Dr Greg Bahnsen - A Short Synopsis of Van Til: The Essence of Presuppositionalism (Part 1)

Doctor Bonson is here at the invitation of the bookstore and the Van Till committee. In case you're not aware of what the Van til committee is. Dr. Gaffin is the head of that group and it's involved, composed of different scholars and pastors that are interested in preserving the legacy and hopefully the living tradition of van Til's apologetics. Dr. Gaffin is engaged in denominational meetings, so he was not able to be here and provide a presence from the Ventil Committee. So on behalf of both the committee and the bookstore, I'm welcoming you here and welcoming especially Dr. Bonson. Dr. Bonson is well known for his ability to set forth Dr. Van Til's apologetic method in a way that is both clear to those who are seeking to understand it and also in a way that is persuasive to those who may even oppose it. Dr. Bonson has been engaged in various debates which have been taped and are available should you like to hear how a Ventilian perspective can actually influence a debate and provide a persuasive case against those antitheistic viewpoints which surround us. The format of this evening's meeting is that we will be given a presentation by Dr. Bonson until 8:45, at which time we'll have a question and answer period begin. Following that, a short break and then we will resume again for presentation and some more questions afterwards. Please join me in beginning this evening with prayer. Our Father in Heaven, we thank you and praise you that you have shown to us your wisdom in the person of Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that you will open our minds to the way all things are. Yes, in Jesus Christ. And apart from him, there is no answer. Lord, we pray that you will be with Dr. Bonson this evening as he seeks to show how clearly Jesus Christ is. Yes. Lord, we pray that you will open our minds to understand Dr. Van Till's writings, which can sometimes be complex and require navigation to interpret. Lord, we pray for those who are still on their way here. We pray that you'll give them safe travels on the treacherous roads. We pray also that you'll give all of us safe journeys home this evening. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Well, I want to thank Steve for that kind introduction and the invitation to be here to share with you something that is really precious to me. I think that the apologetic of Cornelius Van Til holds great promise for the Christian church and power for advancing the gospel in this world. I have come to understand it better over the years. I took an initial interest in it when I was in college and Then came here to Westminster and studied with Dr. Van Til. Eventually became something of a graduate assistant for him and helped organize some of his materials. And when he got ill that winter, taught his class for about a week. As I recall, he was a very precious Christian gentleman to me. But totally apart from my personal affiliation and affection for him, I've been persuaded that his is the most consistent, reformed and especially biblical application of the Christian theory of knowledge. And so it's always a pleasure to be able to promote and to try to explain what he has had to say to people who are interested in it. When I thought about what I might be able to accomplish in the two evenings that we'll have together, I decided, I hope correctly, that it would be good to start with Ban Till central thrust in apologetics. And I don't mean to embarrass or to in any way demean anyone who has come here, but I have found, and let's just say it's Van Till's fault because he didn't really communicate all that well sometimes. But I have found that even people who have read Van Til can come away saying, what's that all about? And so no one has to raise hand and say, yes, you know, I will walk the aisle. I am one of those who needs further help with Van Til. But there may be some of you here who would dislike someone to say, well, I'm not really sure that I've got it, so can you at least lay it out in real basic terms so I can compare my reading to what somebody who's supposed to know says about Mantill? And that's what I'm going to do here under Roman numeral 1. Now, you see, I haven't lost my perspective on seminary training. We go in the Hebrew fashion here from the right hand column. Now, what happened is I ran into room on the board, so I just kept moving the other direction. We're going to start with Van Til central thrust. And I've written down three premises and I'm going to try to explicate each of them because I think if you understand these three things, you've got the nugget, if you will. This is the heart of the matter. The issue is ultimate commitment will be the first thing we talk about. Secondly, Vanthill teaches that we must pursue epistemological self consciousness. That's a mouthful of. But in just a few minutes you'll understand it, you'll all be saying it, you'll be going home snapping, epistemological self confidence. I got it. That's right. And then, so we argue from the impossibility of the contrary, we'll put this together as just real quick overview of what Van Till was all about. And then I'd like to take kind of time out from the more academic philosophical presentation and give you a rundown of Van Til's career. There may be people here like myself that take an interest in that, the biographical side of Van Till's. The presentation of Van Till will also contribute to understanding what he was doing and the significance of this man in the 20th century. And then I would like to thirdly talk about Van Till in comparison to other major Reformed thinkers in the 20th century. Not because Van Til did not appreciate Kuyper or Warfield or Doyberg or Schaeffer, but even though there is a family of Reformed theology and thought and many of the goals are shared, there are distinctives between these various Reformed thinkers. And so not as a matter of just saying, hey, rah, rah for Van Til, put these other people down, not with that spirit at all, but so that you might understand the distinctive genius of this man. By genius I mean, you know, what is the thrust here? What is it that he was getting at? I think it would be helpful to set him over against Kuyper and the usefulness of apologetics, and then set him over against Warfield on the interdependence of apologetics with theology, over against Dollivert on the interdependence of apologetics with philosophy, and then over against Schaeffer on the interdependence of apologetics with evangelism. I don't know if we'll get through all of that tonight. That's my hope and goal. And then tomorrow evening, well, wherever we leave off here and then I'd like to pick up Roman numeral 5, talk about Van Til and the question of theistic proof. Because Dr. Van Till has been widely maligned and misrepresented, and I think you might be surprised on what he has to say about theistic proof. He believes in proving the existence of God. Now, I realize everybody else has written Van Till's against arguing for the existence of God, so forth, but I'm going to show you otherwise. And then talk about Van Till's relationship to Christian evidences as well. Because here again people have said, well, I'm an evidentialist, not a presuppositionalist. As though presuppositionalists don't use evidence and evidentialists don't have presuppositions. Right. Sadly, that nomenclature gives rise to that misperception. I can't fight it. Just like my friend John Frame admits, we've got to use the vocabulary people have come to use and become familiar with. But the fact of the matter is, it's not the best thing in the world to say. You've got presuppositionalist and evidentialist. That's very misleading. So that's the goal for the next two evenings, Lord willing, he'll bless our time together. This discussion. We're going to be taking questions, as you know, in the middle as well as at the end. If I had more time with you. What I prefer to do when I lecture is to have people interrupt at any point. I think that's the best thing. It's like, well, if you begin to think, oh, I'm off the path, I don't know what's going on, the easiest thing is just to make sure you know that you get that clarified, that you're back on the path before we go on. But time is short and we have a fairly good crowd, so I think we'll have to wait till the middle of the lecture to take your first set of questions. So we begin then with Van Till central thrust. The issue According to Van Till, his ultimate commitment. John Calvin wrote these words in his commentary on the verse that is long taken as the charter of Christian apologetics. 