for the technical difficulties and Also for the time scheduling

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I was a I was I got a little bit confused in the midst of all the Hustle and shuffle over here.

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I apologize for that we'll have to do something again, and I definitely would have I definitely will like to bring you on to my show and we can

31:36

Continue to have further conversations. Sure. No problem. That's it. This happens. I mean we have the time difference, of course and I Was looking back on the text messages and I realized that I did say 1 p .m.

31:49

Eastern, however I'm not pretending that when you read my text messages, you're just sitting around doing nothing, you know

31:57

And it's easy to lose track and stuff so no worries there brother All right

32:04

So let me remind folks of the nature of the topic today that I the reason why I had

32:09

Emilio on and it is Exploring the relationship between presuppositional apologetics and Reform theology.

32:16

Okay, and so I want to explore that a little bit with Emilio so that people can see why Why is it the case that?

32:25

Presuppositionalists tend to be reformed in their in their theology Okay, and then after that we'll continue on in the questions and then we can grill

32:30

Emilio if he's up to it With some of some of the listeners questions. I'm sure people will enjoy that.

32:37

Okay All right, so let me start with my first question that I have for you

32:43

Emilio and so that we can define our terms here and When we're talking about presuppositionalism and reform theology, let's define what is reform theology as you understand it and then we'll move on from there

32:55

Sure. Yeah. Well reform theology, I think Has been defined and the way that it's been defined

33:03

I guess in a formal way has been through the various confessions and the statements that have been written

33:10

For example, the Westminster standards and then later, of course different Baptist confessions and things like that and then also the statements regarding reform theology

33:22

That have a lot to do maybe getting closer to what we want to talk about, you know in terms of Calvinism and soteriology

33:31

That's been that's been defined by the various souls that have been given throughout the Reformation right the sola the five solas of the

33:40

Reformation and then the five points of Calvinism that have also emerged which of course were response to Catholic theologians and things like that, but I like to just summer summarize it by saying that reform theology consists of The ten points the five points of Calvinism and the and the five solas of the

34:01

Reformation and really it's a It's a distinct vision of God in the vision of redemption

34:07

That separates us from other traditions were as in the reformed tradition. God is

34:13

You know meticulously sovereign. Mm -hmm Many in traditions are less than To use a ban till phrase less than consistent

34:26

Calvinism you have other evangelical and Arminian Michael Asian type ideas of God's Sovereignty and how that salvation how that affects the salvation.

34:39

So that's kind of a General approach to reform theology So now how would how would reform theology differ if from the more like evangelical flavor of Christianity out there

34:56

Yeah, well again, I think the more evangelical type theology that's out.

35:01

There is really Hodgepodge really of Ideas and and really a lot of evangelical theology out there really is

35:11

Non -theological it has no theology It's kind of open -ended and that's why it's given rise to all sorts of you know, all sorts of different expressions of theology going all the way from maybe like a classical

35:27

Armenian position to a Semi Pelagian position and then you know, also all kinds of things can arise in evangelical theology

35:36

But but no, but reform theology, of course stresses the idea that God works

35:42

Not just as a sovereign God, but God also works covenantally and so that God in the covenant of redemption has chosen the people through Jesus Christ and through his work and that's really not the feature of evangelical theology things like the covenant of redemption and Really when we're talking about reform theology reform theology has always almost always been covenantal

36:12

With the rise of dispensationalism, I think You can have someone who's a Calvinist, but not necessarily reformed

36:21

Thoroughly reformed in their understanding of the covenants if that makes sense. Yeah No, that makes that makes a lot of sense now if you can expand on this a little more you said something that to the effect that Evangelical theology tends to be open -ended.

36:34

Is that the word you used or open? So why don't why don't you flush that out? Why do you think that's the case that because of their lack of?

36:41

You know the formulation of well official confessions or some or stuff like that. Sure Yeah, sure.

36:48

A lot of times evangelical theology tends to be non -historic So you don't really subscribe to much historical theology and it seems that their evangelicalism

37:00

Desires to go back to some sort of pure Biblicism and that can get you into trouble because it divorces what you're doing in the 21st century

37:11

From what has happened In the course of in the course of church history and of course, but we do theology

37:19

We are never doing theology in a vacuum. And so we need to take into account That we stand on the shoulders of Giants and the historical theology that has preceded us so we have to be very careful when we develop our theology that We don't we don't think that we're doing theology all over again

37:37

You know, we're going to sort of reconstruct it or you know and try to reimagine what theology should be for us today

37:46

That that really is when we're thinking theologically a non -sensical idea

37:53

The origin of ideas has a history We need to know what that history is.

37:59

And so Evangelicals tend to be non -historical. They tend to not really care About what happened in history and yet without what happened in history there would be no birth of evangelicalism.

38:10

So it's really a ironic phenomenon Can you give perhaps more solid example of someone or an organization, you know a ministry that they tend to be solid in various points of the points of theology, but But it looks like or perhaps they're a product of doing this independent of a historical tradition

38:39

Yeah, I'll give you an example. I came from Calvary Chapel Many many many years ago and Calvary Chapel was built on the notion

38:49

Jeff Smith who was the founder of Calvary Chapel Really started Calvary Chapel on the notion of abandoning all traditional

38:57

Christianity Really rejected Presbyterian and Reformed Baptist types of Christianity Okay And wanted to like I was saying earlier wanted to come back to just the

39:07

Bible in a real biblicist type of approach Christianity well not surprising

39:14

Christian Calvary Chapel has really struggled over the years in its identity.

39:19

They don't know how to stave off Calvinism they ended up becoming Armenian and Pentecostal charismatic and so they don't they have struggled throughout their history to stave off things like People in their churches becoming

39:34

Calvinists or people in the churches adopting a new perspective on Paul I was in a church where the new perspective on Paul came in and just ravaged this poor

39:46

Calvary Chapel and many of my friends and people

39:51

I knew at that church Went into Eastern Orthodoxy and the church was ill -equipped to even know what to do at that point.

40:00

So That that tends to happen when you don't really have a deep rich historical a tradition

40:06

Theologically speaking so things like that and oh, I don't know I could just I guess

40:12

I could just go on when you when you're open to when you're open to new interpretations of Or non -historical interpretations of certain doctrines like justification

40:24

I think the new perspective you can make the case the new perspective is just to return to Rome And so it's very important for us to know our history.

40:33

Hmm. Very good. Very good. And I think a lot of people who Come out of the evangelical Background and say, you know,

40:40

I think I want to be a Roman Catholic or I want to convert to Orthodoxy or something like that Usually people usually give the explanation

40:48

Well, I feel like these traditions are more connected to the ancient faith They're more cognizant of the of the historical tradition and of which whatever church they're coming out

40:57

It should have been in touched with the history, but there's no confessional aspect No connection to that broader backdrop of Christian of the

41:05

Christian faith Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. All right.

41:10

Well, very good. Okay, so we know what reformed theology is We know how it differs from a lot of what's out there with regards to evangelical

41:18

Understandings. What about presuppositional apologetics every every guest that I have I always ask them to define their terms and it's just my way of throwing a bone to people who may be listening for the

41:27

First time. Yeah, what is presuppositional apologetics in your understanding? Well presuppositional apologetics in my understanding

41:36

I'm glad you asked it that way my understanding That way

41:41

I'm not making any any Definition that's on purpose. That's on purpose brother Yeah, so the way that I understand presuppositional ism is that?

41:53

God is the foundation as he Discloses himself to be

41:59

God is the foundation of all knowledge and all meaning and all morals and Therefore meaning morals and beauty

42:09

Let's say aesthetics are meaningless apart from God and it is the task of presuppositional apologetics to show the antithesis that arises whenever you reject

42:21

God as To quote the famous phrase the necessary precondition for these kinds of things

42:28

Not just the necessary precondition for intelligibility But the necessary precondition for meaning and morals and beauty and everything like that human experience and any experience and and we are you know, the task of the reason why we call presupposition because we argue by way of Presupposition and the reason we do that, of course is because we're trying to get to the transcendental foundations of reason and thought and What we're as a presuppositional is what we're saying is that we really haven't gotten anywhere in the argument

43:02

Unless we deal with the underlying issues in our worldview, and this is what's wrong with Non presuppositional thought that the fact that we're not tackling the deeper transcendental issues ends up Resulting in a type of conversation with non -christian thought where we're just going one factoid at a time going back and forth to an infinite degree and Because of course no one part of presuppositional ism is that we believe

43:33

No one can actually make meaningful statements what van

43:39

Til called predication because the facts never end and so we can't never know for certain if What we're saying about one fact really truly checks out with all the other facts because the reality is

43:53

Not only do we not know all the facts The facts never stop coming. Well, but it really

43:59

Emilio Yeah, really, but that's but isn't that I can just picture a skeptic But isn't that the humble thing just to admit that we don't know the facts

44:09

It's you Christians who are claiming to know all this stuff. You know, what what if it's the case that yeah

44:14

We live in a world where we can't know any of these things for certain sure.

44:20

Yeah Well and a lot of times too, that's why we speak of a Revelational epistemology because what we're claiming is not that our epistemology arises from ourselves right

44:33

You mentioned Descartes earlier. It's not that we think and therefore we we are

44:38

It's that when we think we think in connection to God who justifies our thinking

44:46

You know, there is this sort of relationship and dependence upon the mind of God and the revelation of God and that's the only thing that's capable of truly justifying our reason other than that we

45:01

Don't have justification for reason we may have we may have a reason in process

45:06

Then you have to try to justify that you don't have the justification of reason unless of course that justification comes from an authority that is capable of interpreting in a self interpretive manner

45:23

Everything around you and for you and so as presuppositional as we speak of God interpreted facts, right?

