Answering Some Questions

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and I'm super excited to be with you today.

Thank you for tuning in. We're gonna be covering the issue of practical questions on presuppositional apologetics.

These are questions that I received over my wide variety of speaking engagements and contexts in which

I've been teaching, whether it's young people, older people, or whatever the case may be, these are questions that constantly come up when

I am speaking. So I wanna share them with you, and then I wanna take the opportunity to kinda share my thoughts on them.

And so I hope that they are helpful to you. Maybe there are questions that you've asked yourself, and to that end, here we go, okay?

So the first question is kind of a no -brainer. This is kind of an easy one, kind of falling right into my hands where when someone asks me this question,

I get really excited about it because obviously I'm very passionate about apologetic methodology and things like that.

Also, this question that I'm about to share with you gives me an opportunity to share with you my favorite definition.

So let's ask the question. So the first question is, what is presuppositional apologetics?

Now, this question can be answered in a wide variety of ways. There are more sophisticated flavors of how we can define it, and then there's more simple ways that we can define the presuppositional apologetics.

But my favorite definition is actually given, it's taken from the book, Resurrection, Scripture, and Reformed Apologetics, and it's published by McMaster Theological Studies.

And there is a section right there in chapter four, and it's so good that I actually wanna read to you the first page and a half.

It is so good, and it's a helpful way to understand presuppositional apologetics.

Again, once I saw this question, I was like, I need to take the opportunity to kind of give credit to this specific book.

Stephen West does an excellent job in his section on presuppositionalism, and so here we go, okay?

This is on chapter four of Resurrection, Scripture, and Reformed Apologetics, and the subheading there is a test for consistency in theology and apologetic method.

So here we go. Stephen West defines presuppositionalism in this way. Presuppositionalism is a school of thought that attempts to bring all human thinking into subjection to the authority of the word of God.

He goes on to say, "'Methodologically, the presuppositional apologist endeavors to achieve this goal by demonstrating that all human thought that does not submit to the word of God is fallacious and untrustworthy.'"

He continues, "'In the view of presuppositionalists, it is literally impossible for human knowledge to obtain apart from the existence of the triune

God and his revelation to humankind. The apologetic encounter ultimately relies on the impossibility of the contrary.

Experience in this world is intelligible, but this is impossible on any modal scheme that is contrary to Christian theism.'"

He continues, "'Since only Christian theism, which here must include biblical Trinitarianism, can account for the intelligibility of human knowledge and experience, and all other alternatives can be shown to fail in this regard.

Christian theism is vindicated by default as the true position.'" He goes on, "'Since the goal in a presuppositional apologetic is to show the nonbeliever that their worldview, whatever the details, is necessarily incoherent, and that in contrast, the

Christian worldview is necessary for there to be coherence, the main emphasis is on negative apologetics.'"

Okay, we'll kind of expand on that in just a bit. "'The apologist attempts,'' I love this, "'The apologist attempts to demonstrate that the non -Christian worldview is intellectually unsustainable and incapable of being rationally articulated.

The non -Christian is invited to prove that the Christian worldview is internally incoherent, but this is something that they cannot succeed in doing.

Ideally,'' okay, this is a key part here, "'Ideally, the Christian presuppositionalist exposes the inconsistency, the contradictoriness, and incoherence of the other worldview, and then the non -Christian tries but necessarily fails to expose the philosophical flaws in the

Christian worldview. They fail in this attempt because it is impossible to be successful. After all,

Christianity is held to be perfectly cogent and logically compelling. Thus, the apologist defends the faith by destroying the coherence of the contrary position, and then,'' this is my favorite part, "'And then supervising the failure that comes when the coherence of the

Christian worldview is attacked, at least in an idealized presuppositional practice.'" And of course, he's giving kind of in an ideal situation, this is what it looks like.

Now, he did say that presuppositional apologetics focuses on kind of a negative aspect. Of course, there is a positive aspect to presuppositional apologetics as well.

For we are not simply showing that a worldview is false, we are also trying to demonstrate that a worldview is true.

