Revealed Apologetics :: Mormons try to Critique Presuppositional Apologetics

Sure, he may be right that a lot of professional academic scholars aren't presuppositional. I would actually argue and say everyone is presuppositional.

Yes.

Yeah.

That should be the next book. Do you remember R .C. Sproul wrote how everyone's a theologian? We need to write one that says everyone is presuppositional.

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And apologies if my face looks really big. I'm kind of losing perspective of how close I am to the camera. Looks really big where I am.

Well, happy to be here. I'm looking forward to having this discussion. This is actually the topic here. We're going to be critiquing a critique of presuppositional apologetics. And it's very interesting because I was looking at some of the backlog of some older shows that I've done.

I actually have a similar kind of show. I should have put it in the description. But if you want to look it up on the YouTube channel, it is entitled, A Meta Critique. A presupper critiques a guy critiquing a presupper.

So we're kind of doing another meta critique. So I've invited my guest, Jeremiah Norter. He's going to correct me later. I'm just going to call him Jeremiah. I have a brother. His name is Jeremiah. So that's easy.

Or I can just call him the apologetic dog, as he is known. But he's going to help me critique a critique of presuppositionalism. And I think what makes this discussion, I think, useful is that this critique is actually coming from some Mormons.

And not just any old run-of-the-mill Mormons. From judging from the video, which I had the pleasure of watching just one time through, the gentleman seems to be philosophically inclined. And so I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to kind of take some of the criticisms that he had of presuppositionalism, and then hopefully kind of incorporate how we might answer those criticisms as presuppositionalists and also apply a presuppositional methodology to the Mormon position.

So this is important because a lot of people who have a passing understanding of presuppositional apologetics often think it works well and good with like the atheist, you know, like kind of the run-of-the-mill, you know, metaphysical naturalist, kind of the empiricist, right?

We kind of have those kind of critiques of empiricism and naturalism. But it doesn't really work against the Mormon or the Muslim or things like that. And I think this would be a good opportunity to show the flexibility and wide-ranging application of the presuppositional approach to apologetics.

So I'm very much looking forward to kind of interacting with the content here. So without further ado, I don't have any future upcoming interviews. I kind of do, but I'm afraid to mention the names because I haven't locked them in yet.

So, you know, when I reach out to people, there are certain people that I'm really excited. I'm like, should I announce this on the show? What if they decline? You know, sometimes there are some people.

So I have some people on the fence who may join me in a future episode. And I'm super excited about that. One person that I can mention, but there's no date locked in. But the person that is connecting me with this other person told me to reach out to them at the beginning of August.

There may be a good chance that I'll be getting Pastor Jeff Durbin on. And that'll be super cool. So stay tuned for that. I have to reach out to, you know, the middleman, so to speak. But I'll keep you informed with respect to that.

So looking forward to that, if it happens, God willing. Without further ado, let me introduce the apologetic dog, Jeremiah. Whatever your last name is. Nortier. Why did I forget that? That was super easy.

Oh my goodness. How you doing, man?

I'm doing wonderful. I've had an awesome day. I've been looking forward to this ever since we connected last. And man, I'm super pumped.

Well, I'm super pumped to have you back. There was a lot of positive feedback that I got from our previous show together when we dealt with the Church of Christ and what the issues and the problems were with that.

What we understand to be a cult. And there were a lot of positive... Of course, you have the people who disagree and will criticize. But there were a lot of positive comments and people who were very grateful that we covered that topic because there really isn't a lot of information out there in terms of doing apologetics and engaging in responses to their position.

But at any rate, thank you so much for coming on. And we're going to jump right into this. Let's pop this up here. So I apologize. That's going to maximize. That won't all be there in just a few moments.

But actually, let me remove this here. Well, Jeremiah was actually the one who shared this conversation with me, this video out there. Was this something you knew was coming out? Did someone throw this video in your direction and said, hey, man, how do you respond to this?

Or is this something you just kind of stumbled on and said, hey, Eli, check this out. What was the context for this conversation between these Mormons?

