Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Foundations VIII (Part 8)

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we hesitate to come before you because we acknowledge that you are a holy God and we are a people unworthy of you. We have in so many ways sinned against you by falling short of your glory and not loving you with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. We confess we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves or treated them in the way that we would have them to treat us. We have transgressed your holy laws, but we do come before you boldly and confidently because Jesus Christ, your Son and our Savior, intercedes on our behalf. And though we may not stand before you because of our iniquities, we do stand before you because of Christ. We thank you that in your grace and mercy you have seen fit to lay our guilt upon Jesus Christ and to receive us as your own sons and daughters for the sake of his righteousness and his love for us. We ask you that this night you might fill us with your spirit, that we would understand your word, that we would appreciate your word, that we would see its significance and put it to use in our lives, that we might be faithful to you in representing you and glorifying you and defending the faith which is so precious to us. Do sanctify this time of study to our use and your glory, for we pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right, we need to take a moment just to summarize what presuppositional apologetics is and what the three common arguments are against presuppositionalism. And then I need to be reminded, where did we leave off in our syllabus last? It was at the end of nine. I almost started with 11 tonight, but then I thought, I don't think we've done 10. So now you'll get 10 and 11 tonight in the summary next week. So first of all, what three principles or three topics would summarize the presuppositional approach to apologetics? No neutrality. What does that mean in terms of our attitude toward the reasoning of unbelievers? What one word captures it? Antithesis. There's an antithesis between the reasoning of the believer and the unbeliever because there can be no neutrality. If there were neutrality, then we could all be in kind of like this safety zone between commitment and anti commitment or whatever. But there isn't any no man's land between these two. There is no neutrality. What's another principle of presuppositional apologetics? Yes, if God had not revealed himself, both in general and special revelation, it would not be possible for us to account for any knowledge at all. We believe that we have a very strong challenge to bring to the world. Then when the world questions the credentials of the faith, our reply is going to be, you couldn't know anything at all if it weren't for what this faith represents, what it says about the world and God and man's relationship. And I've already kind of hinted at that. So what kind of approach are we going to take? What kind of, where's the battle going to be done? Where's the conflict in apologetics? Is it over individual facts like whether Christ rose from the dead or whether Noah had an ark or anything like that? No. What? That's right. Worldviews are in collision. We want to take their philosophy of life, their view of reality, how we know anything and how we should live our lives, and compare that, contrast that to the Christian view of reality and how we know things and how we should live our lives. Okay, so we can we compare worldviews. We challenge the unbeliever that without the revelation which Christianity claims for itself, no knowledge would be possible. And we're not going to give into the idea of neutrality. Nobody knows as yet our non committal attitude. We're going to be bold to say that we presuppose our conclusion even as we are arguing for our conclusion, because we think our conclusion is the necessary presupposition of any argumentation whatsoever. That's a crucial line, that last one. So I want to make sure I'm looking at your faces, that that is getting through what we presuppose, we say is the necessary presupposition of any argumentation at all. Now, how would people object to this approach to Christian apologetics? Three very obvious things, if you've read the syllabus. First of all, yeah, it's arrogant obscurantism, a refusal to argue about anything. Just saying, well, everybody begs the question anyway. So I'll beg the question and you don't know anything and I know everything and be just real arrogant about that. And we pointed out that really the presuppositionalist who understands the grace of God has no room for arrogance at all. He is only able to know what he knows and to defend the faith that he defends because God has changed his stubborn, rebellious and foolish heart. And we aren't. Even though we are humble, we can be bold because the unbeliever is acting like a fool. And the foolishness we point out is not a matter of I'm smarter than you, but God's smarter than You. And if you don't submit to the word of God, then the foolishness that results is your responsibility. Now, there are two other arguments against presuppositionalism. That's right. Unbelievers can't know anything if revelation is foundational to knowledge. Since they deny the revelation of God, then what you're saying is they couldn't know anything at all. And yet unbelievers know a lot of things. They may know more about transmissions than Christians, for all I know. I'm having transmission problems today, so that's on my mind. They may know more about some medical problem. They may know more statistics about professional baseball than any Christian. Whatever you may think about, the fact is we know unbelievers have a lot of knowledge and we as Christians benefit from some of their knowledge. So it just seems ridiculous to be a presuppositionalist because what you're saying would make unbelievers completely stupid. Now, how can we. Oh, Willie is not buying this argument. Good. I've taught someone. Well, what's the answer to that, Willie?

