Eli Ayala & Chris Bolt (Choosing Hats) Talk More Presupp (A MUST LISTEN!!!)

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Elias Ayala, and today we have a very very interesting topic.

If you guys are familiar with my podcast, my youtube channel, I place great emphasis upon the presuppositional method of apologetics, and I go into some of the differences of that methodology as it relates to other apologetic methods, which we're not going to necessarily get into today, but if you're interested you can listen to some past episodes.

Today I have a very special guest with me. I have, is it Dr. Chris Bolt? I know people don't care, but are you a doctor or is it just Chris?

Okay, we want to acknowledge That's fine. We want to acknowledge your credentials only for the point to get across that you do have some knowledge on the topic that we're discussing and you've done the appropriate study to be a somewhat of an authority on this topic, and so I want to make sure that gets across to folks.

So we have Chris Bolt here. Are you still associated with choosing hats? Very loosely so.

Okay. If there's if there's a guest post or something that needs to be addressed, then I might pop on there and post something, but in general my activity there sort of fell off around the time

I started pastoring. Okay, that makes sense, but people can find a lot of your resources on choosinghats .com

or .org and you have a wonderful series, like a series of posts, where you cover presuppositional apologetics exhaustively in the sense that, not that you go as in -depth as you could, but I think you exhaustively provide casual and thoughtful answers to each thing that's usually brought up, if that's accurate.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that we dealt with at that site over the course of about 10 years time pertaining to presuppositional methodology and whatnot.

So yeah, it's difficult to be completely exhaustive, right, because I think this is a very broad methodology that addresses lots and lots of different topics, but we did what we could to try to popularize the method and explain it in simple terms.

Sometimes we went beyond that, but it's still there. I believe it's choosinghats .org.

Okay, yeah, and I and I have read through and shared that material with other folks.

It's an awesome resource. I think you do a very good job explaining the issues, and I believe you do have debates available as well on YouTube, maybe, or on maybe the website.

Am I correct? Yeah, what happened there, the debates were archived and on the website, and then some other folks

I think years later must have picked up on them and put them on YouTube, so I still occasionally find one or two on YouTube.

Yeah, now to really throw a monkey wrench into this discussion, if there are people who are classical apologists, if I remember correctly,

I listened to a debate you did in which not only did you use a transcendental argument, but I believe, you can correct me if I'm wrong, you also used a cosmological argument as your opening presentation.

Is that correct? I don't remember the specifics of it. I'll try to, I believe that was my debate with Michael Long, who was an atheist or an agnostic,

I can't remember which, and a master's student in philosophy. That's probably my favorite debate.

I think he fought back the hardest, as it were, and we had a good discussion.

He was a good guy. For all the Calvinists listening, I'm not denying total depravity,

I'm just talking in general terms here. Yes. But anyway, yeah,

I went into that, and I think the topic was something to the effect of, are there good reasons to believe

God exists? Right. And so I did, I used some natural theological arguments.

I think I used the Kalam argument, and then I used an argument from desire, and I think an argument from the generality of theistic belief or something to that effect.

Right, and I wanted to throw that out there, because that's a big no -no in popular presuppositional circles, and for the classicalists as well.

Classicalists would be completely confused if they saw a presuppositionalist use a cosmological argument, since many people are under the impression that presuppositionalists can't appeal to things like that.

And that's why I like the fact that you use those arguments, because I think you showed by using it that there's a broader application to presuppositional apologetics.

We're not just forced to argue in one way. Yeah, most definitely.

I think another good example of those sorts of arguments being used well and within a presuppositionalist framework, it was in the debate between James R.

White and, I think, Dan Barker. Their first debate, I believe. They had another debate where Dan Barker started saying, don't quote me, don't quote my material.

But the debate preceding that one, I think it was with Dan Barker. It was. It was.

I think it was called, Does the Triune God of Scripture Live? And then the second one was on the idea of Jesus being cut out of pagan mythology.

Right. And then Dr. White goes into what is it, bacterial flagellum, and how this is intelligent design, and these sorts of evidences.

But he had it, again, packed within a Christian understanding and worldview. Right, right.

All right. Well, we're definitely going to touch on that a little bit more throughout our discussion, but let us start from the beginning. As I said before, we started recording.

I want to throw a bone to the people who might be listening for the first time and have no idea what presuppositional apologetics is, and then

I want to proceed in our discussion under the impression that the majority of listeners will have somewhat of a background. So if we were walking down the street and I recognized you, hey, you're that Chris Bolt guy, man.

I think I think I listened to something you did on YouTube. I have a question for you. I don't know why this would happen, but I have a question for you.

What is presuppositional apologetics? That's a mouthful. Can you explain that to me? Well, presuppositional apologetics, obviously, it's an apologetic methodology.

Apologetics pertain or pertains, depending on whether we take that as singular or plural, to the defense of the

Christian faith, or a defense, rather. But as Christians, of course, we take it to refer to the defense of the

Christian faith. Presuppositional methodology does focus on presuppositions to some extent.

This was actually a pejorative term of sorts that was applied to Cornelius Van Til's methodology of apologetics.

Others may call it the transcendental method or transcendental apologetics. That's antiquated.

That was back during Van Til's time, and his interlocutors would call him a presuppositionalist.

Well, the problem with that terminology is that it's so broad. The point of this method is not simply to say, well, everybody has presuppositions.

That's certainly true, but that's not the unique feature of this method. In fact, there are many philosophies that will point out the presuppositions that people bring to evidences, things that they suppose beforehand to be the case.

They presuppose these things before they come to evidences and arguments and reasoning and this sort of thing.

Presuppositionalism, in the sense we're talking about it, differs from that, in that we are actually talking about the presupposition of an entire worldview.

We're talking about the presupposition of an authority, epistemologically speaking, and we're talking about the presupposition of a concrete as opposed to an abstract thing.

In other words, we're talking about the Christian faith itself, and the presupposition of that worldview to render human experience intelligible.

That's all right. So when we talk about presuppositional apologetics, those who are familiar with this topic, even though you said that the term transcendental is antiquated, many people,

I believe, are familiar with what we call the transcendental argument for God. What is a transcendental argument, and then what is the transcendental argument for God?

And when I say God, presuppositionalists argue specifically for the Christian God, so perhaps you can frame your answer within that context.

Yeah, that's a really good question. I like the way you differentiate between a transcendental argument versus the transcendental argument for God and this sort of thing.

So going back to what you mentioned as far as it being an antiquated term, I didn't mean that in terms of the argument itself.

The transcendental argument is, of course, associated with presuppositional methodology, but I meant that in terms of how we refer to the entire method.

It may be the case that James Anderson still uses that terminology or wants to. I can't remember.

But anyway, yeah, so a transcendental argument, you can find something like this in Aristotle.

Aristotle essentially argues, in order to argue for or against logic, one must already take it to be the case that there is logic.

You cannot affirm or deny logic without using logic.

So this takes the form of a transcendental argument. Transcendental arguments pertain not to transcendental features of reality.

So we're not just talking about, oh, well, we have to have something that transcends creation or something to that effect.

We do talk about that, but that's not the meaning of this term. Transcendentals are preconditions of some feature of our experience.

And so with Aristotle, you would say, okay, logic is a precondition of being able to argue for or against logic.

Later on, you get Rene Descartes, and there's a bit of a transcendental flare to some of his argumentation.

He would say something to the effect of, well, in order to argue that I exist, or in order to argue that I don't exist,

I have to exist. The precondition which renders affirmation or denial of my existence intelligible, the precondition of that is my existence.

And so a transcendental argument, when it's offered in that form, actually winds up proving some precondition in the fact that affirming or denying that very precondition presupposes that thing.

So moving forward, you find transcendental argument. Of course, it's associated closely with Immanuel Kant.

There are debates in the philosophical literature over whether or not Kant is actually arguing with a transcendental argument or not.

I don't intend to get into that whole discussion, but Kant makes this whole thing to turn on the self.

He divides everything into the noumenal and phenomenal realm, and he is trying to respond to Hume who,

Kant said famously that Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumbers or slumber.

So Kant's trying to respond to Hume to save science, and the way he does this is by supposing that we bring the categories of experience to this raw data of experience.

And so nothing makes sense without kind of presupposing this entire Kantian transcendental scheme.

There is a meme out there, for lack of a better term, right now that's become very popular, that Van Til is a strictly speaking an idealist.

He actually wrote against idealism in his dissertation. There's this idea that he is borrowing from Kant, when in fact

Van Til is explicitly critical of Kant. What Van Til saw in Kant was almost a perfect exemplification of human autonomy.

