Talking Presuppositionalism with Mr. Q

Introduction to the Reform Rookie Podcast and the Guest’s Background

Well, hello friends and welcome to the Reform Rookie Podcast. My name is Anthony Vigneault and I'm your Reform Rookie host, bringing you all things Reform today. The goal of this channel and this podcast is to take the deep, rich truths of the Reform tradition and help you to see the beauty in them and the joy you'll experience in understanding them better.

Understanding these truths will help us better know the God of the Scriptures and help us better appreciate His plan of salvation because this is about Him. Well, today I have a very special guest, Mr. Chris Quarulina.

He's a Bible teacher and an athletic director at my son's school, which is Our Savior, a New American in Center East New York. Just want to give a little shout out to him. He also has a Master of Divinity from the Master's Seminary in Southern California under John MacArthur, which we might touch on.

He also has a passion for apologetics and evangelism. And today we'll be discussing apologetic methodology and evangelism itself. So welcome to the video podcast, Mr. Quarulina.

Thank you. I just have one correction. My MDiv is not complete.

I don't want to...

I have most of an MDiv. I haven't completed the program.

So we'll call it an almost MDiv.

Yeah.

Okay.

But you're on the road.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Excellent. Is there anything else besides that that you want to share with the audience or just let them know about you?

Yeah, sure.

I mean, I guess I was going to share my testimony in the beginning, right? That was step one.

Yeah, yeah. You were going to ask me about that. Yeah, sure.

Just a little bit about you personally, and then we certainly will go into your testimony.

Sure.

Sure. Yeah.

So I spent nine years in Los Angeles. I was born and raised in New York. I was here until I was 24. And then I spent about nine years in Los Angeles with my dad and my two half brothers. And then while I was over there, that's actually when I came to know Christ.

And that church, Grace Community Church, was the first church I became a member of. And that's where I did a lot of my learning and studying. Still learning and studying now, but the majority of it was done there at this point in my life.

And then eventually started talking to my best friend from high school, who I started dating, and then I moved back to New York to marry her. And that's how I wound up back here. I've been back since June.

We got married in August. That's terrific.

So that's where I am now.

I'm in our bedroom right now. I was going to do this in the studio, but I realized there was a big mirror behind me.

It would have been weird.

No worries at all.

So the bedroom was better. I don't think it's messy.

Nah, don't worry.

I'll just let everybody in the audience say in the comments whether your room is messy or not. We'll see.

We'll get a little survey going.

Testimony, Conversion, and Reading the Bible Before Belief

So okay, so you were in California, and that's when you began to Was it somebody in your family that shared Christ with you? What happened?

No.

So I had a few believers in my family, but I didn't really take it seriously at all. It wasn't really taught in depth. I didn't know much about what Jesus did. It was very nebulous kind of, how do you know you're saved, or you know Jesus?

You get this funny feeling or whatever when you go to church. So it wasn't very I can't really grasp onto that. I don't know what that means really. So I had a somewhat religious Some sort of religiosity, we'll say, when I was younger, but nothing actual.

When I moved out to Los Angeles, I was caught up in life. I was in my late teens, early 20s, doing late teens, early 20s stuff, very foolish, foolish.

Living.

I met somebody at a job that I had. I would say the job that I had was providential, because I somehow wound up being a sushi chef in Los Angeles. Knew nothing about it. Knew nothing about it. Had no intention of joining the restaurant industry, anything like that.

But yeah, providentially through a series of events, I wound up being a sushi chef in.

Los Angeles.

That's the cure of men.

Yeah.

I wound up I met somebody who wound up preaching the gospel to me. She was obviously a believer. She was very attractive. I wanted to meet her, but for fleshly, secular reasons, as a young man in my 20s.

But she wound up preaching the gospel to me. We dated for a little while. She gave me a Bible, and then she broke up with me because I was a non-believer. I was like, what do you mean unequally yoked?

What does that even mean? You know, whatever.

It has nothing to do with eggs.

Yeah.

