December 19, 2016 Show with Tyler Dalton McNabb on “The Lure of Rome & Why A Man Once Caught on that Lure Swam Back Through the Tiber & Returned to Protestantism” AND “Reformed Epistemolgy 101 & Why Should it Matter to the Average Christian in the Pew”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 19th day of December 2016, and we are running out of days in 2016.

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Today we are talking about a very controversial issue, the lore of Rome and why a man once caught on that lore swam back through the

Tiber and returned to Protestantism. I'm talking about Tyler Dalton McNabb, professor of philosophy humanities at Houston Baptist University, and he specializes in epistemology and philosophy of religion.

He is discussing that issue today because he himself was for a time a

Protestant apologist, then converted to Roman Catholicism, and then left and returned to Protestantism, and we're going to find out why.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back after many years to Iron Sharpens Iron, Tyler Dalton McNabb.

Howdy, great to be here. Thanks for having me on today. Looking forward to the discussion.

Yes, in the first hour we're going to be talking about the lore of Rome, in the second hour we're going to be talking about Reformed Epistemology 101 and why it should matter to the average

Christian in the pew. And we hope that you remain tuned in for the entire two hours with Tyler Dalton McNabb.

But before we even go into either of those subjects, Tyler, I'd like to find out about your own upbringing, the religion of your home, if any, how you came to Christ, and then we'll get into the subject at hand.

Yeah, sure. Well, I grew up in a home in Texas that, like most homes in Texas, are affiliated, at least on paper, right, as a

Christian, specifically Baptist. And it was a home that definitely saw reading the

Bible as pious, as good, as wholesome, but didn't really emphasize reading the

Bible on a regular basis or attending church on a regular basis. So I'd probably say maybe a slightly above -average religious home in Texas, in Houston, Texas.

And yeah, I think it was about the age of 16 where I really got right with God, encountered

Christ, however you want to parse it. I became an agnostic during high school and was pretty much on the brink, teetering on the brink, of going full nihilism, full believing that there's no

God, there's no morality, there's no meaning, that sort of thing, because I thought that those things weren't plausible on atheism.

So I ended up having a religious experience through reading Messianic prophecies, such as Isaiah 53, and really felt

God's presence for the first time in my life, at least in a tangible way. And I got right with God.

I stopped doing what I knew I wasn't supposed to be doing and just had this all in great love for the

Lord. And then I went to Bible college and continued on that particular education pathway until I received a

Ph .D. in philosophy. So in between, I did end up traveling to Rome, as mentioned.

I was to, I guess, go on the phrase that they used a few seconds ago, sort of lured in by Rome's beauty, sort of the aesthetics, unity that's portrayed on the outside, at least to the

Protestant tradition, having a sort of coming from a very low church,

Baptistic sort of tradition, wanting something that extended a couple thousand years, being able to study church history in the medieval times and the patristics and feeling like I had

I was a part of that. My tradition was a part of that.

All sorts of things like this sort of helped guide me and moved me into this particular direction.

But also, as you mentioned, I'm no longer a Roman Catholic or an

Eastern Catholic, and so I guess we can talk about those sorts of reasons in a bit, but I'll go ahead and pass it back to you.

Sure. Well, going back to your childhood, when you said it was an above -average, the activity of religious activity and commitment in your home was above -average, at least in your impression of what you saw around you, what exactly would that entail?

Yeah, yeah. So it's slightly above -average. Just in regards to,

I knew the gospel insofar as like propositionally.

And this was a Baptist home? Yes, that's right. And we went to church, you know, we were better than Christians.

We were better than those who went to church only on Christmas and Easter, but we still really weren't regular attenders insofar as every

Sunday or perhaps most Sundays. So it was kind of this in -between. I sort of look at average American, I see sort of as priesters, maybe, you know, something roughly in that sort of field.

We were better than that, but we definitely, I wouldn't call us, we weren't like faithfully involved in the church or anything like that, as the scriptures call us to be.

So I wouldn't call us sort of a faithfully involved Christian home or something like that, but definitely knew right from wrong, definitely knew the gospel insofar as in its propositional form, and had decent theology.

And like I said, the Bible was encouraged. It really wasn't read much, but it was encouraged to read it. So yeah.

Now, when I became acquainted with you originally, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of,

I don't know, 2010, maybe a little bit earlier than that, you had already risen to a stature of being a very respected scholarly

Protestant Christian. When I even had you on as a guest on my program, you were affiliated with Jeremiah Cry, a very thoroughly

Calvinistic open -air preaching ministry, and I believe that is why

I had you on the program. It was affiliated with that. So you, being lured into Roman Catholicism, unlike many people, you were not just some average person in the pew that had a very shallow concept of what the gospel and what the scriptures were, somebody that could have easily been blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

You were somebody who seemed to be very deeply knowledgeable of the faith and respected, and perhaps had already had your doctorate,

I don't know. But when you were talking about the beauty of Rome seducing you or luring you, that seems to be very often what you hear from people, like when you listen to the

Journey Home television broadcast or watch that on EWTN or whatever television network people are watching that on, where they have interviews primarily with former

Protestants who either are returning to Catholicism of their youth or are becoming

Catholic for the first time. But that very often is the appeal. I mean, people joke about it being the smells and bells, but that very often is a very big part of that.

So tell us about that. What was it about that that started to draw you, even though you already had seemingly very firm footing in Protestant theology?

Yeah. How do I want to go about this? I guess, let me first be open. So as you mentioned, coming from a very strong Reformed background,

I would have probably even considered myself roughly within the A .W. Pink sort of tradition.

I was very afraid they were going Reformed, and I thought that Catholicism taught all sorts of doctrines that were anti -Gospel, you know, was in conflict with intention with the

Gospel, was in tension with honoring

God with all of our heart, mind, body, and strength. And so I never really took seriously the claims, if there really were evidence for those claims.

I never really took seriously their side of the argument, if you say. And as I was in graduate school, doing a degree in philosophy,

I started reading Catholics, and I started reading really smart

Catholics. And I think, like, these guys are pretty sharp.

They're not, you know, you're... I sort of had in mind that Catholics were, say, analogous to Jehovah Witnesses or something like that, right?

And reading these Catholic philosophers, I was quite taken back.

And as soon as I did that, I sort of began to have a bit of an affinity with the

Catholic Church. These were my brothers. These were the guys I'm in arms with fighting the evil doers of philosophy, namely the naturalists, right?

The atheists. And that led me to investigate, okay, well, does

Rome really believe such -and -such, or, you know, does Rome really believe that? And then I would say, all right,

I want to see sort of an objective, you know, try to objectively analyze the situation, objectively analyze the evidence the best

I could. Obviously, we all have bias of some sort, but nonetheless. And came to the conclusion that, actually, either

A, Rome really doesn't teach it, or B, they do, but they have a lot more justification than originally

I thought they did for affirming it. I'm not speaking about a specific doctrine now, but just, you know, various sorts of views which

Reformers are constantly in conflict with Catholics on. And so, yeah, that really sort of opened the door, if you'd say, and to me actually analyzing certain evidences and putting me in that sort of disposition to, that was quite conducive for me believing in Rome.