So Robert Boylan is one of the Mormons that runs a YouTube channel called Scriptural Mormonism. And this is really neat because I felt like their video was specifically catered to me, Eli. I actually debated the other Mormon three years ago on the gospel truth.

And when we interacted over the phone, we understood that he had a heavy philosophical background. My understanding was more theological driven. And so we didn't know what to debate on on the gospel truth.

And so we eventually landed on a different worldview discussion, a discussion of different worldviews. That way we could kind of have the best of both worlds colliding together. And we debated. It was more of a really good structured discussion.

Marlon was moderating and he chimed in with questions. But we covered a ton of different topics like what is the gospel? We talked about Galatians 1 in connection to Joseph Smith. That was really interesting.

We talked about the Trinity, which I introduced the problem of the one and the many, and we went into it really good. Very charitable guy, Joseph Lewall is his name. And so we debate. We were the longest debate on Marlon's channel for a long time.

We debated for three and a half hours.

Wow.

And it was awesome. I loved every second of it. And so from that debate, Robert Boylan reached out to me. He has more of a theological mind and exegetical bent, it seems like. And so we hit it off. We got through the initial throwing snarky rebukes at each other.

And we're like, hey, we can have some mutual respect and sharpen one another. And so he actually had me on his YouTube channel, Scriptural Mormonism, and interviewed me about Reformed Baptist theology.

And he just set me up, t-ball questions to just explain things from our perspective. I actually wore this shirt. So this was kind of to give him a shout out. And I did wash it since then. So he had Joseph on to critique Reformed Presuppositional Apologetics.

And so I'll follow Robert a little bit. So when I saw this, I thought, oh my goodness, I cannot wait to see what they said. And I bet sometime in the future, me and Joseph will have a round two to discuss a lot of these things.

Oh, excellent. And I got what, what was the gentleman you debated? What was his name again?

Joseph Laywall. Laywall.

And that's on the Gospel Truth.

Yeah, a long time ago, about three years or so.

All right. Yeah, I'll definitely check that out. Folks, if you don't know the Gospel Truth, that's the YouTube channel over there. Marlon Wilson runs that channel. Excellent channel. If you want to dig your teeth into some good debates.

And there's some really good ones on there. So I highly recommend if you haven't subscribed to his YouTube channel, you should go over there right now and do that.

All right.

Well, first, before we kind of interact with the video, we do have some timestamped segments here. And I will inform the audience what we're looking for in each of these timestamps. So Jeremiah was so kind to send me an out.

He's much more prepared for this than I am. He sent me the video and I was like, you know, dude, let's get together. And respond to this video. And I didn't get to watch the video until like earlier today.

And this guy's sending me outlines.

And I was like, gee whiz.

So he did most of the work for me. But there are 12 timestamped sections that cover various issues that come up. And we're going to kind of go in that order. So I'll let people know what each of those timestamps are titled.

And what the issue is going to be covered there. And we'll play the video clip and interact with it. So I hope you guys, those who are presuppositionalists and want to learn kind of how do we respond to some of these more technical criticisms.

I hope that this is very beneficial for you. Also, as we will be critiquing Mormonism, we love Mormons. We violently disagree with them. Obviously, from our perspective, Mormonism is a cult. It's actually, from our perspective, it is the quintessential cult.

That when we go to churches or we're speaking and we speak of, you know, beware of the cults. Mormonism is usually what pops in people's head. It is not a separate Christian denomination or anything like that.

It denies central features of the gospel. And this should be obvious to my regular listeners. But there is a difference between disdaining doctrine and disdaining people. We love Mormons and we pray for the salvation of Mormon people.

So they are fertile ground for evangelism. If you have the courage to confront them lovingly and engage in conversation with them. So I think this is a very important topic to cover. All right. Well, without further ado, let me find the timestamp here.

I'll share the screen here.

Let's see if I can go here.

And we are at 3 minutes and 50 seconds. So for those who are curious, our first section, by the way, and Jeremiah could attest to this, this Mormon gentleman, the main guy that's being interviewed, does a really good job explaining presuppositional methodology.

I was impressed. I know Jeremiah was impressed that he kind of explained it much better than like a lot of our classical and evidentialist brothers who disagree with us. So a pat on the back, you know, not my back, but this is my hypothetical patting him on the back.