Well, it's only apparent they deny the revelation. That doesn't mean the revelation doesn't exist. It's only in a parent life.

Well, okay, it's not so much that the revelation doesn't exist. It's that even though they deny that they believe this revelation, the fact is they believe it. That's the really bizarre thing, that you have a situation here where a person very honestly and openly says, I don't believe something that they do believe. I don't believe there is this God. I don't believe he did create the world out of nothing. But they do. How do we know that? Now, what do we call this condition of sincerely denying something which you know very well? Self deception. Right. Unbeliever knows God in his heart of hearts, but he suppresses the truth and unrighteousness. What gives us the right to say that about the unbeliever? That they really know the revelation of God even though they say they don't. Okay, well, Scripture tells us. But going outside of scripture, I mean, because they'll say, well, yeah, you can appeal to the Bible that says, I know these things, but of course that's what I'm rejecting. So now you're just reasoning in a real close circle. And I don't accept that. What is it about the unbeliever that gives away the fact that they really believe these things? What kinds of inconsistencies is. You're right.

You pointed out the example of the professor. The agnostic professor who come test time and act like a believer in the sense that won't allow cheating. Expect certain answers, questions.

Oh, it's amazing. On the final exam dealing with ethical relativism, the professor expects you to be absolutely honest in terms of not cheating. You see, there are absolutes about his exam, even though his exam's over the fact that there are no. Or over the claim that there are no absolutes.

One of the ones that really stuck to my mind as far as examples is the materialist who's in love.

Yeah, you would say, well, there's nothing going on here but electrons and things like that. Most unbelievers I know get pretty excited about some of these things that are not really physical in terms of their conceptualization anyway, even if they're made physical in their expression. All right, Ellery, I just wanted to.

Mention that last Sunday's sermon gave me an idea for a new parlor game. You give one of your guests 60 seconds to eat a mouthful of crackers and then say, antidispensationalist, post suppositional. If you dis.

That would be a challenge. And how would that advance her apologetical ends? Well. Okay, with that digression, we've had two objections to presuppositionalism. One is that it amounts to arrogant obscurantism. We said, no, it really is humble boldness. The second is it would deprive the unbeliever of all knowledge because the unbeliever denies the revelation of God, which you say is foundational to knowledge. The answer being he may deny it, but he believes it nonetheless because he's self deceived. And then the third. Is this another parlor game?

Okay, I'm practicing English I don't understand.

From this second point, but I didn't take your notes.

I have. Principally, according to presuppositionalism, his unbelievable. Would preclude his knowing anything.

Yes, in principle. Okay, if the unbeliever. See, the unbeliever says, I don't believe in a creator God. I don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe in moral absolutes. I believe that everything is random in this universe. Believes in chance. Now, what I said is if he consistently carried out those avowed beliefs in principle, that is, if consistently done, he wouldn't know anything at all, because that view of the universe would preclude any knowledge being possible. Okay, so what we're saying is, if someone says, well, on a presuppositional basis. The unbeliever couldn't know anything. We could say, well, in principle, that's right. In practice, of course, they know all sorts of things because they say one thing and do another. And see, the nice thing about presuppositionalism is, though it can be dressed up in sophisticated philosophical garb and it can hold its own in those discussions, this is not something that you'll find difficult to understand. People do that all the time. They say things and they don't really believe them. And that's all we're saying. We're saying the unbeliever says something. He doesn't really believe that he says one thing and he does another. And we want to catch him in that inconsistency and say, God is demonstrating to you, you see, his existence and the truth of his revelation through your own. Even your own unbelief testifies against you. Okay, the third argument of presuppositionalism is the one we'll deal with tonight then. Yes, that's right. There's no common ground. Since there is this utter antithesis. People say, according to the presuppositionalists, people are in completely different worldviews. They're like in two different towers. And they can't talk to each other. They can't cooperate with each other. We can't send a rocket to the moon with a Christian and a non Christian, both working in the project because they have completely different worldviews. Moreover, they shouldn't even be able to communicate with each other because they see everything differently. Everything. There's no common ground. Willie's dying to answer this one, but I'm not going to let him. I'm going to get someone else involved. Vicki, what's the answer to that objection? Presuppositionalism deny common ground.

The way that I can only answer the way I attack that and catching them in their inconsistencies to show that the worldview, they're operating on it, like you said, they're denying certain things, but they're living by them.