45:30

So everything in the world everything in reality is what it is by virtue of God having known it and interpreted it for us

45:38

Right. All right, very good So now let's let's try to make the link then between presuppositional apologetic methodology and reform theology

45:47

So in your in your understanding, what was Cornelius Vantil's goal?

45:52

Do you think in the development of this apologetic methodology and maybe you could answer that by connecting some of his reformed commitments?

45:59

In the process of doing this. Oh Yeah, yeah, that's no easy task but Well, you know, let me let me put it this let me quote

46:09

Greg Bonson who in one of his lectures I'm sure you've probably heard him say this Greg Bonson Makes a statement about what

46:18

Vantil would call less consistent Calvinism in his writings And he's quoting

46:25

BB Warfield and he says according to Warfield we presuppose God in our theology, but not in our apologetics and I think what

46:36

Vantil has tried to do is he's tried to demonstrate that in fact Apologetics is theology

46:43

And that we cannot have an apologetic devoid of theology and that in fact our theology

46:51

Determines our apologetic and if that's the case Then we have to take our theology which happens to be reformed to govern our

47:02

Apologetic and that's all he was trying to say is that why why is it that we presuppose

47:09

God in theology? But we don't presuppose God in apologetics. And so he was in his mind just simply being more consistent

47:19

You know, I think that more work needs to be done Eli And I'm trying actually to do this work right now the

47:28

Colossians chapter 1 Excuse me Colossians chapter 2 verses 1 to 8

47:36

Is a remarkable passage on Christian apologetics because they're Just summarize it without giving all the exegetical detail.

47:44

Well, why don't know why don't I there you said Colossians chapter 1? Let me let me read it real quick for folks so they can yeah

47:49

Colossians. Well Colossians chapter 2 verses 1 through 8 Okay And let me just say what why

47:58

I'm going there. I'm sure Because I think what we find there Eli is a methodology of Apologetics And the method the method of apologetics we can say is a method from Christ through Christ to Christ and For Christ meaning for his glory.

48:18

Sure So so Colossians chapter 2 verses what 1 through 8.

48:25

All right 1 through 8 I'm gonna read it here for folks and then and then you can comment on it and explain that So chapter 2 verses 1 through 8 for I want you to know how great a struggle

48:34

I have had for you And for those that loud to see and for all who have not seen me face to face that their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of Understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is in which is

48:48

Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments for though I am absent in body yet I am with you in spirit rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ Therefore as you received

49:06

Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in him rooted and built up in him and established in the faith Just as you were taught abounding in Thanksgiving see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit

49:18

According to human tradition according to the elemental spirits of this world and not according to Christ well

49:27

According to presuppositional ism We argue by way of presupposition, which means that we push the antithesis

49:34

That's the Vancel taught and the antithesis is found in this passage where the elementary principles the

49:43

Greek word is Stoicheion The elementary principles are set over against that which is kata krisu, which is according to Christ And so right so so then we have to kind of ask well, what are the what are the elementary principles a

50:02

Lot of if you look at a Greek lexicon There's a lot of a lot of information as to what exactly these elementary principles are

50:09

So people would say the rudimentary elements of life fire wind water things like that Other people would say well elementary principles are you know?

50:19

Human philosophy and the principles of reason and Greek and he was thinking about like Greek philosophy and things like that But really

50:27

I think it's deeper than that because The same exact word is found in Galatians chapter 4, but this time it's not in reference to the

50:37

Colossian heresy Which tends to be more again? sort of a more of a

50:44

What's the word I'm looking for more of a? Synthesis if you would have things right like a combination of heresies going on there

50:51

Colossi, but in Galatians the heresies were clear it's Judaizers and That those

50:58

Judaizers are also characterized by possessing the worthless elementary principles of the world

51:04

I mean, that's remarkable. And so in one sense Whether Jewish in origin or pagan in origin if you have a philosophy a religion an ethic a morality a spirituality that deviates from Christ It is worthless.

51:24

Hmm, and that's and that's how Paul talks And so what I'm saying is that when you look at a passage like this, it really does begin to set forth what?

51:33

We call the antithesis and for the Apostle Paul. It was only and in verse 8 is without doing a whole

51:43

Exposition here of this whole passage, but in verse 8, it's really critical because you have these you have these

51:49

Comparative statements, right? You have these according to according to according to so you it's either going to be according to man according to you know, according to the elementary principles or even though he doesn't use the

52:02

Connection and get he does actually according kata. He the preposition to Christ.

52:08

So this is a Three times he uses the phrase and in that he shows us what the what the what the possibilities are for man,

52:21

I do you're gonna go base and forgive and He said do

52:26

I guess we can distill that word down Elementary principles as a non -christian worldview

52:33

That can be made up of anything Worship of angels harsh treatment of the body

52:39

Philosophy, you know all of these things. Sure. And so You're either gonna have that or you're gonna have

52:45

Christ Governing all of the above and if Christ governs all the above And then now we start to see sort of the formulation of presuppositional ism

52:56

Then you cannot have neutral ground then you cannot have autonomy then you cannot have you know

53:03

Fact there are brute facts. Everything is connected to Christ and others. So I hope that me yeah, so and so You did highlight very well this issue of the elementary principles and how they differ from elementary principles of the non -christian

53:19

Perspective and I think this issue of the antithesis is very important in Vantill. I remember

53:24

I think I don't remember where I read this but Vantill Always used to remind dr.

53:31

Bonds and he says he's Greg you need to always remember to push the push the antithesis and Yeah, and that really reminds us of always being conscious of the of the fundamental difference between believing thought and unbelieving thought that must be pressed out of our biblical commitment to Christ and For the apologetical usefulness of setting aside the both these competing systems of thought we don't we want it

53:59

We want to highlight that non neutrality aspect because it's not only faithfulness to Christ in doing so but it's actually

54:06

Constitutes a powerful apologetic and not allowing the unbeliever to borrow from our system so to speak

54:14

Yeah, yeah, and if I can say something here might be a little bit controversial But okay in one set in one sense me like pushing the antithesis is all that we can do

54:26

It's all that we can do in our apologetics. Okay, we present for example, we cannot

54:33

We cannot persuade somebody to believe Belief is a gift of God.

54:41

That's not something we're capable of doing or produce. We can't produce that We cannot accomplish that as it were

54:47

We cannot convince somebody right to repent That's something that God is going to do that doesn't mean that God doesn't use us or that there's not secondary means or something

54:58

Of course, but what I'm saying is that when it comes to the task of apologetics

55:06

We're so we're so caught up in the debate of whether or not we can prove the existence of God I would say we don't in a sense prove the existence of God as much as As much as we show that without God you have the elementary principles

55:24

Which are worthless and so you see what I'm saying? And so we believe obviously a basic tenet of presuppositional ism is that everyone?

55:34

Fundamentally has the sense of the divine and so everybody actually does know that God exists

55:40

That's not what we're trying to establish, you know In in a conversation

55:46

I had with Mike Wiener Mike Wiener for just to illustrate something

55:53

I brought up. We like Mike Wiener. He's a great guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah He is

55:59

I asked Mike Wiener. I said, can you show me in the Bible anywhere where someone in the

56:05

Bible tries? attempts to prove the existence of God and He really struggled he kind of went around around in his head and open

56:17

I said, uh, no not really And and and I found that fascinating because he also says in the same breath that Elijah Was giving evidential proof for the existence of God Anyway Shows us once again that what we're doing in apologetics by pushing the antithesis is we're showing the unbeliever

56:43

The consequences of his rebellion to God which that then becomes to look a lot like the gospel, right?

56:50

Now I do want to clarify just in case so people would know you

56:56

You're not saying that one can't prove the existence of God You're not saying that of course, right because I would imagine you would agree that the transcendental proof is

57:04

An actual proof. It's just not a proof that gives room for autonomous reasoning and neutral facts.

57:12

Am I correct? Yeah, yeah, of course, I think that the transcendental

57:18

Argument itself is the best argument that demonstrates as a matter of necessity that God exists

57:27

Okay Yeah, absolutely and but there's a difference of course between proof and persuasion so we can prove

57:34

God God exists and as Bonson said we Should prove that God exists, of course in line with the being consistent with the

57:41

Bible but there's a vast difference between proof and persuasion and then we want to acknowledge as you just said that You know, the persuasion aspect is the work of the

57:50

Holy Spirit. Let me ask you a question real quick, though Correct. I hear this often That if if if we don't persuade anyone and it's the work of the

57:59

Holy Spirit then what's the point of even giving the Transcendental argument, you know, I would respond to someone like that.

58:05

Sure No, sure, and that's why it's important that your theology Dictates your apologetics.

58:11

Okay, and because the reason the reason we do that is Because of course we believe and ironically this kind of comes back full circle to what we're discussing with reform theology that it's almost

58:23

Only if reform theology is true Can your question makes it or can your question be answered in a meaningful way?

58:34

because only if God who is sovereign and Who has chosen and predestined a particular people for himself in Jesus Christ only if that theology is true

58:47

Can we say that what we're doing is actually a meaningful means by which?

58:54

God will use that or use us and our speech and in our arguments and in our apologetics to instill in people the very thing that can bring them to Christ, which is the gospel because The presuppositional is does what he does so that he can

59:15

Preach the gospel. I'm personally I don't know Eli about you, but I'm personally against this notion this popular notion

59:24

Popularized by people like great cocoa and others that what we are to do in Christian evangelism is put a pebble in people's shoes

59:34

I'm personally the opposite of that. I Don't want to put a pebble in anybody's shoe

59:42

I want to communicate the full counsel of God I want to give them the good news of Jesus Christ, and I'm not trying to Just put you know some curious thought in Somebody's mind.

59:58

I want them to know that's like telling someone I just put up. I just give a person the hint

01:00:05

That there might be an antidote in the room I Really want to communicate to people the full gospel and that's what presuppositionalism should be for It's clearing away

01:00:18

The arguments and the hostility and all of that so that we can present The positive truth of the gospel apologetics is not an end of itself.