The other thing that really helped at the time was I was sick and tired of going back and forth on certain secondary doctrines.

So, say, baptism, that was a big one, right? My Presbyterian Reform brothers, all right, my

Anglican brothers, my Orthodox and Catholic brothers, arguing that, you know, we pay to baptisms the way, infant baptism, you know, it's a biblical traditional, you know, we forgot to do it.

And then my Baptistic brothers saying we shouldn't, going back and forth, reading scholar after scholar on both sides, and sort of coming up just really overwhelmed, feeling one way the one week, and then another way the next week.

And she was just really tired of the division, tired of the disagreement from secondary issues, and an infallible interpreter really sort of became a nice thought, and sort of an objective way in how we can have unity now was also a really nice thought.

And so those things in conjunction with me for the first time really analyzing

Catholic arguments in sort of somewhat of a non -biased way, those are the things in the background that were putting me in a particular environment for me switching sides.

Yeah, in fact, when I have spoken with and heard some of the more prominent apologists who were

Presbyterian or from other branches of Protestantism, that lure of papal infallibility just seemed to clean up a lot of the unanswerable questions for them in regard to how can we trust what we are reading in the

Bible is a correct interpretation. And of course, they began to believe, these folks that converted to Rome, they began to believe that Sola Scatorra is a blueprint for anarchy, because every man in their minds, they believed that that meant every man could interpret the

Bible the way he or she chose to, and there was going to be no security of biblical orthodoxy in that, or even in Christian orthodoxy, because obviously the

Church of Rome does not believe in Sola Scatorra, they believe in the heavy weight and importance and vital role of tradition as well in the

Magisterium. So it seems that even if the other areas of Roman Catholicism at first seemed anything from very disturbing or horrific to annoying or troublesome, they were buying into all of those things just because they immediately said, well, if the

Church of Rome has an infallible interpreter, if it has an infallible

Magisterium, then no matter what I think about these other things, they must be true. Whether or not

I think it is right to pray to Mary, and whether I think it is right that I need to confess my sins to a priest and receive the sacrament of penance, and all these other things that are a part of the

Roman system, it seems that those things, as distasteful as they may initially have been for Protestants, they bought into them because of the infallibility of the

Magisterium teaching that they swallowed. Now, would that be something in your own experience, or did you actually just immediately find these other things beautiful and precious?

I know Scott Hahn has said something to the effect that when he was watching people receive the

Mass, he began to salivate, and he no longer wanted to have the Eucharist just in his mouth, he wanted it in his stomach or something.

It was a very romanticized idea of this

Eucharist that just totally captivated him. So what was your experience? Yeah, that's a good question.

So I saw certain doctrines as heretical, and to the authority of my point of view now,

I don't see Rome as heretical.

I do think that they're wrong, and I do think that there can be things that they currently believe that can lead to really bad things.

And there are a lot of people in Rome who are practicing idolatry, or, you know, certain things associated with the saints or Mary.

But I do think that there is a evangelical lens that one could read

Catholic doctrine in. We can get to that in a bit, if you want, but as for answering your question,

I did think that Rome taught heresy, and so I wasn't willing to forego my mind.

I still had to, you know, come up with some sort of coherent response to the certain doctrines, you know, say by works, or Mary worship, or something like that, that I had to sort of come up with sort of a biblical justification for these things before I could go there.

I wasn't willing to go there. I did crave the Eucharist, as you mentioned,

Dr. Hansen, but that wasn't at all for me.

I did have to do a little bit of exegesis and biblical theology, church tradition stuff, before I let my mind totally go there.

And the other thing that I wanted to add was that I still do crave the

Eucharist, and I still do believe in a real presence. I don't sort of exegete, or I don't formulate my view of the

Eucharist in some sort of transubstantiation way, but I do—

And I'm assuming you no longer worship the Eucharist. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't feel inclined to worship the

Eucharist. I'm not sure what that entails, but when you say it, it sounds bad. Well, I think it is.

I mean, that's what they do. But yeah, so that's,

I guess, sort of my view and where I'm currently at. Now, as far as the softer view of Rome's errors than I would have,

I would believe that on many issues they are very seriously heretical, and even damningly so.

Sure. A lot of that is because Rome, long before I was born, condemned certain essential elements of my faith today.

I was raised Roman Catholic, by the way, and I became a Bible -believing

Christian in a Reformed Baptist church by God's grace in the mid -1980s, and have been a

Reformed Baptist ever since, other than a month or so of being an

Arminian Protestant without even knowing what an Arminian was, or even knowing what a Calvinist was, for that matter.

But the Council of Trent makes it clear that there are certain things that historic

Reformational Protestants, those that are heirs of the Reformation, there are certain things that we believe that have been anathematized by Rome, which is not a slight slap on the wrist.

This was, you know, back in the day of Trent, there were people, obviously, as you know, who were tortured and executed for being on the anathema list if they were too open and forceful with disagreement with Rome.

And since those dogmas of Trent and those anathemas have never been revoked, they have never been rescinded, taken back, even by the most liberal

Pope in history that they have now, Pope Francis, he has not even rescinded the anathemas of Trent.

How is it that you don't see the differences that Rome have as being heretical or as dangerous as I do, if they do, at least in an official sense, not in the softened version that has become popular since Vatican II, and increasingly more so popular.

But if you go back to the dogma, which is the main issue here of what does the

Church of Rome really stand for, not the opinion of a Pope, because one thing that I have learned by having gained the friendship of very serious -minded

Catholics throughout the years doing these debates, in fact, you might find it interesting that I have more friends now who are serious -minded

Catholics. I have more friends now as a Protestant than I ever did as a

Catholic growing up. The Catholic friends that I had were nominal Catholics.

But those very seriously -minded Catholics will say that, well, the

Pope isn't infallible unless he is declaring something as dogma, it's ex cathedra.

So the opinions of St. Francis that we would find repulsive, even as Catholics, are not binding upon anyone.

But the dogmas of Rome are, and the dogma in Trent was a dogmatic council.

So if you could respond to that. How is it that you don't see it as seriously as it seems

Rome has seen it, other than the liberalized version of it, if you will?

Sure. Yeah. So real quick on the Eucharist. If you mean that they worship the

Eucharist insofar as the accidental properties which are there, I think that would be something that wouldn't be the case.

But if you mean the essence of the Eucharist, their worship, they think it's the presence of Christ that's there.

Yeah, I don't think that one's going to go to hell if they think Jesus' essence is in something, and they're worshiping

Jesus there. I obviously would agree with you that it would be bad if you were worshiping this sort of accidental properties, or both the accidental properties and the essence there.

But I think ultimately, God's a loving God, and God's going to judge us in a just way, and in a loving way.

And so I don't think that if I thought that Christ was in something, that he was in something, and I was recognizing him in something, as such, following through with the appropriate way of worship or the appropriate way of honoring him, as such,

I don't think that, even if I was wrong, that that's going to lead me necessarily to hell or something like that.

So it might be sort of, in our views of God, I don't know if you would agree with me there or if you disagree with me there, but if you disagree with me there, maybe that might have something to do with it.