Kant's making everything to turn on the subject of knowledge rather than, say, the object of knowledge.

Right, that we impose the patterns upon the raw data. So we don't see the raw data in and of itself.

What we see is our imposition and interpretation of the raw data, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And of course there are problems with Kant's scheme, but again, this is where we get a lot of this transcendental method and some of that talk from.

But again, this preceded Kant at the very least in an incipient fashion, right?

So then later on you get into folks like A .C. Grayling, who is an

Oxford philosopher or was an Oxford philosopher, and he is very interested in these transcendental arguments as a way of answering skepticism and skeptical worries.

P .F. Strawson is another example of a philosopher who has dealt with these things and written on them.

You get a guy like, I believe it's Robert Stern, who's dealt a great deal with transcendental arguments.

And then you get folks who are critiquing transcendental arguments, folks like Barry Stroud, they're offering criticism.

So this idea on, I wish I could say it was on the popular level, but it's not.

There's an idea in the academy that sort of mocks Vantillian presuppositionalists.

They go, oh, the transcendental argument. What is the transcendental argument? This is not a unique form of thought for Vantill.

You find it throughout the philosophical literature and in many more instances than what I've named. So that simply is not a good objection.

They've not done their homework, and that's actually deeply troubling in a way.

We find these also, to start turning it toward the Christian side, obviously we find transcendental argumentation with Cornelius Vantill, with Greg Bonson, with K.

Scott Oliphant, with folks like Alvin Plantinga even.

Currently you have Tyler McNabb, who is leading the way on the development of what

Plantinga has given us. And he, early on in his career, was influenced heavily by Greg Bonson and Vantillian presuppositionalism, and he's fleshing that out now.

I don't think he would ever say this, but he's fleshing this out through the reformed epistemology and that sort of model.

It's amazing some of the work he's doing. I hope to study that a little bit more in depth.

Real quick, if I could interject. And I think this is a good point where you mentioned that Cornelius Vantill was very much drawing very heavily upon Immanuel Kant and just the history of the utilization of transcendental arguments.

But because he was interacting with idealistic philosophy, I think oftentimes when explaining his own transcendental method, he adopted the vocabulary of idealistic philosophy.

And I think that was one of the contributing factors as to many of his critics thinking that he held to some of those views.

When in fact, to my understanding, you can correct me if I'm wrong, while he used the vocabulary of idealistic philosophy and Kantian philosophy, he filled it with Christian meaning.

Would I be correct in that assertion? Yeah, I think you're absolutely correct in that. And of course, some people try to argue, well, he can't be using the terminology while denying the concepts and all.

That's just simply not the case. This struck me one evening as I was driving and listening to something from Vantill.

A lot of the criticisms of Vantill, this idea that he's unclear, that you can't understand what he means.

I don't think it's the case that Vantill is less nuanced than people need him to be.

I think he's actually more nuanced than people want to deal with. And so he very plainly, almost, he's a continental, but almost in analytic fashion, he explains what he means following some of these more supposedly controversial statements.

You know, he's not a novice at these things.

He has the PhD in philosophy. He's done his work through Princeton and elsewhere and at Calvin College.

By the way, just an interesting tidbit, which I'm sure you're aware of. Cornelius Vantill studied under Gellema at Calvin College, which is the same place that Alvin Plantinga studied to go and study under Gellema.

So these are not folks who are just walking off the street and don't know anything about philosophy.

The same being the case with Greg Bonson, who is Vantill's protege.

Greg Bonson studied under Dallas Willard alongside of J .P. Moreland, who's one of the best recognized

Christian philosophers of our time, and rightly so. So anyway,

I want to say I hate to name drop, but not really. There's a huge context and a history to this thing that I think a lot of people overlook, particularly those in the academy, because they want to hand wave or dismiss this method.

I hate to say it, but I think sometimes because of its frank acceptance of the

Christian worldview and this dogmatic flair that the methodology does carry with it.

By the way, real quick, you do see this also, the transcendental argument and this sort of presuppositional methodology.

You see pieces of this in C .S. Lewis, right? A good summation of the presuppositionalist method is when

Lewis writes and says, you know, I believe in God the same way I believe that the sun exists, not only because I see it, but because by it

I see everything else. So the sun is a precondition for the intelligibility or seeing everything else.

Yeah, very good, very good. Now, okay, so that was excellent. So now we kind of get a good look at the way transcendental arguments exist within just the conversation of philosophical discourse throughout history.

So it's not a unique thing to the presuppositional apologetic methodology.

So let's narrow down then. Well, two things. Let me ask a question before we get into the specific transcendental argument for the

Christian God. I hear a lot of people discuss presuppositional apologetics as a methodology in general, and the use of the transcendental argument in particular.

Are they one in the same? Or should they be differentiated from one another?

The presuppositional method and the transcendental argument. Do we see them as together intrinsically?

Or is there a way? Because I have people who say, hey, I'm not a presuppositionalist, but I could use the transcendental argument if I wanted to.

It's a good argument, but I think you presuppositionalists are greedy. This is our argument.

Other people can't use it. So how would you tackle that question? That's a really good question, and I think it's going to depend upon how you approach your methodology.

So could a classical—and by the way, I understand I had a friend recently criticize these distinctions between presuppositionalism and evidentialism and all that.

He said there's so much more than that. Yes, I understand that. We're talking in the colloquial sense.

I understand you can make this very fine grained as far as these differentiations. And I don't know that that's always helpful, by the way.

But anyway, let's say a classical apologist, a

Thomistic philosopher, something to that effect, who's using, let's say, pre -dogmatic natural theology.

Sure, that person could use a transcendental argument as a type of anti -skeptical argument.

You can use a transcendental argument for all sorts of things, just like I talked about logic or one's own existence.

By the way, I think both of those arguments, at the end of the day, don't work as well as we need them to.

But anyway, so they're narrow. There are transcendental arguments in a narrow scheme or on a localized level that pertain to particular problems.

Is there an external world? You know, what about logic? These sorts of things.

Right, so real quick, and I do apologize. I hope you don't mind if I just interject because I don't want to be rude.

But so basically you're saying there are transcendental arguments that we can use to show that something is the necessary precondition of another thing.

And then there is the transcendental argument employed by the presuppositionalist for the truth of the

Christian worldview. So there are different sorts of transcendental arguments, and you can use any of them depending on what you're trying to show is the necessary precondition for something else.

Am I correct? Yes and no. So, and interrupt at any time.

Oh, thank you. I'll talk all day about this otherwise.

Do it. That's why I'm glad you're on, man. This is great stuff. Oh, I forget what you said at the end there.

But I don't want to make it, I want to do an even finer distinction. So first of all, the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, these are not the argument either, right?

I tend to view these as families of arguments. There are different ontological arguments.

There are different cosmological arguments. There are different teleological arguments. I don't think that this is even controversial, at least at this point.

The same is true of transcendental arguments. It's a family of arguments. And so, and of course people ask, well, what's the unique feature of them and all that?

Is there an overlap with other types of arguments, the ontological, the cosmological, the teleological?

And I say, certainly. I mean, it depends on what we're talking about. I'm not committed to one or the other of these things.

If you want to slap a label on this or that, then by all means do so. I'm just concerned for what's biblical and what's philosophically persuasive and proves what we need to prove, in a loose sense of that term.

Anyway, I've explained transcendental arguments as you could use them on a local level, as you can use them in terms of natural theology even, or as you can use them with regard to specific skeptical worries, that sort of thing.

Now, pull it into the Christian context and pull it into the context of Christian, Vantillian presuppositionalism in general.

I think we have a divide even within so -called Vantillianism, and so the answer to your question is going to fall out along these lines.

You're going to have those who follow more so John Frame's approach, where presuppositionalism is the undergirding methodology of all of our apologetics.

So presuppositionalism is the undergirding methodology for all of our apologetics, and then you would use various localized transcendental arguments that look very much like the ones used by Greg Bonson or some versions of what

Vantill says, but then of course they would also rely fairly heavily upon natural theology, the presentation of evidences, that sort of thing, as individualized arguments within the presuppositional.

Yes. Okay, so that's very important. So someone like Frame would allow for other arguments but set within a presuppositional framework, and so, say for example, the argument that God is the cause.

So would it be something like, because God exists, we can make intelligible the very idea of causation?

Would they have to restructure, say, the various premises of the cosmological argument to use it within a presuppositional framework?

That's one way of doing it. So Frame would actually, I think, even define the transcendental argument as an instance of a cosmological argument at some point.