And that answer, I think, goes very well with the previous objection. But now this objection is that you presuppositionalists say something, something which in principle would make it impossible to communicate with unbelievers or cooperate with unbelievers in gaining any knowledge of this world because you presuppositionalists are pressing the antithesis. You're saying there's such a monumental difference here, a worldview difference between believer and unbeliever. So there is no common ground.

Well, as I understand it, so we believe that there is common ground since God is sovereign, creator of all things, and that common ground is not only common between the believer and unbeliever, but it's God's ground.

Thank you. Well put. Did you find that in the booklet?

I read it.

I agree that. I agree with that. We say that there's all kinds of common ground between believers and unbelievers. In fact, we maintain the whole realm of reality as common. A rose is a rose is a rose. A rose is a rose to an unbeliever, and a rose is a rose to a believer. We believe that everything God has created is common to the believer and the unbeliever. But as Craig has put it, it's not neutral ground, it's God's ground. The problem that people who raise this objection have, I think, is that they think of common ground as necessarily neutral ground. So we don't have anything in common unless we agree to it. But once you put it in that light, then you can see how this is really just another form of the previous argument, isn't it? Because the fact that they don't agree that they. The rose is God's creation and glorifies him for its beauty, the fact that they don't say that doesn't mean they don't know it. And so for that reason, the rose becomes a point of apologetical contact for us. In fact, everything is a point of apologetical contact. I'm not saying that I've worked it all out and that I personally, you know, real facile at this, but in principle, every experience that a human being has can be used to lead a person to Christ. Every experience can be used to prove the truth of the Christian faith. Now, other schools of apologetics look at it a little bit differently. They think, well, there are a lot of things that we hold in common with unbelievers. And those common experiences are. Those things that we know in common have nothing to do with proving Christianity. We all know certain principles of science and logic and psychology and history and so forth, but those things don't. They aren't push or pull points when it comes to proving or disproving Christianity. We all agree, you know, about the War of 1812, so that's something that isn't all that crucial. Believers and unbelievers are not divided over the War of 1812 or what they've experienced when they go to a Shakespeare play. Well, there are certain things in this world, however, that do have significance, although that I don't think is going to necessarily be one. They'll say things like miracles, in particular the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So if we can prove that a miracle took place, we can prove very likely that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Then we have a way, a stepping stone to proving Christianity. Now, I want to contrast that point of view with what I'm telling you. I'm saying, of course, the resurrection of Jesus Christ proves Christianity to be true. That's great. But so does the existence of the rose. So does any human communication or the use of any moral or logical absolute. Because none of them, the resurrection, the rose, or the use of logic, none of them can be accounted for except within the Christian worldview. We hold all these facts, the facts of history, the experiences of the natural world, artistic experiences, psychological feelings. We hold all these things in common with unbelievers. Dr. Van Till used to say, becoming a Christian doesn't give you a new nose. So when you smell a rose, you smell a rose just like an unbeliever smells a rose. What's the difference? I smell the rose for what it is, something that glorifies God. The unbeliever smells the rose and says, oh, we live in a chance universe. He acts like a fool, you know, he sees the wonders of scientific advancement and doesn't realize that his worldview would make that impossible. You couldn't possibly have confidence in the regularity of nature, which is necessary for any scientific experimentation if you had a chance universe. So the unbeliever shares the same universe with us, shares the roses, shares the Shakespeare plays, shares the same ups and downs. Psychologically, everything that happens to men is common to believers and unbelievers. But as Craig said, everything that happens is God's witness to himself. Everything that we experience, we experience in the way that we do because God has revealed himself and God has made us, and God has made the world. And that's why everything's a point of contact. It disturbed me a great deal when I was originally, many years ago, studying presuppositionalism. Because I saw that critics of Van Till easily. In fact, I had some come to the college where I was and just, you know, they'd stand up in front of people and say, well, there can be no point of contact between people if you're a presuppositionalist, because he's got his presuppositions, you have yours, and they just don't, you know, you can't even communicate with one another. There's no point of contact. And always frustrated Me, because I said, well, the unbeliever has the presuppositions that he professes, and then he has the presuppositions that he uses. And the presuppositions that he uses, of course, condemn him. They are the witness of God against him. But those presuppositions, of course, are in common with my presuppositions. And that's why we can talk about roses and can talk about scientific experiments and how to build bridges and go to the moon and so forth. We have a lot in common. We have everything in common. Our noses are in common. You know, the principles of math are not different for believers and unbelievers. Some people think that if you're a presuppositionalist, you would be forced to say, well, we do math differently than unbelievers. Well, when people say that, I say, well, of course, in a sense we do. If we do math the way we say we should, we should do it to the glory of God. Non believers don't. But what you do in terms of adding up, you know, two plus two or three times seven or whatever, that's exactly what the unbelievers does. To which Dr. Van Till used to say. He had such great catchy expressions. He used to say, well, of course, believers and unbelievers count, and they count alike, but only Christians can account for what they're doing. Only the believer can account for the principles of math, mathematics. Stop and think about that. The unbeliever says, two plus two is four, and it always is that way. Of course, unless you want to use a different kind of, you know, base for your number system. But base 10 that we've all been brought up on. Two plus two is four and it always that way, and it's that way for everybody. Now, do we want to say otherwise? We say, oh, no, no, no, no, we agree. But how can it be universally true for you? And the unbeliever can only do one of two things. He can either say it is universally true by stipulation. That is, we just. We define it in advance in such a way that it has to be that way, or he has to say that it's objective and universally true. But if it's objectively, universally true, you can challenge them by saying, well, now wait a minute. You haven't experienced every instance of 2 and 2. There are twos all over the place and throughout history, and you haven't seen every set of two and two. You don't know that it always comes out to be four. And so he can't say it's universal. He can only say two plus two is four. As far as I know, as far as we've been able to find out. Now, believe me, you're going to have to hold on tight because the unbeliever is going to say, I'm not going to buy into that. I mean, we all know it always is. And I said, that's right, we all know. But I've got a reason for that. I've got a justification for that claim. So I'm not challenging the universality of the the laws of mathematics or logic. That's not the issue here. The issue is how can you justify your belief in the universality, the laws of logic and mathematics. Now, the other approach is to say it's only stipulated. That's just one of the rules of the game. Two plus two must be four because we define it that way, of course. What's the problem with that? Can anyone tell me? Taking that subjective stipulative approach to math.