As Cordelius Van Til has defined apologetics in his book, Christian Apologetics, right there in the first chapter, he says, "'Apologetics is the vindication of the

Christian philosophy of life over against the non -Christian philosophy of life. That vindication is not simply coming by way of refuting falsehood, but it is also coming by way of establishing the necessity of the

Christian worldview via transcendental argumentation.'" Okay? Now, that's a lot, okay?

Hopefully something stuck there when I read that to you. There's so much good stuff there. That's like my favorite section of the chapter there.

But what I like to focus on is the opening lines there that he gave. "'Presuppositionalism is a school of thought that attempts to bring all human thinking into subjection to the authority of the word of God, even the thoughts of the unbeliever.'"

Okay? And that's pretty much what presuppositionalism is all about, okay? We're bringing our thought into obedience to the

Lordship of Christ, and we're also showing that unless the unbeliever does the same, he can't make sense out of anything. Okay?

So I think that's my favorite definition of presuppositional apologetics. Of course, you can find definitions in Van Til, Bonson.

I think I heard this first from Dr. Scott Oliphant over there at Westminster Theological Seminary.

He said that, "'Apologetics is Christian theology applied to unbelief.'" And I think that that definition is so important because it connects our apologetic with our theology.

Okay? And this is so important because a biblical apologetic is gonna flow out of the soil of scripture.

And I believe that that's true. You do have people who don't, they don't believe that the

Bible gives us a specific apologetic methodology. I don't believe that for a minute. I do think the

Bible goes beyond simply commanding us to do apologetics. It actually gives us the method whereby we ought to do that.

Okay? So there you go. When someone asks me, what is presuppositional apologetics? I like to kind of use that biblical language there that it is an attempt to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, even the thought of the unbeliever.

Okay? So that is the first question that I was asked. A couple of scriptures that I would use to help people understand what presuppositionalism is really getting at is that passage in the book of Psalms where the psalmist says, "'In his light, we see light.'"

In his light, we see light. Think about that. We only see things for what they truly are if we see them in light of God's revelation.

I like that. Okay? Because it is the Christian worldview. It is the triune God of scripture and his revelation that illuminates our understanding of everything.

The facts of science, the facts of history, whatever is a fact and is intelligible, the

Christian context, the Christian conception of reality provides for us the necessary pre -environment to understand that in a meaningfully cogent way.

Okay? Super, super awesome question. I love when people ask that basic question. What is this presuppositional apologetics?

Okay? I like to call it revealed apologetics because I think it is a methodology revealed in scripture.

All right? So again, presuppositionalism also focuses on the impossibility of neutrality and the inappropriate nature of taking or attempting to take a neutral posture when you are reasoning with the unbeliever.

Again, Matthew chapter 12, verse 30 says, whoever is not with me is against me and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Okay? From the biblical perspective, and of course by extension, the presuppositional perspective, we do not cater to attempts at being neutral.

Okay? There is no neutrality because God is the creator and definer of all things.

Okay? And so unless we understand facts in light of how God has created them and defined them, we do not understand that fact truly.

Okay? You think in terms of just a simple, a simple thing. If I were to ask you, what is a cow?

Okay? You might be able to give me a biological definition of a cow and at the surface level, I'm going to agree with you, right?

I'm not gonna dispute with the atheist, for example. Well, that's not really what a cow is. A cow is this. But when we get to the fundamental foundational issues of our worldview,

I'm going to differ with the atheist as to what a cow is. Because for me, a cow is a created being.

God created cows. He gives definition to the cows and their role and function in creation and man's use of those cows.

All of that is taken within the context of a worldview. Okay? So cows are not neutral either.

If you really, really think about it. Okay? And presuppositional apologetics seeks to make people, the

Christian, self -conscious of that fact that everything that we believe about anything is only understood within a

Christian worldview. And that is the appropriate thing that Christians ought to do. And we should remain consistent in that when we're talking with the unbeliever.

All right? So I love that question. What is presuppositional apologetics? That's my answer.

Of course, we can use Van Til's definition as well, where he defined apologetics as the vindication of the

Christian philosophy of life over against the non -Christian philosophy of life. And so he saw apologetics as a vindication of a

Christian worldview or philosophy of life against non -Christian worldview. So for Van Til, apologetics was a dispute between entire systems of thought.