Also, in regard to Justification Trent, first, typically, as Catholic apologists usually do, they say that anathemas are for those who are in communion with Rome, that anathemas have no authority over those who are not in communion with Rome, and so the addresses, the condemnations, the anathemas and so forth, are for those who hold to a false view who are in communion with the

Bishop of Rome. And in fact, could you pick right up where you left off there? We have to go to a station break right now. If anybody would like to join us with a question for Tyler Dalton McNabb, whether you agree with him, whether you vehemently disagree with him, whether you're

Roman Catholic, whether you're Protestant, whether you're Jewish, Muslim, Sweden, Borgianist, whatever you happen to be, we will welcome your questions at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages.

And that was the wrong button. We'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.

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Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang up conference called the G3 conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

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Iron Sharpens today. Welcome back, this is

Chris Arnsen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr.

Tyler Dalton McNabb, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Houston Baptist University, specializing in epistemology and philosophy of religion.

We're discussing the lore of Rome, why a man once caught on the lore swam back through the

Tiber and returned to Protestantism, and for the next, for the second hour I should say, we're going to be discussing something that is somewhat of a specialty of our guest,

Reformed Epistemology, and why should it matter to the average Christian in the pew. If you'd like to join us on the air today, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Before we went to the break, we were talking about the anathemas against Protestants in the

Council of Trent's dogmas, and I'm not saying no

Protestant that knows about the Council of Trent or is familiar with it would say that there is nothing in that council or from that council that they would agree with.

There are things in there that Protestants even agree with, but this was a council that took place to counter the

Reformation. I'm sure you would agree with that, and it was more specifically to highlight those things that Protestants believed, and you were talking about your understanding of the anathemas not apparently being quite as harsh as the meaning behind them as I would view them and as those who

I know who are scholars and historians have viewed them. If you could address that issue, if you could pick up where you left off.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so the other one of the other major things I think that's important,

I think a lot of the disagreement regarding Trent is probably a result of an equivocation on the word faith.

So typically Catholics define faith as sort of more something like mental assent, and they use faith, hope, and charity as a sort of phrase to capture what

Protestants usually mean by faith or trust. And so when it says, you know, faith alone,

I do think they have in mind the sort of mental assent alone. You have, recently,

Catholics and Lutherans, a particular joint statement, a declaration on their view of justification, where I think it highlights that a bit more.

I think if you pick up, there's a really good book, I think it's five views, you know, one of those four views, five views, six views, one of those sorts of views,

I think it's five views on judgments in our works, final judgment in our works.

The Catholic author in that text, I think, does a really good job at sort of exegeting the

Catechism, the current Catholic Catechism, that justification has multiple aspects.

There's sort of this initial justification, which is just about being in union with Christ, pure grace, it's not a work of man but of God, and you have other aspects of justification.

When it comes to final justification, yes, there's going to be a final justification based on works, but those works are really not our own sort of human efforts, some sort of plagianism or semi -plagianism, but rather it's supernatural works, it's gifts by the

Holy Spirit, in virtue of being in union with Christ, these works are being produced. It's a view,

I think, very similar to N .T. Wright's view. So even if you think that's a really bad view, that's a dangerous view, something like that,

I think it's not as bad as some make it out to be.

I can fellowship with N .T. Wright on justification, and being that I don't see anything significantly not analogous to that of Rome's doctrine of justification,

I don't see any reason why I can't be in fellowship with Rome, at least on that topic.

Especially given the sort of joint statement they made with the Lutherans and how they see justification.

So things like this, I guess, have led me to believe that,

I think, Trent isn't so much a defeating factor for fellowship with Catholics.

Well, the Council of Trent, and perhaps I could find the exact wording for you at some point, either during the program or after, but there is a specific anathema that even anathematizes those who think that works are only a necessary fruit or evidence of the one truly justified.

So in other words, the works must be viewed as in some sense meritorious.

That's right. And so therefore, that is a belief that I personally believe is damning.

I believe that's a heresy. And it's clear to me that the Council of Trent believe that to oppose their view, that view is a heretical concept.

So one of these days, perhaps we could even organize a debate on ecumenism, if you'd like to participate in that, because I just see this as so historically different than you are seeing it.

Yeah. Well, I guess this is the thing. One, I agree that it's meritorious, for sure. I'm just saying that the origin, the author, primary author, if you'd say, of those works is the

Holy Spirit in virtue of you being in Christ. So it's not this sort of Pelagian or semi -Pelagian.

Right, right. Yeah, I understand that even the Church of Rome condemned Pelagius, I understand that.

And so if, but even if I'm wrong, let's say the

Catholic Church has indeed shifted its opinion, or it's gone away from this sort of Trentian view, and it's come a lot closer to this

Protestant view. It'd be great, you know, maybe that's a good argument, orthodox

Catholicism is true, but to me it wouldn't be a great argument for thinking that we shouldn't fellowship with our

Catholic brothers who indeed take this sort of view. And by the way, I do not, and nor does anyone that I highly respect and love and value and work with in regard to debates and other things on the

Protestant side, we do not believe that all Catholics are damned, but there is an issue about, as the old game show that Johnny Carson used to host in the 1950s or early 60s, who do you trust?

That's the main issue, who do you trust? And there are Catholics that either through naivete or ignorance of what their own church teaches, but really believe in the biblical gospel.

There are others who believe in a Protestant or Reformational understanding of the gospel and choose to remain in Rome because they think they're going to make a difference somehow.

But I think that there are, and that is an issue by the way, who do you trust?

That really not only is exclusively a question that I think dogmatically

Rome fails on their answer, because it's not

Christ alone in his finished work, obviously multitudes of professing

Protestants are in that same group, and perhaps even many multitudes of Baptists or those who claim to be

Baptists. So this is not just something that I'm beating up on Roman Catholics for.

My mother, if you were to ask her on her last breath if she was

Catholic, she probably would have said yes. But she, after a lifetime of venerating

Mary and the saints, really revealed on her deathbed for six weeks, it wasn't just like a momentary confession that was open to her interpretation, for six weeks while she was lingering on that deathbed, she was making a clear affirmation of her trust in Christ and his finished work on the cross alone as the reason why she was going to enter heaven.

She ceased praying to Mary and the saints. She was praying to Christ alone. But I do not believe that she would have said that she's not a

Catholic. She just came to the true gospel as I believe

I see it and those who are my colleagues and brethren in historic

Protestantism see it. But having said that, what was it that finally jolted you to say, you know, these guys aren't,

I know that you don't think they are as wrong as I think they are, but you came to an opinion that they are wrong and I'm not sticking around here as an official member of this club, at least, and you returned to Protestantism.

What was it that providentially came into your life that made you?

Sure, yeah, and then real quick, just to add on, I guess what I'm also saying is just, you know, the particular groups that you've mentioned that you think perhaps, you know, they could be true believers as well,

I'm saying, I'm just sort of proposing another group to consider, namely those Catholics who are convinced that their interpretation, though they may be wrong, you know, perhaps you're right, perhaps

James White's right, you know, perhaps these other sort of figures are right, but nonetheless, they have a false belief, namely that there's sort of this evangelical way to understand doctrinal justification that's consistent with Roman Catholicism.