If you define it any other way, it doesn't work.

That's right. The amazing thing is that these stipulated things build bridges and send rockets to the moon and so forth. The laws of mathematics work in application to the world and things ordinarily we take as just stipulated truth. Just arbitrary stipulations don't have that kind of pragmatic workability in the world. Just stipulate that up will be down and down will be up. Try. Doesn't work. Okay, in the same way you would think, well, then we could stipulate two plus two is six. Try building a bridge with that understanding of math and you'll see that it doesn't work. So it doesn't make sense to claim it's only a stipulative truth. But if you consider it an objective universal truth, there's no basis for saying it's universal because no person, believer or unbelievers had a universal experience of man.

Ellery, I don't know whether to go into this at this point because I don't know much about it. My understanding that non Euclidean geometry starts with different parts of us from the sort we've been talking about true, and arrives at the same conclusions. It says parallel lines. Do we do it? Maybe somebody here knows a little more about the substance.

Well, I'm going to defer to Tim at that point. The last of your very simple summary doesn't sound correct to me. That arrives at the same conclusions, it deals with different problems, and so it doesn't really arrive at the same conclusions. Tim, can you help us? Non Euclidean geometry?

Only to the extent that it applies to physics. It always struck me as interesting that differentially the curved space time of general relativity at the limit of the microscopic reduces to Newtonian equations where things are moving in a manner. It's only when as you build up the equations in a global sense that you get the curved properties. But interesting how it reduces to a Euclidean in the limited.

Yeah, a limited parameter. But am I right to say that the summary that we get the same answers is a little misleading because the curved space approach to geometry is dealing with a different problem. But whatever the proper answers are in terms of general relativity and curved space and non Euclidean geometry and all those interesting deviant systems, well, that's what they're called. They're deviant logics too. Where most people learn logic, where what's called on a bi value basis, every proposition is true or false. And you can manufacture a logic that has five values or 50 values, and you can redo all the laws of logic accordingly. It doesn't do anybody any good because in natural languages true and false are the only values we give to propositions. But nevertheless, for all these deviant logics and geometries and so forth that modern theorists like to deal with, all we're saying is that they're the same for Christians and non Christians alike. If a Christian does deviant logic with five values, it's going to be the same as what happens with a non Christian doing deviant logic with five values.

Tim, I'm wondering how you would answer the third avenue of trying to just justify two plus two equals four. That would neither be claiming that it was a convention nor trying to justify it empirically, but rather, let's say along Kant's synthetic a priori argument.