And that's why the believer and the unbeliever differ over how to interpret reality.

It's because we're coming from completely different systems. And so knowing that fact is useful in apologetics because it gets to the heart of the disagreement between the believer and the unbeliever.

Okay? So I find those definitions useful and helpful. I hope you find them helpful as well. Okay? We need to talk.

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ReformCon 2025. Tickets are limited. Lord willing, we'll see you in Tucson. The next question here that I typically get asked is how can we simplify presuppositional apologetics for others?

Now this, again, this can be challenging. How do you simplify anything? It's really gonna depend on your audience.

You know, I've been, I work with middle school students and I get asked this question all the time. You know, how do I explain the trinity to my like, eight year old?

Or how do I explain the trinity to my, you know, eighth grader or seventh grader? The answer to that is gonna depend on the level of background knowledge and understanding that the person with whom you're speaking with has.

Okay? For me, when I'm explaining difficult concepts to young people,

I try my best to do two things. I try to not use technical jargon.

Or if I use technical jargon, I try my best to define what I mean.

Okay? So for example, you can explain the tenets of presuppositional apologetics without using the language of presuppositional apologetics, right?

You can refer to the biblical way of defending the faith. You can refer to it as, you know, the apologetics that the

Bible shows us. You know, I can use different phrases that I use to kind of connect with a kid so that they're not, you know, thrown back by like complicated, you know, verbiage, okay?

But if you're gonna use, if you need to use the terminology, just define your terms, okay?

This is super important because we often look at young people as kind of like, eh, they're not gonna understand.

Kids are super smart, okay? I remember when I used to work in childcare, elementary school, we did before care and after care.

It was one of my favorite jobs back in the day when I just started going to college. It was perfect because morning care was from seven,

I think it was seven o 'clock in the morning to 9 .30 in the morning. So as I'm working in the morning with the kids, helping them, you know, if they need help with homework or something, it was an awesome job.

I did that and then in the middle of the day, I would go to my college classes. You know, when I was working on my undergrad, when

I was becoming a teacher, so on and so forth. And then I would come back for aftercare from three o 'clock to six o 'clock p .m.,

okay? So you kind of had the, you know, the small kind of segment in the morning, a small segment in the afternoon.

You had this gap in the middle of the day. If I had class, I would go to class. If I didn't, I kind of got to chill at home and do homework or whatever.

Now, when I worked morning care, there was this little kid named Sam. He was a tiny little kid, probably smaller than those of his own age.

And he used to walk around with this Pokemon encyclopedia. If you remember the show

Pokemon, that Japanese animated cartoon, okay, where they have little

Pokeballs and they would catch the little creatures and have them fight, you know, in tournaments and things. I know you know what

I mean, okay? This kid used to have this Pokemon encyclopedia. And I remember asking, hey,

Sam, what is that? He was like, well, it's a Pokemon encyclopedia. I was like, well, why don't you tell me a little bit about the creatures in there?

This kid knew all of the Pokemon, almost by heart. He knew what they were called when they evolved, because if you know the

Pokemon show, these creatures evolve into kind of stronger versions of themselves. Now, I'm not, you know, black belt in Pokemon, but I know this.

So the character Pikachu, okay, he evolves into what's called Raichu.

I think it's Raichu. If you're a fan of Pokemon, I'm so sorry, but he evolves and he's stronger.

And then some of the names of them are really hard to pronounce, because they're Japanese and things like this. This little kid, he was in third grade, remembered all the names.

He can tell you what their powers were, what their powers were when, you know, when these creatures evolved into the, you know, the stronger versions of themselves.

And I remember listening to this kid go on and on, and I said, wow, this kid not only knows the technical language of this cartoon, he also knew the concepts and how to define, you know, each of the things involved in that world.

How much more could a kid in church understand, you know, complicated vocabulary and the definition, okay?

And so when I now teach, and this kid has no idea. He's grown up right now. I don't know what he's doing with himself, but he actually influenced me, because I often,

I used to hide the terminology of theology and apologetics, and try to always simplify stuff until I realized, you know what, people can learn this stuff.

You know, you use a term, you define what you mean. Simple as that, okay? And so what you can do is you could use the technical jargon when trying to simplify concepts if you're teaching apologetics or whatever.

