Talking Presuppositionalism with Mr. Q

Reformed Rookie

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Well, hello, friends, and welcome to the Reform Rookie Podcast. My name is Anthony Vigneault, and I'm your

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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

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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

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God of the Scriptures and help us better appreciate His plan of salvation, because this is about Him.

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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

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Our Savior in New America in Center East New York. Just want to give a little shout out to him. He also has a

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Master of Divinity from the Master's Seminary in Southern California under John MacArthur, which we might touch on.

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He also has a passion for apologetics and evangelism, and today we'll be discussing apologetic methodology and evangelism itself.

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So welcome to the video podcast, Mr. Quarulina. Thank you. I just have one correction.

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My MDiv is not complete. I don't want to... I have most of an MDiv, I haven't completed the program, so I just wanted to make sure

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So we'll call it an almost MDiv. Yeah. Okay. But you're on the road?

01:19

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

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Yeah. Sure. I mean, I guess I was going to share my testimony in the beginning, right? That was step one. Yeah. You didn't ask me about that.

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

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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

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I spent about nine years in Los Angeles with my dad and my two half brothers.

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And then while I was over there, that's actually when I came to know Christ, and that church,

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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.

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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

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I started dating, and then I moved back to New York to marry her. And that's how

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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.

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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.

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No worries at all. The bedroom was better. I don't think it's messy. No, don't worry.

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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.

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You were in California, and that's when you began to... Was there somebody in your family that shared

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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.

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It wasn't really taught in depth. I didn't know much about what

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Jesus did. There was very nebulous kind of, how do you know you're saved, or you know

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Jesus? You get this funny feeling or whatever when you go to church. So it wasn't very like...

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I can't really grasp onto that. I don't know what that means, really. So I had like a somewhat religious...

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Some sort of religiosity, we'll say, when I was younger, but nothing actual.

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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.

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And 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.

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Knew nothing about it, had no intention of joining the restaurant industry, anything like that.

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

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That's a true event. Yeah. I wound up,

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I met somebody who wound up preaching the gospel to me. She was obviously a believer.

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She was very attractive. I wanted to meet her, but for fleshly, secular reasons, as a young man in my 20s.

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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.

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And I was like, what do you mean unequally yoked? What does that even mean? You know, whatever. It has to do with eggs.

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Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I wound up reading the

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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.

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I opened a karate school. I wanted to get out of the restaurant industry. I wanted to have something of my own.

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I opened a karate school. And as much as I loved teaching and running the classes,

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I knew nothing about business or how to bring students in. So here

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I am in this karate school with not enough students. And instead of getting on to the

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Internet and looking up, how do I bring students into this place? How do I bring money into this place? I was reading the

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Bible that I was given. And I have a background in English literature.

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So I went to school. My undergrad is teaching

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English, so secondary education and teaching English. So I read the entire Bible before I became a believer.

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And I got to the end of it having no idea what I read. I got to the end of the

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Book of Revelation, and I said, what? What does it even mean? So I read it again.

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But I didn't read the whole thing the second time. I was just kind of like, you know, piecing through it and I wound up in Job. And as I was reading

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Job, I was starting to connect with him. You know, my whole teenage life,

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I was like, you know, God either doesn't exist or he hates me. Why is he being so mean to me? You know, all sorts of angst and anger.

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So when Job finally, you know, chimes in with his friends are saying, you know, you must have done that.

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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.

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And then what does God do? You know, somewhere around chapter 35, God chimes in.

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He comes out of the whirlwind and says, you know, whatever translation you're reading, dress for action like a man.

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I'll question you and you'll answer me. Who are you? Gird up your loins. Where were you when

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I laid out the heavens like a scroll? Where were you when I sunk its foundations and hung it on nothing? Well, yeah.

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Where were you, Job? And I started thinking, well, where was I? This guy was living a pretty good life.

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He loves God, at least. And here's God laying into him, you know.

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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.

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That's that's what really showed me my sin. I was like, whoa, maybe

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I do need a savior. This guy needs to be corrected. Maybe I need to be corrected, too.

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Maybe this is for me to listen to right now. And so that's when I was like, all right, I'm yours.

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What do you want me to do? I wound up closing the karate school because I realized it was an idol.

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I learned about idolatry and I said, oh, this is a problem, so I closed it. And then

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I started going to a few different churches. I I was sitting in a few different churches and hearing, just listening to them.

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And I already had read the Bible one in some percentage times. I'm just listening.

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And I go, yeah, that's not what that passage says. You know, that's not what that's not what the author is trying to say to hear.

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It's not that's not what they're teaching. And I would confront the pastors after church. I wouldn't raise my hand. Excuse me.

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No, you know, but I would I would come. I would go afterwards and I would talk to the pastor and say, you know, that's that's not what that says.

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Why are you teaching it that way? And and we would have discussions. And and I got to the point where I said, you know what?

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I kind of wanted to go to seminary, but now I don't because I guess you don't learn anything there.