Right.

So, I wound up reading the Bible. It was a Bible that she had given to me. I was reading it, and I was in my office of my then failing business. I opened a karate school. I wanted to get out of the restaurant industry.

I wanted to have something of my own. I opened a karate school. As much as I loved teaching and running the classes, I knew nothing about business or how to bring students in. So, here I am in this karate school with not enough students.

Instead of getting onto the internet and looking up, how do I bring students into this place? How do I bring money into this place? I was reading the Bible that I was given. I have a background in English literature.

I went to school. My undergrad is teaching English, so secondary education and teaching English. So, I read the entire Bible before I became a believer. I got to the end of it having no idea what I read.

I got to the end of the book of Revelation, and I said, what? What does it even mean? So I read it again. But I didn't read the whole thing the second time. I was just kind of like piecing through it, and I wound up in Job.

As I was reading Job, I was starting to connect with him. In my whole teenage life, I was like, God either doesn't exist or he hates me. Why is he being so mean to me? All sorts of angst and anger. So, when Job finally chimes in with his friends who are saying, you must have done this.

You must have sinned. You must have this going on. All his friends are chiming in, trying to tell him what he did wrong. He finally starts to question his relationship with God. And then what does God do?

Somewhere around chapter 35, God chimes in. He comes out of the whirlwind and says, whatever translation you're reading, dress for action like a man. I'll question you, and you'll answer me. Who are you?

Gird up your loins. Where were you when I laid out the heavens like a scroll? Where were you when I sunk its foundations and hung it on nothing? Yeah, where were you, Job? And I started thinking, well, where was I?

This guy was living a pretty good life. He loved God, at least. And here's God laying into him. But I was doing the same thing my whole life, and I wasn't nearly as righteous as this guy. And that's where I got convicted.

That's what really showed me my sin. I was like, whoa, maybe I do need a savior. This guy needs to be corrected. Maybe I need to be corrected, too. Maybe this is for me to listen to right now. And so that's when I was like, all right, I'm yours.

What do you want me to do? I wound up closing the karate school because I realized it was an idol. I learned about idolatry. I said, oh, this is a problem, so I closed it. And then I started going to a few different churches.

I was sitting in a few different churches and hearing, just listening to them. And I already had read the Bible one in some percentage times. I'm just listening, and I go, yeah, that's not what that passage says.

No, that's not what the author's trying to say to here.

That's not what they're teaching.

And I would confront the pastors after church. I wouldn't raise my hand. Excuse me, no. But I would go afterwards, and I would talk to the pastor and say, that's not what that says. Why are you teaching it that way?

And then we would have discussions. And I got to the point where I said, you know what? I kind of wanted to go to seminary, but now I don't because I guess you don't learn anything there. And then I found out that John MacArthur's church was very close to where I lived.

It was about 20 minutes from where I was living. Started going there and realized there was a seminary on campus and was recommended by a few shepherds in the church that I should do that. Okay, so I kind of went that way.

And that's how I wound up in seminary. And it's just kind of been a path ever since there. Yeah, it's been a pretty wild ride. There's a lot of other details, but that's... Sure, sure.

So was it when you got into Mass's seminary, or did you start going to church there first and then the seminary, or you just...

Yes, I started going to church there first. I was in church there for about a year, maybe about a year before I started seminary there. I had a passion for prison ministry because I knew the life that I had lived prior to Christ should have easily landed me there.

And I said, you know what? Let me go to this prison because I feel like I can connect with them on a certain level that would allow them to be receptive to the gospel. Not change the message, but just connect with the people and say, this is what Jesus did for you.

He lived, He died, and He rose again, and you need Him because you're a sinner. Interesting enough, nobody in prison really tries to deny that they're a sinner. A lot of them are proud of it. And that really removes one of the obstacles when you're preaching the gospel.

A lot of people don't realize their need for a savior, or even that they're that bad. But when you're in prison, like, yeah, I killed somebody, or yeah, I stole something, or yeah, I did this or that, they know they're not good people.