01:00:28

It is a means to an end And the end of apologetics is to preach the gospel Well, I do sometimes use the pebble in the shoe analogy, but because I am thoroughly

01:00:40

Presuppositional I I don't mean it in precisely the same way as someone like cocoa would use it So so so I completely understand where you're coming from with that and I that's fine

01:00:51

I I I guess the pebble in the shoe is always It's kind of one of those secondary means if I could if I could present the fullness of the gospel

01:01:01

The necessity of the Christian worldview like yeah a pebble in the sense that when we're done you're thinking

01:01:07

But that's not independent of the work of the Spirit of course You know the Spirit will I pray that the

01:01:13

Lord use the pebbles to cut the feet of the person It's a big the bruise the sole of the foot, you know, so but but yes

01:01:20

I completely understand what you're what you're saying there and I I'm in agreement there let me ask you a question though, and I think people might be interested in this and seeing the

01:01:30

Connections between reformed theology and presuppositionalism. Do you think that a non reformed person can use?

01:01:38

Presuppositional apologetics and and be consistent now This is this is important because a lot of people make a mistake of Saying something to the they seem to assume and I've seen scholars.

01:01:49

I've spoken to scholars seem to assume this that Presuppositionalist are sometimes evidentialist because they use evidence and I've always made the distinction between the use of evidence and evidentialism or the appeal to presuppositions and Presuppositionalism just because a classical apologist appear appeals to presuppositions in a discussion and apologetic encounter

01:02:13

Doesn't mean they're engaging in actual presuppositional apologetics So so can you explain a little bit of the differences there?

01:02:20

And if if someone is not reformed in their theology, but tries to use presuppositional apologetics

01:02:27

Why do you think he's being inconsistent? Well, yeah, so that I guess debate so and when the question is that whenever I get that question, you know

01:02:37

People say like can you use presupp if you're not reformed? Technically, no

01:02:45

Because it is only in reformed theology as van Til himself would point out

01:02:50

That the bat the way he talked about it kind of confused people But he what he would say is back of everything is the plan of God.

01:02:58

Mm -hmm and when we subscribe to the absolute sovereignty of God What we're saying is that back of everything is the plan of God and what we mean by that is that that?

01:03:11

eliminates the element of chance and One thing that van

01:03:17

Til is really keen on is that every worldview outside of Christianity has some element of chance and It's it has some element wherein the truth is not that the future is not known

01:03:34

Something is not determined man is free man is autonomous Something is random facts fact are brute facts

01:03:44

Things like that. And of course what we would say is that that's not the case And so when an Arminian comes with a free will worldview

01:03:53

I asked a guy if he believed That God had ordained all things and he said yes, but I also believe there's an element of chance in that I'm not sure how you can have both so so I would just say that no

01:04:12

Ultimately, no that and exactly what you're saying Eli that I Was an Arminian when

01:04:19

I first picked up van Til and the way that I became a presuppositional is through van Til I just picked up the defense of the faith.

01:04:26

I started reading through it Took me about reading every paragraph probably five times over again.

01:04:33

I Had to keep reading But once I understood the argument somewhat, you know,

01:04:39

I wasn't reformed in my soteriology at that time And so I was trying to do Presuppositionalism best

01:04:45

I could but I was in fact doing it inconsistently by necessity. It was inconsistent.

01:04:52

Okay Now now you said something that the elements of these non -christian worldviews that there's an issue of chance

01:04:59

And I do think that there's an issue with having chance mixed into your worldview since chance

01:05:06

You know, there's this element of uncertainty Oftentimes when I asked, you know Certain Christians and apologists, you know, could you be wrong about the existence of God and they say well,

01:05:16

I don't think I'm wrong But I suppose it's possible. It seems that within that perspective Contingency and possibility are actually more fundamental than God If you think about it, there you go

01:05:28

It would have to be and so even if you were a Christian you're being inconsistent in that God is not the highest standard rather this issue of contingency and possibility is more fundamental and I think that's that's a problem

01:05:41

But however, what do we do? There you go What do we do with perspectives that hold to a form of determinism that don't that don't?

01:05:48

Appeal to chance and some form of libertarian freedom and how those things relate What if someone has a purely deterministic worldview do they run the same?

01:05:57

Problems at that point. Yeah, I mean it would just depend on what that is when you say that somebody has a deterministic worldview

01:06:08

Of course a worldview is more than just what you do with determinism or compatible

01:06:13

There's more to a worldview than that. So I don't know Eli Just have to be more specific what worldview we dealing with deterministic.

01:06:21

Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's true because if we have some form of Impersonal determinism then you get into issues of irrationality and the lack of foundation for knowledge and things like that So that does that exactly?

01:06:31

Okay. All right. Here's a question that I get And this is usually put forth by Catholics against the reform perspective

01:06:39

Okay, now now, you know, I'm sure as a reformed Christian. You've heard this all the time, right? Reformed theology is innovation

01:06:48

That for the early church fathers didn't hold to this, you know You don't see certain understandings within reformed theology until Martin Luther came along, you know,

01:06:56

John Calvin or whatever now Of course we could respond to those issues from the reformed perspective, but I've heard this same application with regards to presuppositional apologetics

01:07:06

How can the presuppositional methodology be the biblical methodology when we don't see people throughout church history using it?

01:07:13

I mean if you look at the early church, you know, give me a someone who is a purely a presuppositionalist

01:07:19

I mean this stuff didn't come around until Van Till or maybe some other people before him that had the seeds of it, but you don't really see it until modern times

01:07:26

So what gives there how can it be the biblical position if we don't see it until more modern times? Sure.

01:07:34

Yeah, I don't know that I'm the expert when it comes to the historical foundations of presuppositional thought

01:07:41

But I will say this that you have an example for example when it comes to the utilization of certain tenets of presuppositionalism like the transcendental argument or what some people would say the circularity of a self -attesting

01:07:58

God and a self -attesting word revelation of God and those elements you can absolutely find those elements

01:08:06

Scott Oliver has demonstrated from John Owen That Owen had a form of the transcendental argument because he was arguing for the self -attesting nature of Scripture And that he was actually accused of circularity because he believed that God was self -evident in a sense, right that God was

01:08:24

Self -attesting and so we do have We do have fragments of the argument here and there

01:08:31

My thing is in a sense What's wrong with innovation as long as you still believe in Sola Scriptura?

01:08:41

And so if the issue both down to Sola Scriptura, then of course we have a whole

01:08:46

Historical heritage when it comes to that on on you know, church fathers and whatnot looking to Scripture as the final authority, but even then when you look at Scripture as the final authority that is in a sense a transcendental argument because it is

01:09:02

Talking about Scripture being the foundation of the Christian worldview.

01:09:08

So I again, I don't know that I'm the guy that's going to settle the issue of are there elements of presuppositionalism throughout church history going back to the first century

01:09:16

Yeah, I think others I think others have done that kind of work but No, I think that I think that if we go back at least historically to the

01:09:26

Reformation, that's That's what that still is arguing that if you look even at the Westminster Confession He would say that the

01:09:33

Westminster Confession in a sense is is calling for that based on the idea that that God is so distant from the creature and things like that and just Again being creating the image of God and having the sense of the divine every man knows

01:09:49

God Those kinds of things are very much in keeping with presuppositionalism. Hmm. All right, very good

01:09:55

All right. What we're gonna do now is we're gonna transition to the questions I mean This is where we grill the the guests people really enjoy this because people the questions that people ask are not always related to the main topic

01:10:06

However, you can feel you could feel free to pass. There's no shame in saying oh, yeah

01:10:12

Yeah Well, but you know what here's the thing a lot of people get nervous like well, okay

01:10:22

Well, I'm gonna have to answer these random questions from these people from all over the place and I have no idea You know who they are and what they're talking about but I think that there is great apologetic value in seeing an

01:10:36

Apologist admit I don't know now We won't we're not playing a skeptic game where there are things we think we do know and so we can talk about those

01:10:43

But there are things that we don't know and so I think it's helpful to see people You know like ourselves like apologists for other people who are watching.

01:10:50

Hey, you know what? I appreciate that. He didn't try to just give me a packaged answer there that you know, no one knows everything

01:10:56

It's good to be reminded that and so that gives people a you know, an area to study and look into for themselves

01:11:01

So I'm sure you appreciate that Yeah, for sure.

01:11:07

All right. He's Emilio's like, all right. What do we got here? Let's see. Let's see where we left off here.

01:11:13

Okay Okay, that's the last one. Okay. Now if you don't if you're not familiar with the names or whatever

01:11:21

You can pass but here's a question if you're familiar with Tim Stratton's criticism of determinism

01:11:26

Could you address it now before you even say I don't know who Stratton is Maybe you do but before you say that I did an entire two episodes two hours a piece.

01:11:36

So that's four hours I had the French Calvinist philosopher Guillaume Bignon on in which he completely in my in my estimation

01:11:44

Of course, it's not gonna be the end all but he completely decimated Tim Stratton's position and criticisms

01:11:51

And you can avail yourself of those two episodes. They are packed with helpful responses to all sorts of criticism.

01:11:58

So You can take a look there But of course Emilio if you're familiar with Tim, feel free to address something if not, we know completely pass.

01:12:05

Yeah I yeah, sure. I am familiar with him, but I'm not I'm not familiar with his arguments against determinism and all that but I did watch your video and I just I would just I would just refer people to that video because I'm not going to come anywhere close to that French philosopher

01:12:28

Really does know his stuff and by the way Tim Tim Braxton and Leighton flowers made a response three response videos and so our response to their video is also found on on the revealed apologetics

01:12:42

YouTube channel and then Tim is actually coming up with Another response and this is the last response. We're not going to go back and forth

01:12:48

But you know sure when it comes to when it comes to stuff like that to Eli what

01:12:54

I would what I like to do when it comes to determinism and things like that That's why I may not be the person sure who's best suited to debate that What I what

01:13:03

I just tend to always try to do with with with that is to try to get people to The actual text of scripture.