Just make sure you define what you mean, okay? And in that way, you equip them with a new term, a concept, the idea, these sorts of things.

But if that's what you're gonna do, just define your terms. If you're not gonna go that route, you know, try not to use technical language.

Ask yourself, is there another way I could explain this concept, okay?

If I am talking about the necessary preconditions for intelligibility, is there an easier way to explain that concept to someone, okay?

I often say, instead of saying the preconditions of intelligibility, I'll say, what must be true first before this other thing is true, okay?

And then I would ask them, you know, if I'm on the second floor, what are the necessary preconditions?

What must be true in order for me to be on the second floor? And even the kids, you know, my seventh graders, oh, well, there has to be a first floor.

I'm like, that's right. So the first floor is a necessary condition for the second floor, so there you go, okay?

We just talked about the necessary preconditions for intelligibility. So there are ways to simplify and to, you know, make easy application with these concepts.

You just need to be a little creative and ask yourself, is there a different way that I can say this without using specific terms?

It reminds me of that board game, Taboo, okay? I don't work for the gaming company, but if you've ever played

Taboo, it's that awesome game, it's so much fun, where you get this card, right? And on the card, there's a word on top of the card that you wanna get your team to guess.

And you could describe the thing. So if it's like the word beach, I can say, you know, there's sand, you know, a place where there's water.

But under the word, there's like a list of other words that you're not allowed to use in describing the thing.

So if the word is beach, you might not be able to use the word sand or, you know, water or something like that.

You need to, I mean, it's a place that's wet and you go swimming, you know, and you can't use certain words, but you're trying to get them to understand the word you're trying to get at.

Same thing. I might not want to use technical language. I have to kind of think, how can

I say this in a way that captures the same idea, okay? Or if you're talking to someone who really is just like biblically sensitive, like, can you give me a biblical example of this?

You know, try to memorize certain scriptures that capture the essence of the fundamental features of a presuppositional approach, okay?

Within presuppositional apologetics, there's a great emphasis upon the authority of God. You know, that God is the ultimate authority.

And so I might bring up that passage in Hebrews chapter six, verse 13, where God says to Abraham, right?

The writer of Hebrews says, for when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, okay?

Why did God have to swear by himself, okay? We usually swear by something greater than ourselves, okay?

But in this case, God swore by himself. Why is that?

And of course, the kid's gonna respond, well, because God is the greatest, right? There's no greater authority than God.

That's right, okay? So you can teach these things in different ways. It just really is gonna depend on your audience, your context.

You want to be able to learn how to contextualize the things that you want to convey, okay?

So the big challenge for me is I have primarily learned presuppositional apologetics through Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bonson.

Now, granted, reading Van Til is very challenging, okay? It's really hard, okay?

You're like, I don't even know, you're reading the book, I don't even know what he means by that. And then you find

Bonson, you're like, oh, thank the Lord, Bonson clarifies Van Til. But for some people, Bonson can be a little technical.

So how do I contextualize what Bonson is saying about Van Til's ideas to the average person?

And so I now have to bridge the gap between someone like Bonson and like Sophie the

Wash Woman or my seventh graders or my eighth graders or lay persons at church, okay?

It takes some work, but it can be done, okay? So that's how I, I know that's a long -winded answer, but I hope it's helpful in answer to the question, how can we simplify presuppositional apologetics for others?

I guess the takeaway in terms of answering that question is learn how to contextualize, okay?

Understand your context, be sensitive to who you're talking with and adjust the things that you know to that context and avoid technical jargon.

But if you use technical jargon, make sure you define your terms, okay? Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense, all right?

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Again, go to ApologiaStudios .com and start your journey today. All right, so another question is, okay, this is a good question too.

So maybe you're into apologetics. You know, you've been doing this for years.

This question here, you know, how do I explain to my classical apologist friend that presuppositional apologetics is biblical?

So say you've been doing apologetics for a while, and you have some friends who also do apologetics, but they don't share your methodology.

And maybe someone might ask you, well, you know, why do you hold to presuppositionalism? Why do you think it's the biblical position?