And some of them are proud of it. So it removes an obstacle, but then preaching the gospel there is important. So I started doing that before I was in seminary. I met the guy who leads that ministry. And he was one of my seminary recommendations because he went to Grace Community Church.

So that whole ministry at North County Correctional Facility is run by Only Hope Prison Ministries. And the leader of that goes to that church. So that was the easy path in. One of my roommates at the time was already serving there.

And so he introduced me to Frank, the guy who leads it. And that's how that happened. And then eventually, he was one of my seminary recommendations.

You should go.

All right.

Put me in that direction.

Reformed Theology, Scripture, and the Move Toward Apologetics

So now, as you started to go to the church, you were listening to John MacArthur preach. Obviously, he's a five-point Calvinist. He holds to the doctrines of grace. So was that just your first entrance into that theology?

Or did you have another theology and came and had it changed a bit? How did it happen?

I was kind of at the point where I didn't want people's opinions to shape what I thought about God. I wanted to know what God is, who He is, what He does. I wanted to know the truth about Him. And I think I just...

What's important, I think, for anyone to do is no matter who you're listening to, look at the passage that they're teaching and make sure that's what it says in the Bible. Because I might say something today that's wrong on your podcast because I'm a man and I make mistakes.

So I need to make sure that what I'm saying is the truth and what the Bible says. And what drew me over there was the fact that his entire draw, his entire... The point that he wants to make is that I don't want to preach what I think.

I just want to preach what it says here. So we call it grammatical, historical, hermeneutics, interpretation. What does it say? What did the author mean? How do I apply that to my life? But first, what did the author mean?

And I need to change myself to align with this. Not I need to change this to align with me. And that's the challenge that we face. So I thought that was attractive because, like I said, I realized that I was wrong.

And I need to correct that.

Yeah, right, right, right.

So what was it that drew you into apologetics and evangelism?

I was kind of immediately... I would say almost the moment I was saved, I wanted people to know the truth. I knew how much time I had spent telling people other things and thinking other things and influencing people in bad ways.

And so I wanted all of those people or as many as I could reach to know what I know now. So it was almost instantaneous. I guess I looked at it like this. I had a teaching gift. I knew that because I taught martial arts and I went to school to be a teacher.

So I had a teaching gift. I thought that was clear. The question was, what should I be teaching?

Right.

And so at that point, every book in the New Testament, even the shortest ones, even Jude, on one page warns about false teachers.

Right.

And if it's that important that it needs to be mentioned that many times, we need to be on guard against that.

For sure.

And how do you do that? Well, you have to know the truth. You can't tell people the truth if you don't know the truth. And you can't defend the truth if you don't know the truth either.

Right.

So then it becomes, well, what is your methodology? How do you even do that? What's the right way to. Or is there more than one way I can do?

I don't know.

And I began studying that.

So now, obviously, I know you come from a presuppositional methodology. That's your viewpoint. So why don't you explain to our audience in simple terms, what is a presuppositional apologetic?

Well, everybody has a foundation for what they believe. Everybody has a worldview. Everyone has a way they look at why things happen the way they do. Whether it's a biblical worldview, or you can talk about a secular humanist worldview or a rationalist worldview.

Everybody has this foundation for why they believe what's true. And if you were to appeal to anything outside of that, then you would be conceding that you're wrong because something else has the authority to prove you correct.

Right.

So it goes something like this. I believe the Bible is true. I believe everything in it is the foundation for truth. So I'm going to appeal to evidences to prove my point. No, I'm going to prove that the Bible is true.

And that is the foundation of what I believe. So I appeal to the Bible as truth. And if evidences support my belief, then okay, fine. But that's not why I believe it. And that's not what I'm appealing to.

I like one of the first teachings that I came across when I was learning this stuff was Votibachum's, Why I Choose to Believe the Bible. I don't know if you've ever seen that one. I could sum it up kind of quick for the audience who hasn't seen it.