01:13:11

So somebody like late flowers Who've I've had interactions with latent before but with latent flowers,

01:13:17

I would I would just want to hold him to to scripture and Because I'm much more comfortable there.

01:13:24

So if we're just looking at the exegesis of the Bible I would love to interact with somebody on that level, but if they want to immediately get into Philosophy and things like that.

01:13:36

I think others are More well suited to deal with that Sure, sure And if people are interested in what

01:13:42

Tim has to say with regards to the video the second response video that we did He's coming out with a video himself and that'll be the last video on this interaction

01:13:51

So he'll have some information there. You can see his perspective there Tim's a fine Fine Christian gentleman, we disagree, but he's got some good stuff to say and it's good iron sharpens iron opportunity there

01:14:04

Alright this one you might be familiar with does continuation is an impact revelational epistemology.

01:14:09

That's a good question Yeah, that's interesting because on my program

01:14:17

I just did a program on that and once if I had Justin Peters on red grace media and we talked a little bit about ongoing revelation and how that you know and in relationship to charismatic theology and whatnot, so Yeah, I mean

01:14:35

I would say it would be a weakness in the in the worldview of a charismatic to try to maintain both

01:14:44

That God's revelation is closed But that they themselves receive revelation from God and so I think at a logical level

01:14:54

The answer would have to be I Forgot how the question was phrased But the answer would have to be no in the sense of no or yes that revelation is

01:15:03

Ongoing or that there's more more revelation than what we have in Scripture. So that would be

01:15:08

Obviously stemming from my cessationist position Yeah, next time if I am able to have you on the show if you're not in front of a computer

01:15:16

What people see on the screen are the questions so you're just on your phone and that's why yeah, you're not reading the questions

01:15:21

That's fine. So I can repeat a question, but the folks who are who are watching can see the question on the screen

01:15:27

But no worries Here's a question pertaining to Presupp methodology and the theology that undergirds that what is the precise nature of the unbelievers knowledge of God?

01:15:40

What is the precise nature of the unbelievers knowledge of God? That's a really great question.

01:15:47

That's something that Well, I think that's something that that that in the midst of trying to communicate the presuppositional method

01:15:55

That is always a sticking point and it fascinates me how often

01:16:01

Presuppositionalists have to clarify this point It just seems like over and over, you know, one of the things that Van Til was attacked for probably more than anything may be exactly on this point in terms of what can the unbeliever know and because Most of the time when non -presuppositionalists talk about this issue

01:16:23

They present the character of the position. They don't present the actual position. Sure, but say things like well

01:16:30

Additionally unbeliever doesn't know anything. That is not the argument at all, right? And they always and it's to me.

01:16:38

It's such a simple distinction Qualification and it's a specific detail, but they never mention it and that is

01:16:46

That based on their worldview They cannot know anything for certain for example based on their worldview they cannot account

01:16:57

For knowledge for how they know things But based on the Christian worldview, of course, we turn to an unbeliever and say you of course, you know things

01:17:07

You may know more. You may know more things than I know As an unbeliever the question is not

01:17:15

What can you know or how much do you know? The question is always about can you justify your knowing?

01:17:22

That's right And so I would say that if the question has to do with how much does an unbeliever know in relationship to God?

01:17:28

Do you think the question has to do more with that Eli? Yeah, what is the nature? I mean, so we say the unbeliever knows

01:17:34

God. Okay, what what about God? Does the unbeliever know that makes him without excuse?

01:17:42

Well, it seems it would seem here to be that He knows obviously of God's existence

01:17:48

Which that in and of itself is not I mean, that's very easy to say but that's actually quite profound to think about that he he knows that God exists based on Romans 1 and Therefore he knows that he is in relationship to God And so he has a divine referential all of his life no matter what he does no matter where he goes

01:18:12

He knows that God is powerful and seemingly from Romans 1 and from Romans 2

01:18:18

He knows based on the conscience that God has given him. He knows that he is accountable to this

01:18:24

God for certain world norms now we would say those more norms are succinctly summarized for us and something like the deck law group and Thank you something of a

01:18:37

Litmus of what man knows man knows it's wrong to murder to steal to dishonor your parents those kinds of things that's just sort of built into the

01:18:47

Creaturely aspect of man and his Constitution and so those kinds of things though when we say that it's not that if you went to You know you went to some, you know deserted island in the middle of nowhere

01:19:01

To an unreached people group that they would have the Ten Commandments up in their hut That's not what we're saying.

01:19:08

But at the same time we would see the reflection of a biblical conscience no matter where we go no matter how perverted no matter how

01:19:19

No, no matter how darkened they the people are in their habits but still we would see that and so You would see you would see that lying is

01:19:33

Not permitted in a culture. For example, you would see that people

01:19:39

Often act against their conscience. For example pagan practices like pagan Child sacrifice and things like that.

01:19:47

There's record of those people doing such abominations against their conscience and so I Would I would look at things like that?

01:19:56

Hmm Very good. All right. Um, someone made a comment here Ramos did a great job debating

01:20:03

Jesse Morrell. I have not watched that debate, but cool. I'm definitely we'll check that out, you know

01:20:11

That was a that was a that was a curbside debate, okay, so like on the street, right

01:20:18

Okay, I'll still check that out I think I think that would be helpful for folks here, let's see Here's a question, how is the odyssey expressed from a reform perspective

01:20:29

You understand the question. I'm sure Yeah, sure. I mean

01:20:35

God in relationship to evil. I don't know we can go we can go on and on about this

01:20:41

I guess the simple answer that would be something like God has a good purpose for the evil that he ordains

01:20:48

It's important for God to ordain evil because it's it's different than God actually doing evil and so We have to make that fine distinction and of course people don't ever want to give us that ability

01:21:03

Right the minute you say God ordained evil People want to tell you that God is evil or that God has performed you or that evil has come through him

01:21:11

Okay But of course we don't believe that God is not in a sense not the author of evil in that sense that it originates

01:21:18

With him, right? Okay, and so But nonetheless, we do believe that God does ordain it for his glory and for the good of his people

01:21:30

My ultimate example for the odyssey is the cross and I would say

01:21:36

That when we look the cross the cross is the most unspeakable evil that took place in the history of humanity the murder

01:21:45

Crucifixion of the sinless Holy Son of God. That's why it's the worst Because we can we kill human beings or torture human beings, but we're sick.

01:21:56

We're fallen We you know We are not Innocent by any stretch of the imagination.

01:22:03

We are flawed as humans, but Jesus was holy and Therefore what was done to him is magnified

01:22:12

Above all else and so when we look at for example ask chapter 4 verses 25 to 27

01:22:19

We know for a fact that as heinous as the murder of Jesus was

01:22:25

Nevertheless, it was ordained by God. It was predetermined by God his and it says in his his hand and his plant exactly what it says and so Yeah, that would be

01:22:37

Where I would go personally. All right, very good. How's your voice doing? You're hanging in there.

01:22:43

Oh I'm doing great. I think the only thing I would add to the theodicy question if it was asked in any way apologetically

01:22:50

Don't think I would ask this from a in keeping with priest up Of course,

01:22:58

I would turn the question immediately back to the unbeliever to try to explain what evil is Right, we could we could make the challenge that the unbeliever has no basis for knowing what evil is without an absolute standard

01:23:11

But the unbeliever can use it as an internal critique. So given the existence of a good

01:23:16

God How can a good God be consistent with the existence of evil and if you listen to the discussion

01:23:22

I had with Guillaume Vignon He said that and I think correctly that we have the same reasons that many other

01:23:28

Christian apologist You know use that God has morally sufficient reasons for the evil that he allows, you know,

01:23:33

I might not like that But it's completely consistent with With biblical theology and biblical teaching we're not privy to why

01:23:41

God allows every single detailed thing We do know that he is he does ordain the beginning from the ends and he has reasons for why he does that So I think that's an option that's open for us as well

01:23:53

Okay, another another question here, how is the how is natural theology and natural revelation or how is the natural theology and natural revelation distinction expressed in presuppositional epistemology

01:24:09

That's a really important question. And I don't know that I speak for all presuppositions when I say this, but In one sense, there is no such thing as natural theology

01:24:21

Because there is nothing natural about our world one philosopher gave 200 definitions for the word nature

01:24:29

What is nature? I mean nature out there is nature in here is nature inside is nature up in the head

01:24:37

What what is nature? And so when we're talking about natural theology, obviously what people are typically as far as Christian categories go people are thinking about general revelation,

01:24:48

I Would say that what we're really talking about is general revelation and the extent of it

01:24:54

And so I would say every aspect of human experience whether it is

01:25:00

Whether we're talking about scripture Incarnational revelation or whether we're talking about revelation throughout the created order and in the conscience is nevertheless revelational

01:25:15

Ventile in his work that he did is entitled my credo. I don't know you remember reading that but in his credo

01:25:23

He speaks of the work of the Holy Spirit when he brings a person to faith and he said that the spirit

01:25:30

Basically works in such a way that when upon regenerating the person he he what he does is he brings a person to believe

01:25:39

What was around him the whole time? and so that's exactly what we're saying like You know, she the spirit

01:25:52

Brings a person into the realization of The clear evidence that surrounded him every moment of his existence

01:26:02

Yeah, I think an important distinction too is is to a lot of people do confuse natural theology with natural revelation

01:26:09

I think Scott Oliphant Summarized the difference really well in his section of a book on the debate within the issue of Christian epistemology

01:26:18

He says that natural theology is what we do and natural revelation is what God does Okay, natural revelation is

01:26:25

God revealing himself in nature and that includes an inherent knowledge of God that we all have

01:26:31

Natural theology is what we do as we seek to understand God now that can be taken from different foundations

01:26:37

Because there are people who believe that the knowledge of God is not innate and so theology natural theology is a practice

01:26:44

Which we engage in to gain knowledge that we don't otherwise have and then there are people who hold to a natural theology in which?