Maybe these guys, we should reconsider our sort of boxes about who's in or who's not.

So I guess that's mainly what I was trying to propose. In regard to the question about what sort of turned me, you alluded to it a little bit ago, namely

Pope Francis. Well, I had a feeling. So I'm a libertarian when it comes to economics and the role of government.

I actually lean heavily that way. I have interviewed a number of people who are Christian libertarians, and I have a longtime friend in William Norman Grigg, who is a libertarian.

But anyway, I interrupted you there. No, it's all right. Yeah. So when

I read the Pope's first apostolic exhortation, I was a little taken back.

You know, what's the magisterium have to do with Economics 101?

And then I really found out that actually there's been a long -standing tradition of popes speaking about economics, especially since the 1800s, the 19th century.

And there's sort of a very widespread authoritative view from the popes then to the current pope of endorsing a view that the government has a right to redistribute wealth, that the government, if possible, speaking of an encyclical on the

Catholic view, is not infallible, but nonetheless still binding on matters of faith and morals. And so the government is obligated to try to make sure that health care is free or, you know, low cost, if at all possible, speaks really well about unions and the rights of union workers and all these sorts of things that generally,

I think even vacation time, that employers have to give their employees livable wage, that the government has the right to intervene if it's not possible, if it's not done so by the free market, to ensure a livable wage for everyone.

So there are certain things that I took at odds with my current view of the role of government and what

I thought was government overreach and violation of rights and business rights and so forth.

And so that sort of caught me off guard and started making me sort of really think, reconsider.

And then, not too long after that, I found out that the

Church taught as hallowable dogma that doctrines of divine simplicity, that is to say that God is completely without parts, any metaphysical parts, anything like that, you know,

God's omniscience is identical to God's omnipotence, which is identical to God's omnimevalence, and so forth.

So there's this sort of doctrine that God is literally metaphysically simple, he's not made up of anything, he doesn't possess properties, he's identical to his existence.

And that God is strongly immutable, meaning that not only does God not change his character, right, hopefully everyone affirms that, that God's always going to be faithful to us, and he is the very grounding of the good, he is the good, but that God literally is immutable in more of a static way.

He is the unmoved mover, he is, from eternity past, sort of, you know, doing this one action which encompanies all what we perceive as multiple actions from our point of view.

And so it's this very sort of philosophical Thomistic doctrine that are accepted by some

Protestants. There's a raging debate amongst Reformed Baptists over the impassibility of God.

But, well, I've been wondering about what is going through the minds of many of the prominent

Catholic apologists, especially those who came out of Protestantism, over Pope Francis, because most of them are very silent about it.

I'm sure, I'm talking about the more conservative Catholic apologists, and they're strangely silent about it, with the exception of Robertson Jenis, who is participating in this debate that I have organized.

Robertson Jenis is very outspoken against Pope Francis in areas that he disagrees with, and he makes it clear that as a

Catholic he must do so in certain parameters of respect and reverence, but he still is very upset and very much in vehement opposition to much of the ideology of Pope Francis.

And in fact, Robertson Jenis was fired from EWTN because he had a television program on EWTN and was being very vocal in his opposition to some of the things that Pope John Paul II was doing and saying, not to mention even kissing the

Quran and having ecumenical prayer gatherings with those involved in pagan religions and so on.

Gerry Matitix, of course, is somebody who was more well -known in the past, who was very vocal in his opposition to these things, but he is more of a schismatic in regard to his views, because he's become a state of vacantist and does not even believe there has been a valid Pope since Vatican II, although he believes that the office is biblical.

He just thinks it's not occupied. But it is interesting that although Catholics are supposed to have the freedom and liberty to criticize the

Pope when they disagree with him on matters that have not been defined as dogma, they typically are not doing that.

That's why Robertson Jenis is kind of a lone voice amongst those who are considered to be in communion with Rome.

He has not been disfellowshipped, excommunicated, or anything like that over his views.

His bishop has not disciplined him over his being outspoken against where he believes

Pope Francis is in error. But when

I see someone to the extent of liberalism that Pope Francis embraces, it makes you wonder what papal infallibility really means and how useful it is, because popes have hardly ever in history declared things ex cathedra.

So how are these men faithful shepherds if they can say nearly anything when they are just voicing their own opinion?

And things that even make faithful Catholics cringe and of course speak against in the privacy of their own coffee clotches and wine cellars or whatever.

They're not saying this typically in Catholic radio and television.

So when you returned to Protestantism, you obviously, from what we've already discussed, you did not return to what you have called

A .W. Pink -style Calvinism. You've become somewhat of a moderate

Molinist. How would you describe yourself today as a Protestant? Yeah, yeah.

Can I just respond real quick to something you said? Oh yeah, sure. Respond to anything that I said. Yeah, so there's a scholar, a libertarian named

Tom Woods, who has this view that libertarianism is compatible with Catholic doctrine, and that the encyclicals overreach, and that good

Catholics should respectively ignore them. And I think his book's called

The Church and the Free Market, I believe. I think that those arguments aren't very good.

I think that indeed a faithful Catholic needs to affirm the role of government, that the government has the right to do these things that we're discussing, because we are talking about morality, and when we're talking about these things, and morality is within the scope of the papacy.

But there is one thing that it's like, you shouldn't overreach in one sense, as I think that they've done, in regard to making these sorts of secondary views on government role and economics and business, or you have to have a certain philosophical view of God that Thomas Aquinas did, basically, or you can't be in fellowship with us at all.

And yet, they sort of underreach, if that's the phrase, in regard to, as you mentioned, actually speaking from the seat, the chair of Peter.

But it's a bit troubling, and just the overall idea that the

Church is making a really big deal about these secondary issues, that I that I can't call someone a brother or sister in Christ, because they believe

God is pastoral, you know, God has emotions, and God is affected by us, or, you know, these sorts of things.

I mean, I can't call that person a brother in Christ, or, well, one would say I can call them a brother in Christ, but they're a separated brother, right?

So that's really what overall what draws me away from Rome, is this very hard exclusivism within things that I sort of see as secondary.

I want to focus on the Gospel, on the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, on the Apostles' Creed, something like that, that I see in faith, you know.

That's kind of interesting how you would view modern Rome as being so hard and exclusive when their own catechism says that Muslims adore the same one true

God that we do. Yeah, so they're really exclusive when it comes to secondary

Christian doctrine, but they do seem to be very inclusive when it comes to non -Christian religions or sects.

So I find that troubling. And by the way,

Christopher Farrar, I don't know if you're familiar with him, he is a Roman Catholic attorney and apologist.

He was involved in the last Long Island, New York debate that I organized between James White and Catholic apologists.

He is vehemently anti -libertarian and wrote a book condemning libertarianism as one of the most dangerous political ideologies known to man.

That's right, that's right. Oh, so you're familiar with his book? I'm familiar with him, but I'm not familiar.

I've heard of his name, but that's the same sort of thing that lots of Catholic philosophers that I know, that they think that libertarianism, big capitalism, free marketism, you know, is this tool of the devil.

So yeah, I'm familiar with that sort of thinking. Great. Well, we are going to a station break right now, our second station break.