He says something like this. It's I choose to believe the Bible because it's a reliable collection of historic documents that were written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. It tells of specific prophecies that were divine in origin rather than human in nature and came to fulfillment.

There's something like that. You can look it up. It's Votibachum, Why I Choose to Believe the Bible. It's not my words. But then he proves it by going to 2 Peter 1.

So he supports it.

So 2 Peter 1 is the entire proof text. And that passage is Peter talking about the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus is glowing like the sun. And he says that we have something more sure the scriptures.

And of course, he's writing about the Old Testament at the time because the New Testament wasn't complete. But he says more sure than Jesus faced shining like a bright light in front of me is the scriptures because they talk about him.

2000 years before he was born. So that's stuck with me for a lot, clearly, because I remember what he said. But he quoted Spurgeon. Spurgeon says, I defend the Bible like I defend a lion.

You don't defend a lion.

You just let him go.

He'll take care of it.

Exactly.

So basically, presuppositional apologetics is all about your starting point.

Yes.

Where you start. So for presuppositional like yourself, the Bible would be your ultimate authority. That would be your starting point. And then you would reason from the Bible to what we see in the world.

You wouldn't take what we see in the world and use that to try to prove the Bible.

Correct. Correct.

Yeah.

I don't try to prove the Bible is true. It is true. The world just happens to agree with that. People in the world, but the things you see in the world.

Yeah.

Does everyone have presuppositions?

Everyone has presuppositions. Most of them don't believe that the Bible is their presupposition. You can go to someone who will say the Big Bang Theory is true. And schools teach that as truth, even though it contradicts every scientific law that has been proven to be true.

So that argument goes something like, here's the Big Bang Theory. Nothing exploded and created everything. And an explosion created perfect order.

Okay. Well.

Sounds completely reasonable.

What? Yeah.

That's completely reasonable.

And I was talking to Mr. K. Duncan Casabonte. He's one of my colleagues at Our Savior. He's a science teacher there, also a Bible teacher there. And he has a really brilliant, I can't do it justice, but he has this thing where when scientists can't explain something, they just throw gravity at it because gravity is mysterious and we don't know why.

We know that the bigger a thing is, the more gravitational pull it has, but we don't know why it began to gravitate together in the first place. So because it's confusing, when you can't explain something, you just say, oh, gravity.

And then that's their explanation. So that's very scientific, right? As you can tell.

Oh, my goodness.

Very scientific explanation.

That's funny. So now your view on apologetics, coming from a presuppositional standpoint, would you say that's distinctly reformed? Is that something that comes out of your Calvinistic or reformed theology?

Well, I would say you need to have a high view of Scripture to appreciate it even, but to use it also. So if you have a low view of Scripture, you're not going to be presuppositional. You're going to use some sort of evidences to prove the Bible's true.

I believe that a high view of Scripture is a watermark of being reformed, whether you're Reformed Baptist or Reformed Presbyterian or whatever. I don't know too many Pentecostals or Roman Catholics who have a very high view of Scripture.

A lot of times they're elevating what people have said to a degree that it shouldn't be. So is it distinctly reformed? I think someone else could use it, but it tends to be more reformed. The people you're going to read come from Reformed backgrounds.

Right.

And would that be because Romans 1 says the evidence for God is within everyone. Everybody's going to be without excuse because God's visible attributes have been displayed through what is made. So God has given us ample evidence to the point where no one can say there is no God.

Right. Yeah.

It would be foolish to say there's no God. That's how you wind up saying nothing exploded. So everyone knows that God's there. But the reason people of Romans 1 also says they suppress the truth by their unrighteousness.

The reason people do that is because they don't want to repent. They don't like what it means if the Bible is true. If the Bible is true, that means I need to change. But I like what I do. It feels good.

I don't want to change that.

I'm enjoying it. So I'm going to look for everything I possibly can that will deny that God exists so that I don't have to change what I'm doing. And that's what Romans 1 goes on to explain that, what was going on.

All sorts of immorality, everything was happening.