So, I mean, he might argue, which is even more true to the original use of the

Kalam argument, because that argument came out of Islam. That was an argument for the eternality of the

Quran. And so Frame might even argue something like, okay, well, if you say C, then you have to say

B. If you say B, you have to say A, and you can't go back any further than A. And so this is an instance of a cosmological argument.

Whereas a guy like Greg Bonson, who's more of a Vantillian purist, and so that's what

I'm going to talk about in a moment, a guy like Bonson is going to say there's a cosmological argument that's an instance of natural theology, but then there's also a cosmological argument that is an instance of the, and I mean the, transcendental argument.

So that he would present that the way that you just did a moment ago, where we're not, so the

Kalam cosmological argument, for example, which is my favorite version of a cosmological argument, everything which begins to exist has a reason for, sorry, everything which begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being.

The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause. Okay, so when we get to the very first premise, everything which begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being.

Bonson would say, how do we know this, right? And so right away we're fleshing out what must be the case for a premise like that to be held.

What are the preconditions for that principle, whatever begins to exist has a cause.

Ah, okay. That's right. So I hope you're understanding what I'm saying. If you picture the presuppositional methodology as this sort of blanket, methodologically, that holds all of these different arguments within it, many of which have a transcendental thrust to them, right?

They're transcendental arguments, but they're more localized and you have these natural theological arguments that can go hand in hand with them.

Perhaps the TAs themselves, the transcendental arguments themselves are instances of natural theology.

That's a whole other discussion. So for example, Tyler McNabb within Reformed Epistemology, he's going to say, yes, transcendental arguments are, this is a natural theological argument.

So you have that. And by the way, the methodology in those systems of thought,

I think the methodology is still going to function in a little bit more watered down version, simply because these tend to be more analytic thinkers.

And so for example, with James Anderson, who I believe, by the way, I mean, one of the best representatives of the method, one of the most underrated theologians and philosophers out there, he's great.

Oh yes, he just had an interaction with an atheist YouTuber who debates in a nice, respectful dialoguing manner,

Christian scholars and people from all different perspectives. And I was surprised to actually see him. He was invited on and he argued, you know, transcendentally for logic.

And I never saw him actually interact with an atheist. I've only listened to his lectures and I thought he was brilliant.

I thought he did an excellent job and I became a fan. So I started devouring his website.

So I agree, underrated for sure, but definitely a brilliant thinker that's worth looking into if people don't know who he is.

Dr. James Anderson at Reform Theological Seminary. That's right. So he defines the methodology, he's looking for the essence of it philosophically speaking, and this is in Frame's Festschrift, and he says that it's non -neutrality and non -autonomy.

These are the two principles of presuppositionalism, and then everything kind of flows from that. That's a very, that's very much how

Frame approaches this. Now, I want to move over and talk about what I would call a

Vantillian presuppositionalism that's more of the purest variety. It's very heavily traditional.

In that sense, when you're reading Vantill, even though he would differentiate between an argument and a methodology per se,

Vantill also wants to say, well, we're arguing by way of presupposition.

So we're arguing by way of the Christian worldview. Now we're talking about a holistic approach where, at the end of the day, there is one overarching transcendental argument.

You can think of it, even if we're using different instances of it, as with the other approach

I just discussed, even if we're using those different instances of this argument or applications of this argument, there's still one overarching argument.

There is, if you think of a meta tag, there's an all -encompassing transcendental argument that is inextricably tied to presuppositionalism as a method because it is, at least the way they would put it, the biblical approach.

So yeah, so even philosophically it works out that way. So of course, Vantill, you'd put in this stream of thought.

Craig Bonson, Oliphant would all fall more into that approach, into that stream,

I believe. So yeah, you can still distinguish, I think, between the argument and the method, but there is a very strong sense within Vantill where they are the same thing because that's the whole point.

We cannot get out of our worldviews to debate about these facts and evidences.

There is no neutrality, and so we have to debate in virtue of these worldviews.

How do you compare and contrast worldviews and do worldview critique? You do it through the transcendental method.

Gotcha. Now, you mentioned when you were explaining Frame's take on these issues, you mentioned the use of natural theology, and natural theology is that term that makes many popularizers of the presuppositional method break out in hives.

So do you think that there is a place for natural theology within a presuppositional framework?

Well, I certainly hope so, and the reason I say that is because, first and foremost,

Scripture teaches natural theology, and I mean that in this sense.

There is an immediate knowledge of God, right? So the go -to text for presuppositionalists is

Romans chapter 1, where we're told that everyone knows God. It's the universal knowledge thesis.

Everyone knows God. They suppress that truth in unrighteousness, but God is evident.

His existence is plain in the things that have been made. You know, since the creation of the world, they've seen these things.

We are ourselves created in the image of God, right? And so to know ourselves is to know, in some sense,

God. You find this fleshed out in John Calvin at the very beginning of his institutes for Christian religion.

So this is a popular thing. You find a little bit different form of this, but you find

Alvin Plantinga talking about this a great deal, particularly in Warranted Christian Belief. He calls it his

AC model, right? His Aquinas -Calvin model, where he's looking at this idea of the census divinitatis, where you've got

Aquinas and Calvin overlapping one another in belief of this mechanism.

He says, wherever they overlap, we need to pay attention, right? Right. So there is natural theology in that sense.

It is, what, instantiated knowledge. It's already there.

It's a cognition of God, as it were. So in our very thought itself, in our reasoning, we can't escape from God.

When we look at, you know, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth his handiwork, you know, you cannot escape

God no matter where you go. That's one sense of natural theology.

Right. There's another sense of—go ahead. Go ahead, I'm sorry. So people don't get confused.

People who might know a little more of the background of this type of discussion may think you're conflating, which

I don't think you necessarily did, but people may think you're conflating natural theology with natural revelation.

And so can you address the differences there and why you're not conflating it? Yeah, I would just grant that as a semantic difference in what

I just said. So in other words, I'm arguing on the opposite side of the equation.

I'm saying that some people approach natural theology and say, well, of course we do natural theology in the sense that Chris just discussed.

And so I want to clarify, by natural theology, they just mean what you just mentioned, natural revelation or whatever, general revelation, sure.

So the point there being, though, that we do have, in fact, the knowledge of God. Everyone knows

God exists. They express that truth in unrighteousness, and when they do so, by the way, what does that text go on to say?

It says that their foolish hearts were darkened, professing themselves to be wise. They became fools.

That, in and of itself, is a biblical expression of a transcendental argument.

It's the existence of God and the affirmation of him which renders human experience intelligible.

You deny that. It's foolishness. And we could go through the whole Bible and talk about these instances, but we're not going to.

I mean, why be biblical? No, it's too much. Let's move on to humanistic philosophy.

No, so natural theology, in another sense, is this type of argumentation.

It's immediate knowledge of God. It's argumentation that is based upon, in some sense, what we learn through natural revelation, as you called it a moment ago, through general revelation.

So obviously the three traditional arguments that we've already mentioned—the cosmological, the theological—sorry,

I meant to mention the ontological argument, which is an a priori argument. It works apart from experience, supposedly.

These sorts of arguments are based on what we get from the fact of existence itself or something to that effect.

Now, we can make this more fine -grained, and I think we need to.

I don't believe, and I in fact know, that someone like Cornelius Van Till would not object to natural theology in its dogmatic use, insofar as it's used appropriately and not abused.

Obviously, Van Till is not going to say, well, yeah, false conclusions we draw from dogmatic natural theology, we should accept that.

I'm not putting him in that sort of position. That would be silly. I'm simply saying

Calvin's autotheos with regard to the debate, the discussion over the eternal generation of the sun, for example.

I have some friends who love to debate this topic. Well, Van Till affirmed

Calvin's view of autotheos. In fact, he actually tied it to his concept of the self -attesting

Christ of Scripture. He mentions this in parentheses in one of his works as he's discussing the self -attesting

Christ of Scripture as the authoritative starting point for all human predication and knowledge and everything.

He mentions Calvin's autotheos. So, what am I talking about there?

I'm talking about the fact that when we're talking about the eternal generation of the sun, there is a great deal of dogmatic natural theology being used there.

It's not something that is explicitly in Scripture in terms of a proof text or something.

There are proof texts for the position, don't get me wrong, but what we learn, what we want to say about eternal generation of the sun, if you affirm that, it's derivative of what we find as the data of Scripture.

So, we're using philosophy. We're actually using human reasoning. We're coming away from Scripture and it's the dogmatic function of natural theology.

Now, if you can do it with Scripture, you can do it with general revelation, which is also the revelation of God, right?

So, I actually do believe, as a Christian, I actually do believe that everything which begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being.

I affirm that wholeheartedly. I don't think that an atheist has any reason to affirm that.