01:26:51

We can theologize Using the tools that God has given us and that doesn't add Content of the knowledge of God But it does flesh out some of the details of what we can gain from reflecting upon the created order

01:27:03

So the different ways that people can can cut that cake. I think it's important to know the difference between those those two concepts

01:27:10

Daniel says something funny here Eli asks for any questions. This is before you came on Emilio I was like ask any questions because Emilio is having some difficulties and a bunch of people

01:27:22

Yeah, a bunch of people put like so many questions and then you ended up coming on So I was unable to get to all of them at that point, but that's no worries.

01:27:31

Okay Someone says what's up? Hello. Hello. Yes. What's up? What was the next question here?

01:27:37

We got a couple here. I'm just scrolling through Okay, someone asked a question

01:27:43

So Matthew Jackson asked the question and this is pertaining to the issue of what when presuppositional to say we start with God.

01:27:50

Okay? He asks is starting with God Synonymous with presupposing

01:27:56

God if there is a difference. Can you break that down for me? That's Matthew's question Or That's a significant difference, um, as I understand the quote that when suppose

01:28:13

Your star God, I mean, I think look there might be a distinction between ontology and epistemology there

01:28:20

Yeah, right. It's like it's like God is Ontologically the starting point of all knowledge and everything else, right?

01:28:28

but how we come to know that or how we formulate that and how we predicate about that that may be

01:28:33

Something more given the epistemology. So that would be probably the only difference I would make there

01:28:39

Hmm. All right, very good Another question here. Does the unbeliever have immediate knowledge of God or immediate knowledge of God?

01:28:49

both I mean He has the immediate knowledge of God by virtue of being in God's image and the immediate knowledge of God by virtue of God's revelation

01:28:57

Hmm All right, very good. And that was a big difference between Yeah, people watch the debate between Greg Bonson and R .C.

01:29:05

Sproul on apologetic methodology This was a big a big point here

01:29:10

I mean, it's not an either -or it's not, you know, either immediate knowledge or immediate knowledge for presuppositionalists

01:29:16

It's it's both And it's the meat. It's the immediate that makes man without excuse You know, he can't claim ignorance.

01:29:24

Well, I didn't properly interpret the world around me. I didn't know Well as Calvin said

01:29:29

Consciousness of ourselves is simultaneous with consciousness with God to know oneself is to know that to some degree

01:29:35

So I think that's a very important key to keep in mind That's right. All right.

01:29:40

Someone's asking me. Do I plan on having J .D. Martin on to talk about Calvinism? Maybe J .D.

01:29:45

Martin's a great guy literally just spoke with him yesterday Perhaps if we find a specific topic we can have him on.

01:29:51

Okay, this one's for you Where does common grace play a role when it comes to common ground with the unbeliever?

01:29:58

Where does common grace play a role when it comes to common ground with the unbeliever? Oh, well

01:30:07

Yeah, I you know, I've been thinking For quite a while here now on on uncommon grace, maybe a different approach.

01:30:15

I've been thinking about it more from a practical maybe even a pastoral perspective in that I Don't think that common grace is has really been given it's it's day.

01:30:28

It's day in the Sun. It's I Don't know why you really Underestimated the force what

01:30:34

I call the force of common grace And and and the force of common grace is such that you can see so many wonderful Things in I mean kind of brace yourself here, but in the life of an unbeliever

01:30:49

God is so I mean remember we are talking about grace And so we should expect that based on the grace of God We can look into the life of an unbeliever and find remarkable remarkable things

01:31:05

That we that are actually useful You know a person's ability to do medicine math science a

01:31:15

Person able to you know economics whatever you can have you can have a staunch pagan

01:31:22

Give you the best financial advice of your life You can have an unbeliever a moralist give you incredible advice for your marriage

01:31:34

This is all evidence of the force of common grace in a person's life, but in terms of common ground, that's

01:31:43

That's a bit of a different thing and I would say it's not necessarily just because of common grace

01:31:49

That we want to talk about common ground if common ground if we're not getting too technical if all we mean is that there are things that the unbeliever and the believer

01:32:01

Apart from the subject of Christianity that we can talk about and we can have things in common.

01:32:06

Well fine. Okay, that's fine We get technical, of course the presuppositional position would be that there is no common ground because Everything every inch every molecule every every every inch of ground is

01:32:22

God's ground There's no there is no neutral ground whatsoever.

01:32:28

And so a couple different dynamics going on there Yeah, I think is important. I think you you you

01:32:35

You conflated something on accident because you were just talking about I just want to clarify and I'm sure you'll agree here there is a difference between common ground and Neutral ground and I think you kind of interchange them and I know you that's not what you meant

01:32:50

Because because Vantil would say there is common ground between the believer and unbeliever But there's no neutral ground and the common ground is that the unbeliever is made in the image of God And so he's able to be communicated to and effectively engaged within an apologetic

01:33:04

Context so there is a difference in common ground. Yeah and neutral ground No, yeah, of course,

01:33:10

I would say that right. That's right. That's what I figured you meant when you made those distinctions there All right.

01:33:15

Here's another question. And are you doing? Okay, Emilio? We usually go through it Okay, cuz cuz there are you actually

01:33:22

I'm feeling kind of saucy today if you're I don't want to overburden you But if at any moment you want to stop

01:33:28

I might still have the energy to plow through these and I might finish them up if we don't finish them up But you're more than No, I'm fine, but I'm here to serve you.

01:33:39

All right. Well, I appreciate that brother. Okay, let's take the next question We won't them quickly. What would be the nature of epistemology?

01:33:45

This is a good question, by the way, and they're the two consecutive ones The other person after this person words it differently, but I think they're asking the same thing but let's answer them both, you know answer them both because I think the second question kind of Flows into flows from the first one.

01:34:01

Okay. So what would be the nature of epistemology in the Old Testament? Since Revelation is progressive and the

01:34:08

Canon was not complete that's the first part and I'm going to transition to this next question because it's related and if the

01:34:15

Bible is Transcendentally necessary. What about the times past in redemptive history before the

01:34:22

Bible was given? And of course, I don't accept yeah, I don't accept the premise that there was a time before the

01:34:30

Bible was given if What we mean by the Bible is the revelation of God if we mean by the

01:34:36

Bible the inscripturated revelation of God Then of course then maybe we can talk about a time when the

01:34:41

Bible was not written down But at every stage of redemptive history God's revelation was always present.

01:34:48

So there was Technically never a time when the Bible never was or what a word of God revelation of God never was maybe revelation is better than the word

01:34:57

Bible, but But I would say that that yeah that the issue is one of in organic unity of God's revelation

01:35:07

And and and so the distinction if there is any distinction that we're going to make is simply one of degree not one of Either Either whether it was present or not present or whether it was of a different kind or of a different type of the epistemology the same of epistemology same foundations of epistemology

01:35:29

Different degree. That's all that's I think that's as far as I would want to make the distinction.

01:35:35

Okay. All right, very good Someone has a question here. What's the relationship between the transcendental necessity of the existence of God and the

01:35:43

Transcendental necessity of the truth of the Bible What's the is he asking what the distinction is or what the difference is?

01:35:55

I missed that part he asked what's the relationship between the Transcendental necessity of the existence of God and the transcendental necessity of the truth of the

01:36:05

Bible Sure well,

01:36:10

I would just say that of course God is the source of the transcendental necessity of the

01:36:16

Bible Because without God you have no Bible And so I would just say that in a sense

01:36:23

Right the one stems from the other and so the transcendental necessity of God's Word stems from the transcendental necessity of God himself

01:36:32

Yeah, and I think this is highlights the importance that we argue as a package deal right if if the if the

01:36:40

Bible is true transcendentally then that entails that the Christian God is true transcendentally because it's part of the package

01:36:48

So we wouldn't separate and you know what? Honestly in this your life That's one thing.

01:36:54

I really come to appreciate about your apologetics as much as I've been As much as I've been able to listen to some of your stuff

01:37:00

Is your insistence on? What what the vent who would call the total worldview, right?

01:37:08

Arguing as a system as a package, you know, that's really important to the presuppositional method

01:37:14

Yeah in my debate with Tom jump who's a kind of a well -known YouTube atheist he said something to the effect that I could take

01:37:23

The idea that Jesus was raised from the dead But I I wouldn't have a basis to believe that God was omnipotent and I was thinking to myself

01:37:32

I'm like, oh, wait a second if God if you're talking about Jesus being raised from the dead and he said that Christianity is true

01:37:38

But I didn't I wouldn't have a basis to believe that God's omnipotent. He he's missing the point that if Christianity is true that that entails as part of the package of the omnipotence of God You can't just pull apart the attributes from like the acts that God has done

01:37:52

They're part of an entire worldview package so that not only is an important aspect of presuppositional ism

01:37:58

I've actually found it to be a very useful tool when Responding to statements like that.

01:38:03

So Very very important that we argue package deal against package deal Let's see here.

01:38:10

Hey, man, someone asked the question Do you see logical conclusion of presuppositional apologetics towards the truth of theonomy?

01:38:18

considering the harem principle for some of some guys in other words does presuppositional ism lead necessarily to Theonomy and that's very much related to Bonson since Bonson was a theonomist and obviously presuppositional is so how would you speak to that?