1st Peter 3:15. Calvin wrote, Contentious disputes arise from the fact that many think less honorably than they ought of the greatness of divine wisdom, and are carried away by profane audacity. Calvin's words were not directed, however, at the profane audacity of the unbeliever who challenges the existence of God or the veracity of his word. Calvin was rather directing this rebuke at those Christian apologists who fall short of recognizing and submitting to the superiority of God's wisdom as revealed in the pages of Scripture. Assuming for themselves the self sufficiency and the intellectual pride of autonomy, such apologists launch into battle with antagonistic unbelievers who are themselves marked by the same self sufficiency and intellectual pride with an audacity that Calvin called profane, an audacity that is not befitting those who live under the lordship of Jesus Christ. The sorry result, as Calvin knew in his day, was nothing but the kind of contentious disputes which should be shunned by a servant of the Lord. In 2 Timothy 2, verses 23 to 26. I think it's real important that those of us who are interested in defending the faith See that Paul calls the servant of the Lord not to be contentious, not to be argumentative. And it was Calvin's view that if you approach apologetics without bowing first to the greatness of divine wisdom, if you approach apologetics in the spirit of intellectual pride or autonomy being a law to yourself, self sufficient intellectually, that nothing will come of it but contention and dispute. Now can you figure out why I don't think it takes a PhD to get to the bottom of this? If you're arguing with somebody who already takes himself all too seriously, you know, he says, well, anybody who's going to have me believe in God, you're going to have to prove some things to me. Just a few weeks ago I was at the University of California, Davis, debating an atheist. We had an audience of about 1100 students there and that was a very nice turnout. This fellow had quite a reputation for, you know, really banging away at the crowd Christian faith. And he said all sorts of things that were incredible. He made fun of Jesus and the idea, Christianity's idea, that if you don't believe in Jesus, you go to the barbecue pit and you could hear people and they're laughing and they think that's really something. And at one point in the debate, my opponent dared God to show him something. He said, God, if you exist, I dare you come into the auditorium tonight. Stop hiding now, why don't you come? That sort of thing. Well, now, if you're talking to somebody, not everybody's that audacious, I realize. But if you're talking to somebody that's got that kind of intellectual pride, it's like God, if you want me to believe in you, you're going to have to prove yourself to me. You know, you're going to have to treat me as God in the final authority so that eventually I can turn around and say that you are God. If you're talking to somebody that has that kind of attitude and then you come in as an apologist and you too are guilty of intellectual pride. And are you aware of the fact that Christian apologists sometimes really display that? Maybe when you do some self examination, you realize you too have had that problem. Sometimes we get into arguments with unbelievers. It's really a sad thing. I'm glad for the sanctification that catches us short when the spirit convicts us. But sometimes we find ourselves arguing and we realize what we're defending is not the glory of God, but what our own intellectual ability. It's kind of like I don't like you putting me down I'm going to show you that I have the best of you in the argument. And that kind of argumentative spirit arises, it seems to me, when the apologist thinks, I believe in God because I've proven it. You know, I've got the same standards of logic and evidence as you do as an unbeliever, and I've done my homework better than you. The difference between me and you is you're stupid and I'm smart. Now, of course I've overdrawn this, but I want you to see the point. Calvin says, if you don't begin with first bowing to the wisdom of God, all you can produce as an apologist is disputes and contentions. In the words of 1st Peter 3:15, the personal prerequisite for offering a reasoned defense of the Christian faith is set apart Christ as Lord in your hearts. It's really a shame how often evangelical apologists who turn to 1 Peter 3:15 just read that in passing and don't focus on it, because that is the precondition of defending the faith is that you have sanctified, set apart Christ in your hearts as the Lord. Christ must be the ultimate authority then over our philosophy, the ultimate authority over our reasoning, the ultimate authority over our argumentation. And he must be this ultimate authority not just at the end of the apologetical encounter, but at the very beginning of that endeavor. If we are to cast down reasonings and every high thing exalted against the knowledge of God, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, we must bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, every thought captive. And so one of the things Van Til has pushed very clearly is that we do not first of all have a beginning point that's self sufficient, autonomous, neutral, common to the believer and the unbeliever. And from that we work up to a submission to Jesus Christ. But rather intellectually, we begin with a commitment to Jesus Christ. We do not surrender that in our argumentation. That's the beginning point, not the end point of our argument. Every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. And because of that, we have the power to cast down reasoning that's exalted against the knowledge of God. And so an ultimate commitment to Christ covers the entire range of human activity, including every aspect of intellectual endeavor, to reason in a way which does not recognize this is in fact to transgress the first and great commandment. Jesus says in Matthew 22:37, you shall love the Lord your God with all your mind. With all your mind. And so the Way I think the way I reason is to be an expression of my love of the Savior. In light of this, our thoughts about apologetic method must be controlled by the word of Jesus Christ and not merely our apologetic conclusions. It is so pervasive in the evangelical world today, it's so much the atmosphere that we breathe that evangelical scholars simply take it for granted that the opposite is the case. The Bible should give us an idea of where we should end up in the argument. But surely we don't go to the Bible to learn how to reason. Because if we went to the Bible to have our method controlled, determined or set out for us, many evangelicals say we'd be begging the question, we'd be assuming the very thing we're supposed to be proving. And to that kind of criticism, Dr. Van Til's response was always that's exactly right, because the lordship of Jesus Christ controls my thinking from beginning to end. And if you think that the opposite is not the case, that you don't have an ultimate commitment that is controlling your method, then that's why we need to talk. We'll get into this in a few minutes. We've got to talk about your epistemological self consciousness. When people said you're not being neutral, Van Till didn't shudder and say, oh boy, what should I do? I better be neutral. He said, that's right, and you're not being neutral either. No one can be neutral. Very simply, if the apologist is to rid himself of profane audacity like Calvin said, then his faith in the greatness of divine wisdom must be championed by means of a procedure which itself honors the same wisdom. It simply makes no sense to have respect for your own intellectual ability without Christ, your own autonomy, your own self sufficiency, and use that as a ladder by which you climb up to a place where you say, oh, I can't live my life without Christ. I must give up my self sufficiency and my autonomy. You see, autonomy does not naturally lead to the rejection of autonomy. Isn't that obvious? Shouldn't it be obvious to us? And so the method by which we promote Christian conclusions must itself be controlled by, by those Christian conclusions. The method