Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Foundations III (Part 3)

And let's begin again this evening with.

A word of prayer.

God, we bow before you as those that cannot claim any knowledge on their own. As those who confess that all the knowledge and wisdom they possess come from you and by your grace and is made possible and is intelligible only because.

Of you as the Creator of all things.

We pray that this night you might make us truly grateful for the gift of knowledge. Truly grateful that you make it possible for humans to know anything. But beyond that and all the more.

Grateful that you have redeemed us from.

Our self centered and humanistic ways of thinking and by the grace of your Holy Spirit and life, our eyes and our minds, so that we might understand your work and your world. We thank you for the grace you have shown us. Pray that we would be faithful to you and to those truths that we have professed when we defend the faith. We ask, Lord, that you would help.

Us to defend our faith in a.

Way which is consistent with the truths of that faith. That we would bow before Jesus Christ as our sovereign Savior and be willing.

To be marked out as his disciples.

In this world and to honor him wherever he should lead us and to love him with all of our minds and to be faithful to him and glorify him in all things.

For it's in his name we pray.

I said that there would be three basic principles we'll try to learn in our foundation section under the syllabus on a Biblical to Apologetics. And the first principle that we have focused on, spent actually a couple weeks on is that neutrality is not something that Christians should strive after, but rather shun. And that will sound very strange in a sense. We are told on all sides that everyone has to have kind of an uncommitted impartial attitude when they approach matters of religion, and especially when there's a debate between different ethnicities conclusions on religion. But you have been given a reason.

And I'm not going to review it tonight. Why?

Neutrality is not something that the Christian would endorse. So our first principle is no neutrality. Tonight's lesson will be on the subject, secondly, of antithesis. There is an antithesis between. The reasoning of the believer and the unbeliever. If you're taking notes, you may wish to underline the reasoning of the believer. And just as a reminder that I'm not simply saying that there's an antithesis between the conclusions of the two, what I'm suggesting is the way they use their minds, the way that they reason, their method of thinking is different. Actually more than different, antagonistic to each other, that there is an antithesis between them, there is a warfare conflict between them. The two can't exist side by side. I was partially tempted by my not feeling well and partially tempted by my always wanting to be cryptic in my teaching, to think that maybe tonight I would come and just say, this follows from this. If there is no neutrality, then there must be an antithesis in the reasoning of the two. And I thought I would just leave the lesson there and let you bowl that over for about 30 minutes and let it sink in, see if you.

Can figure it out.

But I decided I would teach the whole lesson because I knew Robert wouldn't let me get away with this in chapter three.

Come across very strange.

Yeah, well, the silence part on the tape would be difficult. People coming in the middle of a lesson or something. Chapter three in the syllabus deals with the nature of unbelieving thought. In chapter four, the mind of the new man rooted in Christ. And although the title doesn't exactly give it away, I trust you can see that that's what we're dealing with.

Now.

Here's the way unbelieving thought proceeds. Here's the mind of the Christian, See, it's the non Christian mind, the unbelieving mind and the Christ. In chapter three, after the introductory paragraph, I ask us to return to Ephesians 4 and Colossians 2 to see the true character of neutralist thinking. Well, of course it's not really neutral thinking, but it's that which claims falsely to be neutral thinking. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4 that to follow the methods dictate by the intellectual outlook of those who are outside of a saving relationship to God is to have a vain mind and a darkened understanding. So let's look at Ephesians 4, 17 and 18. I don't hesitate to tell you that if I were teaching this lesson where I got my PhD, if I were to have an open lecture and say, now the problem with you who are unbelievers is that your. How do we put it here? That your mind is vain and your understanding. Understanding is darkened, they wouldn't say, oh well, I guess we have a difference of opinion. They would be insulted, right? But Paul does say that. Let's make sure of it.

Verse 17.