Okay, that's a great question. And the value of that question is that when a person asks you this question, and there are classical apologists, assuming the person, obviously, because they're doing apologetics, hopefully, they're believers, right?

Hopefully, there is a shared belief of the authority of God's word. And so how do

I explain that something's biblical? Well, easy. You go to the Bible, right?

We go to the Bible, okay? You might want to share Bible verses relating to the nature of the authority of God and the authority of His word, and then make application as to how that impacts how we do apologetics.

And we ask ourselves, am I, when I'm defending the faith, am I reflecting a biblical conception of the authority and role of God's word in how we are doing this, how

I'm interacting with the unbeliever? Am I seeing and interpreting the unbeliever in light of how

Scripture defines and understands the nature of the unbeliever, okay? So I want to look for those key elements within the presuppositional method in Scripture and share those with my classical apologist friend and call him to consistency, okay?

Now, there might be some other issues here as well that kind of throw a monkey wrench into all of this.

I do believe that presuppositional apologetics is the biblical approach. But one of the reasons why many people don't share the methodology, there might be a number of reasons why, is that they might not share your theology.

I've said this ad nauseum on this channel, your theology will determine your apologetic because apologetics itself is theological.

It flows out of your theology. And so say if the person is not a Calvinist, they're not reformed in their theology, that might impact how they do apologetics.

So there might be kind of a deeper theological difference with your friend as to why they're not seeing why you hold to a presuppositional approach.

And at that point, you're gonna get into the discussion as to how our theology determines our apologetic, and then you're gonna have to defend your theology biblically.

And again, we wanna do so with gentleness and respect, but yeah, when you're talking to your fellow apologist buddies, you're gonna have to defend certain views and have fruitful discussion, okay?

The point in that is being able to do that without strangling each other, okay?

All right? I don't know why, when you debate the issue of like Calvinism, reformed theology, apologetic methodology, eschatology for that matter, study of end times, the debates over creation views thing, for some reason,

Christians, they go insane, okay? You don't wanna do that, okay? You wanna gently point these things out.

You have a shared belief in the authority of scripture and you want to press for consistency. If this is what the

Bible seems to be teaching, what does that look like when we consistently apply that to our apologetic?

I think that's the best route to take. I have many classical apologist friends, and I've taken this very approach.

They might not agree with me at the end, but I've given them something to think about. Am I being consistent with the

Bible when I assume categories of neutrality or am

I implicitly assuming autonomy with respect to human reason? How is that working out?

If I get my brothers and sisters in Christ who are classical evidential to ask those questions, that's one step in the right direction, okay?

So that's how I would answer that question. That's a good question, okay? Let's see here. All right, oh boy.

So this is kind of similar to the first question we got. So the next question is, how do we teach presuppositional apologetics to children?

Again, super great question, okay? And I'm going to punt to Pastor Jeff Durbin, okay?

So a while back, I had Pastor Jeff on my channel, okay? And I don't know if I asked him this question or someone asked this question, as I think it was live.

Someone said, how do you teach this stuff to your kids? And I thought his answer was really great, which

I was surprised because I think he was coming off doing like something, you know, his whole day was busy.

He's a really busy guy. Even when I went to Arizona and I recorded classes for the Apologia Studios Academy, which

I highly recommend you guys check out, I only saw him for a couple of minutes. I only spoke with him for a little.

He's a very busy guy, great guy though. Nevertheless, I asked him this question and he gave a brilliant answer.

And he said, when your kids are asking you questions, okay, whether it's theological questions or maybe they went to school and, you know, they heard something from a non -Christian friend, a good question to ask your kid is this, what does the

Bible say about that? Okay, why is there so much suffering in the world?

Well, what does the Bible have to say about that? Now, this is key because it sounds like a simple question, but what it does is it instills in your child the importance of allowing

God's word to inform our questions, okay? It trains our children to acknowledge the authority of God's word when asking those questions, okay, and then you can dive into what the

Bible has to say and explain how the Bible answers some of those questions. So again, you don't have to use the language of presuppositional apologetics or the necessary preconditions of intelligibility or ectypal knowledge and, you know, archetypal knowledge and all these sorts of things, okay?

As some of you probably passed out, like I have no idea what he means by that, okay? All words and terms that are important to the discussion of apologetic methodology.