Yeah, I know. A lot of vocabulary is being traded in the last few minutes that people are kind of checking out on. Don't worry about it. Okay, I'm going to translate Tim's question into your language. Okay. Tim said. Tim referred to the two ways of trying to justify the results of mathematical operations like two plus two is four as being either the conventionalist approach. What I said it's true by stipulation. It's just a convention we have and we grew up in a culture where two plus two is four. We just defined it that way. Okay, so that doesn't seem convincing because it's just too usable in the world to be nothing but a convention. But then if you try to justify it as an Objective, universal, that is on the basis of human experience, what Tim called the empirical approach to it. No one has had an empirical experience of every two and every two coming together to see that it comes out to be four or every instance where there's a two and a two of something turning out to be four. So that doesn't work. Now in the history of philosophy, another approach called the transcendental approach to defending math says that this is a precondition of intelligibility. That is to say, if we don't look at the laws of mathematics this way, math won't make any sense and we won't be able to use our at all. That is, it has a kind of necessity that pertains to the very conditions of doing math. It's not a result of experience, nor is it just something we've agreed upon. But it's in the nature of the case. Mathematical thinking is impossible without seeing it in that way. And my response to that is that's exactly right. That is the way to defend the laws of mathematics. It is a precondition of intelligibility. But Kant was wrong, because Kant said it just has to do somehow with the way the mind works. And amazingly, in this chance universe, everyone's mind works the same way. I'm true. Kant psychologized. The mistake Kant made was not in looking for a transcendental, that is to say, a preconditional defense of the laws of math, but he psychologized the laws of math. That's the way we think and that's the way we must think. Whereas what Van Till is doing, I have sometimes suggested tongue in cheek, and so I hope I don't get into trouble with this group. But in a sense Van Til has completed Kant's project in a way Kant couldn't. Kant was looking for the preconditions of intelligibility. And Van Till said you can only find them in a Christian worldview. You can't find it on a one by one basis, as Kant tried to do, but you have to do it worldview by worldview. And there's only one worldview that provides the preconditions of intelligibility, preconditions for science and math and morality. So that what Tim has suggested to you in the language that at first mystified you is at the very core of this course in apologetics, because that is our argument. The only way to justify the laws of mathematics and that we know that they're universal, is that they're grounded in the very character of God that's been revealed to us. Laws of math are universal because they reflect the way God thinks. And this world reflects the way God thinks because he created it. And so two and two always is four. And that's not just a stipulation. Not just. Well, in the Western world, we say two plus two is four. In every culture, two plus two is four. And you'll build bridges, if you know that. I mean, and a lot of other things, but you need to know those things too, Vicki.

Dr. Stein, trying to state that these preconditions are it. That's the starting point. Just stopping. Trying to get you to stop there.