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And then I found out that John MacArthur's church was very close to where I lived.

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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, you know, shepherds in the church that I should do that.

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OK, so I kind of went that way. And that's how I wound up in seminary.

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And it's just kind of been a path ever since there. Yeah, it's been a pretty wild ride.

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There's a lot of other details, but that's. Sure, sure. So was it when when you got into Mass's seminary or did you start going to church there first and then the seminary?

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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.

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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.

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And I said, you know what, let me 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.

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Not change the message, but just connect with the people and say, this is what Jesus did for you. You know, he lived, he died.

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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.

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A lot of them are proud of it. And that really removes one of the obstacles when you're preaching the gospel.

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A lot of people don't realize their need for a savior or even that they're that bad.

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But when you're in prison, like, yeah, I killed somebody or yeah, I stole something or yeah, I did this or that.

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You know, they know they're not good people and some of them are proud of it. So it removes an obstacle.

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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.

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So that whole ministry at North County Correctional Facility is run by Only Hope Prison Ministries.

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And the leader of that goes to that church. So that was the easy path. And one of my roommates at the time was already serving there.

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And so he introduced me to Frank, the guy who leads it. And that's how that happened.

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And then eventually, you know, he was one of my seminary recommendations. You should go. All right.

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Kind of pushed me in that direction. So now as you started to go to the church, you will listen to John McArthur preach.

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Obviously, he's a five point Calvinist. He holds to the doctrines of grace.

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So was that just your first entrance into that theology? Or did you have another theology and came and had it changed a bit?

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How did it happen? I was kind of at the point where I didn't want people's opinions to shape what

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I thought about God. I wanted to know what God is, who he is, what he does.

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I want to know the truth about him. And I think

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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

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Bible. Because, you know, I might say something today that's wrong on your podcast because I'm a man and I make mistakes.

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So I need to make sure that what I'm saying is the truth and what the Bible says.

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And what drew me over there was the fact that his entire draw, his entire, you know, you can say his...

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The point that he wants to make is that I don't want to preach what I think.

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I want to... I just want to preach what it says here. So, you know, we call it grammatical historical hermeneutics interpretation.

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You know, what does it say? What did the author mean? How do I apply that to my life? But first, what did the author mean?

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Right. And I need to change myself to align with this. Not I need to change this to align with me.

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And that's the challenge that we face. So I thought that was attractive because, you know, like I said,

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I realized that I was wrong and I need to correct that. Yeah.

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Right, right, right. So what was it that drew you into apologetics and evangelism?

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I was kind of immediately... I would say almost the moment

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I was saved, I wanted people to know the truth.

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I knew how much time I had spent telling people other things and thinking other things and influencing people in bad ways.

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And so I wanted all of those people or as many as I could reach to know what

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I know now. So it was almost instantaneous. I guess

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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.

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

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I be teaching? Right. And so at that point, every book in the

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New Testament, even the shortest ones, even Jude, on one page warns about false teachers.

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

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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.

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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

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I can do? I don't know. And I began studying that. So now, obviously,

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I know you come from a presuppositional methodology.

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That's your viewpoint. So why don't you explain to our audience in simple terms, what is a presuppositional apologetic?

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Well, everybody has a foundation for what they believe.

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Everybody has a worldview. Everyone has a way they look at why things happen the way they do.

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Right? Whether it's a biblical worldview, or you can talk about, you know, a secular humanist worldview or a rationalist worldview.

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Everybody has this foundation for why they believe what's true.

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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.

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Right? So it goes something like this. I believe the Bible's true. I believe everything in it is the foundation for truth.

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Um, so I'm going to appeal to evidences to prove my point. No, I'm going to prove that the

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Bible's true. And that is the foundation of what I believe. So I appeal to the Bible as truth.

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And if, you know, evidences support my belief, then okay, fine. But that's not why

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I believe it. And that's not what I'm appealing to. I like one of the first teachings that I came across when

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I was learning this stuff was Votibachum's, you know, why I choose to believe the Bible. I don't know if you've ever seen that one.

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I can sum it up. I could sum it up kind of quick for the audience who hasn't seen it. He says something like this. It's, um,

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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.

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It tells of specific prophecies that were divine in origin rather than human in nature and came to fulfillment.

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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.

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But then he proves it by going to second Peter one. So he supports it. You know, so second

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Peter one is the entire, um, the proof text. And, uh, that, that passage is

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Peter talking about the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus is glowing like the sun.

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And he says that, uh, we have something more sure the scriptures.

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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.

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You know, so that's, um, that, that stuck with me for a lot clearly, because I remember what he said.

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Um, but I like, he quoted Spurgeon. Spurgeon says, you know, I defend the Bible.

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Like I defend a lion. You don't defend a lion. You just let him go. He'll take care of it.

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

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Yes. Where you start. So yes, for presuppositions like yourself, the

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Bible would be your ultimate authority. That would be your starting point. And then you would reason from the

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

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Bible. Correct. Correct. Yeah. I don't try to prove the Bible's true. It is true. Um, the world just happens to agree with that.