That shouldn't be happening.

Yeah, so that, yeah.

So God's given human beings, all humanity, enough evidence to believe that He exists. So us giving them more evidence does what?

Waste your time. I don't have to prove to you that God exists. I just have to show you what He said.

Right.

It doesn't make sense to me to prove that the Bible's true if I know the Bible's.

True.

If you know that God exists, that is a Romans 1 argument. Why waste time on something you already know? What do you say when your life is terrible? Oh, God, please help. When you cry out to Him, even if you don't believe in Him, why?

Why even use His name? Why do we use His name as a curse, a cuss word, if we don't believe He exists? It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, I've never heard somebody stub their toe and say, oh, Allah.

Yeah, right.

It's never like that. It's always Jesus, right? So that would be an evidential approach to apologetics. What about a classical approach to apologetics? What would you say about that method?

So classical, I believe they like to prove God exists first and then move into evidences. So it's like a two-step evidential method. And I don't think it's necessary because then you go back to this, why do I have to prove God exists?

And just to prove that it's Jesus, right? So the evidential method is I'm going to use evidences to prove that Jesus is God, and that He is your Savior, and that you need Him. And then the classical approach would be more of a two-step method.

I'm going to prove God exists, and then I'm going to prove that God is Jesus. So it's just another obstacle that I need to get past, when I really don't need to get past it anyway, because you know in your heart that God exists.

Just look at the stars, they're beautiful.

How is that random? How is the snowstorm outside right now random? Look how beautiful the snow looks.

Scripture, Paul in Athens, and the 1 Peter 3:15 Defense

So one of the things that I find really interesting is that the Bible never, ever, ever makes an argument for the existence of God. It starts with God existing and working from that presupposition. It doesn't look to prove the existence of God.

It's standing on the foundation of God to make its claims. So there's no argument that anybody in the Bible makes to prove that God exists.

No, it's always assumed.

Jesus assumes it's true, He's there.

Paul assumes He's there. Paul in Athens, right? In Acts 17. He observes their culture. He respects them. He observes their culture. I perceive that you guys are very religious. But you even have an altar to an unknown God.

And He doesn't try to prove God exists there. He just says, you know God exists. Let me tell you about the one you don't know about because He's the real one. So He uses their culture to observe and see where they're at and what they believe.

And I believe we should do that. There's, you know, some people admit they know God exists, but they don't like the idea of sin. Okay, well, let's talk about sin. Some people know that they're bad. They know that God exists, but they don't understand our relationship to Him or why we need a Savior.

Okay, well, let's talk about a Savior.

Let's talk about God's wrath and judgment, right? So I'll start at different points depending on who I'm talking to and what they already know or believe. But I never waste my time trying to prove that God exists.

Because in your heart, you know He's there.

Right, right.

And that's part of the apologetics verse that everybody uses, 1 Peter 3 .15. Always be prepared to set apart. Always be prepared to make a defense for the hope that's within you with gentleness and respect.

And what happens is they leave the first part of the verse off, which is, set apart Christ as Lord of your heart.

Yes.

Right?

When you set apart Christ as Lord of your heart, that's where you start. Jesus accepted the Scriptures as true. Why would we now go about trying to prove to an unbeliever that the Scriptures are true?

We should stand on the Scriptures and make our argument from that. Because if we have an omniscient God who reveals something to us, we can have confidence and certainty. Because an all-knowing God who knows everything, when He reveals something to us, first of all, He can't lie.

Second of all, we know it can be true. It's true because He's all-knowing. When human beings propose to make arguments from science or from philosophy, because it's rooted and grounded in humanity, they can make an error.

So we don't have the same certainty that we can have with an argument from the Scriptures.

Circular Reasoning, Ultimate Authority, and the Impossibility of the Contrary

Yeah.

And the other thing that we want to keep in mind is that people who do what we do will often be accused of circular reasoning.

Yes.