If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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That's lynbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with one hour to go is

Tyler Dalton McNabb, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Houston Baptist University, specializing in Epistemology and Philosophy of Religion.

We are now discussing Reformed Epistemology 101 and why should it matter to the average

Christian in the pew. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzen at gmail .com. If you could, first of all, let's start with a very logical place to start because we're getting into some very heady stuff here.

What is Reformed Epistemology? Thanks. And real quick,

I just wanted to make a clarification from the last hour. Sure. I consider myself a conservative evangelical.

I've actually have gotten a lot of... I was broadly Reformed, by the way. I've actually gotten a lot of heat in the philosophy community, the

Christian philosophy community specifically, for defending the right of philosophers to criticize homosexual lifestyles at academic conferences.

So by no means do I want to come across a moderate here. Right. I can understand why some people, you know, have that affinity with Rome, who at least officially is in the political and social arena opposing these things with homosexuality, same -sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia.

We're opposing these things with the same fervency as evangelicals and conservatives of all religious stripes.

But yeah, I can understand that. Yeah. Yeah. So I consider myself broadly

Reformed or broadly Calvinistic evangelical.

So that was the question. I just wanted to make a clarification on that. What is

Reformed Epistemology? That's a good question. It's called

Reformed Epistemology because John Calvin, speaking of to make it sound all nice and Latin -ish, and it was the idea that all individuals, all humans, have this sense of the divine within them, that they all have this sort of faculty that is responsible for producing belief in God, for making one aware of God's existence.

And so the Reformed, and the phrase

Reformed Epistemology, is called Reformed because it finds its origins in John Calvin primarily.

And then Epistemology, the other word there, is the sort of theory or the study of knowledge, of rationality.

It's the sort of field within philosophy that's interested in asking, how can we know something?

Is someone rational? They believe something? Are they justified in affirming that particular proposition?

And so forth. So in this particular field, right, this field of what's called

Epistemology, and then we're going to put Reformed in front of it, and so far as John Calvin goes.

So it's this idea about what's the sort of Reformed view? It's a view about how we can know that God exists, which finds its origins in Calvin.

And there are many Reformed Christians who are apologists, who are presuppositionalists.

I've interviewed some of them. I've also interviewed those who would adhere to the evidentialist philosophy of apologetics, including

R .C. Sproul. So there is a divide amongst Brethren who not only share much of the same doctrine, but even perhaps the same pew on Sundays, who disagree.

We just most recently had Sy. 10 Brugengate, who is a very well -known, at least amongst presuppositionalists who were

Reformed and so on. He's fairly well -known in that community as being a leading advocate of presuppositionalism.

I've got another author who, God willing, will be on in the near future to discuss that as well.

But how would Reformed Epistemology be different from both presuppositionalism and evidentialism?

Yeah, so the Reformed Epistemology, most sort of glossed and contemporary terms, finds its origins mostly, though not all of it, in a philosopher named

Alvin Plantinga. Alvin Plantinga is a Christian philosopher, still alive, still producing some great stuff on occasion, who was really responsible, at least significantly responsible, for the

Renaissance and secular philosophy of theists and Christians doing philosophy in the

Academy. And he had this sort of idea, and his idea is something like this.

If God exists, and He's created in us a faculty aimed at producing belief in Him or His activities, then if that faculty has functioned properly, and we've formed a belief in God or in God's activities, then we can be warranted, we can be justified in our belief that God exists, or that God is doing something in our lives.

Even if we were without argumentation, even if we were without argument. So it's this idea that belief in God is what philosophers call properly basic.

A basic belief is a belief that doesn't depend on other arguments for its justification.

It's basic, and it has justification because it's formed from properly functioning cognitive faculties.

So it's a conditional statement. Most Reformed epistemologists, at least in the sort of Plantinga style that I just drew up for you there, they make a conditional claim that if God exists, then we can know that He exists.

This is essentially the heart of, I think, Reformed epistemology. It differs from evidentialism, because evidentialism doesn't make this sort of conditional claim of that if God exists, then belief in God is warranted, or we can know that God exists.

Evidentialism aims to show that indeed God does exist. Also, so they're answering sort of two different questions, and because they're answering two different questions, they're not incompatible.

I think some form of evidentialism is compatible with this idea of Reformed epistemology.

Well, you said that, unless I'm misunderstanding you, that evidentialists—I'm not an evidentialist, by the way—but you said that they do not believe that belief in God is warranted.

Well, obviously R .C. Sproul and the late John Gerstner and many other evidentialists believe that you must believe in God or you will be damned.

I mean, I'm not sure where you're going with that. I'm not sure when I said that. Oh, I thought you just said it a few seconds ago.

Perhaps I misunderstood you. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't make that claim. No, the idea is that Reformed epistemologists are interested in the claim that if God exists, then belief in God is warranted.

Evidentialists aren't interested in the claim that God does exist. So they're sort of answering two different questions.

I say they're compatible. One can be an evidentialist, one can be interested in and, you know, talking about the

Kalam cosmological argument or the moral argument or the argument for the resurrection of Jesus, as well as be a

Reformed epistemologist. These aren't mutually exclusive views. So, in the ecumenical spirit of the show today, right, is yet another olive branch.

But the main idea is that we don't have to have an argument for in order for our belief to be rational, in order for our belief to constitute knowledge.

Presuppositionalism likes to claim its origins in Calvin and so forth and through Scripture, obviously, as well.

It makes a little bit of a different claim. The idea behind presuppositionalism, as I understand it, is something like, we all have this knowledge of God, we all know that God exists, and we can show, without a shadow of a doubt, that we all believe that God exists.

And as we do this, we formulate a sort of transcendental argument, an argument that's aimed at showing that sort of the preconditions of all of our human experiences assumes

God's existence. So therefore, we can show that everyone believes that God exists. So, God is a precondition to logic, and He's a necessary condition for morality, and induction, and so forth.

And so, the main sort of goal, or at least one of the main goals,

I would say, is showing the unbeliever that he's being foolish, he's suppressing the truth of unrighteousness by way of this articulating a transcendental argument.

And presuppositionalists tend to formulate their justification for God's existence in sort of a circular way.

So, how do you know that God exists? Well, because the Bible tells me so. Well, how do you know that the Bible is, you know, true? Well, because, you know,

God says so. Something like that. It's a sort of viciously circular argument in which the

Reformed epistemology view doesn't share that. As I stated earlier, the Reformed epistemology view is, the

Reformed epistemology model is a constructed and conditional model. Like, if God exists, then our belief in Him would be warranted.

It's not assuming, it's not giving, it's not assuming the conclusion in a premise, or anything like that.

So, I would say those are roughly the main differences between each of those three views.

Now, I'm assuming that even though at the heart of Reformed epistemology is regarding the question if God exists,

I'm assuming you're not claiming to be an agnostic, that you firmly believe

God does exist. You're just talking about philosophical reasoning and argumentation,

I'm assuming, correct? Yeah, yeah, that's right. Again, I'm a conservative evangelical. Yeah, I think this sort of conditional project is a very interesting one, and it can be very productive.

So, say, for example, that all arguments for God's existence actually turn out to be bad ones, which

I don't believe. I think there are lots of good arguments for God's existence. But for argument's sake, let's go ahead and assume they're all bad.