Right, within his system. So, even when you said we use reason, presuppositionalists obviously affirm that we use reason, but we don't use it independent of acknowledging a broader metaphysical context in which something like reason makes sense.

That's why I think it's important that we argue our system, not isolated facts within our system that are divorced from our broader metaphysical commitments.

Exactly. Absolutely. So, we're doing worldview thinking here. So, you know,

I actually think some of the objections to the use of natural theology come from the presupposition that there is neutrality.

We're saying no. In virtue of the Christian worldview, there is a dogmatic use or a dogmatic function for natural theological arguments.

This is the faith -seeking, understanding tradition. This is what you find.

I'm not saying that I agree with everything they say, but this is what you find in Anselm or Augustine.

And in large part with Thomas Aquinas, that's a whole nother topic. But, you know,

Thomas Aquinas has become very popular all of a sudden. The Reformed community is reading him deeply and saying, you know, we don't think he's our enemy.

We think he's our friend, which is largely true, by the way. But they're wanting to—the idea

I get when they come back is they say, well, really Thomas Aquinas is saying something very similar to Van Til.

Now, none of them would ever say that. None of them would ever say that, but I'm perfectly fine with that. You know,

I was like, okay, sure, Van Til was wrong about this or that thing, or we're not understanding exactly what it is that Van Til is saying about Aquinas.

But if you want to make Aquinas a presuppositionalist, that's fine to me. Okay. Anyway, I really do believe that if, you know, something that begins to exist, it has a cause for its coming into being.

I really do believe that the universe began to exist, and therefore that the universe has a cause.

Now, that's consistent with Scripture. We know those things from Scripture. But you can also reason at least that far just on the premise of natural revelation or general revelation.

This is the dogmatic use of natural theology. Divine simplicity is a wonderful example of this as well, right?

Now, again, you want to be careful because Scripture is, you know, the final authority, the standard by which we try all of these opinions and reasoning and whatnot.

But there's nothing wrong with the use of natural theology in that way. The objection comes in when we want to use natural theology in a pre -dogmatic function.

In other words, the reason I believe God exists is because this guy shared the cosmological argument with me on the street, and that's why

I believe God exists. That's not consistent with the Christian worldview. That's a terrible reason to believe in God, and it's not going to work apologetically for the reasons we know regarding presuppositions and total depravity and whatnot.

Well, I've heard noted—and I won't drop any names—but I've heard noted Christian apologists when asked, why are you a

Christian, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is, well, because of the overwhelming evidence. And I'm thinking to myself, if the

Bible's true, that can't be the primary reason why you believe, because it leaves out the entire aspect of the convicting power of the

Holy Spirit and that His Spirit bears witness to our spirit. It's not just the evidence, although God can use evidence.

There is a work of God that is at base, the fundamental reason why we believe. Would that be correct?

Yeah, I think that's really well put. And I would go a little bit further and mention that a lot of folks conflate the reason we believe with the cause that we believe, right?

So there is a—I'm sorry, but there's a pervasive hyper -Calvinist approach to presuppositionalism that's very troubling to me.

People saying, well, okay, but the difference between your method as a classical apologist and my method as a presuppositionalist is

I believe in the Holy Spirit, and I believe the Holy Spirit's the one who converts. I mean, everybody believes that, okay?

There are reasons we believe. So you present the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins.

You present the gospel to someone, that comes with content, and they are understanding it and this sort of thing, and then you have your testimony, right?

Here's what God has done for me. Here's how I was converted to this and that sort of thing.

Then there's an apologetic, right? You come to people with an apologetic, and yes, there's a difference between proof and persuasion.

That is not an excuse for failing to try to persuade people. We are reasoning with people, and we are trying to persuade them.

That is explicitly biblical, okay? Yes. That is the reason that people come to faith.

The cause for people coming to faith is the Holy Spirit. We have nothing to do with that part, other than to pray for people's souls.

So I think everything you just said was great, and I would add that to it, and then that way

I think we can publish a book together and be good on that. But yeah, no, the pre -dogmatic use of natural theology, it's not going to work.

It's going to fail. I mean, there are philosophical reasons for that, but there are also theological objections, which you've just given.

And so we don't want to present these things to people as though they're neutral. So in essence, to simplify, there is a way to do natural theology that does it outside the dogmatic context of the

Christian worldview, in which case that presupposes neutrality, in which case neutrality is a myth, in which case that particular use of natural theology would be inappropriate.

And then there's a way in which we can do natural theology within the backdrop of the Christian worldview.

Yes, and so in terms of the apologetic implications of that, you can offer these evidences and arguments and whatnot,

I believe, as part of the persuasive appeal of the Christian worldview as a holistic approach.

So for example, for example, listen very closely to Greg Bonson's opening statement in his famous 1985 debate with atheist

Gordon Stein. Bonson lists just a number of evidences.

He says, here's why I believe God exists. And he says things, well, actually in a Q &A, he says, well,

God saved me and he loves me. He starts quoting these things from personal experience, but even in his opening statement, he's talking about the persuasion of the seas and the stars and the sky.

So those are immediate evidences of God's existence. But you could also put into that,

I believe, what are traditionally known as these natural theological arguments. Look, we have a consistent, thoroughgoing worldview here that includes human reasoning and understanding and natural theology and whatnot.

I think you can use it in that sense in an apologetic encounter. I think also that you can use it to throw a wrench into the atheist program or whatever religion you're dealing with.

So for example, you come to an atheist or agnostic and you say, well, let's say that God is a necessary being.

So if God actually exists, he exists in every possible world or something to that effect.

We just define God that way. And then we say, so do you believe that the existence of God is possible?

I mean, the problem here, this is an ontological argument of sorts, it's very vulgar, but if the existence of God is possible, if they say, well, yes,

God's existence is possible, well, then that means that God necessarily and actually exists in their worldview.

Now, I don't have to worry about Van Til's objection to the ontological argument at that point. Van Til's objection, by the way, is that our conception of a highest possible being or greatest possible being or whatever, our conception of that is not the same as God's conception of himself, something to that effect.

So we'll never get to the God of the Bible via a natural theological use of the ontological argument. That doesn't prevent me from throwing that right into the atheist worldview as a serious problem for their view, right?

They're going to have to affirm a harped atheism that explicitly rejects that sort of understanding of God for whatever reason they might give or fail to give.

Okay, now, okay, so another important aspect of presuppositional methodology is because it is derived from the soil of Scripture.

We affirm the propositions of Scripture, especially the propositions which give clear indication that all men know that God exists, right?

Non testam theon, knowing the God, right? So it's a very specific God in which they know.

Now, a question that I usually get from people is that if the Bible teaches all men know that God exists, are there any atheists?

Are there any true atheists in the world? And number two, what is the nature of that knowledge that the unbeliever has?

Does the unbeliever know that God is a trinity? Does the unbeliever know that the Bible is true?

I think presuppositionalists have not necessarily done a good job explaining a little bit more specific as to what we mean when we say the unbeliever knows that God exists.

So two questions. Are there atheists? I had one guy say, I believe there are atheists.

I believe that when someone says they don't believe in God, I believe them. But you presuppositionalists, how dare you? You're calling these people a liar, and that kills communication.

You get the whole gist, right? So how would you address those two questions? Are there atheists? And what is the nature of the knowledge of God within the unbeliever?

So quick question, or quick answer is no, there are no atheists. Now let's talk about that.

So atheists themselves do not agree upon a settled definition of atheism.

Right. And you know, you'll find both classical apologists and presuppositionalists will just drive this into their, you know, through their opening statements in debates and whatnot with atheists.

They're trying to pin them down to make them prove this positive claim of there is no

God or something like that. But atheists define it differently. You know, they'll try to wiggle out of it. Oh, well, it just means a lack of belief in God and these sorts of things.

So there's no agreed upon definition, even within their literature and whatnot. That presents a problem.

So let's use a parody argument here. And now I get to define atheism, okay?

So no, I just, I mean, atheists are those who, it's a non -Christian worldview, as are all of these various manifestations of the non -Christian worldview.

Islam, Mormonism, atheism, same problem at base. They're rejecting the authority of God.

They're rejecting the self -attesting Christ of the scriptures. They're rejecting a Christian worldview.

Okay, so atheists then are people who claim that there is no

God or claim that they don't believe in God and this sort of thing. What I want to say is, in virtue of a

Christian worldview, no, you do know God exists, so you certainly believe

God exists, but you suppress that truth in unrighteousness.

You are pushing that truth down. So what the fool is doing, and I'm talking in a biblical sense, the biblical fool, not just name -calling, what the fool is doing in terms of scripture, the fool is saying there is no

God. That's the willful suppression of the truth. God is not in all their thoughts.