This I say, therefore, and affirm together with the Lord that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility, another translation for vanity. The futility of their mind being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the Ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their heart. Neutralist thinking is characterized by intellectual futility and ignorance. Stand up before your unbelieving audience and say the problem with you is that you're ignorant in a way. The can't lead to anything but ignorance. To turn away from dependence upon the light of God, the truth that we receive from God in the context in which because of that truth that he's revealed, we're to understand the world. To turn away from all of that is to turn away from knowledge to ignorance. Paul is a witness to that. I mean, these are insulting words. Would you please feel the insult of that and realize that he said it under divine inspiration. It is God who insults the unbeliever and says, you are hard hearted, your thinking is futile, it's vain and it leads to hatefulness. Now I want to maintain that any apologetic that falls short of coming to that conclusion is an apologetic that's less than industrial strength. It's not the full product. It's not what Paul is dealing with. The kind of faith that we defend is a faith that says, well, as Dr. Van Til used to put it, brings out the flamethrowers. We pursue the unbeliever into his cave and flamethrowers out. We don't just try to hold the carrot up and say give Jesus a chance, please come and that kind of wimpish mealy mouth sort of thing. What we say is with the flamethrowers it's all or nothing. It's unconditional surrender. It's ignorance or the knowledge that God makes possible by his grace. So we don't begin our thinking in the dark, as I say, but we want the word of God to be a light on our path. Let's look at two passages in the Old Testament. Psalm 36:9. David says, for with thee is the fountain of life. And listen to this small but pungent expression. In thy light we see light, in thy light we see light. Forgive me if I use one of the favorite expressions again of Dr. Van Hill. But Dr. Van Til used to say the sun of God's word does not define human flights for its illumination. That is what the psalmist is getting at is if God didn't have light, we wouldn't have any light to deal with at all. It's in his light that we have any light to see, not the other way around. Many times apologists, I'm afraid, approach the debate with the unbelievers level. Everyone's in the dark. No one can know for sure. So you bring your best flashlight, I'll bring my best flashlight, and see what we can discover together.

What we want.

To say in essence. I know these are metaphors, but they get things across in a popular audience. I think Dr. Van Till used to say, we want to say to the unbeliever, if it weren't for the sun, you wouldn't have a flashlight. You know, in a sense that's true.

Right.

Tim can expand on the physics of that, but there wouldn't be any power to illumine on earth if there wasn't, first of all, the radiation of the sun, from which we could make batteries and flashlights and so forth. David says God's light provides context for us to see anything else, to have our own lights. And in Psalm 1:105, we see that this light comes to us, particularly in the Word of God. Psalm 119, verse 105. My word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my. To my path. Without it I stumble, without it I'm lost in the darkness. You don't need a course in the history of philosophy or comparative anatomy of different apologetical systems then to know in the most elementary sense that what we are going to argue when we deal with the unbeliever is if you do not begin with the Word of God, you will not be able to know anything at all. That's a very big claim. And often beginning students of apologetics get scared off. They say, there's no way I could hold my own in that kind of argument. I'd rather say very probably Jesus rose from the dead and argues and evidences like that, than to come and tell a professor or somebody with a PhD or just somebody who's very well read or can out talk me. I don't want to say to them, start with the Bible. You wouldn't be able to, but I am. This is not hubris. This is experience and also dependence on Scripture. I assure you, by the time we finish this course, you will be able to argue that with anybody. Of course, one of the things is to get beyond intellectual bullying. Don't let the local professor use big vocabulary, try to beat you down by his degrees and all that kind of thing. But what you're going to challenge him with is that his worldview, by its own lights or darkness, actually his own worldview will not sustain what he calls knowledge. So we won't do all that tonight, but that's what we're going to be aiming at. In Romans 1:21, we read that God makes the Reasoning of the unbeliever, vain. That should give you some confidence.

Read it.