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People in the world, but the things you see in the world. Um, yeah. So does everyone have presuppositions?

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Everyone has presuppositions. Most of them don't believe that the Bible is their presupposition. Um, you can go to like someone who will say the big bang theory is true.

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Um, and schools teach that as truth, even though it contradicts every scientific law that has been proven to be true.

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So, so that, that argument goes something like here's the big bang theory.

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Um, nothing exploded and created everything and an explosion created perfect order.

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Okay. Well, sounds completely reasonable. What, what? That's completely reasonable.

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And, and I was talking to, um, I was talking to Mr. K, uh, Duncan Casabonta.

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He's one of my, one of my colleagues at Our Savior. He's a science teacher there. Also a

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Bible teacher there. And, uh, he has a really brilliant, you know, I can't do it justice, but, uh, he has this, this thing where when scientists can't explain something, they just throw gravity at it because gravity is mysterious.

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And we don't know why, you know, we know that the bigger thing is the more gravitational pull it has, but we don't know why it began to gravitate together in the first place.

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So because it's confusing, uh, when you can't explain something, you just say, oh, gravity. And then that's, that's their explanation.

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So that's, that's very scientific, right? As you can tell. Oh my goodness.

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Very scientific explanation. That's funny. So now your, your, your view on apologetics, uh, coming from presuppositional standpoint, would you say that's distinctly

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Reformed? Is that something that comes out of your, your Calvinistic or Reformed theology?

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Well, I would say you need to have a high view of scripture to, to appreciate it even, um, but to use it also.

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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

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Bible's true. Um, I believe that a high view of scripture is a watermark of being

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Reformed, whether you're, you know, Reformed Baptist or Reformed Presbyterian or whatever. You know,

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I don't know too many Pentecostals or Roman Catholics who have a very high view of scripture.

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A lot of times they're elevating what people have said to, you know, to a degree that it shouldn't be.

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Um, so is it distinctly Reformed? You know, could, I think someone else could use it, but, um, it tends to be more

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Reformed. The people you're going to read come from Reformed backgrounds. Right. And would that be because Romans one says the, the evidence from, for God is, is within everyone that everybody's going to be without excuse because God's visible attributes have been displayed through what is made.

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So God has given us ample evidence to the point where no one can say there is no

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God. Right. Yeah. It would be foolish to say there's no God. Uh, that's how you wind up saying nothing exploded, you know?

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Right. So, yeah. So everyone knows that God's there, but, uh, the reason people of Romans one also says they suppress the truth by their unrighteousness.

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Um, the reason people do that is because they don't want to repent. They don't like what it means.

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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.

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I don't want to change that. I'm enjoying it. So I'm going to look for everything

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I possibly can that will deny that God exists so that I don't have to change what

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I'm doing. Um, and that's what, you know, Romans one goes on to explain that what was going on, all sorts of immorality is all sorts of, you know, everything was happening that shouldn't be happening.

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Um, yeah. So that, yeah. So, so God's given human beings, all humanity, uh, enough evidence to believe that he exists.

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So us giving them more evidence does what waste your time.

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I don't have to prove to you that God exists. I just have to show you what he said, right?

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Um, it doesn't make sense to me to prove that the

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Bible is true. If I know the Bible is true, if you know that God exists, that that is a Romans one argument, um, why waste time on something you already know?

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What do you say when your life is terrible? Oh God, please help. And you cry out to him, even if you don't believe in him.

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Well, why, why even use his name? You know, why do we use his name as a curse, a cuss word?

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Uh, if we don't believe he exists, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Yeah. I've never heard somebody stubbed their toe and say,

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Oh Allah. Yeah. Right. It's never like that. It's always Jesus, right? So that would be an evidential, um, approach to apologetics.

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What about a classical approach to apologetics? What would you say about that method? So classical,

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I believe they like to prove God exists first and then move into evidences, right?

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So it's like a two -step evidential method. Um, and I don't think it's necessary because then you go back to this.

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Well, why do I have to prove God exists? And just to prove that it's Jesus, right?

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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.

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Um, and then the classical approach would be more of a two -step method. I'm going to prove God exists. And then

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I'm going to prove that God is Jesus. So it's just a, another obstacle that I need to get past when

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I really don't need to get past it anyway, because you know, in your heart that God exists, just look at the stars are beautiful. How is that random?

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How, how, how is the snowstorm outside right now? Random. Look how beautiful the snow looks.

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You know, 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.

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It starts with God existing and working from that presupposition.

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You know, it doesn't, it doesn't look to prove the existence of God. It's standing on the foundation of God to make its claims.

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So there's, there's, there's no argument that anybody in the Bible, you know, makes to prove that God exists.

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No, it's always assumed, right? Jesus is true. He's there. Paul assumes he's there, you know,

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Paul in Athens, right? In Acts 17. Yeah. He observes their culture. He respects them.