by which we champion the lordship of Christ must itself be controlled by the lordship of Christ. And so Paul tells us in Colossians 2, 3 that all the treasures, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited in Christ. And here Paul makes no exception for the knowledge by which Christians defend the knowledge of Christ. He doesn't say all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, except for apologetics, are in Christ. Paul doesn't say, now, of course, use the authority of Plato or Aristotle or somebody else until you prove that Christ is Lord. And then from that point on, everything else is deposited in Christ. He says, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited in Christ. No exception is made. And so apologetics doesn't make such an exception. The apologist must presuppose the truth of God's word from start to finish in his apologetic witness. Again, I'm not meaning to insult anyone, but if you would like a brief definition. When we talk about presupposing, or if we talk about a presupposition, what we're referring to is an elementary assumption in our reasoning, in the process by which our opinions are formed. An elementary assumption. And usually in apologetical discussion, a presupposition is thought of as at the most basic level of the network of one's beliefs. Everybody has a set of beliefs. They're related to one another. And as it turns out, those beliefs have some kind of structure. There are some beliefs that you'll give up easier than others, more readily than others. Some beliefs support other beliefs so that when you give up those beliefs, you end up giving up not only the belief in question, but many that relied upon it. So there's this networking of beliefs that everybody has. And at the most basic level, those beliefs are called our presuppositions. Presuppositions form a wide ranging foundational perspective, our starting point, in terms of which everything else we believe is interpreted, in terms of which everything else we believe is evaluated and interrelated. And that's why presuppositions are said to have the greatest authority in one's thinking. Presuppositions will turn out to be the least negotiable beliefs a person has. People will grant to their presuppositions the highest degree of immunity to revision. So the apologist must presuppose the truth of God's word from start to finish. It's only to be expected that in matters of ultimate commitment, the intended conclusion of one's line of argumentation will also be the presuppositional standard which governs his manner of argumentation for that conclusion. If your conclusion does not dictate your method of reasoning, then it turns out your method of reasoning is not arguing for an ultimate commitment after all. Why not? Because your method has a different basis or ultimate authority than your conclusion does. Have I lost you? Somebody says, well, Dr. Bonson, you're assuming the truth of Christianity when you argue in the way that you do, your method is dictated by your conclusion. I'll say, well, of course, because my conclusion is my ultimate authority. I'm talking about that which is my ultimate way of authorizing beliefs. Somebody says, okay, but I want you to use a method that doesn't assume that. I want you to use a method that has some other authority in mind than your ultimate authority. Now, wait a minute. If it's a method that assumes a different ultimate authority or a different authority, then what I'm arguing for obviously is not my ultimate authority. Let's go down certain levels here. Why do you believe A. Why do you go down to level because of B. Why do you believe B? Because of a different level C. Why do you believe C? You have a different level. D. Now, at some point, everybody's got to get to the bottom. Now, for some people, maybe it's 26 stories. For others, maybe it's 126 stories. But eventually you get down to the bottom. Now, at that point, after all this, you know, why do you believe? Why do you believe? Why do you believe? When the person says, why do you believe that? What do you appeal to? Well, you have to appeal to your ultimate authority, right? Because it's ultimate. If it's not your ultimate authority, if you could answer the question without being circular, you would in fact not be at the ultimate level, because then you could be going down another level. So the point is, everybody has an ultimate authority. And when that's what's in dispute, and that is the case in Christian apologetics. The ultimate authority of the Christian versus the ultimate authority of the non Christian worldview. The non Christian is going to assume his ultimate authority in his method of reasoning, and the Christian is going to assume his ultimate authority in his method of reasoning as well. The Christian's final standard, the inspired word of God teaches us Proverbs 1:7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The fear of the Lord is not the endpoint of knowledge. It's not the final outcome. It's not like you learn all these other things and you put everything together and you finally come to the conclusion, oh, I should reverence God. The Bible tells us, isn't it explicit, lays it right out in front of us, that we start with reverence for God. If we would know anything at all, that's not the end of the reasoning process, it's the beginning of the reasoning process. If the apologist treats the starting point of knowledge as something other than the fear of the Lord or Reverence for God. God, then unconditional submission to the unsurpassed greatness of God's wisdom at the end of his argument doesn't really make sense. I think here of the example of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the English analytical philosopher, who in the first phase of his career, his famous career, he admitted in his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus that there was a devastating incongruity in what he was saying. If he was correct in his eventual conclusion, Wittgenstein said the premises that he used to reach that conclusion were actually meaningless. And so I quote him, he said, anyone who understands me eventually recognizes my propositions as nonsensical when he has used them as steps to climb up beyond them. He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up by it. In similar fashion, evangelicals sometimes utilize an autonomous apologetic method which does not assume the authority of Christ, treating their method as a ladder to climb up to the acceptance of Christ's claims, only then to throw the latter away, since Christ is now seen as being the ultimate authority. But of course, if Christ is the ultimate authority, their conclusion is in conflict with the method by which they reach their conclusion, because their method presupposed that they were the ultimate authority. And this is what Van Till is trying to rid us of. To be very simple, Vantill says, in apologetics, the issue is going to be one's ultimate commitment. We mustn't assume that there's something greater than God's wisdom, the wisdom of someone's chosen intellectual starting point, by which we can, as a ladder, get up to the roof of saying, oh, God is the wisest of all. And so I guess that ladder really didn't exist in the place first. First place. The situation is pictured well by CS Lewis when he writes, and I quote him here, the ancient man approached God, or even the gods. As the accused person approaches his judge, for the modern man, the roles are reversed. He is the judge. God is in the dock. Remember, the dock is an English jurisprudence where the accused stands for the trial. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock. And this is what Dr. Van Till taught us to reject. See, there are evangelicals who say, man will be the judge. And when they get done, they say, God, you've passed very well. You're innocent. We do believe in you. Your word is true. Van Till says, if you come to that conclusion, you have not honored God. If the method is to put him in the dock and put yourself at the bench. So the issue, first of all, is one of ultimate commitment. What is our ultimate authority? What is the unbeliever's ultimate authority? Okay. Now secondly, we must pursue epistemological self consciousness. Have you been practicing saying that? Ready. Epistemological self consciousness. It's been the genius of Cornelius Van Till's approach to defending the Christian faith to see how entirely inappropriate the intellectual attitude of putting God in the dock is. The spirit of St. Paul aroused van Til. Paul says in Romans 9:20. Rather, who are you, O man, to reply against God? Paul says in Romans 3, verse 4, Let God be deemed true, though every man a liar. Our commitment to the ultimate authority of God is such that we don't put him in the dock. And if the entire world were lined up against what God said in His Word, we'd say they're liars. Let God be true, though all men have to be deemed liars. Created men, especially as sinful rebels, are in no moral and in no intellectual position to challenge their sovereign Creator and Lord. A thoughtless approach to Christian epistemology which forgets this runs the danger of transgressing God's clear Prohibition. In Deuteronomy 6, verse 16, you shall not put the Lord your God to test. It's interesting, isn't it, how Jesus, when he was in the midst of an apologetical contest with Satan, rested his case on a simple quotation of this scripture from the Word of God. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy when Satan says, okay, I want evidence. Jesus says, you're not to put God to the test. We don't follow that method if we're obedient to the Word of God. So remember the example of Job, who dared to question God and demand answers from him. We read in Job, chapter 40, the Lord said to Job, will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who argues with God answer him. Would you condemn me to justify yourself? This is a matter of Christian piety. This is not just a matter of intramural debate among theologians. This is not some mere question of academic chess or whose school of thought is flashier than the others. Van Til was concerned that the Bible tells us we dare not, in defending God, challenge his superior wisdom. Job's told by God, you dare not approach me in that spirit. How would you contend with the Almighty? Why would you do so? You wish to condemn me to justify yourself? Sound familiar? Isn't that what the unbeliever is doing? Why does the unbeliever want to put God down? Why does the unbeliever want to say God contradicts himself in this book? Why is it going to say, well, God says things that are just terrible. I mean, he has the Canaanite tribes exterminated. How could you follow a God like that? How could you follow a God that believes in everlasting damnation? How could you follow a God that allows the Jews to be gassed at Auschwitz and so forth? But why is the unbeliever trying to condemn God as God said to Job, in order to justify himself, to say, well, therefore God, you can't complain about my lifestyle. Don't consider me a sinner, don't consider me a rebel, don't dare think about punishing me. But God is not in the dock. According to the Bible, we are. His word and character are not questionable, ours are. And as Van Til is acutely aware, this is not true simply in a narrow religious sense or a narrow moral sense. This is true equally, and it applies equally to man's intellectual reasoning, because man's intellectual reasoning is an expression of his religious posture. The way in which we use our mind is an expression of what our orientation is religiously is an expression of our ultimate commitment. Our Christian theory of knowledge should thus be elaborated and should be worked out in a way that is consistent with its own fundamental principles. Our theory of knowledge must be worked out in a way that's consistent with its presuppositions. If it isn't, it will prove to be incoherent, and if it's incoherent, it will prove to be ineffective. So we ought not to espouse one thing theologically, the ultimate lordship of Christ, and then practice something else in our scholarship, namely that Christ isn't the ultimate lord over my intellectual method. One way to say this is to say that Christian scholars and apologists must be thoroughly self conscious about the character of their own epistemological position, letting its standards regiment and regulate every detail of their system of beliefs and its application. Christian scholars should become self conscious about the demands of their theory of knowledge. Then they should become epistemologically self conscious. And if they are, then our ultimate presuppositions regiment and regulate every detail of the system of beliefs and the application of that system that we enter into. We need to always form opinions and develop our reasoning in light of our ultimate Christian commitments. And it was Van Till's aim to bring this ideal of epistemological self consciousness to bear upon the theory as well as the practice of defending the Christian faith. So I have an ultimate commitment and I'm not going to give it up. When I argue, I'm going to become epistemologically self conscious. I'm going to let my theory of knowledge, I'm going to be real aware of what my theory of knowledge is about, so that the fear of the Lord controls all that I do, all of my argumentation. And it's not just the conclusion toward which I'm moving, but it's also the starting point and the fundamental authority for everything. I'm doing this problem because the unbeliever has an ultimate commitment too. And the unbeliever is going to try to be epistemologically self conscious. And so it would appear that if we work on this idea of an ultimate presuppositional authority and we're consistent with it, then how can we argue with the other unbeliever? And so the third thing you need to see about Vanthill's apologetic is that given the issue of ultimate commitment and the development of epistemological self consciousness, we must argue from the impossibility of the contrary. It was the genius of Van Til's approach to recognize that an epistemologically self conscious method of defending the faith is not simply what is philosophically necessary given the nature of presuppositions, and not simply what is morally appropriate given the creator creature relationship. It also, interestingly enough, constitutes the strongest intellectual challenge which can be directed to the thinking of the unbeliever. Pressing, pressing myself for epistemological self consciousness proves to be the very thing I want to do with the unbeliever too. I want to press him to become epistemologically self conscious. God's revelation is more than the best foundation for Christian reasoning. It's the only philosophically sound foundation for any reasoning whatsoever. Now I'm going to read that sentence over a couple of times because I think that has got to be hammered into our heads. God's revelation is more than the best foundation for Christian reasoning. It is the only philosophically sound foundation for any reasoning whatsoever. The point here is not that you've got to have the revelation of God if you've come to theological truth. Van Till says you have to have the revolution revelation of God if you would come to any kind of truth. Therefore, although the world in its own wisdom sees the word of Christ as foolish, Paul says in First Corinthians 1:18, the foolishness of God is wiser than men. Christians don't sit in an isolated philosophical tower, reduced to simply despising the philosophical systems of non Christians. I hate it when Van Til is portrayed that way. And I've heard it over and over again. Many years ago when I was coming back from a conference where R.C. sproul and I were both speakers and we were sitting on the plane next to each other, you can imagine what a good time we had. This is the way Sproul portrayed it to me. He says, well, but with you presuppositionalists it just comes down to a Mexican standoff. You know, it's like you're in your presuppositional tower, the unbelievers in his presuppositional tower, and all you can do is loathe each other. You know, it's like sitting over here, I can't ever get to you, but boy, I hate what you're saying. And then he's over there saying, I can't get at you, but I hate what you're saying. And that's all it is, just pointing the finger and loathing each other. Christians don't sit in isolated philosophical towers reduced to despising the system of the non Christian. By taking every thought captive to Christ, Paul says, we're enabled to do what? Cast down reasoning which is exalted against the knowledge of God. So if I'm going to be consistent and strict about my epistemological self consciousness, the Bible says that's going to enable me to go after the unbeliever and cast down his reasoning. We must challenge the unbeliever to give a