But it's the least circular methodology that you can possibly have. John Frame does a good job explaining this in one of his books that I'm forgetting the name of. But it goes something like this. If I'm a rationalist, I need to use rationale to prove that that's...

I have to reason my way to prove that rationalism is correct. So I'm using reason to prove reason. So that's circular, right? But if I'm saying, okay, where's the left side of the screen? I guess I should start here.

God is true. The Bible is true. God is real. And then I'm saying, okay, so I start with God. Then he gave us the Bible. I'm learning these words. Now, how do I take these words and apply them to my life?

Now, this is linear, right? I'm starting at God, and I'm working my way from it, right? That's a straight line. I'm working my way from him, I should say, right? I'm not starting with, here's my rationale.

Here's my reasoning. I'm going to use evidences to prove that it's true. I'm going to read it because it's true. And now I'm back here at the beginning, and Jesus is Lord and Savior. That's circular. I'm not doing that.

I'm starting with the scriptures, and I'm working my way from there, right?

Right.

Yeah, usually the pushback I get is, well, prove the Bible is true without using the Bible. And I say, okay, well, prove rationality is true without using rationality.

Right.

Exactly.

It's virtuous circularity and vicious circularity, right? When we're dealing with ultimate authorities, if I was to appeal to something above the scriptures to prove them, well, then that would become my ultimate authority.

Right.

So you start with your ultimate authority with being the scriptures, knowing that they come from the revelation of an omniscient God. Now we can have certainty. Now our worldview will make sense. And it's not viciously circular because it's an ultimate authority.

It's what we start with so that it ends up proving itself. The same way when somebody tells me truth doesn't exist. I just ask them, is that true?

Is that true? Yeah.

Is that true?

It's a self-defeating argument.

Yeah.

So the proof for the Christian God is, deny the Christian worldview and your worldview will be left to absurdity.

Yeah.

And it's, well, it's the only non-contradicting worldview. So you talk about the impossibility of the contrary, which was very Vantillian or Bonson, learned it from Vantill. But what is the impossibility of the contrary?

Well, if this isn't true, then nothing else can possibly work. Nothing else makes any sense if this isn't true. Why is that? Well, because your worldview is self-defeating. If you don't use the scriptures to make sense of it, every other worldview has internal contradictions.

And if the worldview has internal contradictions, it's not true. You can't live the thing you believe because it doesn't work. But the Bible is the only one, you know, biblical worldview is the only one that's internally consistent.

If you stay within it, you can live a life according to what it says, and you don't have to change anything.

It's the only one that works.

Right.

So that's a very important point, because if somebody is proposing a different worldview than ours, and there's a contradiction in their worldview, that's an identifier that that worldview is self-defeating.

Yes.

It's not coherent in that there are competing views that are contradictory. So we have to look for arbitrariness, inconsistency, and preconditions of intelligibility, right? So if a worldview contradicts itself, well, we can reject it because that doesn't make sense.

Very simple. You know, for Muslims, they read the Quran, and they say, well, the Quran is the word of God. But within the Quran, it says that Allah is the greatest deceiver. So if Allah is the greatest deceiver, all right, and he's the one who dictated the words of the Quran to Muhammad, how do you know he was telling the truth?

Right.

He could be deceiving you.

Even the language of that is interesting, because I know it's in Surah 5. I don't know exactly where in the Quran. I don't know the Quran like I know the word God. But I know in Surah 5 somewhere it says that you need to let your understanding rest on the law and the gospel.

And the way I understand law and gospel is the Old Testament and the New Testament. So if the Quran is pointing us backwards to the Bible, which says now if you add to my words, you are condemned, then how are we supposed to believe that?

Because it's telling us to believe the thing that says don't believe it.

Right.

So I've had this conversation with, you know, I've had a few Muslim friends, co-workers and things before I was a teacher at Osnos. And I've had these conversations, and they're really difficult questions for them to answer.

I don't think they come up very often. But yeah, and what you just said, I didn't realize was in there, that Allah is the greatest deceiver. Well, a name for Satan in the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament is the deceiver.