However, asking the question, well, what does the Bible have to say about that is a good way to instill in your child the importance of the authority of God's word, okay?

And that's really where we start, okay? The presuppositional apologetic method is a method that is grounded and standing upon the authority of God and his word, all right?

So I thought that was awesome. Also teaching your kids the importance of how our apologetics flows from our theology.

Your kids need to know theology as well, right? They need to know the Bible in general and things like that. So you can talk about the importance of the authority of scripture, but just even theological questions,

I mean, respond. Hey, what does the Bible have to say about it? Let's go to God's word and see what it says, okay? Very, very important, very, very useful.

I thought that was an excellent answer. Kudos to Pastor Jeff there. Now, someone asked the question, how does presuppositional apologetics work in evangelism?

Yeah, so this is a good question, okay? I think a lot of people come at evangelism in inappropriate way in the sense that some people tend to separate, they tend to separate the exercise of evangelism and apologetics.

I actually think they go hand to hand. I think the first time I heard this was from Dr. Walter Martin, the original

Bible Answer Man. He said this, he said that apologetics is the handmaid of theology, okay?

And that's 100%, I'm sorry, the handmaid, apologetics is the handmaid of evangelism, okay, and that's so important to grasp, okay?

It is near impossible to do evangelism to the exclusion of apologetics, okay?

It's very rare, it's not impossible, but it's very rare that when you proclaim and share the gospel, someone just says, oh my goodness,

I'm a sinner, I need Jesus, and then they fall down and cry out to God, okay? Not impossible, but the reality is that when you share the gospel, naturally and appropriately so, people will have questions, and that will thrust you automatically into the realm of apologetics, okay?

So apologetics, I think when we ask the question here, how does presuppositional apologetics work in evangelism?

Well, both are rooted and grounded in the authority of God's word, okay?

So we allow God's word to inform how we do apologetics, and we allow God's word to inform how we do evangelism, okay?

That's very, very important. Oh, you get this, you know, people can do evangelism in unbiblical ways, and people can do apologetics in unbiblical ways, okay?

Pardon, I hear a sneeze coming on, pardon. Maybe they could edit that out, sorry about that.

But we wanna see how these things work together. Both operate and are understood within the context of what the word of God has to say about those things, okay?

So evangelism is apologetic. We are proclaiming, okay, the lordship of Christ, and how is that lordship of Christ, how is it established through the fact that God raised

Jesus from the dead? Apologetics is tethered to evangelism.

And it's not just that God raised Jesus from the dead. What that means, okay, as we present it in an evangelistic context, is itself informed by the word of God, okay?

Because it is not the Christian position that some dude over 2 ,000 years ago was raised from the dead.

That's not the Christian position. The Christian position is that it is Jesus, the second person of the

Trinity, that was raised from the dead for our redemption, okay? We need to understand that the resurrection of Jesus that we proclaim in evangelism finds its meaning and its context in God's word.

And so both are apologetic, are evangelism, rooted, grounded, and defined by scriptural categories, okay?

So that's very, very important. We do not want to separate those two disciplines, all right? Pardon, all right.

Next question is, how do we deal with hecklers or trolls? Oh boy, okay.

I've had my fair share of hecklers and trolls. My ministry is predominantly here online.

So that is going to be in the comment section, okay? So it really is gonna depend.

So how you deal with a heckler or a troll in person is obviously going to be a little different than how you deal with hecklers and trolls in your comment section or things like that, okay?

I think it really is going to depend, okay? I do believe in the principle of choosing your battles wisely, okay?

Not everyone that heckles you or trolls you is worthy of a response, okay?

It is up to you to give your time into interacting with someone who appears to just be heckling and trolling and is not very much concerned with actually having a meaningful dialogue, okay?

So it's really going to depend. I get some comments on my YouTube channel, sometimes they're like essay -long things, complaints or maybe something

I said or whatever. And I know for a fact that if I, just by the way it's written, if I interact with this person, we're probably not gonna get anywhere, okay?

My time, pardon, my time is valuable.

So I can't spend 45 minutes writing a post answering every single thing, especially when it's filled with like insults and these sorts of things.