cogent and a credible account of how he knows anything whatsoever. We must say, given your espoused presuppositions about reality, about truth, about the nature of man, to use the code word, given your worldview, how could you know anything at all? A few years ago, in another public debate I had at the University of California with an atheist, a fairly well known one, at least on the West Coast, Dr. Gordon Stein, a man who has given his life to going to university campuses and promoting atheism and trying to tear down Christianity and so forth. So the debate team at the University of California, Irvine, invited him to debate a Christian who believed in the existence of God. And they invited me to represent that side of the debate. If you'd like to pick that up, by the way, we have it on tape from Covenant Tape Ministry. I believe Steve can give you some cards that will allow you to ask for a catalog and maybe get on our mailing list. Short commercial interlude Here. But in this debate, if you'd like to hear this, what I did is not simply develop the need for a Christian to be loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ and work out his worldview in light of that loyalty. I said, you've got a worldview as well. And what I don't understand is how your worldview can make sense out of the laws of logic. You say why unbelievers use logic all the time. I agree that they do. Dr. Stein wanted to use logic, but his worldview can't account for logic. Let's ask ourselves real quickly why. You can get the tape for fuller development of this. Well, on the atheist assumption about reality, the only thing that exists is matter in motion. Everything that is real, everything that exists is in one sense or in some sense or another matter in motion. Now, what are the laws of logic? Are the laws of logic material? Are they in motion? No. The laws of logic are abstract and they aren't particular. They're universal and they aren't qualified. They aren't conditioned by historical setting. They're thought to be absolute. So on the one hand, laws of logic are abstract, universal, and absolute. On the other hand, Dr. Stein, the atheist, has a worldview that says everything is matter in motion. So my point to him was, within your worldview, the laws of logic don't exist. They aren't meaningful. But if the laws of logic exist, that they aren't meaningful, if you can't make sense out of the laws of logic, then we can't make sense out of debate either, because debate requires the laws of logic for this interchange and evaluation of it. Okay? So I didn't sit back in my philosophical tower and say, nya nya nya nya na, I believe in Jesus, you don't, and there's no way that we can get at one another. Rather, I said, because you don't believe in Jesus because of your atheistic worldview, you can't make sense out of the laws of logic, and those laws of logic are presupposed. And so at one point, I tried to draw this conclusion. The audience picked up on it. My opponent seemed to be stymied, I think. But I said, so your coming to the debate tonight already shows that you don't believe your own worldview. You lost the debate by showing up. Now, that is not just some kind of clever, sophistic debate trick. And although you won't find that particular line of argumentation in Van Till's writing somewhere, I learned that method of argument from Dr. Van Till. What I want to do is press my opponent to epistemological self consciousness. I want him to see that if he's concerned consistent with what he says, then he can't make sense out of knowledge at all. He can't make sense out of the laws of logic. He can't make sense out of science and the inductive principle. He can't make sense out of ethics and moral absolutes. He can't make sense out of the dignity of man or the freedom by which we evaluate the truth and make choices and so forth. And on and on the list could go the debate I had just a few weeks ago, which you can also get on tape. Second commercial Here I argued what I called the toothpaste proof of God's existence. They do that, obviously. So the university audience, not always really philosophically astute, will have something to remember. The toothpaste proof of God's. What is that all about? And what I pointed out is that all of us, when we get ready to brush our teeth, squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube. And I ask the question, why do we expect when we squeeze the tube the toothpaste will squirt out? I mean, this is real mundane. This is not high level discussion of Kant and Bertrand Russell and all that kind of stuff. Just say, hey, it's mundane stuff. You squeeze the tube, you expect the toothpaste to come out. Why? Well, the first thing you're going to say is because I have had an experience in the past, like that many. So past experience justifies my belief that if I squeeze the tube, the toothpaste will come out. And then I pointed out, but of course, past experience by itself doesn't lead to that conclusion. There's a bridging premise that has to be supplied. And what is that bridging premise? That the future will be like the past? Interestingly, of course, that's a very big philosophical point that's telling us something about the nature of the universe, something about the nature of history. And the commitment of the person who squeezes the toothpaste tube then is to what we will call in a pedestrian way, the uniformity of nature. And so now the question is, what justifies believing in the uniformity of nature? Nature at that point I read from my opponent, from David Hume and Bertrand Russell, two philosophers who were not at all sympathetic to Christianity, very antagonistic. And they both commented on the problem of induction. And they both said, one cannot justify induction by experience without begging the question. Okay, so what am I going to press him to do? I'M going to say, look, you believe the toothpaste is going to squirt out. You believe in the uniformity of nature. Why, given your worldview, what you have come here to argue tonight, you couldn't expect nature to be uniform. The world of sound and fury signifying nothing. It's random. It's just chance. But if the world is random and chance and we have no justification for believing in the uniformity of nature, then we have no basis for language and argumentation or any scientific knowledge at all. And therefore the entire attempt of my opponent to use scientific considerations and to argue and to use language against me was already assuming my worldview in order to set forth his argument against my worldview. Okay, again, this is what Van Till taught me. He taught me that the unbeliever has to be pressed to see that if he's self conscious with his assumptions, they actually destroy the possibility of knowledge. And so Van Till's presuppositional defense of the faith mounts a philosophical offense against the position and reasoning of the non Christian. We may call it the defense of the faith, but Van Till shows us that the best defense is a very active offense. We go out after the unbeliever and we say, now wait a minute. If you believe that, make sense out of human dignity. If you believe that, make sense out of human freedom. You believe that makes sense out of science, make sense out of ethics, make sense out of logic. And he can't. You see, following the inspired lead of the Apostle Paul, Van Till taught us to ask rhetorically, First Corinthians 1:20, where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? That is the predominant theme in Van Till's practice of presuppositional apologetics has not gone. God made foolish the wisdom of this world. And if you've caught on to that, you've got what Van Til's all about. After that, all the rest is details. All the rest is refinement. One of the things that I think is beautiful about this is that this approach to apologetics can be practiced by anybody at whatever intellectual level. Think about it. You don't have to be a high school graduate to know that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world, so that with a little bit of direction, even a high school dropout can learn to ask the questions that will make the unbeliever look like a fool. And of course, as you go on with your education, if you have a little bit of college training, then you can talk at a more sophisticated level. And of course, if you have PhD training, even more so. And if it's in philosophy, it's even sharper. Maybe. But the point