01:38:36

Yeah, maybe the most controversial question of the day, right right I would I would say yeah,

01:38:42

I would say no, of course not Maybe that maybe that has something to do the fact that I'm not a theonomist.

01:38:49

Yeah, right But no, I would say no it does not All right

01:38:55

I would say on that issue is that honestly, that's one of the reasons why

01:39:02

I'm probably more of a Vantillian when it comes to a college In order in which

01:39:09

I saw a loop from bonds and because Hansen does at Natural and so much

01:39:18

About theonomy at the only alternative Whereas Vantill never goes to that degree because of course he was bred in the soil of Curtis Voss and Bob Inc and people like that and they were absolutely not theonomist, right?

01:39:37

And I think that's something that maybe something controversial. I'll say here, but I think that's wrong with presuppositionalist today and don't all of you email me all at once but What what

01:39:50

I'm saying is that I think that we're what you find a lot of times today's people will kind of go to Bonson they read fonts and they get infatuated the fonts and and then if you would they go to the right of fonts and they go to his successors and and people like that, you know, and different different people that come in the line of in the wake of fonts and but really in my

01:40:11

My approach to presuppositionalism I go the other way not that I don't read fonts And of course I do but I think it's very important for presuppositionalist to understand where Bantill came from Hmm and and make and go from Bantill to the left

01:40:27

Go from Bantill To Voss because of course according to Bill Dennison He asked

01:40:34

Bantill who the single most important Influence in his life theologically was and he would not hesitate to say that it was

01:40:43

Gerardus Voss. That's right So I think we need to go to the left as much as we go to the right

01:40:51

So yeah, that's what that's I'll leave it at that. All right now due to the fact that this

01:40:57

Interview has been unpredictable and I had no way of knowing that I'd be using my phone My phone is on 2 % which means that you will be cut off in a matter of minutes

01:41:11

I'm so sorry. I'm gonna literally have to let you go I'm the one that sorry.

01:41:18

I don't know what happened with my technology It just wasn't it wasn't driving today, but we've got an hour and 15 minutes or so.

01:41:24

So yeah, no, we're Hopefully too bad. No you did it. You did excellent I'm gonna continue on here because I have my laptop on the charger.

01:41:31

So I'll continue to plow through these questions, but Hopefully we can do something again and and work on that.

01:41:36

I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna go ahead and Work the technology issue out of the way. Thank you so much. I really do appreciate it. Oh Yeah, I'll be in touch.

01:41:42

God bless you. Like all right. God bless brother Thank you. Bye. Bye. All right.

01:41:47

Well, we're gonna keep going I'm gonna try to plow through some of these questions because a lot of people have a lot of questions and I've had my coffee

01:41:55

Unfortunately, my phone is about to die Which is not good because if my wife needs me

01:42:01

Then she's gonna be calling off the hook and it's gonna be going straight to my message So sorry about that.

01:42:06

That was kind of an unexpected Situation and so I do apologize But I will try my best to plow through some of these questions if you're interested in what

01:42:15

I have to say You know, hopefully I can be useful to you. So let's continue on here a

01:42:21

Question here. What's the relationship between God's classical attributes reform theology and presuppositional ism?

01:42:28

Well, I don't know specifically what you mean by classical attributes if you're speaking with regards to the omnipotence of God the

01:42:36

Omniscience of God and the omnipresence of God and just the the classical conception of what what it means to be

01:42:42

God Yeah, there is a very important relationship in that our

01:42:48

Theology being reformed we believe flows from What we believe

01:42:53

Scripture says about God, right so what Scripture says about God produces a specific understanding of other theological truths of which our apologetic is one aspect that is affected by that foundation and so they are connected because Presuppositional ism is connected to our theology and our theology is connected to our conception of God as he's revealed himself in his word

01:43:15

So there is a very important relationship there We'll go through this quickly Daniel asks doesn't there exist an evangelical and reformed church created in 1934 or do you believe

01:43:25

Evangelical and reformed are opposites well, I don't know with regards to the 1934 issue, but Evangelical ism is very broad and reformed theology is broad too, but there are limits within the

01:43:41

The Confessions and things like that that create more stricter boundaries So there would have to be some nuance in how we would discuss the differences here

01:43:49

All right, it's just too vast to kind of say, you know one -to -one, you know, they're completely opposite I wouldn't say they're opposites

01:43:56

I would say that there's similarities and there are some significant differences that make the reformed perspective distinctive and which makes something certain

01:44:04

Subcategories of evangelicalism are distinct from one another. Okay. All right Let's continue on here

01:44:11

Someone is asking Gisbertus, I hope I gisbertus, but is that your real name?

01:44:17

Gisbertus votius? That's actually really fun to say he asked me could I have Paul Martin?

01:44:24

Hanbury on he is an underrated Presuppositional apologist. Well send me a link to anything.

01:44:29

He might have on YouTube. I'll give him a look I've never heard of him before but I'm more than willing to have

01:44:35

Anyone on who can contribute to the conversation and Kind of hash out some of these important ideas as we work through them and try to clarify the presuppositional position

01:44:45

So if you put a link in the comments, I'll take a look at him and and we'll see. All right Okay here.

01:44:52

Let's see here Okay, so natural theology preceptors believe that autonomous man doesn't reason to God but rather have an inescapable

01:45:00

That's a comment. But yes, I agree with it Let's move on through here Okay is pushing the antithesis of Cornelius Mantle comes to biblical law versus man law.

01:45:12

Dr. Bonson did and came to okay. That's another I don't understand the grammar of the question.

01:45:18

So I'm not even gonna try to answer it again with regards to theonomy a Bonson believed that his commitment to theonomy was just a

01:45:27

Consistent outflow from his theology and of course apologetic. It's all linked in there now

01:45:32

I think the debate within that issue is who in fact is being consistent at that point and being

01:45:40

Consistent with that methodology in a particular theological understanding and that's an issue of debate obviously people who are theonomist debate people who are not theonomist and who's being consistent and you can't be a consistent

01:45:51

Presuppositionalist unless you're a theonomist some people argue that you know, but that's a point of contention that you know

01:45:58

It's not going to be answered here. Okay Let's see here Okay going through some of these here is a natural relation these knowledge of God Which they suppress is a natural theology something that Bonson doesn't give a lot of credence.

01:46:12

Okay, let's take this question here Okay question here is isn't natural revelation that which leads to a knowledge of God which they suppress

01:46:21

Isn't natural theology something that Bonson doesn't give a lot of credence to Well, we need to hash a couple of things out when we speak of natural revelation

01:46:31

Right. The question is is it natural revelation that which leads to a knowledge of God?

01:46:37

Well, that's yes And no that it pertains to the issue of the nature of the knowledge of God whether it is immediate or immediate and as we've

01:46:44

Mentioned before we believe it's both There's a knowledge of God that is immediate in the sense that the heavens declared the glory of God And then there's a sense of the knowledge of God that is

01:46:53

Immediate in the fact that we are made in the image of God. There is an inherent knowledge of God that all men possess and so Now written natural revelation

01:47:02

Is an innate knowledge as well as a knowledge perceived in the created order and with regards to natural theology.

01:47:09

It's very important to emphasize that on the one hand

01:47:15

Bonson was not too keen on natural theology because of some of the unbiblical

01:47:22

Assumptions that he saw was rooted in that specific attempt to gain knowledge of God however

01:47:29

Natural theology taken within a presuppositional framework is not at all bad

01:47:35

Okay, you might not agree with some of the theistic proofs, but theistic proofs have a place in Presuppositional thought and that's why van

01:47:43

Til himself said that he doesn't reject You know the theistic proofs He only rejected the way in which they were often presented which had inherent within it

01:47:51

Assumptions of autonomy and neutrality and things like that. So we need to keep those things distinct

01:47:57

All right. I think that's very very important All right Let's see moving quickly quickly.

01:48:04

You guys have so many good questions here Let's see here. I'm trying to differentiate between legit questions and interactions between people who are let's see here

01:48:17

Clarification But a butter butter butter butter natural relations got revealing himself to man an inescapable way natural theology claims autonomous reason

01:48:25

Yeah, let's take a look at this it's not a question but it's a comment Natural revelation is

01:48:30

God revealing himself to man That's true and it's inescapable in the sense that it's revealed to us in our conscious as well as the created order

01:48:38

I agree natural theology claims autonomous man can reason to God. Okay, gotta be very careful

01:48:44

Traditionally we would the traditional critique of natural theology would be that yes

01:48:50

Traditionally understood natural theology tends to give the implication that man can autonomously reason to God.

01:48:55

However You can hold to natural theology if you incorporate that entire process within a consistent presuppositional framework

01:49:04

Okay, everything within presuppositional thought needs to be encompassed in the framework in which it's consistent

01:49:11

We don't want to engage in particular forms of theologizing that are inconsistent with our broader

01:49:17

Context the Christian worldview what God has said about himself and man and the knowledge of God that man has and things like that So that's a very important Very important piece there.

01:49:27

All right Let's see here. We got a lot of questions. This is good stuff here Is it possible doesn't persuade you?

01:49:36

Okay. I don't know. I'm trying to go through the well Some of them are grammatically are grammatically incorrect.

01:49:43

So we got to skip through those right? Okay Let's see here

01:49:51

No, please Christianity political idea love bonds and not so much as theology. Okay.

01:49:57

There's a lot of stuff. I have to skip here Okay How does theistic predication factor into Presuppositionalism I'll take that one here.

01:50:11

I apologize if I skipped over anybody. I mean some of them are just hard to read I'm not gonna mention any names

01:50:17

Okay, I'm so sorry Okay, so a cameraman asked how does theistic predication analogical univocal or equivocal a factor into presuppositionalism?

01:50:27

Well depends what you mean by predication if you're talking about predication in general You know when we make predications such as the barn is red.