Well, at the end of the day, does it mean we're not rational? No, it doesn't. Because if God existed and gave us

His faculty, and if that faculty was functioning properly, and we believed in God because of that, then indeed we would still be rational, even apart from argumentation.

An individual who is unsure, say, on any given day, maybe he just, every

Wednesday, for whatever reason, he just questions the arguments for God's existence, he's still rational on Wednesday, just as he is every other day of the week.

And then also for grandmas, you know? Grandmas who aren't familiar with the

Kalam cosmological argument, or an abjective version of the moral argument, right? They're still rational in their faith, because you can tell this nice little story about this faculty that God's given them.

So yeah, I think it's still really important, and it contributes a lot to individuals' relationship with God.

When I was street preaching in Scotland, I did my PhD in Scotland at the University of Glasgow, and I think it meant a lot to people.

I think it had a profound effect to talk with them, to show them that if God existed, then they could know that God existed.

They could trust their senses, just as they trust that a building is right in front of them. And until they're given a defeater, they should go ahead and affirm that a building's right in front of them, right?

Even if we have no good arguments that a building was, indeed, right in front of them. And so, to make that argument with God, it's like going back to, we should trust our basic senses.

We should trust our common sense. And I think there's a real victory there. And then you can sort of turn it around against the atheist and say, but if atheism is true, you couldn't even know that the atheism was true.

And you can go a little bit of a sort of up one on the atheist there, and in doing so, make knowledge, sort of develop a transcendental argument of your own, talking about how

I think God is a precondition to knowledge, and how on atheism, you can't account for knowledge, you can't make knowledge intelligible.

So there's a bit of a positive apologetic to it as well. Now, how does

Reformed epistemology reflect on the tension that exists between, we are taught in Romans 1, that basically all of humanity knows the truth instinctively, but they suppress the truth.

That is a lot of what presuppositionalism seems to be driven by.

And also, on the other side of the coin, that the heart of man is exceedingly wicked, who can know it?

So that would seem to me that there also is warrant for people not to necessarily always trust their instincts, because of that.

If you could reflect on that for a minute. Yeah. So in regard to the first one,

I, a Reformed epistemologist, would agree. Presuppositionalism and Reformed epistemology, they should seem as brothers, as good brothers, as brothers in the faith, who disagree on a couple sort of smaller issues,

I think, overall, and so they sort of gloss their projects a bit differently. But yeah, the

Reformed epistemologists would agree, and would use Romans 1 as justification for part of the reason for thinking that we all do have this sense of divinity.

So there wouldn't be too much of a disagreement there. In regard to the second thing, again, not trusting our...

The heart of man is exceedingly wicked, who can know it. That's right. Yeah.

So I think we're made in the image of God, and God's created in us faculties.

Yeah, they've been affected by sin, and especially the faculty that's aimed at producing belief in God.

And in fact, it's been damaged by sin that the Reformed tradition teaches, which is why we need the

Spirit's repairment and testimony of the gospel. So I sort of gave you an incomplete story a few minutes ago about how this sort of general view of God can be justified and warranted, but I also think that this sort of Christian view, exclusively

Christian view of God, can be warranted. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

No, it's good. Oh, I was just going to say, how is this flushed out in regard to general revelation, which is nature and so on, things that are discussed by Paul in Romans 1, but also, in contrast, specific revelation, where the only way that we can know the gospel, the truths of Christ and the truths of his finished work on Calvary and so on, is from special revelation?

How is that flushed out with Reformed epistemology? Yeah, so the idea that sin has damaged our sense of divinity, now it might be that in a lot of people it's still working properly enough to where it can sufficiently produce knowledge, but nonetheless, it's not producing belief in God the way in which it ought, in the way in which it was designed to.

Perhaps we were first created to produce belief that gods near us are present or exist in the same way as we produce a belief that other minds are around us.

You know, it has a sort of very maximal degree of warrant or of justification.

There's this idea, though, again, sort of this conditional claim that, well, if the Spirit was repairing our sense of divinity and sort of instigated us, moved us to accept the testimony of the gospel, which we can come into contact with by way of reading

Holy Scripture or by way of hearing a preacher, or, you know, our parents talk to us about him, our neighbor, our friend, an evangelist, and we accept that testimony.

Because of this repairment and instigation by the Spirit and so forth, then our accepting the testimony that Jesus wrote from the dead can be justified in somewhat, slightly different, but somewhat of an analogous case as, you know, our belief that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 is justified, right?

You know, a teacher tells us when we're in school, at least that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, and you just sort of go, oh, okay, that's nice.

Yeah, I believe that. I'm finding myself believing that that's true. Or, you know, crazy enough,

I have college students that I teach who, you know, don't remember 9 -11. But nonetheless, they believe it, even if they never saw footage of it, right?

You know, they're going to tell them one day, hey, you know, these evil radical jihadists hijacked planes and killed thousands.

You know, they believe it by way of testimony, and so their belief seems justified.

It seems rational. It seems like they can know that 9 -11 happened, even apart from argumentation. So really, the idea of Reformed epistemology is it's trying to rescue rationality from the hands of the

Enlightenment, which demands argument, you know, hard arguments and evidence for everything.

And it's saying, no, guys, we can be rational and affirming our religious beliefs apart from arguments, and here's some stories to tell us how that can be.

One last thing in regard to the heart, specifically, that verse. Yeah, from Jeremiah 17. Yeah, so I think that's probably primarily—I'd have to look at it again, but just off the top of my head,

I think that's probably primarily talking about needing to question—being there, probably, to make us question certain moral beliefs or perhaps even religious beliefs in our natural state, which

I think, for Christians, we have a little bit of an advantage because the Spirit of God is making all of that right, at least is in the process of doing so.

And at the same time, because I think we're made in the image of God, I think even non -Christians can know a lot of spiritual and moral truths.

So I sort of take the Jeremiah cry—I'm sorry, Jeremiah cry. Freudian slip there.

Jeremiah passage, I think it's to be read in light of being made in God's image, and I think once we do that,

I would take it as more sort of a caution for non -regenerate individuals relying completely on themselves.

Something like that, I think, probably would roughly be in the ballpark. Now, obviously, Alvin Plantigna was in some way influenced by Calvin by his admission, but did he also adopt

Calvin's understanding, which obviously I would believe is a biblical understanding, of the total depravity of man?

Yeah. So, Plantigna is a Calvinist insofar as you would call the

Ramantra a Calvinist, those in whom the

Synod of Dort was responding to. So, by total depravity,

I don't know—you know, lots of people mean different things. You know, some mean total inability, some mean every faculty is at least painted with some sin.

I've heard lots of different versions of it. So there's lots of versions, he'd believe, insofar as the total depravity of man goes.

But if you mean something like, once God's grace erases the effects of original sin, you know, be it

Provenient Grace, and, you know, one's present with the

Gospel, does Plantigna think that that person can then rightly respond to the Gospel? From my understanding, from other scholars

I've talked with about this topic on Plantigna's view, Plantigna would be more sort of in the category of an

Arminian or Molinist. So he actually believes in the concept of Provenient Grace, which

Roman Catholics and Wesleyans seem to be in agreement on that area.