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He observes their culture. He says, you know, I perceive that you guys are very religious. When do you, you even have an altar to an unknown

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God and he doesn't try to prove God exists there. He just says, you know,

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God exists. Let me tell you about the one you don't know about because he's the real one, right? So he uses their culture to, to observe and see where they're at and what they believe.

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And I believe we should do that. There's, there's, you know, some people admit they know

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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.

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They know that God exists, but they don't understand our relationship to him or why we need a savior.

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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

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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.

27:46

Right. Right. And that's part of the apologetics verse that everybody uses.

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First Peter, you know, 315, always be prepared to set apart, always be prepared to make a defense for the hope that's within you with gentleness and respect.

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

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Yes. Right. When you set apart Christ as Lord of your heart, that's where you start. Jesus accepted the scriptures as true.

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Why would we now go about trying to prove to an unbeliever that the scriptures are true?

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We should stand on the scriptures and make our argument from that. Because if we have an omniscient

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God who reveals something to us, we can have confidence and certainty because an all -knowing

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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.

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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.

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

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

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Yes. But it's the least circular methodology that you can possibly have.

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And John Frame does a good job explaining this in one of his books that I'm forgetting the name of.

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But it goes something like this. You know, if I'm a rationalist,

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I need to use rationale to prove that that's...

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I have to reason my way to prove that rationalism is correct. So I'm using reason to prove reason.

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So that's circular, right? But if I'm saying, okay, where's the left side of the screen?

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I guess I should start here. God is true. The Bible is true.

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God is real. And then I'm saying, okay, so I start with God. Then he gave us the

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Bible. I'm learning these words. Now, how do I take these words and apply them to my life?

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Now, this is linear, right? I'm starting at God, and I'm working my way from it, right?

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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.

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Here's my reasoning. I'm going to use evidences to prove that it's true.

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I'm going to read it because it's true. And now I'm back here at the beginning, and Jesus is

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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?

30:46

Yeah, usually the pushback I get is, well, prove the Bible is true without using the

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Bible. Yeah. And I say, okay, well, prove rationality is true without using rationality.

30:58

Right. Exactly. It's virtuous circularity and vicious circularity, right?

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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.

31:15

Right. So you start with your ultimate authority with being the scriptures, knowing that they come from the revelation of an omniscient

31:23

God. Now we can have certainty. Now our worldview will make sense. And it's not viciously circular because it's an ultimate authority.

31:31

It's what we start with so that it ends up proving itself. The same way when somebody tells me truth doesn't exist.

31:41

I just ask them, is that true? Is that true? Yeah, is that true? How do you know? It's a self -defeating argument.

31:48

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

31:56

Yeah. And it's, well, it's the only non -contradicting worldview. Mm -hmm. So, you know, you talk about the impossibility of the contrary, which was a very

32:04

Vantillian or Bonson, you know, learned it from Vantill. But, you know, what is the impossibility of the contrary?

32:13

Well, if this isn't true, then nothing else can possibly work. Nothing else makes any sense if this isn't true.

32:20

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.

32:32

And if the worldview has internal contradictions, it's not true. You can't live the thing you believe because it doesn't work.

32:41

But the Bible is the only one, you know, a biblical worldview is the only one that's internally consistent.

32:48

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

32:56

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

33:11

It's not coherent in that there are competing views that are contradictory.

33:18

So we have to look for arbitrariness, inconsistency, and preconditions of intelligibility, right?

33:25

So if a worldview contradicts itself, well, we can reject it because that doesn't make sense.

33:32

Very, very simple. You know, for Muslims, they read the

33:37

Qur 'an, and they say, well, the Qur 'an is the word of God. But within the Qur 'an, it says that Allah is the greatest deceiver.

33:45

So if Allah is the greatest deceiver, and he's the one who dictated the words of the

33:53

Qur 'an to Muhammad, how do you know he was telling the truth? Even the language of that is interesting, because I know it's in Surah 5.

34:05

I don't know exactly where in the Qur 'an. I don't know the Qur 'an like I know the word God. Right. But I know in Surah 5 somewhere it says that you need to let your understanding rest on the law and the gospel.

34:20

And the way I understand law and gospel is the Old Testament and the New Testament.

34:25

So if the Qur 'an 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?

34:40

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,

34:47

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.

34:55

I don't think they come up very often. But yeah, and what you just said,

35:02

I didn't realize was in there, but that Allah is the greatest deceiver. Well, a name for Satan in the

35:12

Bible, Old Testament, New Testament is the deceiver. Right. So that's one of the names that is given to the devil.

35:20

And if what I just said is true, and the Qur 'an is pointing us back to the

35:25

Bible, then the Bible is telling us that the Qur 'an says that Allah is the devil by good and necessary inference, right?

35:34

Because he's the greatest deceiver. Who is that? Right. The one who took the angels out of heaven with him.

35:40

Right. And the difference between Allah and God is

35:46

God says in his word, God cannot lie. He's not a man that he can lie. So everything that God says is true.