Yes, people will do that. If you follow the argument so far, what we're saying is there are certain preconditions for doing science, math, logic, experience, and a Shakespeare play or the smell of a rose. With a little bit of practice, you will find that those things that you know in life best. You may not be a physicist or an engineer like Tim, or you may not know foreign languages like Elri or so forth, but what you do understand, what you do experience, you can use that as the jumping off point for defending the faith. Because your experience, your knowledge in that area that you share with unbelievers cannot be accounted for except within a Christian worldview. Having said that, Vicki points out somebody like Dr. Stein, the atheist I debated, and others would say, well, we don't need God, we just need the preconditions. Well, the preconditions are a worldview. And in our worldview, God created the universe and keeps it regular and made our minds so that we'd understand the world and all those sorts of things. And so to say we don't need God, we just need the worldview is kind of like, I mean, what could I liken that to? Our worldview is the worldview where there's a God. So if we only have that worldview, what that challenge has to amount to then is, well, we want the preconditions, but not the Christian worldview in which they're found and provided. That's what. Okay, great. Give me a worldview that does provide those preconditions. That's really what it's all about. That's the $64,000 question. Dr. Stein, what would you propose as a worldview that will give a foundation for math and logic and science and morality and human dignity and aesthetic experience and on and on and on. What other view of reality, knowledge and behavior is going to meet the bill here? See, how can I put it? Sometimes unbelievers will say, well, I don't want God, but I want the uniformity of nature. So, okay, I believe in the uniformity of nature. I go that far back. That's ultimate. Now you're going to say, oh, I see. So you just cut God out of the picture. You had the uniformity of nature. No, because the most fundamental sin in philosophy is arbitrariness. Inconsistencies, the second best sin in philosophy. But arbitrariness is the worst thing in the world. Well, I just believe this because I want to believe it. So unbeliever says, well, I believe in the uniformity of nature. I say, okay, good. Why? Well, because nature wasn't uniform. We couldn't do science. He said, that's true. So why do you figure nature's uniform? Now you say, you could say that to you too, as a Christian. Okay, let's do it. Say it to me. I said, I believe that the natural world operates in regular succession. That's what makes science possible. He goes, oh, why? I said, because there's a sovereign God who made the world and controls everything. Oh, so Vicki's right. Dr. Stein could raise that kind of question. But you know, upon analysis, it wasn't a very intelligent response. Because he either doesn't realize that God is part of our worldview, or it's just because God is part of our worldview that our worldview is not arbitrary. Someone says, you Christians can't talk to non Christians because if there's this antithesis that you maintain you have nothing in common. We say, well, in principle, we don't have anything in common. In practice, because they hold to these presuppositions. We have everything in common. They have noses. We have noses. They follow the laws of math. We follow the laws of math. But we can account for why the human nose works and the laws of math, and they can't. So there is common ground. But as the title of the chapter 10 tells you, it's not neutral ground. And the one thing I have not done, and I really should have to be a good teacher, is to summarize why we say this. Common ground is not neutral. Beginning in the third paragraph, you notice the Lord God is Creator. He's made everything. The doctrine of creation in the paragraph following that in the next column, that everything is governed by God and is to serve his glory. And the conclusion, therefore nothing can be neutral because it all belongs to God and it's all governed by God. As Jesus says in Matthew 12:30, he that is not with me is against me. Neutrality is impossible. However, the believer and the unbeliever live in the same universe. God's universe. On the next page, page 21, Acts 14:17, I think is something that you would do well to reflect upon. God never leaves himself without a witness. The scripture says we're never in a situation where we say, oh, well, I guess there's nothing here that's going to help testify to God. God is never without a testimony. And as Romans 1:20 says, and we've studied this already, God's divine attributes are clearly perceived. They're known through the created world itself. And so there is no neutral ground. In Psalm 139, remember how David says, if I take the wings of the morning and flee to the uttermost parts of the sea, as whether I ascend into heaven or descend into Sheol or take the wings of the morning. David says, no matter where I go, what Behold, thou art there. Okay, so the presuppositionalist is saying, every point of creation is a point of contact, but every point of creation gives witness to God. Okay, chapter 11, where point of contact is found and where it's not found. Let's see if