Good job for trying to understand our position. Ultimately, he fails, but that's okay. He did do a good job and I think that he was genuinely trying to understand. So do you want to speak to that at all, Jeremiah?

Yeah. I have a lot of respect for Joseph. Very sharp individual. When we debated, I was taking notes and mental notes and thinking even after the debate, I want to go back and make sure I understand him a lot.

So something I really appreciate about Joseph is I really do see him as someone that can sharpen me. And he's super kind and respectful. And so I think it allows for really good discussion. And so I just, I think he's a really smart individual.

And I hope that as we bring out a lot of these things, I think when we talk about issues of the gospel and salvation, it's not an intellectual issue. It's a heart issue. And so he's just a really good example of someone who I think is very, very smart.

Sure.

All right.

Well, thank you for that.

Okay.

So our first segment is going to cover the 3 minute and 55 second timestamp between 3 minute and 55 seconds and 4 minutes and 45 seconds. So we'll play that clip. And the question that is going to be addressed is, what is reformed presuppositional apologetics?

And then after that, we'll make any necessary comments and then take it from there.

All right.

Yeah.

So it's an approach, I mean, very broadly, it's an approach to Christianity and to knowledge claims within kind of Christian tradition. More specifically, as you say, it's a kind of apologetics.

Right.

And so it's, yeah, I'm going to approach it and it rests on the kind of background, certain sets of epistemological and ontological commitments, really what characterize what presuppositionalism is. Epistemology relates to theories of knowledge and truth, and ontology relates to the nature of being.

And so it's commitments in how we know things and what exists, essentially, is what I'm saying when I say that it rests on epistemological and ontological claims. But it's also a claim about how apologetics ought to be done based on those epistemological and ontological claims, primarily epistemological.

So you'll...

All right.

I'm going to stop right there.

Let's see here.

So, so far, how is he doing?

He did a really good job. Like he understands that a worldview is comprised of many tenants, right? You got ontology, epistemology, and really, we really do get into morality or ethics or value theory, but he understands that those components make up a worldview.

And so the thing that I want to stress to our audience and the other presuppers out there is this is not just something that philosophers have made up and we're like, man, it works. Let's just use it and see how sophisticated we sound.

As Christians, we really believe this is the method that the Bible teaches. Now, like you rightly said, we can understand any given evidence within the proper worldview of how to interpret the evidence, right?

What was it? Was it Bantill that says there's no such thing as brute facts? They're only mute facts, right? There's always a context in which we interpret anything. And so just a few key scriptures, I would say, gives us the parameters, gives us the ground to say, hey, this is biblical.

I love Proverbs 1 verse 7 that says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And so the very beginning of anyone's epistemology needs to begin with a reverence for God, trusting in Him as the the precipium of all truth.

And the second part of that verse says,. And fools despise wisdom and instruction. We could say, if you deny Yahweh as your starting point, then your knowledge, your epistemology is going to be reduced to absurdity.

And so kind of piggybacking off that, that's Proverbs 1 verse 7. But in Proverbs chapter 9, we see a kind of an extension. So I'll kind of read this real quick. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you.

Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will still be wiser. Teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

And so knowledge of the Holy One, I believe this is set in the framework for the coming Mashiach, the coming Messiah. And so this kind of, I think the Apostle Paul understood this in Colossians 2. He talks about how all the treasures of knowledge are found in Jesus Christ.

And that's what he gets into. Don't be taken away by human or worldly philosophy, anything that rivals the knowledge of God. And so last thing I want to say, Eli, John 17, 17, Jesus says, Father, sanctify them in the truth.

Your word is truth, right? So the word of God is transcendent and actually is truth. So that sets the bar. Everything is judged in light of God's word.

Right.

And that can be inferred too by the very concept of God, right? So we can talk about these worldview issues within like highly philosophical vocabulary. So if I wanted to define a worldview, you know, as a network of presuppositions not verified by empirical science or anything like that, and in terms of which all reality is interpreted, that sounds philosophical.