Why? Because they're forcing him out. They're forcing the truth down in unrighteousness.

They are motivated to deny their belief in God.

And so it's not that atheists are explicitly lying, okay, or overtly lying.

It's that they are self -deceived. Now, we have philosophical tools that help us explain this.

We don't have merely an appeal to scripture and theology, although we certainly have that. What I'm saying is we can flesh it out in terms of philosophy as well.

This is in secular philosophy also, and this was the topic of Greg Bonson's doctoral dissertation in philosophy.

It's this crucial concept of self -deception, and what it is is you have a first -order belief.

In this instance, I believe in God, okay, or belief in God.

Rather, let me restate this. First -order belief would be God exists, okay? They believe God exists.

But then, because of a motive to reject that belief, they come up with a second -order belief about the first belief.

Their true belief is God exists. They come up with another belief, I do not believe

God exists. That is the suppression spelled out in philosophical terms.

And we see instances of this in other scenarios, right? So, little

Johnny steals money from mommy's purse, but mommy says, little Johnny wouldn't do that.

I keep seeing this money go missing, but little Johnny wouldn't do that because little Johnny, my little

Johnny, he's an angel, okay? And so, the mother knows Johnny steals, but the mother has these other motives.

For example, what's my community going to think of me? And so, she says, my little

Johnny wouldn't steal. You see, I don't believe that Johnny would steal. Cancer patients apparently do this.

It's apparently a fairly common phenomenon where they can hear their diagnosis and believe it.

But actually, because of the strength of their belief in that proposition, that they have cancer, they will come up with another belief to cover that one.

Namely, I do not have this terrible thing the doctor just told me I have. So, also with belief in God.

So, no atheists, not in the sense that they want to tell us. They're self -deceived.

They could be actually lying, right? Like, in a known sense, a self -confident way. That's not the end of the argument.

It's not enough for us to go, oh no, you say you're an atheist, but I know really you believe in the God of the

Bible. And then be done with it. That's not the argument. That's where you employ the transcendental argument, you see, to demonstrate that apart from the

God of the Bible, you couldn't be doing these things that you're doing, right? So, the second aspect of your question is, what do we know of the

God of the Bible? I think you're right that we have not done enough work in this area.

I think that in particular, the pushback that's coming from the classical theist camp, of which

I would really count myself in their number anyway, but I'm not talking about classical apologetics.

I'm talking about a view of God. Thank you for that distinction, because people would be confused.

They're like, wait a minute. Are you interviewing a presuppositionalist or a classicalist? It's a very heated debate going on right now.

It involves a great deal of politics, and I'm not going to get into it. Sure. The supposed distinction between theistic personalism, and then divine simplicity, and classical theism in this.

Right, right, right. We don't need to get into that. We're not getting into that. I would need a second cup of coffee.

We would need a lot, and I would need to do a lot more reading anyway. No worries.

My point is simply to say that a lot of the pushback against vantillianism and some of the theology that's at least currently associated with it, a lot of that pushback does come about in terms of what are common notions?

What do we know in virtue of common grace or general revelation? It seems to me that there's nowhere near the disagreement that people are making there out to be between these two camps, because on the one hand, folks are saying, well,

Vantill denies common notions. He denies that people know

God. Hold up. No, he doesn't. Vantill actually says the opposite.

He explicitly affirms common notions. He wants to nuance that concept and develop it further in terms of an apologetic, a robust apologetic.

And so I'm a little uncertain as to what exactly the objection is there or whatever.

So that brings us into this very good question. What do people know of the existence and nature or attributes of God?

And I would just say, well, we know that people know that. We know that people know what

Romans 1 tells us they know. His divine essence, his existence, his attributes, his divine nature, right?

Not his triune nature. Well, is his triunity a function of his nature or his person?

I always, I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I always thought that his triunity was part of his very essence.

You know, I connect it to, and I don't want to get too abstract, but I think this is relevant, the whole issue with the one and the many, that when we say that the triune

God is the metaphysical context of the one and the many, that is connected to the issue of epistemology as well, how we could know specific things, since knowledge presupposes the one and the many category.

So I always thought his triunity is wrapped up in his nature and his person.

Yeah, yeah. So, and this is an issue, right? Because Van Til himself uses what some consider fairly unique language in that very regard, probably for this very reason.

Not because he's meditating on natural theology, but he's trying to work this out consistently in terms of nature and person.

And by the way, Van Til's language and understanding of that, I've written on this a little bit, it's not that unique.

You find this throughout virtually any theologian. You find this language where they'll refer to God as God, as a person and this sort of thing.

But that's a whole nother discussion. Van Til does affirm orthodoxy with regard to the

Trinity, the church thought so, etc. We won't get into that. But I think that this is where we stop.

I think that more work needs to be done on that very point. I had a discussion recently with one of those who leads with regard to classical theism and some of these objections that have been leveled against presuppositionalism.

This is exactly where he went. He said, what do we know of God? Do we know the triune

God of Scripture? Well, here's my quick answer to that.

It's the God of the Bible we know. It's the God of the Bible who's revealed in creation.

Regardless of how much we self -consciously or explicitly know about him, we certainly don't know enough to save us, right?

We don't have redemption through pondering natural revelation. We need special revelation for that.

We need the word of God, okay? But I think that the question of how much people knew prior to the incarnation, how much do people know about the

Trinity, I don't think these are necessarily unrelated questions.

Or even how much do we know of plurality in God just in virtue of a natural theological understanding in terms of immediate use of natural theology?

In other words, there is this problem of the one and the many, and it is resolved,

I believe, only within the Christian worldview where God exists as a co -ultimate unity and plurality as the triune

God. We get into questions of denotation and connotation.

My point here is to say all men have knowledge of the existence and the nature of God.

Whether that includes the Trinity or not, I suspect it does not include that as explicit or self -conscious type of knowledge.

But whether it does or not, I don't know that it's that important to the methodology as a whole.

It is important that we know triune theology in relation to the problem of the one and the many in terms of the

Christian worldview, but that's where redemptive revelation of God comes into play. So now the unbeliever who has a knowledge of God may not be aware of the

Trinity, but is it not the case that in order to genuinely know something about anything, you have to already presuppose one and the many thought categories, whether you acknowledge them or not?

So in that sense, they might not know about the Trinity, but the triune God is necessary for them to know anything if in fact they do, since everything they know, if they in presupposes those one and the many thought categories that are necessary.

Would you agree with that? Yes, that's well put. That's what I was trying to say with regard to the immediate knowledge through natural theology.

Yeah, yeah, focusing on one and the many in our experience, because we see this everywhere in experience. That's undeniable, right?

And that's because creation itself is a reflection of God. Right. So there you are.

I do think a lot more work needs to be done on that particular question, and I actually plan,

Lord willing, to do that within the next several months. So I'm glad. That's awesome. See, this is precisely the reason why

I like to do these interviews, because I want to talk about the issues that no other presuppositionalist on the popular level is talking about.

I listen to debates all the time online with popularizers, and when they are challenged on this issue of the unbeliever's knowledge and self -deception, what do they do?

They punt off, well, Bonson wrote a dissertation, and then they move on. Well, that's great. What did the dissertation say?

Can a person who is popularizing the method actually address those specific issues instead of just punting to a book that the unbeliever is probably not going to read?

So I think these are underdeveloped areas that I think we need to talk about more so that we can point popularizers, who

I think are doing good work in a general sense, but to point them in a direction where they can present a more robust explanation of these issues to kind of make their argumentation stronger,

I think. Yeah, and nothing I say here—I don't want to disparage people or discourage people.

There is a use of this methodology for the person you meet on the street as well as the person you meet in the academy.

Most of my work in it pertains to the academy, although that's not completely true. I'm in a very rural community where most people are farmers, most people don't have a college education, and when

I preach, the apologetic methodology that folks are getting is presuppositional. It's unapologetically presuppositional, because preaching itself is presuppositional.

Right, right, right. I don't argue my way to the existence of God. We assume the existence of God, and then we make our appeal and our arguments on that basis in a very dogmatic function.

Now, the fact that you said that, again, makes classical apologists break out in hives.

Well, you can't just assume God's existence. What do you say to the person who claims that presuppositional apologetics is fallacious because it engages in begging the question?

Well, begging the question or petitio principi or logical circularity,

I mean, that's a very narrowly applied fallacy, so that pertains to deductive arguments where you're including the conclusion in the premises that are supposed to be proving that conclusion.

That's not at all what presuppositionalists are suggesting or doing, although I do think some in trying to explain this go too far and mess up in that regard.