35:53

And again, based on that presupposition, we can now trust everything that God says, because he doesn't deceive us.

36:01

Right. Right. Again, an omniscient God who has all knowledge reveals something to us. He's a perfect God who cannot lie.

36:08

So we can take that. And now we can have certainty based on God's word. Whereas if you go to the

36:14

Qur 'an, Allah is the greatest deceiver. Maybe some of the things he said is true. Maybe they're not.

36:21

Any good lie has some element of truth to it. So yes, he's going to say some true things.

36:27

And then, you know, then the big lie comes. Jesus isn't God. He didn't die on the cross. He came down off the cross or whatever.

36:33

Yeah. Jesus wasn't crucified and resurrected. It was his twin brother.

36:40

Right. And like you said before, in Surah 5, it says to go to the gospel, read the gospel. How many times in the gospels does it say that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected from the dead?

36:49

Right. Right. So now you're going to have to contradict that and say, no, he wasn't.

36:55

But you just told us to read the Bible because the Bible, Allah's word can never be broken.

37:01

It'll always be pure. Yeah. So it poses an internal contradiction.

37:07

And that's how we can eliminate that safely as a credible worldview. Well, there's even another contradiction there because, you know, the

37:17

Muslim friends that I've had and the people that I've spoken to have said that the reason the

37:23

Quran needed to be written was because the Bible was corrupted. And so if God's word can't be corrupted, then how is it corrupted and needing an update?

37:34

So I don't. And why would the Quran go back and tell you to read a corrupted Bible? Right.

37:40

Yeah, I don't understand. Yeah, it's not working. So this actually gets into one of the questions that I wanted to ask you.

37:47

How does epistemology play a role in presuppositional apologetics? And maybe you could just, you know, briefly define what epistemology is.

37:55

I know that's a big $10 word. Well, I mean, for anyone watching who doesn't know it, it's basically the way that you think.

38:04

Why do you think the way you think? You know, how do you think? And really presupposition, presuppositional apologetics is an epistemology.

38:18

It's not so much an apologetic because that's just what you do to think.

38:26

I'm not a big Clarkian, but he doesn't even like the idea of inductive reasoning.

38:31

You use deductive reasoning. You're using the scriptures. I disagree with that because you have to read the scriptures before you can know what they say.

38:38

So there's some induction there. So you're doing abduction. You're inducting the scriptures.

38:44

You're reading them. You know them. And then you're deducting from that. This is what it means. And this is what

38:49

I do. So it is two parts. But how do you do that?

38:59

Well, you just read the scriptures. Right. And if they're true, then you're good.

39:05

Sorry, I lost the question while I was explaining that. That's okay. So how does the epistemology play a role in presuppositional apologetics?

39:15

How do you know what you know? So if that's what you're doing, if you're reading the scriptures to know what they say, that's informing your thoughts.

39:24

Right. So if the scriptures are informing my thoughts, that is the basis for my thinking.

39:31

So you might say that I'm a presuppositional epistemologist because my presupposition is that the

39:41

Bible is true and that's informing my thinking. If my thinking doesn't agree, then

39:47

I'm doing something wrong. Right. So my thinking has to agree with the scriptures or it's not going to be consistent.

39:54

Why is that important that your thinking has to line up with the scriptures? Well, because they're true.

40:00

Right, exactly. So if that is the foundation for truth, it's truer than truth, right?

40:12

Because it is truth. So if that's true, then why would

40:20

I do anything else? Right. Unless I want to be a deceiver. Right. I don't want that.

40:26

That would be a bad thing. Right. So with other worldviews, let's say atheism, what is their epistemology?

40:36

It depends who you're talking to, but that varies.

40:44

But at the core of it, they deny God, right? So something that all atheists have in common is that they deny

40:52

God's existence usually because they don't want to change their life. They like it. They like sin.

41:00

So no matter what they do, it starts with the answer can't be

41:07

God. So they'll never arrive at truth because they deny the possibility of God being the truth from the outset.

41:17

So it just becomes this endless search for nothing, which is an interesting concept to me, because if you're scientifically minded, you should be looking for things that are observable.

41:29

And the non -existence of something is not observable. If you want to tell me that God doesn't exist, you need to have exhaustive knowledge of the entire universe to know that for a fact.

41:43

Right. Does that make sense? Because you're like, well, he doesn't exist. Well, have you looked over there?

41:51

You don't know that. Right, right. So their epistemology is rooted and grounded.

42:00

Let's say it's a rationalist, right? Okay. What is their epistemology rooted and grounded in?

42:08

Their own ability to reason. Right. So the question to ask an atheist would be, could you be wrong?

42:15

Right. And they would say, yeah. Right. As soon as he says he could be wrong. Reasonable. Exactly.

42:21

So he can't have certainty on his worldview. Right. And again, that's a defeater for atheism.

42:30

If you can't have certainty. They might turn that around on us and they go, well, how do you know your worldview is true? Right. How do you have certainty about yours?