Romans 1:21. For even though they knew God, they didn't honor him as God or give thanks now to be futile, vain in their reasoning. And their foolish heart was darkened because they wouldn't honor God. Their thinking became foolish. And so that philosophy of light and that outlook on reality, knowledge and human behavior that doesn't take its starting point in Christ is going to be led to futility. Paul says in Colossians 2 that it will be robbed of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Paul describes that kind of philosophy, as we saw last week, as vain deception. Notice the word vain again. Vanity, futility. Repeatedly, the New Testament looks upon the thinking of unbelievers as empty, as futile. And I'm not going to do the word study with you. But you'll notice on the bottom of page five that you can look up passages that deal with the concept of vanity in the Bible to get an idea of what Paul's talking about. He's talking about a philosophy that operates from, and therefore against Jesus Christ. Don't be robbed by vain deceit, he says. The philosophy he's referring to is after human tradition and worldly presuppositions, those elements of learning that are considered non negotiable. The building blocks, the ABCs to the world falses. Watch out for them. By the way, that's just as an aside, good piece of advice. Every time an unbeliever says, well, no one will dispute, fill in the blank. You better stand back and say, maybe we better dispute it. Not because you won't agree with it, but what you want to say is, well, the fact that no one disputes it doesn't give you a right to use it. Because you see, what it is you say no one would dispute doesn't fit in with your worldview. And that's very important.

Embarrassing.

An example. No one would dispute the uniformity of nature. We can't live our lives without assuming the regularity of natural order from day to day. You should step back and say no one would dispute it. All right, but I've got a reason to believe that.

How about you?

On what basis do you hold to the uniformity of nature? Since you say this is a chance universe, since you say there is no God who regulates all things according to his sovereign plan. On what basis do you assume the uniformity of nature? And if the comeback is well, because everybody does, then of course we just say well. But see, philosophers are supposed to be better than that. We're not supposed to take a nose count and find out what's true. This is the nature of unbelieving thought. In chapter four, we go on to a description of the mind of the new man that is rooted in Christ. We've just seen that believers are warned to avoid philosophy that's rooted in worldly, humanistic or non Christian presuppositions, the elementary assumptions of learning. In verse seven of Colossians 2, which we could all turn to now, you'll notice that Paul has something to say about the nature of the believer as well. Colossians 2:7, he says, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in him, in Christ and established in your faith just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude, the believer is called to be rooted in Christ, established in the faith. So where do I begin? I begin with what Jesus Christ teaches me. I start with the presuppositions that Christ provides. My presuppositions are the precepts and doctrines, doctrines not of human tradition, as verse eight throws out, but rather of Christ. See to it that no one robs you through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. Apparently there are elementary presuppositions according to Christ. There's a philosophy, he's according to Christ, even as there is that which is according to human tradition and worldly learning. Paul says, make sure you choose between them. Most Christians don't even pose the question so they can make the choice. They just take it for granted that what I have to do is I have to go run the race like the unbeliever does and see if I can beat him at his own game. Instead we should go and say, you know, according to the rules, you don't.

Have a game to play.

Don't try to beat him at it. Try to show him the futility of.

The game that he's playing.

Well, the point is that.

We are.

To have Christian presuppositions rather than worldly presuppositions. And I note here that sentence neutrality is in actuality veiled agnosticism or unbelief. It's a failure to walk in Christ and a suppression of the truth. In Romans 1, Paul says, it's a mark of unbelievers that they suppress the truth. They know the truth. They turn around and they try to deny it in any number of unrighteous ways. They try to escape the truth. I would suppose all of you have at one time or another been at a pool party and have played a game of keep away, right? Take a volleyball. There are always those smart people who think that the way to do this is when no one's looking is to push the ball under the water and sit on it or something clever like that.

And then everyone's going, where's the volleyball? Where's the volleyball? Right.

That person is suppressing the volleyball. But they got to work at it, don't they? I mean, you got to be pretty talented in the way you sit on that ball, or else what's going to happen pops back up. And so the unbeliever, too, knows the truth. He's got the volleyball, but he's pushing it down. He's going to where's the truth?