We are talking about epistemological circularity, which is something that I would argue anyone is committed to a type of epistemological circularity.

However, this is not a parity argument. In other words, the epistemology or so -called epistemological circularity of non -Christian views does not work.

To kind of do that in a colloquial fashion, it doesn't work in the end, and that's what we're showing through transcendental argumentation.

We're showing that the Christian worldview is a virtuous circle. So when you say, when someone says you're engaging in circular reasoning, you can point, you can simply point out, if we can just put this in more practical terms, if we're in like a basic kind of, not an academic argument, but just kind of a popular setting.

So I'm not engaging in the fallacious fallacy of circular reasoning because that pertains to deductive argumentation.

That I'm not begging the question in the way I'm formulating my argument. Rather, I am engaging in circular reasoning epistemologically, in the sense that I'm assuming the foundation and ground of my epistemology to argue for my epistemology.

Would that be correct? Yes, and there's no escaping from that, and that's one of the features of our method, is to point that out to people.

This is, again, this is not even unique to Vantilianism. I mean, Thomas Morse, who is a very popular philosopher of religion and philosophical theologian, you know, he notes this.

William Alston notes epistemological circularity. You're not going to get out of that, and so that's not something to be ashamed of.

And I'll note one other thing, is that one of the most popular objections to presuppositional methodology or the transcendental argument is that it's supposedly logically fallacious and circular, but then you'll find people also—one of the other most popular objections is that you can't formalize this argument.

Well, if you can't put this argument into a form, if you can't state it in deductive fashion, then by definition it can't be logically circular.

Let's stop there. That's excellent. Yes, okay, so if people are claiming that the presuppositional argument is circular, but at the same time they're arguing that you cannot formulize the argument, then if that's true, then that is a reductio ad absurdum on their assertion, because you cannot claim an argument is circular if the argument that you're claiming to be circular is unable to be formally structured, right?

Yeah, insofar as they offer both those arguments. And one other issue is—and this is what

William Lane Craig does in the Five Views on Apologetics book—William Lane Craig differentiates between presuppositionalism and transcendental arguments.

He then accuses presuppositionalism of committing and, quote, a logical howler, in quote—that is, begging the question, petitio principi, or circular argument.

He charges the methodology with committing that. How can a methodology be logically circular?

That makes no sense. It might be epistemologically circular, but it can't be logically circular.

Then he goes on to affirm and encourage the use of transcendental arguments such as are found in the work of Alvin Plantinga.

Well, he's conceding there that transcendental arguments need not be circular.

And by the way, they're not. Any analytic philosopher you read on this topic, you're not going to find that objection in the secular literature that I can think of off the top of my head.

So, Chris, is there a difference, then, between circular argument and circular reasoning?

I mean, there could be. I think we just have to define what we mean by those terms. Okay. All right.

Okay. All right, so help me out here.

Let's jump into the actual argument for the Christian worldview. If I were to say, prove to me that Christianity is true, how would you engage in a transcendental argument for the

Christian worldview and lay it out for me so that I can follow your line of argumentation?

Because I know it's popularly presented as this is how everyone presents it, because they borrow it from Bonson. The proof for the truth of the

Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all. Is that enough in the state in the argument?

Or should we lay out some more specifics so that people kind of make the differentiation between our assertion that the

Christian worldview is true and our argument that the Christian worldview is true? Yeah, I think that the power or the suspicion that we have something really powerful in a statement like that one you just quoted from Bonson, I think we often stand so in awe of that once we kind of catch onto this idea of, you know, in order to utter one word in affirmation or denial of God, you must presuppose he exists.

You're like, wow, this sounds really cool. That's a really powerful argument if it works.

Or Bonson, right? Without God, you can't prove anything. And it's like, wow, what an argument, right?

Okay, there is a lot to fill out. And Van Til certainly thought that. And Bonson certainly thought that.

And so we do get into how do we actually apply this. That is going to depend upon the conversation and the person.

We're not changing methods. We're not shifting methods based on relativity to persons, right?

Methodology is not person -relative. The way we apply methodology is person -relative.

That's a confusion that comes up in the eclectic use of methodologies and that sort of thing a lot.

There's a distinction between those, okay? So if I'm talking to someone on the street,

I'm probably not going to be bringing up Graham Priest and arguing from dialetheism and the inability to distinguish between cases where the law of non -contradiction is true and holds and cases where it does not hold.

So we're talking about a denial of the principle of explosion. We're talking about some really specific aspects of logics and thinking and thought and paraconsistent logic and multivalued logics and all of these sorts of things.

The Christian response to that is fairly simple. God does not believe anything that is untrue.

And so that's how you presuppositionally respond to something like that. But that's a sort of wrench that you can throw into the worldview of the academic elite who studies logic, okay?

And then you could talk about that or whatever. You're not going to use this method in that way with somebody you meet on the street.

You're going to be saying, why do we bury a baby who passes away and have a service and mourn in a deep way and all of that?

But the frog that you ran over with your car yesterday, you may have been grossed out, but that was the extent of it.

Right. Why is there human dignity? In other words, what is this thing of human dignity?

How do we account for the depth of emotions or that sort of thing?

So both of those are very poorly stated instances of the transcendental argument.

In the first instance, I'm saying logic makes sense and works well within a

Christian framework and worldview, whereas it does not in the non -Christian worldview.

That was the first instance. And then the second instance would be human dignity makes sense and works well and whatnot within the

Christian worldview, not so much in the non -Christian worldview. And you can see that play out on a cultural level as well, right?

Where Christianity has had great impact and where it has not, you can see the differences in the way that it plays out in the way that people view the world and behave.

Right. Now, Chris, but demonstrating that the

Christian worldview can make sense out of something and showing that a competing worldview does not make sense out of something, doesn't necessarily validate the

Christian worldview. How would you respond to someone who would say, well, maybe you have a point there, but be more specific.

How does this validate your worldview with all of its trappings and details as the system?

How does it validate the system? Yeah, because the general principle or the operative feature of the non -Christian worldview that is in question, once you show that that general principle or operative feature cannot be held consistently within that non -Christian worldview, then that person must either forsake or forfeit or give up that general principle or operative feature or recognize that the

Christian worldview does account for that thing, that general principle or operative feature.

So a general principle would be something like there is regularity in nature, whereas an operative feature would be,

I ate the same type of food that I did this morning. I ate the same type that I ate yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, because in general, it's always nourished me, if there's nothing wrong with the food, right?

It's always nourished me, whereas eating gravel has not nourished me in the past.

So I guess

I'm still not clear if I can press you a little bit. I hope you don't mind. I'm sure you don't mind.

But I'm just trying to think in terms of a person who might be listening to this and saying, I think I know what you're saying, but I don't see it played out in a clear way.

If it's true that in my worldview, I cannot account for, say, induction or science or human intelligibility.

And I say, you know what? Okay, I guess I can't, but you got me there. How does this validate your worldview?

Saying that your worldview can account for it and that you provide a positive case as to how something like science, philosophy, induction does make sense, presenting a case on how it does make sense doesn't necessarily prove that that is actually the worldview that is true.

So you have this issue of the difference between showing the

Christian worldview as necessary, epistemologically, like in order to know things,

I need to assume this framework. But does that necessarily point to the ontological truth of it, that it's actually the case that the

Christian worldview is true? Yeah, I think you're actually stating two different objections at the same time there, right?

So one pertains to sufficiency and necessity of the Christian worldview as the precondition for intelligible human experience, whereas the other,

I think—correct me if I'm wrong here—pertains to a distinction between conceptual necessity and ontological necessity.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. When I was reading Michael Butler's article in Bonson's Fetcherist, this was an area that I think he believed was underdeveloped, that there was a distinction between the conceptual necessity and the ontological necessity, and that that needs to be developed more.

So I guess that's the question I'm asking. How do we show that Christianity is conceptually necessary and that it is also ontologically true?

Okay, yeah. I think that the former is a good question as well, by the way, and I'll just very briefly answer and say, in response to questions about the sufficiency and the necessity of the

Christian worldview, we have to recognize how the transcendental exchange takes place.

So one or the other view, because it's an A or not A situation, one or the other worldview must account for the preconditions of the discussion itself.

And so for an atheist or Muslim or whatever to go, okay, well, I see that you've just completely demolished my understanding of science and my ability to do it.

Who cares? They don't have that option available to them. They either have to give up science and intelligibility itself.

In other words, you'd have to show how science is connected to intelligibility itself. They'd either have to forfeit intelligibility to excel or engage in a performative inconsistency where they can't utter anything, or they'd have to concede that Christianity is the worldview that's making sense of this.