someone can summarize that for me. Where is point of contact with the unbeliever not found? Actually, if you can answer that, you got the point of the chapter, Willie. That's right. You don't find a point of contact in his interpretation of things. You see, you don't want to have the picture of the Christian going to the non Christian saying, well, now you tell me how you understand things, and let's see how far I can agree with you. And then after we've got this kind of common area of interpretation, then I'll try to use this stuff we agree upon as a foundation to build over into Christianity. That is the common understanding of point of contact in Christian apologetics. Point of contact is, oh, well, I can agree. I mean, you hear Woody Allen saying something in this movie and say, oh, I can identify with that. So I agree with your interpretation here. But now if we agree on that, just think about it. If you did your homework a little bit better, Mr. Allen, then you would have to become a Christian. Well, there's a sense in which we'd say he does have to become a Christian in order to say and feel the things that he says and feels. But the point of contact is not being found in his interpretation of any fact or any part of the universe. The point of contact is being found in what the objective truth, the objective reality that has been interpreted by God's own revelation. Now, this is difficult because he doesn't agree with that interpretation. He doesn't agree with the biblical interpretation of suffering or the biblical interpretation of the smell of a rose, or the biblical interpretation of some scientific experiment. But that is where point of contact is found, because apologetics presuppositionally, always amounts to. To stripping away the mask of the unbeliever. He does know the biblical interpretation of the rose, the plays of Shakespeare, so forth and so on. I mean, in an elementary sense, he could not have those experiences and he could not know what he knows without the Christian worldview. He holds the Christian worldview, but he masks it. He says, no, there is no God. There are no moral absence. Everything's by chance. And what we have to do is say, well, then when you do say something about roses or about human suffering or about science or about building bridges or whatever it may be, economics, when you do say something, Mr. Unbeliever, that is true, and that I agree with, I have to challenge you to give an account of that. How could you have that experience? How could that scientific thing be true given your worldview? So we do have a point of contact. But having gotten that point of contact, I'm going to hold onto it and say, I've really kind of gotten inside your skin now. Now I've got you, because now that you've said something that I can agree with in terms of building bridges or about human suffering, or about artistic experience, whatever it may be, when you've done that, you've made it very clear you do know my God and you do hold to this worldview, but you're denying it. Now, I realize these are the sorts of sentences that can be uttered to you as believers. These are not sentences necessarily, not usually that you use with the unbeliever. I mean, if you do, it's going to be after a long discussion, this process of unmasking the unbeliever to show him you couldn't know what you do know. You couldn't be feeling what you are feeling. You couldn't make sense out of your human experience at all. Given your worldview. It's not necessarily a 1, 2, 3. And it's like, here are the four spiritual laws for presuppositionalists. Boom, boom, boom, boom. We say, okay, now can we do the sinner's prayer? We're done. It doesn't work that way. And what do you know about the nature of man? He's going to resist this, isn't he? He's going to say, oh, no, no, I don't have to be a Christian to make sense of this. And you're going to have to be patient. Forgive me again, another Dr. Van Till expression. Dr. Van Till would always say, and so you always buy the next cup of coffee. You always buy the next cup of coffee. You know, you go and you sit down, you have a conversation. You realize you can't do it over one cup of coffee. That was his Dutch way of putting that. He'd say, okay. So you buy him another cup of coffee and say, okay, now keep talking, keep hanging yourself. Keep showing me that you cannot account for what you know, what you have felt and these things we have in common on your basis. And then of course, I always want to close by pointing out, but I can account for everything, including our disagreement. I can account for everything on a Christian basis. So we have a point of contact and we have common ground, but it's not as generally understood, it's not a point of contact in his interpretation of reality. And it's not a common ground that is neutral. It's a point of contact in the common ground that comes from God creating all things and revealing himself through all things and controlling all things and therefore having a witness in all things. Now, I find that exciting. I think that just opens up the field of apologetics to all sorts of things that don't come down to mastering arguments from history and so forth, although the arguments from history are good, too. So we don't have to get rid of that. All we have to say is, well, that's just one of many.