Where's the truth?

Who knows for sure? But you got to work at it. You got to work to keep that down because it keeps coming back at him. Every time. He goes, for instance, to UCI to debate some local legalist about the existence of. The guy keeps saying, well, there are no principles of debate that are universal and absolute on your worldview. And here he is, he's trying to debate a worldview that makes debate impossible. He's trying to use logic when he has a view of the universe that logic makes no sense in. So there's the volleyball always popping buck up at him. And then he's pushing it down, pushing it down. Well, obviously we don't want to suppress the truth. We don't want to say, oh, no, we're going to try to do things the way the unbelievers do and try to beat him at their own game. Thus, Paul commands us to be rooted in Christ and to shun the presuppositions of secularism or ecumenism. And in verse six of this chapter, we read, as you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so now walk in him. So how do we go about grounding our lives in Christ? How can we ensure that our reasoning is guided by Christian presuppositions? Paul says, in the same way that you receive Christ as Lord, so now walk in him. So in the chapter, I ask you to do just a little remembering. How did you become a Christian? If you remember the process by which you were brought to Christ, Paul says, that's the way you should continue to grow and mature in your Christian walk. Kind of amazing. I think a lot of us think, well, I was so immature back then. But the way in which you finally gave up your sinful pride and autonomy and bowed not only the knee, but your heart to the Lord is the way you're going to grow up in, too. We never get away from that. And I confessed this sin and I asked God to keep me from it. But I'm afraid that many of us who take an interest in defending the Christian faith feel we need to move beyond that simplicity of faith with which we became Christians, so that we can, in a more sophisticated, intellectual way, defend the faith. The only sophistication and intellectual.

Not even an improvement.

What I want to say, the only intellectual, cosmetic in a way, that we put on our defense of the faith, is for the sake of speaking at the level of a learned unbeliever. But what I'm going to say to my college professor should be the same thing you say to the milkman. And what you say to both is, I wouldn't know anything if I hadn't given up my pride and vowed to Jesus Christ. And I'd like to explain to you why that is. In 1 Corinthians 1:30, Paul tells us that in Christ Jesus.

That we are.

In Christ Jesus, and unto us Christ has been made the wisdom of God. Why does Paul, at this late point in 1 Corinthians 1, speak of Christ as the wisdom of God? Someone remind me what has led up to this discussion in the early verses of the First Corinthians 1? Well, foolishness is natural reasoning, right? Foolishness and wisdom. What does he say? Word of dross. Foolishness to those who are perishing. What is it to those of us who are saved? The power of God and salvation. But what has God done to the wisdom of this world? He's made it foolish. So you see, there's got to be an understanding of the antithesis. The world must, of its own character, see Christianity as foolish. So don't get upset when you defend the faith and people treat you like, oh, come on, no one could believe that. I mean, that's just superstition. That's religion, you say, well, the world must see it that way. That doesn't give you reason to go out and do every foolish thing you can think of and then feel good, say, well, there's the foolishness of the cross. I heard people and seen people doing that. There was a guy, Long Beach State once, who used to wear, you know, one of these sign boards around his neck, one of these sandwich board type things, you know, and just have all sorts of outlandish things, you know, on it. And when people ridicule him, he said, I'm glad to be a fool for Christ, glad to be A fool for Christ. Well, I wish he weren't so much of a fool for Christ and rather would have left the foolishness of Christ's gospel, you see. So I'm not justifying any kind of nonsense because after all, we're going to be seen as foolish. But when you do defend the faith in a faithful way, don't be surprised at the world this makes nonsense because Paul told you it would. On the other hand, God will make the world's wisdom.

Foolish.

So we must recognize that Christ is to us the wisdom of God. He is, as Colossians 2 says, the deposit of all wisdom and knowledge. So how do we walk in Christ? In the same way that we became Christians. Think about the day you became a Christian. On that day, were you sitting around saying, well, Jesus, you passed every test a reasonable man could ask. So I'm going to go ahead and throw in my lot with you. Aren't you glad to have me? I'll bet you that for many of you in tears you said, jesus, thank you for having me.