But a worldview is just that. As Christians who believe in a creator, that creator created everything and defines those things. And so our worldview is informed by how God has created and defined things and how he's revealed it to us.

So we can talk about these issues with philosophical language, but we're really talking about basic categories that can be drawn from principles in scripture itself.

And you said a key word there, God who has revealed himself.

Yes.

So we're going to get more into this later, but we're not constructing a hypothetical option. We're talking about something objective that can be demonstrated because God in fact has revealed himself.

Right.

Very good.

All right.

So let's do this again here. Let me find this. So what is reformed presuppositional apologetics? He kind of defined it.

Okay.

I don't have any issues with how he defined it. Before we move on to the next part, is there anything else you want to add to that? Do you think he defined it okay?

Yes.

I actually do want to add one more point. So we're talking about presuppositionalism and a really good book I would like to encourage our viewers to look into is the five views on apologetics. Awesome book.

You had evidentialist. You have a classicalist. You have William Lane Craig representing the classical apologetic view. Jonathan Frame represents the presuppositional view.

Jonathan? I was like, maybe you guys are friends. That's very

No, that would be awesome. That would be awesome.

John Frame, but I guess

John Frame, he had an awesome quote. He said, the most fundamental point to presuppositionalism is the application of sola scriptura to apologetics. When he said that, I thought I'm locked in, right?

Excellent. All right. Our next portion that we're going to be discussing, it's going to start at the seven minute and five second mark. Presupp is not academic. This came up a couple of times. On the one hand, he said something to the effect, I'm not trying to be disparaging to presuppositionalism, but he kept bringing up the fact that apparently it's not academic, which I thought was interesting, but that's fine.

He's kind of correct. Well, he's kind of correct in a sense that it is not the majority position to be sure. You do have academics who are somewhat presupposition within that kind of vein, but let's listen to what he has to say here.

So we are at the seven minute and five second mark.

Let me just get there. There we go.

Apologetics and Christianity. And as you said, it's really, it's a reformed thing, but it's an online thing, right? You'll see it used primarily by Calvinists and again, primarily online. So one thing to note, and I don't mean this in a disparaging way, it's not particularly an academic thing.

So you're not going to see, for instance, academic philosophers, for the most part, endorsing presuppositionalism. It's not a live option for Harvey Endy. So it's published about, so for instance, Anderson and Welty have a paper in Philosophia Christi.

Okay, let's stop there.

All right.

Do you have any comments there?

Yeah.

So it's interesting. He's like, it's not academic, but then he kind of qualifies. It's not the majority. And I'm over here saying that's fine. We don't need to appeal to the majority in order to say that if it's well accepted or not, the majority still has to deal with all the same problems of philosophy that has been dealt with over the past few thousand years.

And so another book. I hope we can plug a lot of books.

Sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

You've already been encouraging a lot of people. But Jason Lyle, I think he's one of the smartest men I've ever heard and one of the most humble men. I loved his book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation, because he has two chapters that are dealing with logical fallacies, and it is some raw data.

It's hard to get through right there. And if you go to those chapters, he actually says, hey, if you skip these two chapters, I won't tell anybody and you can just kind of move on. But those two chapters are invaluable because they're talking about logical fallacies.

And when you appeal to the majority, that doesn't give you truth.

Right.

And in that chapter on this logical fallacy of appealing to the majority, you got to deal with the substance of what any majority or minority actually deals with.

Right.

So sure, he may be right that a lot of professional academic scholars aren't pre-substitutional. I would actually argue and say everyone is pre-suppositional.

Yes.

Yeah.

That should be the next book. Remember R .C. Sproul wrote how everyone's a theologian. We need to write one that says everyone is pre-suppositional.

That's right. And one of the tasks of the pre-suppositionalist is to point out that everyone is pre-suppositional. Actually getting to everyone's foundation and say, see, you had a foundation too. So you're not doing anything much different than we are.

You're just standing on the wrong foundation. And what I appreciated about this Mormon fellow, I don't know his, I forgot his name. Joseph, that's right. What I appreciated about this portion, he said that this has nothing to do with the truth of the position.

And that's correct.

Right.