Okay, Craig, so common ground isn't really friendly ground. It's somewhere where we celebrate our commonness of our humanity. That's where the battle is joined.

Yes, we celebrate our common creation by God and creation in his image. And it's not. It is a battleground because the unbeliever chafes again, that the unbeliever doesn't want that to be true and is really, to change the metaphor, spending his whole life trying to run from that, to build a roof over his head where he doesn't have to let that truth in. And what we're doing is always tearing the roof off, saying, no roof is sturdy enough to keep this sunshine out. Okay, John.

Popular view of the day that nature has these inherent properties, but atomic forces produce crystals. Ultimately.

Yeah. It's harder for a person to easily accept that if they've studied ancient Greek philosophy, the beginning of Western theorizing about the nature of reality. And so Forth I just recently pointed out to my seniors, we're on ancient Greek philosophy. So I'll give them, I'll give you the answer I gave them. I pointed out, you take the first philosopher, Thales, who said all is water, that the universal principle is that of water. However, Thales could not, on the basis of that alone account for why things change and move. And so he said, all is water, but all is full of gods. And so his understanding that things happen in this world, how can I put it, he had to imitize what natural revelation pointed out to him. There is a God who's put this world in motion and controls all things. And what he does, he tried to draw God, not a single God, but gods into everything. Now, later in Heraclitus, you get someone who's a little more sophisticated. Heraclitus said, well, the world is like eternal fire. It's always changing, it's in constant flux. However, that fire is a logos, the first use, as far as we know of that concept. And by logos he meant it's a reason. There is a reason behind everything. And the Logos, this eternal fire flows through everything. So more sophisticated than everything's full of gods. But again, what you do is you try to build in to nature itself. And this is the basis of natural law and Greek philosophy. Stoic natural law is the idea of the logos flowing through all things. Therefore, the reasonable thing is to submit to nature. Whatever is natural is the force of reason or logos in our life. And so you don't fight it, you just respond with passive indifference to adversity or to pleasure, because that's the reasonable thing to do. Now, our day and age has revived that kind of thing without giving philosophical trappings to it. And we just say, well, the world just works that way. Now, that's either an expression that the world is arbitrary, it's a chance world. I guess tomorrow could be different, just happens that way. And when you put that to someone, they don't mean that, they mean, oh, no, it just happens that way. But it's just going to happen that way tomorrow and on Saturday and Sunday and on and on, which means it's not just happening that way, there's something keeping it happening that way. And that forces you then either to say, it's an imminent principle, you put the principle of motion in the universe itself, or it's a transcendent principle, which is of course our view that God created the world and that's why the world is something. When people say the laws of physics just operate the way they do, you have to push them to say you don't really mean. They just randomly operate that way. You don't think it's random at all. And if you do, you have this utter philosophical silliness that that which is the most determined is based on that which is most contingent. That is it is. It must happen this way and it must happen this way because it's random. You say, well, wait a minute. That's like saying it's got to be black because it's white. You have in the unbeliever a dialectical tension. So you have to put that to him. You have to show him the silliness of his view that things will happen this way and they must because it's a random universe. Well, in a random universe, there is no must. In a random universe, there is no universality. There is no necessity. That's what we mean by random. Go ahead. Yes, what did Dr. Van Til tell us? Rationalism and irrationalism. In the two things that the unbelievers got to have. And they're like two wash women that take in each other's laundry. See, the unbeliever uses this rational principle. And when it gets into trouble, the irrational principle takes over. But then the irrational principle gets into trouble, so the rational principle takes over. And so they just sit there doing each other's laundry all the time. But you can't bring them together. You don't need a catalog of them. Because. What? Well, the first reason you don't need a catalog of them, John, is because if you've been listening closely and not falling asleep during my lectures, you have quite a few illustrations already, right? And the ones I've given you are the ones you're going to find the easiest to use if your experience isn't anything like mine. But the other reason you don't need a catalog is because. What did I tell you tonight? I said everything in the universe is. Is a jumping off point for showing this to the unbeliever. Everything. I mean, we could talk about human dignity and the experience of moral motions and emotions in a person, you know, and C.S. lewis was not a pure presuppositionalist. And C.S. lewis had a number of problems, had a lot of really great things too, and was quite a talented man. So I'm saying Lewis is a mix bag. But in C.S. lewis's Mere Christianity, in the case for Christianity, he presses very effectively the moral argument. Everyone has this sense that there's a right and wrong. And Lewis says you can't account for that cannot account for that. If you don't believe in God, a Christian can. We could talk about the subjective experience of human freedom and dignity and say how can you account for that? In fact it's amazing. Even people like B.F. skinner who want to say we're beyond human dignity still act like there's a dignity. You know, he does want his royalties paid. As far as I know he wants to be respected. Now I mean that's the cheap shot, it's a true one. But I mean there are other ways too. There's the experience of every human being has this sense that there's something different about us as human beings. There's a dignity to us and there's a freedom to us. And yet on the unbelievers view of the universe as big mechanical system of cause and effect, it would be impossible for there to be dignity and freedom. Now the Christian can account for both of those things, the unbeliever can't. There are no matter where you start. Then you can start in art. That's not my specialty. Although we're going to have this discussion of movie and so forth and I enjoy doing that. That's not my technical expertise. Go to epistemology now I'm at home. Other people you could talk about auto mechanics, frankly you could talk about raising roses in a garden or scientific experiments or whatever it may be. Everything in this universe gives you an opportunity to say you can't account for what we know and what we do here except in terms of a Christian worldview. I've gone way over time, but I'll take one more.

Well, I just wanted to comment on that. Picked a point just recently where my photography magazine, photographer who knows for a long time put together a book and photograph of. And in the book he summed up the fact that over years of studying form through the lens he began to see consistent patterns. Patterns that were distributed between the wrinkle of a man's brow and the trace and the lines of an ancient tree. And he put this whole thing together. When he went to the publisher, the publisher said wait a minute, I can't publish this because there's got to be some, you're saying some cause on it. There's some consistent pattern to the universe.

There's some cosmic something about this.

And he says, well I can't deny it there he says. And he began to show it to the publisher. Irascible. They finally published a book but they wanted to exercise some of these paragraphs that he had in their show this consistent common thing. He kept fire watching everything from a shape of a cloud to a leaf of a tree. And it really was unnerving. And he brought in this new science, I guess you call it new science, where they're beginning to discover now that in chaos there was form, in order.

Yeah. Fractal geometry and so forth.

Computers and finding out that even in the curl of smoke from a cigarette that they see form and pattern. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's frightening to a self conscious unbeliever. It's frightening because it shows that the universe is not as random as he thought and wants it to be. Because in a random universe he answers to no one. But if there is a cosmic pattern and possibly a cause behind things, then maybe my death is going to mean something I don't want it to mean. Okay, that's enough for tonight. Next week, would you please prepare chapter 12? And this will be a challenge to you because it's short. I mean the sentences are short, pathetic, to the point, but it's a summary of all the first 11 chapters. So we're going to kind of go over everything in a new way, outline it a different way. Now.