So the odd thing, I'm just going to say this and leave it there and not pick it up. The odd thing about the transcendental exchange between worldviews is that sufficiency of a worldview actually establishes its necessity in a transcendental understanding of things.

So in other words, if someone says, well, I can't account for those things, but you can either.

Well, that statement, I can't account and you can't either, those two statements already presuppose that you're standing on some kind of foundation that can make rational those very statements.

So you either argue for your worldview that it can provide those preconditions, or if you're going to deny that your worldview has, you have to affirm that the other worldview at least can make sense out of these statements for you to even say it.

Yeah. Yeah. So you're arguing these things in a general sense, and then you're applying retortion, as you just did, and saying, okay, let's argue ad hom then, which is not always a fallacy, right?

So let's talk about why you can't say, and neither can you, because you don't have a place to stand to make that claim.

I mean, the debate's over. At that point, once they've lost intelligibility, once they have forfeited their right to speak to anything, you can't then complain more about the

Christian worldview. That's one side of the argument, right? The other side of the argument is, let me show you, by the way, why I can do this in a

Christian worldview, right? Let me show you why I can account for the one in the many, or human dignity, or logic, or science, or morality, et cetera, right?

I'll show you how I do that in the Christian worldview, and I'll show you why you cannot in the denial of the

Christian worldview. So it is constantly that two -step apologetic, and you are constantly moving from general to specific application through retortion, right?

So moving on to your next question, then, the other objection. This is the Stroudian objection to transcendental arguments, and essentially,

Barry Stroud is pointing out that even if you establish a type of conceptual necessity, so even if you say, okay, it's necessary to believe that the

God of the Bible exists, that the Christian God exists, the triune God of Scripture, it's necessary to believe that he exists in order to have intelligible experience, in order to render human predication intelligible, these sorts of things, okay?

So what? That doesn't mean that he actually exists, it just means that you have to believe that he exists.

Yes. Right, okay. So it's something to that effect. Stroud's not dealing with transcendental argument for God, or transcendental argument for Christian worldview, or something like that.

Stroud is addressing analytical uses of the transcendental argument in particular, and I think that that needs to be focused upon, actually.

I think there are big distinctions between the transcendental argument for God or the transcendental argument for Christian worldview.

There are big differences between that and just a localized use in analytic philosophy of a transcendental argument.

What are the three big distinctions? Well, one, we start from authority. In other words, we're not just starting with this a priori analytical tool.

We're starting with the God of the Bible. His authoritative word, okay?

We accept it by faith. That's what we're saying. We're saying, you know, you believe in God, and so you have this understanding.

So we frankly admit that, right? It's faith. It's a faith -based view. That doesn't mean that we're fetished, because we still use reason.

We still use an argument, okay? But anyway, so that's one difference, authority.

The other difference is we're arguing for an entire worldview. We're not just talking about one little element of experience or whatever.

We're talking about an entire worldview. And then third, we're arguing concretely and not abstractly.

We're talking about the actual Christian worldview. So that's one difference that may have,

I think, some content whereby we can push back against Stroud and say, yeah, what

Stroud says here is interesting. It just doesn't apply to what we're talking about. And so that goes into the next part of this, which is to say, if we're really starting with the

Christian worldview, then we're, other than doing this conceptually for the sake of analysis, we're not differentiating in some hard sense between the ontology of the matter and the concept of the matter anyway.

We're actually starting with, no, we're saying the Christian worldview is true.

The Christian worldview is the reality of the matter. Like, this is the metaphysical scheme we're starting with.

Now, of course, an analytic philosopher is going to want to try to chew that up and parse that out and tear it apart and say, oh, yeah, but there's a difference between metaphysics and epistemology, and I understand that.

But we're saying holistically we're already starting with all of that. And so deal with this argument and how you make sense of this or not, which, by the way, you can come back and press back against the

Stroudian objection by saying, okay, fine, let's say that it doesn't work and we haven't shown this.

Now, where are you? I mean, we're still back in the skeptical worry. So don't bring this to our attention anyway.

So that, if I understood you correctly, that also addresses the whole critique of the presuppositional method, that we confuse ontology with epistemology.

We don't. We take them together because we're arguing the whole system, right? Well, I may have a forthcoming debate that will touch on that topic some, so I don't want to talk too much about that.

But this idea that epistemology and metaphysics have nothing to do with one another is specific to particular schools of analytic philosophy, and it is simply not the truth of the matter.

You can clearly see that. Even when we're talking about beliefs, when we're talking about truth, even when we're talking about justificatory models or warrant, it's virtually impossible to talk about those apart from some type of metaphysical considerations.

But that's a whole other topic. I would continue to say with regard to the

Stroudian objection, this is how I answered if we get, first of all, let me say this.

There was a dissertation that came out of Westminster Theological Seminary, Michael Riley, and he addresses this problem, and he does not believe that he has solved it.

And he actually suggests that we use, I'm going to state this in a very colloquial and sense, use the kind of the moral imperative, the deontological nature of inference itself in another type of transcendental argument in order to respond to Stroud.

I think I've understood that properly, and I've tried to communicate that there. So in other words, there is more work that needs to be done on this particular objection.

But what I want to say on an apologetic level, forget about the philosophical academic aspect of it, which needs to be worked out.

That's what I do. I love that, right? That's fine. That's fine. But just for the sake of apologetic engagement, this objection has no teeth for two reasons.

One, because I'm just going to say, first of all, how can you believe that God exists and also say, but this doesn't show that God exists?

Because when you say, I believe God exists, you're making a metaphysical claim. You're professing belief in a metaphysical claim.

The truth of the matter is God exists. What you're telling me is that you still want to try to think about what you've already conceded you cannot think about, namely, that God does not exist.

That's one reply. The other reply is simply to concede the objection and say, okay, that's fine.

Christianity may not be true. God may not exist. Now, where are you? And they say, well,

I believe God exists. Amen. And by the way, this is how

I respond. Well, real quick, when you're saying that so that some presuppositionalists don't get confused, you're not granting that it is possible for God not to exist.

You're just internal critique. Let's assume what you just said. Where does that leave you? You're not saying that that's actually possible.

Just in case people accuse you of saying, well, you're conceding that there's a possibility or there's a world in which

God may not exist. That's not what you're saying. I just wanted to clarify that. I'm stating this as a matter of apologetic usefulness.

And here, I mean, this is what—there was a gentleman who wrote a paper on this trying to advance the

Stroudian objection, and I did respond to this on the website that you had mentioned earlier. And I'm afraid

I'll butcher his name, but it's Bevalent Bekefi, I believe is how you say his last name.

He's Hungarian. He is a friend of mine. We take shots at one another all the time.

But not with one another. I can't say that I take shots with him. I just want to clarify.

But we take shots at one another all the time. But he's done a lot of very good thought on this, and he's thinking about a lot of these things in,

I think, helpful ways that advance the discussion. But that was my reply to him. I simply said,

OK, let's just pull it back, and we'll call this a modest transcendental argument, put it all—cache it all out in terms of—or hash it all out in terms of a modest transcendental scheme where we're just talking about transcendentals, in other words, preconditions, in terms of concept and belief.

Forget about the ontology of the matter, the metaphysics, and all that sort of thing. Now we've still got an argument that works.

We still have an argument where people have to come away saying, well, absolutely, he proved to me that God exists.

He proved to me that I have to believe that, right? To say that you believe it is to say God exists.

You've gotten a long way. You've done your apologetic duty in that sense.

And here's the kicker. Both Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bonson would agree with what

I'm saying right there. Bonson does so explicitly in at least one of his lectures when he's talking about this distinction between the two.

The paper you referenced, which appears in Bonson's Festschrift—what is that called? By the Standard?

No Other Standards? I think it's By the Standard. The Standard Bear. I'm sorry.

Look at that. Both wrong. Yeah. The Standard Bear. So that Michael Butler article appears in that book, and of course it's made its way around the internet.

It's become very popular in certain circles right now. Great, great article. Excellent article. It's a great article, but I would caution—and this is coming from someone who studies philosophy—I would caution folks against putting too much weight on that.

He brings out a lot of problems and a lot of cool conceptual things to think about.

But once we start focusing on form, once we start focusing on the philosophical aspects, once we start focusing on the objections, we are getting away from a lot of the practical uses of the methodology, and we're getting away from the content of the

Christian worldview. That's a great article. I think people are attracted to it because it shows that there has been some substantial philosophical thought given to this topic of presuppositionalism.

Hey, that's great. That's great. It's just not the whole story. It's one little aspect of this whole method.

I say that after spending an hour and a half talking to you about those very things. But it's still—you know what?