is, the argumentation from the lowest level to the highest, most sophisticated level is the same argument. It's just a question of what vocabulary you use and who your audience is. And the argument is always, God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. We argue that if you do not have our presuppositions, you've made knowledge impossible. You've made arguments impossible, you've made science impossible. So we argue from the impossibility of the contrary. Somebody says, how do you know that Christianity is true? How do you know that the Bible is true? How do you know that the Christian God exists? In the briefest sense, the answer is from the impossibility of the contrary. Because if the Bible were not true, it would be impossible to know anything. The task of the apologist is not simply to show that there's no hope of eternal salvation outside of Christ, but likewise, that the unbeliever has no present intellectual hope outside of Christ. Let me say that again. The task of the apologist is not simply to show the unbeliever that his eternal salvation is jeopardized by his unbelief, that he has no hope of salvation outside of Christ. It's to show him that he has no hope, intellectual hope, outside of Christ either. It's foolish for him to build his house on the ruinous sands of human opinion instead of upon the rock. Words of Christ. Again, that is a lesson taught by Jesus in Matthew 7 that we teach to Sunday school children. But it has great apologetical power. What we want to do is essentially point to the man who is building his intellectual edifice, his life, his house on the sand, and say, what a fool. Only a fool would try to build a life on the sand. Well, I come from Southern California, where there's a lot of sand and beaches and so forth, and boy, don't I long for them tonight. And I assure you, even children, if you had somebody who took all the building materials, all his lumber and his plasterboard and his roofing materials and so forth, down to Manhattan beach and started building right there on the sand. Even children would say, what kind of stupid fool is this? You can't build a house here. It's just going to go like that. And we are in the same situation as Christian apologists. We want to point to the unbeliever trying to build his house upon the ruinous sands of autonomous philosophy and point out the foolishness of that. We need to recognize, as Paul says in Romans 1, 21, 22, that those who suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness inescapably become vain in their reasoning. Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. And in First Timothy 6, verses 20 and 21, Paul says that the opposition to the faith that men mount really amounts to no more than knowledge falsely so called. And in second Timothy 2, 23 and 25 he says, those who oppose the faith actually oppose the themselves in their ignorance. The unbeliever attempts to enlist logic against the Christian faith. The unbeliever attempts to enlist science against the Christian faith. The unbeliever attempts to enlist morality in his debate against the truth of Christianity. And Van Till's apologetic answers such attempts by arguing that only the truth of Christianity can rescue the meaningfulness and the cogency of logic or science or morality. The presuppositional challenge to the unbeliever is guided by the premise that only the Christian worldview provides the philosophical preconditions necessary for man's reasoning and knowledge in any field where, by the way, that's why a presuppositionalist is willing to make anything the beginning point proximately of his discussion. You want to talk about ballet rather than nuclear physics, fine. Because I don't happen to know a lot about ballet, I might have to brush up on it. But the point is you can't make sense out of anything in human experience. You can't make sense out of any field of endeavor in the arts, in the sciences, whatever it may. You can't make sense out of anything without the Christian worldview. Now this is what is meant by the transcendental defense of Christianity. I'm going to take a minute to explain that vocabulary, because in our circles especially, the word is bantered about in different ways, and I don't want you to be misled. The transcendental approach, or the word transcendental, should not be confused with the similar sounding word transcendent. The word transcendent is an adjective applying to whatever goes beyond human experience. Transcendental reasoning, on the other hand, is concerned to discover what general conditions must be fulfilled by any particular instance of knowledge to be possible. Transcendental considerations have been central to the philosophies of men like Aristotle and Kant, and it's become a matter of some interest in contemporary analytically minded philosophy as well. Van Till asked, what view of man? What view of the mind. What view of truth, what view of language, what view of the world is necessarily presupposed by our conception of knowledge and our methods of pursuing knowledge. And so for Van Till, the transcendental answer is supplied at the very first step of man's reasoning, not by philosophical speculation, but by a transcendent revelation from God. And thus Van Till's transcendental criticism of unbelieving thought is much different from what doyouvard speaks of in his Transcendental Critique. Let me put it this way. For Van Till, the transcendental is supplied by a transcendent revelation. Have I lost you? The precondition of intelligibility is provided by God's transcendent revelation. He tells us about himself, the creation of the world, man, and how we know what we know. The transcendent revelation gives us the precondition for the intelligibility of science, morality, logic, ballet, whatever it may be. So transcendent revelation from provides the transcendental. Whereas for doyouvard, the transcendental critique is an attempt to find without transcendent revelation what the preconditions of intelligibility are. So Van Till's epistemologically self conscious argument from the impossibility of the contrary can also be described as a transcendental presuppositional method, a method of arguing that looks at our presuppositions and asks which ones provide the preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience. According to Van Till, upon analysis, all truth drives us to Christ. All truth. The truth about how to plant a peach tree, the truth about how to get a rocket to the moon, the truths of history, or whatever else you wish to consider. All truth drives us to Christ from beginning to end. Man's reasoning about anything whatsoever, indeed even his reasoning about reasoning is unintelligible, is incoherent unless the truth of the Christian Scriptures is presupposed. Any position contrary to the Christian one, therefore, must be seen as philosophically impossible. Any position contrary to Christianity cannot justify its beliefs or offer a worldview whose various elements comport with each other. Let's go back to my debate with Gordon Stein. Here's a man who has a worldview, he says God doesn't exist. And. And the problem with you Christians is that you're illogical. You're probably used to hearing that kind of thing put that way in many other ways. But the gist is that God doesn't exist and you guys are irrational. But you see, the elements of this man's worldview won't comport with each other. If he says you can't contradict yourself, he believes the laws of logic are absolute. But if he says God doesn't exist, then there can be no laws of logic. And so that position, though it doesn't appear that way on initial encounter on analysis, what are the assumptions that are used by my opponent, the unbeliever? And when I examine and analyze those assumptions, I see that his worldview is incoherent. In short, presuppositional apologetics argues for the truth of of Christianity from the impossibility of the contrary. Someone who is so foolish as to operate in his intellectual life as though there were no God. Notice that Psalm 14:1 says it's the fool who says in his heart there is no God. Someone who's so foolish as to operate in his life as though there is no God, thereby despises wisdom and instruction and actually hates knowledge. Read Proverbs 17:129. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Okay, so if you would know anything, you must start with the fear of the Lord. And if you don't, you're a fool who will destroy wisdom, destroy the possibility of knowledge. And so Proverbs 26:5 tells us, we must answer the fool according to his folly. That is, we must take the fool and say, what is your foolish presupposition? I mean, you probably wouldn't put it that way. Quote, unquote. Please tell me about your foolish presupposition. You talk to the man and say, tell me about your philosophy of life. So what do you think? What is man? Where did man come from? Where'd this world come from? How do you know what you know? Wise men were reliable. Why are there moral absolutes? What's the nature of logic? How does science get to be so successful? Start asking questions. So you find out what his philosophy is, find out what his folly is. And the Bible says, answer him according to his folly. That is, as Van Till put it, stand on his position and answer him in terms of his own position. Answer the fool according to his folly. What is Proverbs going to say? Lest he be wise in his own conceit, that is say okay, I'll reason like you do, Mr. Fool, so that you can see that you have nothing to be conceited about, that you have nothing but folly. Here to put it in more 20th century philosophical terms, what the Bible says is do an internal critique of the unbelievers way of thinking, Take his philosophy and answer him according to his own philosophy, so he can see how it leads to destruction, lest he be wise in his own eyes. So let me recapitulate the points that I've made in the lecture thus far tonight. Christian apologetics is a defense of religious faith. And when you think about it, that means that apologetics protect to the question of one's ultimate commitment in life, one's religion. Apologetics entails intellectual reasoning and justification of one's beliefs and thus touches on the epistemological question of our final standard for knowing anything. And when we put those two observations together, it should make clear that the defense of the faith will unavoidably be a matter of presuppositions. Both the unbeliever and the believer operate in terms of certain espoused presuppositions, certain worldviews about the nature of reality and knowledge and ethics. And each will aim to develop their thinking in a way which is consistent with their respective ultimate commitments. The Christian apologist needs to argue with the non Christian in an epistemologically self conscious manner. And that can't happen if our reasoning and argumentation assumes things which are actually contrary to the conclusion we're trying to draw. Therefore, the authority of Christ in his word, rather than the authority of intellectual autonomy must be govern our apologetic method as well as proving to be the conclusion of our apologetic. The Christian challenges the philosophical adequacy of the unbeliever's worldview, showing how it doesn't provide the preconditions of knowledge and the preconditions of morality. Our case for Christianity is always some of the argument from the impossibility of the contrary from beginning to end, both in our philosophical method and in what we aim to bring about in the unbelievers thinking. The Christian apologist reasons in such a way that in all things Christ might have the preeminence. Colossians 1:18. So this is the thrust, the central thrust, a van tilt. Now I realize you all knew that already. Okay, I was just kind of brushing up and clarifying and putting it in order for you. Let's take a few minutes before we have a brief break and give you an opportunity to ask some questions. Probably forget, but just remind me right here. Very good. The question is how does the transcendental method argue with other theists that also have a what you said is a transcendental method, which you meant is a transcendent revelation. Okay, so how would a vantilian argue with a Muslim commercial number Three, you can pick up my tape, my debate at Orange Coast College with a Muslim to see how presuppositionalists would do that. But I'll give you a little rundown real quickly. Whether it's the Muslim or anybody else, it's not unusual for people to think, well, Van Till system works pretty well when you've got some kind of gross atheistic worldview and a guy has nothing to appeal to for universality and absolutes and authority. Let. What about people who have false absolutes, false authorities? They have a revelation just like you do. Now we're right back to the intellectual towers and loathing each other. I've got the Bible, I got the Koran, but I've got the Bible. Yeah, but I've got the Koran. And that's all we can do. That's what some people think it comes down to. The answer is, no, it doesn't. When people ask me, what do you do when somebody comes and they propose another revelation as the basis for their philosophy of life? The answer is, answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. You know what I'm getting at? That you can treat every proposal of another revelation as just one more worldview. Granted, it seems a little more religious, it's a little more clever because it has an alleged revelation. But it too is a worldview. Muslims have a view of reality, a view of how men know what they know. They have a view of how men should live their lives, do an internal critique of it and say, well, I don't know a whole lot about the Quran, Dr. Bonson. How would I get that going? Well, a few pointers here. If you read the Qur', an, it helps. I say that not, you know, just be humorous. But I understand. When Muslims say to Christians, how can you criticize what I believe? You've never read it. Isn't that what we say to unbelievers when they criticize the Bible? We say, you should read the Gospel of John before you decide all this stuff about Jesus is wrong. Well, Muslims have just as much right. So I encourage you, if you're going to argue with a Muslim, know something about what he's supposed to believe. By the way, in so doing, you'll usually know more than your opponent does about the Qur'. An, because Muslims are not encouraged to understand very much from the Quran. They recite, you know, their five pillars and that sort of thing. But when you read the Quran, let me get on with this and not wander. When you read the Quran, you'll find out that the Quran presents Allah as having previous revelations, particularly the law of Moses, the Pentateuch, the Psalms of David and the Gospel of Jesus. That's the Quran itself. Don't you see? You didn't realize how far you were down the line. If the person you're talking to assumes the authority of the Quran, he has handed you the authority of Moses, David and Jesus as previous prophets of God. And so now all you have to do is point out that what the Quran teaches contradicts what Moses, David and Jesus taught. Because if the law of Moses, Moses is true as the Qur' an says, and Moses gives us the test of any further prophets, any further prophets must agree with previous revelation. Therefore we can test Muhammad against what Moses has said previously, or Jesus or David for that matter. And in my debate with the Muslim, what I tried to do, and by the way, he did not want to get into this at all. I mean the whole debate was an attack attempt to slide away. And to avoid having to deal with this, I wanted to know how is it in the law of Moses and in the Psalms of David and in the Gospel of Jesus, God requires blood atonement. What do we do with that? Does the Koran provide for any substitutionary atonement? Well even if you're ignorant of the Koran, you probably know the answer is no. The Muslim faith is a works righteousness approach to salvation. You please Allah by obeying him. Now of course the Law of Moses and the Gospel of Jesus call for us to obey Jehovah and please him, but it also recognizes that we all fall short of the glory of God and that all of our righteousness is as filthy rags. So now what is Allah going to do with people that are filthy rags? See, the Koran can't deal with that. The Koran, it not only contradicts previous revelation, it doesn't even give something as a substitute for the previous revelation. The Gospel of Jesus presents Jesus as the divine son of God. The Koran utterly repudiates the deity of Jesus Christ. And so there again you have another contradiction. And so answer the phrase fool according to his folly, that is to take his philosophy and turn it against him. Say if your philosophy is true, then your philosophy couldn't be true. There's a lot of ways of doing it. I've illustrated two or