I just need to choose who I interact with. I have interacted with people. I've made entire videos in response to certain points that people brought up.

But if I find that someone's super disrespectful, it doesn't look like they're interested really in a genuine interaction.

I just don't waste my time. I do not throw the pearls before the swine, so to speak.

Sorry, I'm not calling, that's a Bible verse, okay? I'm not looking at anyone in particular calling you a swine, you get what

I mean. So it really is gonna depend. In other contexts, I think it is appropriate to respond to the heckler and the troll, especially for the sake of those who might be watching or might be reading, okay?

In this case, you wanna follow the principle found in Proverbs 26, verse four and five, where the author of the

Proverbs says, "'Answer not a fool according to his folly, "'lest you be like him yourself.'" And then the next verse says, "'Answer a fool according to his folly, "'lest he be wise in his own eyes.'"

I think this passage does really great in teaching us balance and how we approach these things.

Again, like I said, sometimes it's best to ignore a heckler. Don't waste your time. Other times, we need to be able to expose foolishness, and we need to be able to prevent trolls and hecklers and people who are doing these sorts of things, prevent them from misleading others, okay?

And so in that regard, yeah, I think we should respond to people who are trolling or misleading, misguiding, or preventing you from effectively communicating the gospel.

So again, there's not like a one -size -fits -all kind of answer or it's gonna depend on the context, but yeah,

I think that's how I would approach that question. I hope that's helpful, okay?

Now, another question that I got, pardon. Another question

I received is, how does presuppositional apologetics apply to competing religions, okay?

It seems to work well with atheism. How do we use this in a religious context?

All right, so that's an excellent question. Now, I did have, some years ago, I had

Dr. Chris Bolt on the show. I think it's called Presupp Apply to Competing Religious Claims or something along those lines.

If you go on YouTube and you type in Chris Bolt, competing religions or something like that, it should pop up.

Excellent discussion, and I'm going to punt to his answer. I thought his answer was really great when I asked him the same question.

He said that presuppositionalism applies to competing religions in the same way it applies to atheism, right?

We're not doing anything different, right? Greg Bonson talked about this as well, okay? Some people who criticize presuppositionalism, they'll say, well, it worked good with the atheists, but what happens when the

Mormon comes along and they have their authoritative books? At that point, as J.

Warner Wallace once told me, he said, presuppositionalism is good to undercut the other side.

You kind of undercut their assumptions so that it doesn't work, but then at that point, you're going to have to give a positive case for the

Christian faith. At that point, everyone's an evidentialist. That's what he told me, and of course, I disagree with that.

I don't think that appealing to evidence and building a positive case for the Christian faith reduces to evidentialism or classicalism with respect to apologetic methodology, okay?

This is very important. I've said this multiple times on this channel. There is a difference between the use of, the utilization of evidence and the utilization of evidentialism as an apologetic methodology, right?

There's a difference between evidentialism, an apologetic method, and the use of evidence so that when the presuppositionalist appeals to evidence for the reliability of the

Bible or evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, when the presuppositionalist does that, he does not magically cease to be a presuppositionalist, right?

There is nothing inherent within the presuppositional method that says that we are not permitted to use evidence, okay?

So as a presuppositionalist, I could undercut the presuppositions of the unbeliever, and as a presuppositionalist,

I can build a positive case as to why Christianity is true. Now, they work hand in hand.

For example, when I argue the transcendental argument for God's existence, yes, that's going to involve a demonstration of the falsity of the competing worldview, but it doesn't stop there.

I not only show that the Mormon, the Muslim, or the

Jehovah's Witness, or fill in the blank, I not only show that their worldview lacks the adequate foundation for intelligible experience, okay?

But I also have to show how the Christian worldview does in fact, as to quote

Dr. James Anderson, how the Christian worldview does in fact pay the bills on those claims.

And then we have to be able to do that. But the methodology is the same. I'm not doing anything different with the proponent of a competing religion than I'm doing with the atheist, right?

I'm answering not the fool, answering the fool, according to our Proverbs passage,

Proverbs 26, four and five. Okay, so the method is the same. I guess the difference is going to be the sorts of things that we are emphasizing or that we're talking about, okay?