So if someone were to say, oh, this isn't really academic. Well, that has no bearing as to whether it's true. And that's really what we care about. What's interesting, though, he says that you only find it online.

Isn't like 90 of our access to this stuff is online. So that doesn't say anything.

Right.

I mean, it's like, yes, 90 of what I do, my apologetics is online. If I was a Ph .D. philosopher, most of my stuff would still be online because that's where I leaned. I mean, I'm sure I probably write and publish stuff also.

But so I don't see that that can kind of be understood as kind of, oh, it's online. So it's not really taken seriously.

You must have found it on Wikipedia.

Yeah. Something like that. Also talking about precept not being a live option. That, again, is I need to hear specific argumentation, right? It's not a live option for people.

Right.

I've read a lot of academic critiques of presuppositionalism that are just horrendous. It's not even I'm not even I don't have I don't have a Ph .D. myself. And I've read Ph .D.'s criticize presuppositionalism made elementary mistakes that are quite embarrassing.

So that really doesn't matter much to me. And also Mormonism. Take Mormonism itself. That's not a live option for most philosophers either. Not many academic philosophers take Mormonism very seriously.

That doesn't mean Mormonism is false. But again, we have to deal with the specific claims, right? So and what I appreciate about Joseph is that he does try to do that in the video there. You have any other comments there?

Yeah, the Internet's actually a really good thing. This is a product of the time that we live in. And I bet you read those academic papers from the Internet. And so that just speaks to the access that we have to everything.

So when he says it's an online phenomena, we're over here like this is this is a product of the day that we live in. And I'm sure you're wanting to put your content out there. So like when Joseph, he did a video rebutting the cosmological argument because it undermines Mormonism, right?

They have an infinite regression of gods in it. They look at time as going back into infinity. So there's a lot of problems. And I'm just saying like he uses the Internet to actually present his case.

And so the Internet is not a bad thing. That's actually a way to let people think more deeply on these topics.

And he wasn't suggesting that it was, but he brought it up a couple of times. And I know people can get the impression.

Oh, yeah, online.

And again, it's not just a thing online. I mean, look at the work that Apologia Church is doing. I mean, they're in they're doing street evangelism, not just Apologia Church, other churches as well. That, of course, are reformed, which I appreciated that he was able to recognize the connection between presuppositionalism and reformed theology.

But yeah, just because most people access it online doesn't mean that it's not being done on the streets as well. It is being done on the streets and it is being done academically, although it's not the majority, but that's really irrelevant to the truth of the position.

But all right, let's continue here. So this is my favorite one here. OK, so this is the portion here where presuppositionalism I'm reading a comment here. We'll get to the comments later. By the way, if you have any questions, preface your question with questions and we'll get to them towards the back end of this episode.

So please, I encourage you guys if you have any questions. But by what standard? OK, this is this is the this is the presuppositional apologetic meme. And I'm going to look directly into the camera and say, I don't care.

It is a valid question. And you do not alleviate your responsibility of answering that question by simply hand waving it away, calling it a meme. Now, our Mormon friends did not do that. I'm just speaking generally.

People who take that as, oh, by what standard? Yes, we're going to ask that question. By what standard? I think it's a very important question. But let's play the clip here and and we'll interact with it.

Let's get back over here and 17.

OK, OK.

There we go. That's good.

Right.

The idea is that's a bad thing. If you're borrowing from the Christian worldview. And then along with that, again, you hear a lot. It's a bit of a meme, I think, as well as being a serious claim by some presuppositionalists.

They'll say, by what standard?

Right.

You'll say, you know, I believe X, Y, Z. And they'll say, by what standard?

Right.

By what standard do you believe that? And I think it's like a T-shirt.

I don't want to go back to the video. I don't.

I struggle to see how presuppositionalism can be made to be sophisticated and plausible, especially along these lines. When you say things like, by what standard? It's not a good argument, and we can get into why.

OK, so there are a couple of things we could say here.

All right.

I think Robert goes on to say, and hopefully you will tell us by what standard we can judge the claim by what standard. And they both kind of laughed. And Joseph was like, I might be a little on the presuppositionalist side if we talk about it in those ways.

Yeah.