three, but one that I particularly like. Though many Muslims don't have enough philosophical either interest or sophistication to get into it, I've noticed. But the Quran tells us that Allah is so different from his anything in the created order that no human language is adequate to describe him. That sounds wonderful. It sounds, you know, like a lot of adoration, exaltation. Allah is really up there, right? Allah is so great that nothing in human language can be said of him. Oops. Because if that's the case, then the book that is said this couldn't be saying this. See, the Quran undermines the very possibility of the Quran being what it says it is because the theology of the Quran makes a doctrine of revelation impossible. So answer the fool according to his folly. Now, you can do that with every religious worldview that comes. I'm glad we started with the Quran because most people think that's the really tough one. The sad thing I found over the last 20 years of teaching apologetics is that most Christians don't really want to study what the other guy says. And so that's why we're bamboozled when we run up against it. Now, you may live in a neighborhood where the Jehovah's Witnesses come around so you'll grab, you know, Walter Martin and read the Kingdom of the Cult and kind of bone up on Jehovah's Witnesses or something. But in terms of a widespread or systematic study of other world religions, Christians are usually very ignorant. And okay, I won't bother to tell you. I've got a tape series that will help you on this. If you get the catalog, you'll find out about that. But as a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, if you study the world religions, you'll find out it is extremely rare to have a personal revelation from God. Extremely rare. Say, there'll be people. This is the ignorant unbeliever. Now that you have the advantage over, if you'll study this, when I'm on the university campus, I'll say, well, you know, I'm committed to what God has told me in the Bible. And so the unbeliever says, well, the Bible is only one religious book. There's a lot of religious books. How about the Bhagavad Gita? Well, what about the Bhagavad GitHub? Well, it's a religious book too. So you have your revelation. The Hindu has his revelation. Say, oops, wait a minute, wait a minute. The Bhagavad Gita teaches us that there is no personal God, that personality and impersonality are equally illusory because all reality is one, therefore all distinctions are misleading. Now, if reality is ultimately impersonal personal, it because it's all one Then there can't be any revelation from God to man because that assumes what the difference between God and man. The Bhagavad Gita teaches pantheism. So what's a revelation from God to man supposed to be? Me talking to myself? If I'm God because all is one and the Bhagavad Gita is the revelation of God, then I guess the Bhagavad Gita is my word. But if the Bhagavad Git is my word, I don't need the Bible. Bhagavad Gita, Forget it. I'll just talk.

Again.

That may sound like, you know, you're being cutesy. These are debate tricks, but they aren't. We need to tell unbelievers. It is a very unique thing to have the claim that an all knowing, sovereign, personal, eternal God has revealed himself in human language. There are very few religions that have that beginning point. And then I think you can ask the unbeliever. But if God hasn't revealed himself, who has the right to speak for him or her or it or whatever? You see, without a self revelation from God, what are we left with? Well, it's Jack's opinion and it's Joe's opinion and it's Jim's opinion and everybody has an opinion. Big deal. If there is a God, do you think God is, is just going to be happy to be whatever the majority of people think he is? That makes no sense. He wouldn't be God. And so in the nature of the case, when the unbeliever says, oh well, there's all these religions, you say, yeah, but there aren't very many that compete with Christianity. There are some but not many. The Muslims are one of them. But now interestingly enough, once you get around to those religions that compete with Christianity, I hope you won't just take me at my word. But for right now, trust me, I have studied this, I debate this openly, I'm willing to defend this. It turns out that all of the religions that compete with us having a verbal revelation are heresies of the Christian faith. They are all, to use the language here, aping what we've already said. So the Mormons have their revelations, the Book of Mormon, right? Where did they get that idea? Well, they already have the Bible, which they pervert and then they try to add to it. But the point is they didn't come up with the idea of a verbal revelation from an all knowing personal God. They're just following out Christianity. The same is true of the Muslims. By the way, that's what Muhammad did. Muhammad knew Jews and Christians and then all of a sudden, against the backdrop of Arabian idolatrous polytheism, he comes up with one God as revealed himself in a book. I'm not trying to be a smart aleck here, but you know, you have to say copycat, copycat, don't you really? You just want to have what the Jews have and what the Christians have. And that is exactly true. And on and on it goes. It turns out that you don't have competitors to Christian revelation. And yet if you don't have revelation, no one has any right to talk about what God really is. And so a study of world religions proves not to undermine presuppositionalism but to drive you strongly right back to the same approach in apologetics. Now what about those ones that have the revelation though? Since they are Christian heresies, the way in which we argue with them is on the basis of the Bible. Somebody comes to me and he says, hey, I believe the Bible plus X, the Book of Mormon plus the Koran plus whatever you want to put there. I'll say, well, I don't happen to agree with what you put there as the plus, but since you believe the Bible and I believe the Bible, let's just use the Bible to see who's right. So it's like with Jehovah's Witnesses. How do you refute a Jehovah's Witness? You could hear me out. You could answer the Jehovah's Witness by doing a philosophical critique of his worldview. It would work, it would take you a longer time and so forth. But after all, the Jehovah's Witness comes and he lays down for you. He says, well, I accept the Bible as the inspired word of God. I say, great, let's just start with the Bible then. And then I go to the Jehovah's Witness and show that he's perverted the Bible. And you all know that. I mean, I can say that quickly, but it's not always an easy task. There's a lot of belligerence and perseverance and close mindedness and all the rest. But. But the argument nonetheless, the argument is much simpler in that you just take what he's handed you and you argue from it. Okay, that was a long answer to the question. Now here the question is, how do you deal with the theist who says he doesn't need a revelation from God, that he can use logic because he believes there's a God and that's the foundation for logic. But beyond that, he doesn't need a revelation of God. Well, I think we need to look at this claim that I can tell you about God, but God didn't tell me. Do an analysis of that. And I think, as you can see already, that's going to go real quickly because what am I going to say when somebody comes to me and says, now I can tell you what God is like? And I say, oh, and did God tell you this is what he's like? No, I say, well, that's just your opinion. But by the way, for every opinion you can give me, I can bring somebody else down the street that has the opposite opinion. By the way, God didn't tell that person either. So here we have one person saying it's my opinion and another person contradicting him, saying it's my opinion. Now I ask you, should I follow you or this guy down here that contradicts you? You said you believe in logic, so obviously you can't both be right. See, in the end, there is no authority in any theory theology if you don't have a revelation of God. Deists, English and American deists in particular, were noted for this general approach of trying to have kind of a vague Christian approach. But we don't need the details of redemption and the deity of Christ and so forth. All we need is creation. God pulls back after then, and there's a moral order that we all have to recognize. And God will.