Yeah, I'm not an expert in this. I'm an expert in epistemology, but not on esoteriology. And so far as I've discussed with experts more in this sort of analytic theology field, yeah, that's what they tell me.

Okay, we're going to a break right now, our final break, and we do have a couple of questions waiting for Tyler when we come back.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, if you would like to join them on the air with a question of your own.

And we look forward to hearing from you right after we return from our messages during this final station break.

So don't go away, we will be right back with Dr. Tyler Dalton McNabb after these messages.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

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I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests, Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to.

Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris's show,

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Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

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We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Thanks, Todd. I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth.

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This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 25 minutes left is

Dr. Tyler Dalton McNabb. We are currently discussing

Reformed Epistemology, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com Please give us your first name, city, state, and country of residence if you live outside of the

USA, and we invite questions from anyone, whether they are a

Christian or not, or no matter what denomination or what religion or what faith they claim to represent, if any.

Agnostics and atheists are also welcome to ask questions at chrisarnzen at gmail .com

And before I go to one of our listeners, who is in Greensboro, North Carolina, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, I just wanted to,

Tyler, since I was able to fish out the Council of Trent, Canon 24, if anyone shall say that the justice received is not preserved and also increased in the sight of God through good works, but that said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification received, but not a cause of the increase thereof, let him be anathema.

That's what I was referring to earlier. So some people might think on its surface that Rome would be in agreement with those

Reformed Christians who are in the lordship salvation camp, who condemn easy believism and cheap grace, those who unbiblically and heretically believe that a born -again

Christian can live any way he or she chooses for their entire lives and go to heaven when they die.

They may think that Rome and those who are in the lordship salvation camp of Calvinism are on the same side, but obviously they're not, because Dr.

MacArthur and all those in the Christian camp of lordship salvation would say that good works are a fruit, an evidence of our justification, but they're never a cause of it.

But anyway, we can— Yeah, yeah, that's why I agree with that for sure. I was questioning, what are the origins of those works?

Who's the primary author? Who's primarily responsible for those works? Are they basically works of, you know, works that find their origin or primary responsibility in the spirit by way of us being in Christ, or are they sort of just our man -effort work that they're talking about?

And so if you tend to think that N .T. Wright is right about justification, then you might—

Well, actually, I have a lot of serious disagreements with N .T. Wright, but— Indeed, I'm just saying if one did, then

I think that what they're saying is compatible with that, not compatible with the traditional reformed or at least what's understood today as the traditional reformed view of justification.

Okay, and we have Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker in Greensboro, North Carolina, who asks, what are the top three issues with epistemology for the

Christian to deal with? The problem of induction surely is one, but what are the next two or three aspects of epistemology?

That's a good question. I think one of the big things that a lot of people,

Christian or not, are under the assumption— wrongly under the assumption— that knowledge entails certainty.

That knowledge entails certainty. That in order to know something, that you have to be certain of it.

And I think that's just clearly false. I know that I'm talking with you right now about reformed epistemology, but you could be a greatly designed

Japanese robot that's fooling me this whole entire time. Well, if it's a robot, it certainly would be

Japanese, wouldn't it? Indeed, indeed. So I think

I'm in my house, but perhaps someone, you know, built a—it's possible, at least, even though it's not really probable— someone built a house that looks really a lot like mine and moved mine slightly, you know, to the left or somewhere else or something like that.

I mean, these things are possible, but they're not probable. But nonetheless, because they're possible, they show that we can know something and yet not be certain of it, not have this sort of 100 % certainty thing.

So I think that's actually really important when we're discussing arguments for God's existence, when we're talking about epistemology to nonbelievers, is that we don't have to— maybe some think that we can.

That's great, but we don't have to show that an argument shows that God exists with 100 % certainty or show that our apologetical approach guarantees that God exists with 100 % certainty.

That's not a requirement. Almost no philosopher living, almost no epistemologist living almost would affirm that.

So I think that's something really important, practically speaking, that Christians, when we engage the lost, know, and also for our own personal lives.

I went through a crisis for about a year thinking, am I justified? Am I rational? My belief that God exists because I'm not 100 % certain, or am

I? And I went back and forth with this for about a year. So I think that's pretty important.

Yeah, the problem of induction. How do we know the future will be like the past, right? I'm assuming it's what the author has, or the pastor has in mind.

On Plantinga's view, the problem of induction is solved in this way. In a similar way to talking about how belief in God can be warranted apart from argumentation.

Inductive belief in the uniformity of nature, belief that the universe is uniform and so forth, can be warranted.

We can be justified in affirming the future will be like the past, not by way of argument, but by way of, maybe if we have a faculty that's aimed at producing this belief in the uniformity of nature, belief that the future will be like the past, then we naturally produce this belief from our faculty, as long as our faculty is functioning properly and aimed at truth.

And hey, we can have a justified inductive belief here. And so on Plantinga's view, we don't get there by argumentation because if we did, if we tried to try to demonstrate the justification of an inductive, of induction by induction, that would indeed be circular.

So yeah, so I guess those are probably my two comments that right off the bat

I would probably mention to him. And Pastor Vanderwerker has a follow -up question.

I had the distinct honor of preaching to a dear sister in Christ's family member last

Friday. I guess he meant preaching to a dear sister in Christ's family member last

Friday. I proposed a problem to the hearers. The Bible says, it is appointed once for man to die, then the judgment, and then propose the following three steps for the hearers to be able to know the truth of the scriptures.

Truth can only be known for certain under these three conditions. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God exists and that he has the power to, number two, reveal truth to us in such a manner in which, number three, we can know it and be certain, objectively certain.

Is this the proper presentation for the epistemic certainty? Brother Saiten Brugenkait taught that three -part presentation based on Bonson's understanding of Cornelius Van Til.

Do I need to repeat any of that? Because that's kind of a lengthy follow -up.

Can you just repeat the syllogism again? Let's see.

We are able to know the truth of the scriptures under these parameters here.

Truth can only be known for certain under these conditions. An omnipotent, omnipotent,

I'm sorry, omniscient, omnipresent God exists and that he has the power to reveal truth to us in such a manner we can know it and be certain, objectively certain.

Yeah, I guess I don't see why it follows that we have to be the sort of,

I assume what he means is something more than psychological certainty. I suppose what he means is that it's impossible for us to be wrong about a particular belief.

I don't see why that follows necessarily from God being omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, and so forth.

I just, it seems like a non -sequitur. I'm not sure why that follows. I don't, I am, I think that that,

I sound like a heretic to some of your listeners, but I probably already do, given last, last

I, I actually think that we can't have this sort of certainty that Psy thinks we can have.

I don't think that, that there can be such a belief that has a particular property in which we can't be wrong about.

But, nonetheless, it's not a big deal for me because I don't think knowledge entails certainty. I can say

I know God exists, and yet say it's not impossible for me to be deceived by that belief.

Or similar, I could say, I am in my car right now, but it's possible that actually when

I went in my house and then I came back, someone replaced my car with another car that looks very much like my car. I don't think knowledge entails certainty, so that's not a big deal for me.