42:37

Couldn't you be wrong? I could be, but God can't be. Right, right. The only way

42:43

I would say to the unbeliever, well, I believe that you do have certainty and I do have certainty with some things.

42:52

I can safely say, I know what I'm thinking right now and you know what you're thinking right now. But that's only true on my worldview where certainty is a real thing.

43:05

On your worldview, how do you know that you're not a brain stuck in a vat and everything that's happening around you is just an illusion?

43:15

Yeah. How can you prove that's not true? And on their worldview, they can't.

43:22

Because their standard isn't objective. It doesn't lie outside of them.

43:27

It lies inside of them. Yeah. And as soon as you do that, as soon as anything internal to you becomes the standard for truth, then anything

43:45

I disagree with you about could be true from my perspective, right?

43:50

Right. So if perspective is what determines truth, then you can't be right because someone else is going to disagree with you.

44:00

My standard of truth does not reside with me. My standard of truth resides outside of me and that's how

44:06

I know it's a standard. I can say, okay, that is what I need to do. My opinion is going to change.

44:12

My opinion is very different now than it was 20 years ago. That changes.

44:19

What doesn't change is God's word. And so that's the only thing that can be consistent. Yes. If you don't have something consistent, you never really know what's true or what's real.

44:29

Right. Exactly. So truth is not like ice cream. It's not you like vanilla, I like chocolate.

44:34

Well, let's just leave it at that. You know, it's not a matter of opinion. Truth is a matter of fact and certainty.

44:41

And to say that truth is relative is just to say, well,

44:47

I have preferences that are different than your preferences and I like mine better.

44:53

Yeah. What they're confusing is the idea of truth versus lived experience.

45:01

Right. People say my truth when a more accurate term would be what

45:09

I've experienced in my life. Right. Okay. So these are things that are true that occurred in your life, but they don't determine what is true.

45:20

These are just things that you've experienced. Okay. So because you've experienced bad things, it doesn't mean that you can decide what is true from that.

45:32

A good example is like a critical theory. Right. You have critical race theory. Well, my lived experience is that X, Y and Z is racist.

45:42

Well, that doesn't mean that white people are always racist. It just means that you've experienced them and those people that you experienced were bad people.

45:52

It doesn't mean you have to hate everybody else. But that's the kind of road that goes down.

46:00

I'm not the type to just stuff everyone into that category. Some people do that, but I'm saying it's an easy example of something that does happen.

46:10

Right. And that's, again, where truth comes into play.

46:16

You may perceive that somebody is racist, right? And somebody else may say, well, I don't feel that that's racist.

46:22

Well, now who's right? What's the arbiter of what is racism and what isn't racism?

46:28

I would say the definition of racism. I revert back to what does that word mean? Right. We have an agreed upon definition.

46:34

It's in the dictionary. That's how we use the word. That's how we communicate. You know, we've used lexicons for the greater part of humanity.

46:42

We've had dictionaries for a long time now. So we've agreed that these words mean something. Let's use the definition of that word.

46:49

And let's understand what we're saying to each other. So I would say the definition of the word determines what is and isn't.

46:57

But what if they change the definition? That's a good question because that happens, right?

47:04

And that's what the purpose of the lexicon is. We don't use the same words the same way anymore. So how do we agree on what is and what isn't?

47:13

Well, the only, again, objective standard that never changes is

47:20

God and history. And so we can change the definition of a word, but we know, here's the defeater for that argument, all men are made in the image of God.

47:35

And because of that, they deserve love and respect and kindness and to be cared for.

47:43

So if you're treating anyone differently, then you need to check your heart.

47:49

Why are you treating this person differently? Because they're dressed differently? Because they look different? Because they're shorter than you? Because they're, you know, whatever it is.

47:56

No, God created all men equal. Maybe not in status, you know, there are rich men and poor men.

48:02

But as far as being made in the image of God, that's true for every human being. And that's where I think we,

48:11

I'm using we broadly, tend to fail. I think a lot of times we can, because we know stuff, we read books.

48:23

It's easy to look down on people. And that's off -putting. It's like, you don't know, you haven't read, you don't know.

48:32

Don't talk to me like that. Now I feel like you're calling me stupid. I don't want to be called stupid. So how do we, the second part of that verse in, you know, 1

48:43

Peter 3 .15, is, you know, with gentleness and respect or humility and respect, depending on what translation you're using.

48:53

So how do I bring the truth to someone without my demeanor being offensive?

49:02

The message is offensive enough. Yes. I don't need to be. I need to actually do my best to not be, personally.

49:10

Yeah, humility is definitely a virtue that we need to work on as Christians.

49:18

Because so many people, you know, they look down their nose. And I hate to say it, especially people who hold to the doctrines of grace.

49:24

They are sometimes some of the most graceless people I encounter. They forget that the only reason they know the doctrines of grace is because God's revealed it to them.

49:36

And the only reason they are saved is because of God's grace. So if you hold to the doctrines of grace, you better be some of the most graceful people on the planet.