01:50:34

It is very much related to presuppositionalism because predication And all of human language and thought presuppose one and manyness categories and so we believe that the issue the philosophical problem of the one in the many must be accounted for in order to have coherence and be able to predicate

01:50:52

And so because we are defending the triune God of Scripture We believe within Christian theology that oneness and manyness is equally ultimate within God and God provides that provides that Ultimate metaphysical context out of which oneness and manyness makes sense and predication presupposes one in many categories in which we need to operate upon in order to have coherency and intelligibility, all right, so there is a

01:51:20

Relation there now, it depends what you mean by theistic predication I've never heard the word phrase in that specific way

01:51:28

I'm not sure if you're referring to knowledge of God and knowledge of man is knowledge of God Analogical, is it univocal equivocal?

01:51:37

I'm not sure what you mean by there because the question is a little broad It can be taken in a couple of ways.

01:51:43

All right. Let's see here Calvinism is a farce. Okay. Thank you.

01:51:50

I'm a Calvinist, but I'm also a good sport. So hey, no problem All right. Here's another question by practical faith

01:51:55

Eli Would you be willing to have a live debate or maybe more of a conversation with Tim Stratton or Braxton Hunter if I could possibly?

01:52:03

Set it up. Well, um, Tim is a friend of mine and Braxton Hunter is a very good friend of mine

01:52:08

We talk almost weekly. Um, I don't know if I'd be willing or even Braxton I don't even know if Braxton would be willing to do it just because of our

01:52:15

Friendship and the particular understanding that we have between our views and the respect we have for each other I'm not sure he would want to do that and I wouldn't want to do it either to be perfectly honest, right?

01:52:25

And there are a number of reasons why I I do take some debates, but I actually have been trying to simmer down a bit

01:52:33

I'm a Papa. I have three little kids. Okay, I have a five -year -old a three -year -old and like an eight month

01:52:40

And so it is almost impossible to sit down and focus on My studies and things like that a lot of the things that I do

01:52:49

I have to do like really early in the morning I wake up at 440 in the morning or 5 a .m In the morning to actually get some reading done and you know, so it's really difficult so I'm really trying to stay back from the

01:53:03

The debate game, although I do have a debate coming up with an atheist in June I believe and then

01:53:09

I have an apologetic methodology debate out in August, but that's it I was I've gotten invites to do some other debates

01:53:17

With various topics and I just don't want to overload myself Now you're probably wondering well if if you got if you don't have any time, what's up with all these videos?

01:53:25

And well, I have a background in theology and apologetics. And so these videos are pretty easy to make You know,

01:53:30

I have a guest on and we just talk I'm gonna have a list of some questions I go through doesn't require so much of my time.

01:53:35

So I probably would not want to do that All right. Oh, I am trying to set up something with Guillaume and one of these individuals.

01:53:42

So maybe that'll happen But at any rate Let's see here

01:53:50

Let's see How long has this been playing It's been playing we're at one hour and 53 minutes,

01:53:58

I'm probably gonna have to cut this short here Okay, so here we have

01:54:06

Pine Creek here You know anytime a precept tries to turn it back on the non -believer

01:54:11

They're admitting their insecurities if they realize it is an internal critique I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I appreciate

01:54:18

Doug. Um, he has some thoughtful questions There's a really great video speaking of Braxton Hunter Braxton made a cool video on Trinity radio

01:54:27

Where he categorized the different kinds of YouTube atheists and I thought he did a really good job and he categorized

01:54:34

Doug Pine Creek here as the Psychologizer. Okay. Now, I don't know how much Doug would accept that You know that description of him, but what

01:54:44

I hear from Doug and very much appreciate I mean, we've always had respectful interactions he does tend to be the psychologizer tries to jump in your head and and and try to You know predict what you're thinking for instance in his criticism of my discussion with Jason Lyle I think he said something to the effect that people turn to priests up because they they their arguments are weak

01:55:06

You know if you're a classical apologist, you know, you got weak arguments. So you need that that certainty, right? You know,

01:55:11

I come to priests up because I'm so insecure I mean, this is just you're jumping into the minds of people. I mean, you don't know

01:55:16

That's the reason why and from my experience even though I'm not a classical apologist Atheists get their tails whipped when they're arguing with classicalists and I disagree with the classical classical classicalist methodology

01:55:27

So I would be very careful to jump into someone's head and just assume, you know It's just we're just a bunch of insecure people running around looking for You know stronger arguments and things like that I mean

01:55:38

I think there it would be better just to take The person's position as it stands and interact with the position and I'm not trying to jump into your head

01:55:47

And say well you're doing this because you're scared or whatever the case may be So at any rate I do say this and I do mean this

01:55:54

I do respect Doug and I appreciate him But those are just my quick thoughts There.

01:56:00

All right Let's see here Okay, let's see

01:56:05

Mm -hmm Eli had a guess let's see Eli had a guest and revealed apologetics who said that presuppositional apologetics is just one of many approaches used to reach the same goal

01:56:16

Do you agree or is presuppositional ism foundational? Yes. Simon is referring to Gary Habermas that that I had on a couple of episodes

01:56:26

I appreciated that show and I really greatly enjoyed dr. Habermas was fun to have on I would say that I disagree with Habermas although I did not find it appropriate to engage in Methodological debate at that point because I think there are a lot of other fruitful things he had to say

01:56:41

But I do not agree that it's just one of the many approaches. Our approach should be consistent with our theology this is the conflation a lot of people make a lot of classicalists will do they will they will conflate the idea of for example the use of evidence and Evidential ism or the appeal to presuppositions and Presuppositional ism the classicalist can talk about presuppositions and analyze someone's presuppositions.

01:57:09

That doesn't mean they're in a they're a presupposition They're using presuppositional methodology in like fashion a presuppositional is could appeal to evidence, but that doesn't mean he's appealing to evidential ism

01:57:18

There is a vast difference there. And so sometimes people seem to conflate that and I in my opinion I think dr.

01:57:24

Habermas was doing that so I would say that I wouldn't agree with that statement Okay Let's see here

01:57:31

Let's see Let's see if they skip over a couple

01:57:37

I do apologize Man okay.

01:57:43

There we go. I'm coming towards the end. I do apologize Someone said

01:57:49

I like this one. Maybe you I could read some for audible. I Don't know why don't you give me some thumbs up?

01:57:56

Okay, give me thumbs up Do you think my voice is something you'd want to listen to? You know,

01:58:02

I got I got like a little I got a nice microphone here. I got my little My blue mic what would you want to hear me do some readings?

01:58:10

Maybe for like a podcast episode reading articles or something like that. You give me a thumbs up Let me know what you think if you wouldn't mind hearing my voice in your ear reading to you some apologetic literature

01:58:22

You know, maybe I will maybe I will Let's see here Let me see here.

01:58:27

So here's a good question as a father. When are you planning to start teaching your kids presub one or three?

01:58:35

Oh Man Well, here's a here's the thing I don't know if this question is kind of a jokey question if it's not, you know, if it's a serious question

01:58:43

I think it's very important a presuppositional ism is not merely an apologetic. All right I want people to keep to pay attention to this.

01:58:50

It's not merely an apologetic methodology Alright apologetics is kind of an application of a mindset

01:58:57

That submits itself to the authority of God and the authority of his word and so presuppositional ism manifests itself as an apologetic methodology

01:59:06

But it also manifests itself in all areas of life as we seek to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ And so that's you know

01:59:13

That's why I like the definition of apologetics that Scott Oliphant gave in I think his book covenantal apologetics or maybe was a talk

01:59:20

He gave he said that apologetics is is theology applied to unbelief, right?

01:59:25

So it's theology applied to this area on belief But presuppositional thinking can be applied to and should be applied to everything that we do, right?

01:59:34

and so it's it's basically following the principle of acknowledging God as our foundation and How that plays out in our lives of which apologetics is just one aspect of that should be consistent to those fundamental

01:59:48

Commitments that we have. All right. All right. Let me go a little bit down. We're almost towards the end

01:59:59

Let's see here. All right. Can you please share some tell okay, there we go. This is my last question for today

02:00:05

All right, we just just made it to two hours You guys are troopers. I hope this is gonna be a fun episode

02:00:11

I mean if the audio of Emilio came in this will be some some fun content and I From my experience people enjoyed the longer episodes.

02:00:19

It's kind of guys a bunch of information chunked in together Hopefully one time when I when I have time to do this

02:00:24

I can sparse some of the episodes and make kind of shorter clips you know, hopefully that'll be useful to folks but Let's see here can can you please share some tips how you keep yourself motivated and Disciplined consistently and constantly on your study while working and taking good care of your family

02:00:48

Some people are asking please one more question. Sure. Why not? I'll take a couple more but This this one really touches the nerve it touches the nerve now.

02:00:59

Don't be fooled Okay, don't be fooled by the books. All right, I've read these are my books

02:01:06

I've read bits and pieces of all of these right But don't be under the impression that I'm just this perfectly disciplined person is a

02:01:17

Sure, I wake up really early in the morning But I I don't do it every morning and it is it has been a struggle as a matter of fact

02:01:24

Every person that I've had on this show except for Emilio due to the technical difficulties

02:01:29

My question that I would ask them off the air is How do you manage your schedule when you have children and of course all of my guests have asked me

02:01:41

Well, how old are your children and I would respond? Well five three and eight months and he's in there.

02:01:47

Everyone says the same thing. Oh, man, you know You're just at that stage of life. I think dr.

02:01:52

Kruger told me You need to be okay with being inefficient at this point in your life

02:01:59

So that later on when your kids get older your schedule opens up and you're able to throw yourself more into your study

02:02:05

So so it has been a great challenge Consistency and motivation.

02:02:10

It's really just acknowledging the importance of what you're doing whether it's reading the Bible studying theology or apologetics, whatever recognize the importance of what you're doing and You need to somehow just do it.