I think it's helpful because, as you're right, we need to be careful. It explains areas that people are asking these questions.

I mean, when you say, well, how do you know your argument is really valid? He goes into what is the nature of the argument.

A lot of people don't know what that is. I mean, there's obviously more to iron out, but it was helpful for me when

I read the article, and then I was like, oh, yeah, the argument is in the form of a disjunctive syllogism. P or not

P. Not not P, therefore P. That was helpful for me because people were asking, well, what's the argument specifically?

It seems like you're just arguing an assertion that the Christian worldview is a necessary precondition. So I think that that was helpful as kind of a little study tool to get some of the—a little bit more of the meat of the method, although obviously it's not comprehensive and it's not perfect by any means.

Yeah, no, I think that's well put. But yeah, I would just say that. I would say a modest transcendental argument is sufficient, according to Greg Bonson himself, and it certainly works on the street.

So what's the issue? Right, right, right. That makes people pull their hair out and get upset, but that's my story.

Here's my last question for you. It might take you a little while to answer. It might not.

And it's pertaining to a biblical passage, Acts 17. Now, I have been told by a very well -grounded classical apologist—he knows his stuff, and we talk about these issues all the time—and he, as well as many others, have expressed that they really think that the classical method of apologetics shows forth strongly in Acts 17 in the

Areopagus Address, where Paul is in Athens. How would you argue that Acts 17 is actually a good example of presuppositional apologetics if, in fact, you think it is a sufficient argument, a sufficient example?

Yeah, and I don't keep enough about that passage in particular accessible to my mind, and that's shame on me.

But I have been in this discussion before, because I had people telling me, classical apologists telling me, and I mean die -hard classical apologists telling me, that no presuppositionalist had ever dealt with that passage.

That's just simply not true. Well, it's actually in the appendix of Bonson's Always Ready. It's in the appendix of Bonson's Always Ready.

It's in Scott Olyphant's work, The Battle Belongs to the Lord, and it's in other works as well.

But I would say, first of all, it's always strange to me when people try to say that they're utilizing this natural theological argument when

Paul is simply talking about things like creation and providence, and doing so often with appeal to Old Testament themes, if not the explicit text of the

Septuagint itself. I mean, Paul actually reasons directly from passages of the

Old Testament when he's in the synagogue and when he's out and about, other places, reasoning with folks.

That having been said, yeah, there is a more philosophical approach with Paul to those at the

Areopagus, but he is pointing out for them inconsistencies within their worldview.

He wasn't granting elements of their worldview. He was showing inconsistencies within their worldview.

Why would he be granting elements of their worldview? He's not trying to pat them on the back.

He's trying to rebut them. He's trying to say, look at your foolishness in this practice, and by the way, here's the

God that I believe in, and of course, you should too, right? Let's put it like this.

Acts 17 does not militate against a presuppositional or transcendental approach whatsoever, and it may actually be the case that it shows presuppositionalism and the transcendental method to be the method that Paul used, which by the way,

I think essentially it was, not in the full -blown Vantillian sense of that, but there's a philosophy according to Colossians.

There's a philosophy that's according to Christ by implication, right? He says, beware these vain philosophies, these other philosophies that are not according to Christ.

He talks about all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge being hidden in Christ. He talks in Romans 1 about they know

God exists, but they suppress truth and unrighteousness, you know, and so what? Their foolish hearts become dark and professing themselves to be wise, they become fools, and it affects every aspect of their lives.

He goes on to talk about that more. So I think that this is definitely something we need to look at.

That's not to completely dismiss natural theology, which we've already talked about.

Right, right. And I think a lot of people also complain that if this is the methodology that Paul used, why hasn't this been the method that has been used by early church fathers and people throughout history?

It seems that this methodology doesn't come about until Cornelius Vantill comes around, or some people a little bit earlier than him.

And so people would say there is an obvious absence of the presuppositional method throughout church history, which doesn't mean it's wrong, but historically as it's developed and then come to us through Vantill, it seems like it is more of the new kid on the block, unless you could argue powerfully from Scripture that it's actually what is grounded in the text itself.

Well, I think we can argue powerfully from Scripture that it's an integral part of Hebrew thought, particularly in divine revelation, with the presumption of the existence of God from the very get -go.

That doesn't mean that it's non -polemical. I understand the polemical thrust of the text of Genesis, that God is declaring himself,

I'm Yahweh, I'm God, I am that I am. He's not like the Egyptian gods. He's not like the pagan gods.

I get that. That's a polemic. But his existence is assumed from the very beginning.

There's not syllogistic reasoning spelled out in Scripture before we get to the Bible. That's nonsense.

It assumes the existence of God from the very get -go. The people believe in God because of his revelation to them, and if you deny that, it's foolishness.

In fact, under the law, you're put to death. So I'd say that's a fairly strong presuppositional type approach.

You get into the righteous and the wicked of the Psalms. Go and read how the righteous and the wicked act.

We already talked about it. It's the fool who says in his heart there is no God. In Proverbs, it's the fear of the Lord that's the beginning of wisdom or understanding or knowledge.

It's fools who despise that from God. Now, Proverbs has a lot of overlap with pagan sources and pagan

Proverbs and that sort of thing, but the distinct feature of Proverbs is that it pushes us to the fear of the

Lord. It's faith. It's faith seeking understanding. Then you get to the New Testament. You've got Jesus saying things like, you're either for me or against me.

You say, well, I don't believe with what Jesus says there. It's a false dichotomy. Okay, you're against him then. You just proved what he said, you know?

Or let's, you know, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The foolish one builds it on the sand, right?

This is a kid's song, right? And so in our Sunday school classes, we're learning as children, we're learning this presuppositional methodology.

When you get into church history, I believe this is Anselmian. We've already talked about that. I believe it is Augustanian. When you read

Tertullian, you see this. What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens? It's not a full -blown methodology, but there are certainly aspects of this presuppositional approach there.

When you read John Chalvin, you find many of these things. When you read Martin Luther, even though Lutherans and Luther himself have some very interesting understandings of the relation between faith and reason, nevertheless, there's a strong presuppositional type bent in him.

You find it, you know, with the Jesuit philosopher Blaise Pascal, with some of his reasoning, there's an element of presuppositionalism there.

You certainly find it with the Dutch Reformed thinkers, for example, Abraham Kuyper and Hermann Bavink.

Yes, he uses natural theology in the sense that we've just been talking about.

Again, some might argue that Thomas Aquinas himself is using a little bit of this approach to things because he's not intending for his five ways to be used independently of what he knows from divine revelation.

Well, that's a presuppositional scheme or methodology. Then you get into who comes from Kuyper and Bavink and Gerhardus Voss and these folks.

Well, you get Cornelius Van Til, and then you've got fellows who follow him up, right?

His students being Francis Schaeffer. That's a different methodology of sorts, but still, there it is.

You get guys like Greg Bonson. You get John Frame. You get Scott Oliphant.

So there have been many who have used this method. Again, we argued earlier, C .S. Lewis himself knew something of this method.

And then you've got now Reformed epistemology, which, though it's distinct, there's overlap between these two different approaches in what

I believe is a faith -seeking, understanding tradition. Hey, man,

I could listen to this forever. It's so fascinating. There's so much to cover.

And I think, I mean, we're going on an hour and 41 minutes right now.

I honestly can go for more. But I do want to keep it within a manageable podcast -slash -YouTube content length.

Would you be willing to do some more at a later date? I mean, did you enjoy this interview?

Would you be open to doing something like this again and maybe covering some more questions? Absolutely.

I really enjoyed it, and I appreciate it. And it's good to try to rethink my steps through these things and to sharpen myself.

And I'm sorry I'm a little bit rusty because other things in life beckon me. But nonetheless, yeah, it was very enjoyable.

Well, you're pretty darn good for someone who's rusty. So let's just say I'm sure you're going to be giving a lot of people something to think about, especially for people who have those common criticisms to presuppositionalism.

There's a lot to chew on here that I think you did an excellent job explaining. So I'm glad you're willing to do this in the future.

I want to really get some more of this material out there so that people can understand the methodology a little better, even if they don't hold to it.

And for those who do hold to it, they know a little better the ins and the outs as to how the method works and what are the different applications of the method.

So I think you did an excellent job, and I'm really sure people are going to find this a huge blessing. Well, thank you very much.

All right. Well, we're going to conclude, and I'm going to stop recording, and then we'll still be on so we can formally say our goodbyes.

But if you guys are enjoying the Revealed Apologetics podcast, please, you can email me at revealedapologetics at gmail .com.

If you have any questions or possible topics you'd like me to cover, I'd be happy to address those issues.