49:45

And that's a rebuke. Because a lot of times I see them not being so gracious.

49:52

Right, right. Just being honest. And if it weren't for us receiving more grace than that, we wouldn't even know the things that we're talking about.

50:01

Right. They've been revealed to us. It's the doctrine of illumination. The Spirit reveals it. Well, if it weren't for the

50:09

Spirit changing my eyes, I'd still be scoffing at Job. I wouldn't be connecting with him.

50:16

I wouldn't be identifying with him. I would be saying, well, look at that idiot. Yes. All right.

50:23

Just to switch gears a little bit. What would be a book that you would recommend to study apologetics?

50:33

Do I get more specific? Is this for the average

50:39

Joe? Is this for young kids? Yeah, give me two or three different ones.

50:45

Advanced, mediocre, beginner. What would you recommend? Anything by Van Til.

50:53

Okay. Is that for beginner or advanced? That's advanced. He's basically a

51:02

Christian philosopher. You're getting up there into advanced. I like Bonson, but he's up there too.

51:11

Pretty much anything by Bonson. Again, I mentioned

51:16

Clark earlier, also extremely advanced. He's up there with Van Til. Those guys are going to be tough to read, but worth it if you're a reader.

51:26

Then we could take it down a notch. There's a book called

51:36

Five Views on Apologetics. Okay. What it is, is guys who agree with us and guys who we disagree with writing from a

51:48

Christian perspective. They're all Christians, but talking about, okay, this guy is a classical apologist.

51:55

This guy is an evidentialist. This guy is a presuppositionalist.

52:00

This guy uses cumulative case. There's going through five different views that are common.

52:09

Within that book, they respond to each other. There's discussion within the book. They write their piece, and then everybody else responds to it.

52:17

They write their piece, and then everybody responds to it. You get a good taste of what all these people believe, but what

52:27

I appreciated was the presuppositional response to every single one of them. That was a good book.

52:33

It's called Five Views on Apologetics. There's five contributors to it.

52:39

I don't recall all of them. That's a good one that I would say is more middle of the road.

52:50

Beginner stuff. Honestly, beginner stuff. I know there's a book by Richard Platt.

52:58

Yeah. Is it David Platt or Richard Platt? I think it's Richard Platt. Okay. I always forget the name of it, but he likens presuppositionalism to building a house, starting with the foundation.

53:11

He does a good job of laying out a basic understanding of presuppositionalism.

53:17

Yeah. I'm trying to remember the name. Yeah. I got it right there on my shelf.

53:24

Hold on a second. Let me look at this. Every Thought Captive.

53:31

That's it. Every Thought Captive. Yeah, it is. I mean, and that's really the essence of presuppositionalism, bringing every thought captive to Jesus Christ, so that all your thoughts align with his thoughts.

53:42

Like Van Til says, we want to think God's thoughts after him, because when we do, that's truth. Yeah. And then, because we live in the culture we do, some of your viewers might be more prone to,

53:55

I'd rather watch a video, and that's fine. There's a few debates that I would recommend.

54:04

One of them in particular, Greg Bonson and R .C. Sproul had a debate where they were debating classical apologetics versus presuppositional apologetics.

54:16

R .C. is Dr. Sproul, one of my favorite guys to read and listen to. Me too.

54:23

He's a classicalist, and he has reformed, so that's an interesting difference. Yes. But Bonson, obviously a contemporary of Van Til, was presupp.

54:35

So they had a good debate. I like their debate. You can look that up on YouTube. I don't think there's a video of it, but you can listen to it.

54:42

Yes. The other one I would say is the Gordon Stein debate, right? Yeah. The Bonson and Gordon Stein debate.

54:49

That's excellent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's presuppositionalism in action. Right. Yeah, yeah.

54:54

And you could watch, on that track of watching videos of debates, which

55:00

I love, James White, who I will admit is a little crass at times, but he knows what he's talking about.

55:09

I think he's the type of guy who's so brilliant, he doesn't know how to be kind sometimes. So you have to be careful of that.

55:15

But it's true, I think. I think that's a kind rebuke to a man who's much more intelligent than me.

55:21

Right. But any debate that he's ever done, I would say that's presuppositionalism in action.

55:30

And then his contemporary, Jeff Durbin, also great. He does a lot of stuff.

55:36

You can look up a lot of his videos on the street, just going out street preaching to people. Yes, yes. Something that he does do that I think is very impressive.

55:44

I watched one of his videos, and he was just letting the person talk, about 20 minutes.

55:50

He just let the person talk. And you can see him taking mental notes. He's taking these mental notes.

55:56

And then after the person's done talking for 20 minutes, he takes about five minutes, and he distills down everything that they said and gives it back to them and said, am

56:02

I understanding you correctly? And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's basically what I'm saying. And then he responds.

56:09

And I think that's important. We have to listen. Very much so. I'm not saying you have to be that good at it.