Now, do Mormons ever argue for morality, like things being objectively moral? Do they ever use the standards of morality? What is their position on that?

So we can bring this. We can talk about now and we can bring it up later because they actually talk about that.

OK.

Because Robert was asking Joseph there later. He says, OK, usually in everything that we disagree with, maybe there's a kernel of truth. And he says, is there anything you like about presuppositionalism?

And he basically goes into like transcendental arguments are valid.

Right.

There's many things you can make a transcendental argument. And we make the transcendental argument for the Triune God. And so with that, he was talking about how we can utilize a transcendental argument for morality.

Right. And I noticed classical apologists will do the same thing like William Lane Craig.

Sure.

Right.

And it's such a good point to say to a professing atheist that says, we ask the question, so why do you treat one another with dignity? Why do you believe in absolute right and wrong? It sounds like you're borrowing from our worldview, right?

Being made in God's image and so forth. What Joseph said was really interesting there. We can kind of bring it back up later. But he says some Mormons argue that way. He prefers not to because really they deny Sola Scriptura and the perspicuity of Scripture.

It's clearness.

Right.

And they would say you need the inner witness of the Holy Spirit to confirm that it's true.

Right.

The burning in your bosom. And then they also have a living prophet to kind of help with that. So he says he prefers just to say not to use a transcendental argument whatsoever when it comes to truth.

Okay.

And so what are we, when we say by what standard, what are we asking? I didn't get the connection where he says, I can't see how this can be taken as serious argumentation. That just, I mean, I'm listening to it.

I'm like, wow.

Like, okay.

So, okay.

The no standards. That's the opposite, right? So by what standard? Oh, that's just a silly question.

Okay.

So then no standards, you know, like, like how do we reason? I mean, there are standards of reasoning. I mean, if I were to debate this individual and I were to start talking gibberish, I mean, is he not going to hold me to the standards of reasoning and logic?

I mean, if he says, hey, you can't say this because that's illogical. He's literally just showing this is the standard you should be using. And look what happens when you don't use the standard. He just as well can summarize and say, by what standard are you saying this?

How can you make sense out of what you're saying? What you're saying is nonsense. So by what standard is not particularly presuppositional? I mean, yeah, I guess. I mean, presuppositionalists tend to use it because we're trying to emphasize foundations and presuppositions, but anybody can say that legitimately.

I don't see how this is any way connected to the sophistication or a lack thereof of presuppositional argumentation. Do you get that feeling when you heard that?

Yeah, it struck me as odd because I think he understands, but it's really easy. I know he wasn't trying to do this, but to disparage a position you don't agree with because later he does articulate his own standard, which is a form of the cogito that I think, therefore I am.

But, and I don't want to give it all away, but he says something very presuppositional later. So I like what you said. No matter what you say about by what standard, you're not going to escape the ramifications of how you view truth.

And so Eli, I was thinking, you know, on one hand, is by what standard just so simplistic where some people have just have dismissed it and maybe we can come back and say, okay, fine. We'll say it a different way.

What is your theory of truth? How do you judge things to be true?

Well, that's ridiculous, Jeremiah, that I can't see how that can be at all. You know, sophisticated argumentation to ask those questions, to receive, to say that in response to what you just said, what is your theory of truth?

And I said, yeah, you know, that's not really sophisticated. You're basically just saying you're saying that, you know, by what standard is silly, then it's also silly to say, what's your theory of reality or what's your theory of knowledge or any of that's literally what, by, by what standard we're just asking by what standard do you do, right?

What's, you know, we want to identify whether the person is being arbitrary or, or, you know, inconsistent or something like that. So, um, I thought that was, that was very interesting. Now I do want to say that the phrase by what standard can be misused and it has been misused by many popularizers of presuppositionalism.

It's kind of akin to when, uh, you know, people will say, well, how do you know? Oh, well, I know because, well, how do you know that? Well, how do you know that? And they just keep going and going and people will interpret presuppositionalism as just this infinite, how do you know methodology?

Um, and it can come across that way if presuppositionalists argue that way, but there is a distinction to be made between presuppositionalists individual presuppositionalists and, um, and presuppositionalism as a methodology.