02:02:23

It's kind of like exercising. It's like it, you know It can't just be an add -on to your life. It's just something that gets in corporate

02:02:29

You have to just do it see the value in it and do what must be done to get it done on that day

02:02:36

Okay, so those are the the tips also it's the it's difficult discipline takes training

02:02:43

It takes motivation and then how do you get motivated? These are very difficult questions But it's really an issue of recognizing the importance and trying to be consistent and finding that time

02:02:54

There's always time somewhere in the day You just got to find it and sometimes it's not on the time of the day that that we would like unfortunately, okay

02:03:02

All right Let's see here when you listen through your own shows Can you write down some of the nuggets that your guests say and share them with us?

02:03:11

You know, that's a great idea I could try that Although when I'm really listening to my shows to kind of go back since it's hard to listen to my guests while at the same time

02:03:20

Asking the questions and then scrolling through the comments to see which questions I could ask later It is hard to do that But if I can

02:03:28

I'll try my best to do that There are some pretty good nuggets there that some of my guests have have shared. Okay?

02:03:34

Okay, Daniel said that I escaped the question. Okay, what age I Didn't escape

02:03:41

I didn't dodge a question. I just forgot. I don't know what age I mean, I'm gonna try my best to raise my kids in the ways of the

02:03:48

Lord as simply as I can just Provide those opportunities to went before my kids go to bed.

02:03:54

We watch Some YouTube devotional videos for kids and I try to highlight, you know

02:03:59

Some point that I think that they resonate with and ask them about it. So it's kind of a you know it's kind of like a you just have to know your kids and what level and just kind of fit it into everyday life and It's not easy but Recognizing what's important and finding the time to do it and do it consistently

02:04:17

Okay, and of course my own nuggets. I'll try to add my own nuggets as well.

02:04:22

All right, and Okay, I think that's it if I had did skip other people's questions

02:04:27

It was probably because of a grammatical issues or whatever, but I think this is enough for today I hope my answers have been helpful as well as Okay, okay.

02:04:37

All right one more question. All right. There we go. I thought that there was a last question Yeah, this was a person who asked can we take one more question?

02:04:45

Okay Alright, man, I need water. Give me give me one second. This is pretty hard. There's a lot of questions

02:04:51

So give me give me a chance to one second. Oh, oh

02:04:57

All right Man, I talked too much all right, so How can

02:05:03

Christian presuppositional? Apologetics work with Islam precept other than to expose inconsistencies in Islam, which is hard to do well first there is a problem with The question that is in the quotes.

02:05:18

Okay The quote or the the what what are those called?

02:05:23

Oh my goodness brackets. I Don't know what they're called anymore. My brain is going too much

02:05:28

So the the bracketed part of the question that are problem you guys look on the screen other than to expose inconsistencies

02:05:35

Well, wait a minute part of presuppositional apologetics is engaging in the internal critique

02:05:41

Parentheses, there we go. Thank you Part of exposing internal inconsistencies is part of the presuppositional methodology

02:05:49

So for example in Proverbs 26 It tells us to answer not a fool according to his folly lest you become a fool like unto him and then answer a fool

02:05:57

According to his folly lest he be wise and it don't conceit Excuse me. So you have this answer the fool don't answer the fool method, okay, and so we don't want to answer the fool according to their presuppositions because Apart from Christ there is no foundation but we hypothetically grant what the unbelievers saying so as we can show where it leads and part of doing that is internally critiquing and showing inconsistencies now

02:06:21

Aziz says well, it's hard to do. Well. Yeah, it is. It can be hard as sometimes it's easy

02:06:27

But other times it can be very difficult and that's where you're going to have to and this is this is where the personal

02:06:34

Interaction comes in. Okay when you're doing apologetics We care for the unbeliever

02:06:41

Okay, we care for them, right? We want to listen to what they say

02:06:48

I'm not just merely listening so that I could respond I do want to hear what does this person believe because I care what they believe and Once they they lay that out the

02:06:58

Muslim lays that out then through the conversation. We were navigating We try to point out those inconsistencies.

02:07:05

I mean, it's just part of the interaction So I'm not just saying tell me what you believe so that I could only refute you that's part of it

02:07:10

But I want to engage in interaction. I want to genuinely understand What the person believes?

02:07:16

Okay now if there's an inconsistency within that person's belief system and it's an it's essential feature to that worldview then that worldview has problems and That's part of the apologetic task

02:07:26

However, the apologetic task is not simply to show inconsistencies within the unbelieving perspective unbelievers perspective because it is true

02:07:34

Now a lot of people think that presupposition was don't acknowledge this but it is true that merely showing in it an inconsistency

02:07:41

Within someone else's perspective doesn't automatically Demonstrate the truth of your own right there just because I show that a worldview has contradictions

02:07:49

It doesn't mean that the Christian worldview is true, right at that point We're gonna have to now provide an explanation so that the unbeliever sees how the

02:07:56

Christian perspective actually Provides those necessary preconditions and so you would do the same thing with the with the

02:08:04

Muslim hypothetically grant the truth of what the Muslim is saying and points out the necessary Inconsistencies, is it hard to do it can be but we should be

02:08:14

Studying and and looking into these things Understanding what Islam teaches. I mean, you know a lot of times

02:08:21

Muslims will misrepresent the Christian perspective Because the average Muslim is not reading the

02:08:26

New Testament or and and how what how Christians understand these things and like fashion Christians can

02:08:34

Misrepresent the Muslim perspective because we're not taking the time to read their literature So you want to in the course of your studies know what

02:08:42

Muslims believe? Know thoroughly what you believe is a Christian and know that they're not in perfect agreement

02:08:47

And so you're gonna have to point out those disagreements and you're gonna have to point out the internal Inconsistencies given the truth of the other perspective.

02:08:55

Okay, so that takes some work But no one says this is going to be easy. You're dealing with people Arguments are sloppy

02:09:03

You know Arguments and or people, you know, the conversations don't always go in the particular order, you know

02:09:11

That's why the issue of scripts, you know, this always comes up like all you presuppositionalists have scripts.

02:09:17

Well, listen, we all have scripts We want to make sure we are clearly getting our points down and trying to bring certain aspects

02:09:24

You know out in the conversations true, but in reality You know, you're gonna have to be so familiar with your position that it's okay that you're not using the script

02:09:33

I mean apply what you know about your faith to the conversation and bring those those issues out throughout the course of the interaction

02:09:41

It's it's hard, but you know, my friend Matt slick told me when I asked him. What's the best way to get better at?

02:09:49

Apologetics, you know now Matt slick, of course people know he's not a perfect guy He's had some interesting, you know back and forth with some people.

02:09:56

That's fine But he said the best way to get better at apologetics or even like evangelism is just do it

02:10:02

And when you do it, you're gonna mess up a whole bunch of times, you know when I interact with unbelievers

02:10:07

I sometimes say stuff that like when I'm done I'm like, oh man I wish I could have said this or maybe I shouldn't have said that in this way and it's part of the learning process

02:10:14

You need to be okay with not doing this stuff. Well all the time, you know, we trust we trust the

02:10:21

Lord and we go We pray that God uses our words unto his glory and you know, it is a learning process for us as well

02:10:30

Okay There we go. So a pine Creek Doug asked another question Can you give an example of a friction in the

02:10:36

Bible that you personally believe is really hard to reconcile or harmonize? Mmm, not a fair question.

02:10:43

Um, I guess some of the things that are hard to conceptualize in my head So for example, like the

02:10:49

Trinity, okay Like I know what the Trinity is and I know that it's not logically incoherent, but how to conceptualize it in my mind the concept

02:10:59

Logically speaking. I don't see that within the definition of the Trinity logic is violated But once I start trying to picture in my mind, what does that look like?

02:11:07

It can be kind of hard to make that connection. So and again, I mean, that's why most Christians will say something to the effect

02:11:14

That will a Trinity in in his essence is is really mysterious and there are mysterious aspects of God in that regard

02:11:20

But I don't think that there is any logical incoherency and I think people who defend the Trinity do well and showing that that's not the case but we can grapple with these things and they're very challenging and They they expand and stretch our minds another issue that I think is is difficult to think about I don't

02:11:37

I wouldn't call friction when you put friction in scare quotes, you know I I don't think they're contradictory but conceptually some of these things can be difficult like for example

02:11:47

You know God being completely sovereign and control of all things And man having freedom.

02:11:53

I have a position as a Calvinist, but I completely understand when people have difficulty conceptualizing

02:11:59

Well, how does that all work? So, yeah, so so how do we remedy these frictions well

02:12:05

There are some of these frictions can be or apparent Apparent contradictions.

02:12:13

I'll even say that things that look contradictory can be remedied through a either

02:12:20

Studying more sometimes our inability to explain and conceptualize something comes from our ignorance

02:12:26

And so the more that we study and look into the issues those concepts can be clarified And then there are other areas where we just have to Acknowledge our own finitude

02:12:36

I mean Deuteronomy 29 29 says that the things that God has revealed to us are for us in our children's children

02:12:42

But the secret things belong to the Lord And so when we're doing theology, we study and try to understand as best we can

02:12:48

But we acknowledge that there are some areas of God's revelation that he has not chosen to fully reveal to us

02:12:54

And so it can be difficult to grasp these concepts and understand them on this side of eternity So that's how

02:13:00

I would answer that question. All right, well That is the last bit for today two hours and 13 minutes guys

02:13:08

Thank you so much for spending time with me. I do appreciate the questions Please if you haven't already subscribe to the revealed apologetics

02:13:15

YouTube channel and the podcast. I take the audio for my youtube Interviews and put them on the podcast when

02:13:21

I catch the time so you can have the content on both those platforms All right. Well until next time take care and God bless.