So again, the methodology is consistent through and through no matter who we are talking with, okay?

The atheist has a suppressed knowledge of God. My goal is to expose that suppressed knowledge in the atheist, okay?

The Muslim has a suppressed knowledge of the true God. My job is to expose the suppressed knowledge that the

Muslim has of the true God. The Mormon has suppressed knowledge of the true

God. My goal in addressing them is to expose the suppressed knowledge of the true God that they have and to show that what they are professing with their mouth is inconsistent with the things they believe in their heart of hearts.

And the reason for that is that they are made in the image of God and that they know the God that they are rejecting.

They are suppressing God in their unrighteousness as Romans chapter one tells us. So that's how

I would approach, you know, at the application of presuppositionalism to competing religious claims.

All right. All right, let's see if we have some more questions here. Let me take a quick water break. Again, if this is your first time visiting

Revealed Apologetics, welcome, welcome. I'm glad you're here. If you like the content, if you're listening and you're saying, hey, this is super interesting, it's super helpful,

I really appreciate this stuff, please don't hesitate. Click that subscribe button and the notification bell so you can keep up with a bunch of other things that we're gonna be putting out.

I'm super excited. As you guys know, I have a new partnership with Apologia Studios.

They were so generous to send me some new lights, some camera, a new camera, these sorts of things.

It looks nice and I really appreciate that. And now I'm gonna be putting out much more content.

So if you guys know in the past, I kind of just randomly posted videos and, you know, maybe do two or three videos or an interview and then two months later,

I'd come out with something else. Well, the goal here is to be more consistent and I want to really provide you with material that is going to be very, very helpful to you, okay?

I also want to point you in the direction of ApologiaStudios .com. If you, again, you're new to this channel and you don't know anything about Apologia Studios, there is, there are a lot of, there's a lot of content on their channel that you'd be crazy not to want to avail yourself of, okay?

There's Bonson U. They have the collection of Bonson's lectures, Greg Bonson's lectures on apologetics, philosophy, law.

You totally want to check those out, super helpful. Much of what I've learned is by listening to many of the lectures by Dr.

Greg Bonson, his books, you know, Van Til, and they've got a bunch of other things available on that website,

ApologiaStudios .com. Highly recommend it. Before we even had kind of this link up between Revealed Apologetics and Apologia, I constantly used that website all the time.

I love the lectures that are available on there. Following Apologia on YouTube, they've got great videos on evangelism and things like that, so highly recommend that content if you're interested, all right?

So let's go on to our next question. Okay, let's see here.

Was that the last question? Let's see. I think that was the last question.

Okay, all right, well, that's the last question. That's perfectly fine, okay. All right, well, if you don't remember at the beginning when

I took the first question, what is presuppositional apologetics, I want to remind folks to check out that book that I made mention of in that section on presuppositionalism.

The book is called Resurrection, Scripture, and Reformed Apologetics, I think it's published by McMaster Theological Seminary.

I really like that section there on presuppositionalism, and so I use that definition. I'm not sure if it's original to Stephen West, but I really appreciated that section, okay?

If you guys really enjoy book references and things like that, I am looking to do a book recommendation episode where I go through some really cool books that I think would be useful for folks, even kind of going through some less commonly known presuppositional books.

I've got a couple that folks might not know about, but you would greatly benefit by getting these books.

Many of them are available on Amazon. Not all are available on Kindle, I don't think.

I'm not sure if you're a digital reader or a physical books kind of guy, but I'm thinking of doing that in the future.

I love book recommendations. When I read a book or I listen to a debate or something like that,

I don't know about you, but I get this kind of immense drive to like study and to like dive into something, kind of inspires you.

So maybe kind of walking through some books and saying, hey, you wanna check these books out, maybe I'll inspire you to go and dig a little deeper and study a little more.

So if I can do that, mission accomplished, all right. Well, I guess that is the last question here that I've received.

And so without further ado, then we're gonna kind of conclude things. Guys, thank you so much for joining me.

Once again, if this is your first time, please click that notification bell and the like button.

If you didn't like it, if you didn't like this episode, I hope that's not the case, but if you did like it, please click that like button.

It does matter, it does help. And you guys are greatly appreciated. Until next time, take care.