56:15

It's helpful to be that good at it. I can't do it. What we have to remember is we're talking with another image bearer of God, who's going to face the wrath of God if he doesn't repent and trust in Christ.

56:27

Our hearts should be breaking, not looking to win an argument or champion, like, oh, look at how well

56:35

I argued. I argued this guy into a pretzel. You may have just helped harden the guy's heart.

56:43

It's so important that we're talking to other image bearers. These are people who need to know the

56:50

Lord, right? Have mercy on those who doubt. That's what Jude tells us. So our hearts should be going out to these people in love, in gentleness and respect, and giving good reasons.

57:02

I'm not saying don't give good reasons. Of course, give good reasons, but also warn them of the judgment to come and be loving towards them.

57:10

So important. Yeah. So my last question, because I want to be respectful of your time.

57:18

I know you're coming up close to an hour. I talk long, too. That's okay. I'm enjoying the conversation, truly.

57:26

Who has influenced you most regarding apologetics? I know you spoke about Bonson and Van Till. Are those the guys, or is there someone else?

57:33

Um, you know, honestly, there's so many names that I could give.

57:44

I think Bonson, Van Till, but that's not really giving credit. I only knew about them because I was watching videos of Jeff Durbin and James White.

57:54

And then, you know, talk about Sytenberg and Kate. He's another guy who I would say is a little too crass.

58:00

You know, he admits it. I've heard him admit it in videos where he's, you know, I get a little too short with people.

58:08

Too, you know, it gets to the point of disrespect sometimes, and that's not really what you want to do. Sure. But his methodology is, you know, correct,

58:17

I think. He just doesn't express it well. So I would say those mostly.

58:24

I would say Bonson, Van Till, Durbin, White. Yeah, I'd like to throw another name into the ring, if I could.

58:34

Good friend of mine and fellow apologist. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. His name is Eli Ayala of Revealed.

58:40

I've heard the names. I've heard the name. I don't, yeah. He's got a very successful YouTube channel, and he does a great, he's done several debates.

58:49

And to see presuppositional methodology put into action, he does a phenomenal, phenomenal job.

58:56

And let me throw two more names out there that are a little less popular than all them. Couple of guys over at Grace Community Church.

59:04

You might have heard the name Mike Riccardi. He's a teacher at the Master's Seminary. At least when

59:10

I was at Grace, he was the outreach pastor. So every outreach program had to go through him, and he was the one really teaching the teachers how to do this.

59:23

So I took his apologetics class in seminary. It was fantastic. It's evangelism and apologetics together in one class.

59:30

As much as you could stuff into 15 weeks. Really incredible. And then one of his students,

59:37

Sheldon Ko, was the guy that I would go out with all the time. When we were in Grace Community Church, he was really heading up the outreach department of the church underneath Dr.

59:50

Riccardi, and we would go every Sunday out to the neighborhood, knock on doors, out to the bus station, and just talk to people waiting for the bus, waiting for the train, and just have as many conversations as we can.

01:00:03

There'd be 20 or 30 of us every Sunday just going and trying to preach the gospel to people. So you can look up some of Mike's sermons and maybe some of his lectures.

01:00:15

But yeah, I'll definitely do that. I know the name, and I've seen him before. I know who you're talking about, and I didn't know that he was presuppositional.

01:00:23

So I very much look to check and see. Most of his class was, you know, here are the other views, but this is what we're going to focus on.

01:00:32

Right. Well, Mr. Quarley, and I just want to thank you so much for taking your time out to have this conversation and sowing into the kids at Our Savior, New American.

01:00:43

Especially my son, you know, highly regards you and looks up to you. And I just want to thank you for sowing into him and doing everything that you do.

01:00:52

Tell him he can relax. He did well on his exam. I will relay the information to him.

01:00:57

So I'm going to close the show, and then we'll take a couple minutes just to talk you. Well, friends, thanks again for joining us at the

01:01:04

Reform Rookie Podcast. I just want to remind you that I do have a YouTube channel and a website and a podcast.

01:01:10

So if you would like and subscribe, that does help with the algorithms. People get more stuff. I have a bunch of playlists, all with regards to Reform Theology.

01:01:20

Concerning apologetics, I've gone through the book Always Ready, which is by Greg Bonson. And this series walks you through presuppositional methodology.

01:01:30

It's excellent. We also have a series on biblical hermeneutics. That one has over 40 ,000 views.

01:01:37

Again, apologetics, biblical inerrancy. We have series on the books of the Bible, like Daniel, Nahum, Jude, Proverbs, and topics like the

01:01:46

Old Testament, tabernacle, prayer, and eschatology. Got interviews with theologians like Tony Costa, Chris Date, and Bruce Gore, and apologists like Anthony Rogers and Eli Ayala.

01:01:57

There's a lot of content and there's something for everyone. So please be sure to check us out and let us know how we're doing in the comments.

01:02:04

With that, thanks again for joining us on the Reform Rookie Podcast and YouTube channel. Please, again, hit the like and subscribe for more information regarding Reform Theology and apologetics.