So I don't actually try to establish with the unbeliever that we can have this objective certainty that Psy's talking about, at least what

I believe he's talking about, if I understand him rightly. I think that's a bit of a red herring, and it's unnecessary, and I think it can actually be hurtful for our own faith, and for others coming to faith.

Instead, I try to establish how they can trust their common sense, their basic common sense, even when that comes to believing in God.

And I think that that's probably the primary concern that I have before I get into why on atheism you can't do this, and why they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness for another reason, and present the gospel, you know, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ through that way.

Now having said what you said, why is it that when the

Apostle Paul is trying to comfort the church in Thessalonica, he seems to be appealing to things that they can be certain of?

That, you know, the fact that for since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

But we're not supposed to be paralyzed with depression and anxiety that we are ignorant of where those that we are, that we formerly labored with the gospel in our midst, our brothers and sisters, when they die.

We're not supposed to have some kind of lingering doubts about where they are. It seems that Paul is just instilling confidence in them that they are indeed with Christ, and that they're going to be raised with him, and that they're going to return with him.

That's right. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I don't think that this sort of epistemic certainty that we're talking about, though, is entailed by Paul's statement there.

I mean, just because it's possible that right now you're talking to a

Japanese robot, a highly sophisticated Japanese robot, it doesn't mean that you should, then, or be uncertain and insofar as confident level, right?

It doesn't mean that you shouldn't have great confidence that you're not speaking to a real person.

It doesn't mean that you have no justification or you have no psychological certainty, at least, that who you're talking to right now is a real person.

You shouldn't be in fear. You shouldn't be very, you shouldn't be agnostic about the situation.

So, I think you can say the same sort of thing without that entailing or requiring this sort of certainty that Cy is speaking of.

Well, like, for instance, I believe that the Scriptures do teach the miraculous qualities that are inherent in the

Word of God and the Gospel in regard to how they transform someone. And like, for instance, how would someone with your philosophy approach 1

John 5, 20? And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding.

So, we may know Him who is true and we are in Him who is true in His Son, Jesus Christ.

This is the true God and eternal life. There doesn't seem to be any room for a question mark there.

So, perhaps I'm not being clear. Perhaps I'm just stupid. No, no, no, no, no, not at all.

So, perhaps I'm being clear. So, again, I don't think knowledge entails certainty. So, you can say, you know, you can know that you're talking to someone on the phone.

You can rest assure that you're not doing a radio show with a

Japanese robot. That, saying that, that doesn't require you to have this sort of certainty.

And it's sort of like a, almost, I think, because how a lot of us are brought up to believe, it's almost sort of like a radical, a radical sort of paradigm shift.

But I'm not saying you can't know. I'm not saying you can't have lots of confidence. I think we can be psychologically,

I'm psychologically certain that God exists. That's to say, you know, if you want to do some sort of, you know, psychological analysis on me, it would be like, you know, as if I thought that, that, you know, and my feelings, via my feelings, it's not such that,

I think that God doesn't exist, or that it's possible that God does exist. It's just sort of when

I take a step back and I analyze, well, technically, is this a possibility?

You know, is there, even if it's the most, you know, infinitesimal situation here we're talking about, right?

Maybe it's like 0 .001 chance that I'm wrong here, that, you know, nonetheless,

I can still be the case, and yet I can know. So those passages about knowing

Jesus is risen from the dead, or being confident that I am saved, or knowing that I am saved, all that still fits on my model, which, again,

I stress, nearly all epistemologists, including all Christian epistemologists, almost all Christian epistemologists agree that we can have knowledge about something and yet not be certain of it.

And because we can have knowledge, that would entail that we have confidence. I think knowledge does entail some sort of confidence and a particular belief.

So I can still, on my model, I can still account for all those verses, I think. We have

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, Mr. Arnzen, years ago,

I can recall, on the old Iron Sharpens Iron program, you interviewed a gentleman who had been through phases of involvement in various religions, including evangelical

Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and perhaps a couple of cults here and there.

And then, when returning to Protestantism, wrote a book about his experiences.

You then challenged him on how we, his hearers, could know that he is not just being blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

I remember you later announced a year or two after that interview that that man had sadly returned to Eastern Orthodoxy, just as you feared he might when you were interviewing him.

What does your guest have to say about his confidence that where he is now will not be something that he strays from in the future?

Yeah. So this is where I'm going to sound like a heretic, your viewers. And that's for my mere

Christianity, you know, to quote C .S. Lewis there. I think

Eastern Orthodox Christians are Christians, just that. So I don't think that he's necessarily, at least in Jeopardy!

if he has an evangelical, if he understands Eastern Orthodoxy with evangelical lenses, as I understood

Roman Catholicism with, then, you know, I don't necessarily think that he's headed straight to hell.

So it would be, to me, maybe not exactly analogous, but roughly analogous to someone being a

Baptist and then turning Presbyterian, something like that. I think doctrine can be confusing.

These secondary issues aren't as clear as people think. People like to think that they have this sort of epistemic certainty on these issues they just can't be wrong about, but I don't think that's quite right.

I think we need to have some epistemic humility when it comes, especially when it comes to these sort of secondary issues that people struggle with.

Well, obviously you and I would disagree on what our secondary and tertiary— That's right, sure. In fact,

I'm serious if you ever think that you would be interested in having a debate with someone on the issue of ecumenism and so on.

I would love to see if we could perhaps at some point do that, because obviously there were many things during our interview today that I disagree with you on.

And also, I must repeat myself, I don't believe that every person who claims to be

Eastern Orthodox is going to hell either. But I think it goes back again to who do you trust, and even what do you trust?

And I believe that many of the religions of the world, if not all of them, officially teach that man is some way earning his favor with God to enter into eternal life with him.

When I say all of them, I mean outside of biblical Christianity. And I don't think that the issue of whether or not works are meritorious or not—the works of humans—

I don't think that's a secondary or tertiary issue. I think it's a very, very serious one. But I do appreciate you putting up with me disagreeing with you on the program today.

And I would love for you to at some point be willing to participate in a debate, not with me.

I would never debate anyone. I don't think I am qualified to do that. But with someone, some scholar or apologist that I could perhaps get interest in involvement.

But anyway, I know that your email— I'm sorry, not your email, your website where people can contact you.

I'm looking for it right now. Here it is. It is tylerdaltonm as in Michael, C -N as in Nancy, A -B -B as in boy .com.

And any final words that you care to share with our audience before we go off the air today? Yeah.

First, thanks for having me. Very, very kind of you. Secondly, I'd be more than happy to do some sort of thing, some sort of discussion, debate, dialogue over ecumenicalism or that sort of— roughly that field, that topic.

And thirdly, I'd be more than happy to entertain any questions if you want to email me or leave a comment on my website, my email.

You can email me at my personal email. I'll give you my personal email. tylerdaltonmcnab at gmail .com.

So I welcome any sort of further dialogue from this. Well, I thank you very much for being on the program today.

And I want to thank everybody who listened and those who took the time to write in emails with questions.

And I apologize to those that we could not get to because we're running out of time now. But I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. And we look forward to receiving your questions for our guests the remainder of the week on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.