I don't know why you did.

You turned away from what the world says about what was possible and what was true and what was the wise thing to do. And you said, jesus, even if I don't understand it all, I'm going to.

Bow my heart to you.

And I trust you. You know, that quality of trust mustn't be forgotten. Christians are not just intellectually ahead of the game by a few steps. We've done our homework a little bit better than unbelievers. The reason why we see things different because God has done something in our hearts. But isn't it sad that we're tempted and so many Christians do give into the temptation to think well. But when I go back now to my unbelieving friends to defend the faith, I have to kind of forget all of that humility with which I became Christian and start laying on intellectual arrogance and say that I can beat them at their own game. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 2, 3, 12, 16. We have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God. Such things we also speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual, my translation says, thoughts with spiritual words, comparing the spiritual with the spiritual. But the natural man does not accept things of the Spirit of God. Why they are what to him? Foolishness. And he cannot understand them because they are spiritually understood or appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he should instruct him. Listen to this. We have what? The mind of Christ. I'm going to go out there and say to the guy that's in my PhD program in philosophy sitting next to me, not going to say, I've got mind and way of thinking. You've got your mind and way of thinking, and mine leads to Jesus and yours doesn't. Let's compare our different approaches to knowledge, because I'd be no better than him, would I? What does the natural man do? In our natural state, we can't understand the things of the Spirit. We can't receive those things. There are going to be foolishness to us. Greg Bonson did not become a Christian because he was smarter or had a higher GPA than anybody else. I became a Christian because God was gracious and took away my obstinance in the darkness of my mind. And so when I turn around and defend faith, I want to keep that in mind. I don't want to think that the guy sitting next to me is going to be able to work his way intellectually into the faith. He has to see what I'm saying as fully so wouldn't it be better for me just to kind of fly the flag openly for all to see and just tell her from the outset, listen, I'm going to tell you some things which you will just not be able to understand or believe where you're coming from. You're going to have to say, this is foolish. And where I'm coming from, you know what I think the sorts of things you believe are foolish. I'll throw in a couple of examples. Just so he doesn't think this is likely, an exchange of calling names at one another. I just find it totally incredible that you have an evolutionary view of reality, but you believe in love. I just don't see how the slime oozing out of the slime leads to this ethic of love that everyone is supposed to pursue. And so your worldview strikes me as just really incredible. It must take a lot of faith to believe that kind of thing. And so I know you think I require a lot of faith, and I'm telling you it takes a lot of faith to believe yours. And so I would suggest we tell them, you know, there's a conflict of worldviews here, and one of us, you know, is going to be foolish and both of us are going to seem to one another to be foolish. And so we have to work at who's the real fool here? Rather than saying, well, you know, we're really in a sinking boat together. No one knows anything for sure. Let's see if we can take our flashlights and find the truth somewhere. That's not the way to do it.

So let's turn back further in 1 Corinthians 2 to see how it is that we become Christians, because this is all under the Rubric from Colossians 2, that we should walk in Christ in the way that we received Christ. So how do we receive Christ? First Corinthians 2, 4. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the spirit and of power that your faith isn't this indicting. I mean, we know these verses. Why don't we live this way? That your faith should not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I'm not going to try to beat Bertrand Russell at his own game. I'm not going to say, bertrand, teach me everything you know and I'll try to turn it around on you and show you you should be a Christian. Because faith will not rest in the wisdom of men. It will rest in the power of God. God will have to change his mind and give him light. Even as he changes mind, the Spirit will have to fill him with the mind of Christ before he'll submit. In First Corinthians 12:3, in the midst of the tongues controversy, Paul says that what the Spirit leads all men to, to profess as Jesus is Lord, there's a lot of time. It's really kind of an interesting way Paul does it. Look at all these things being said. But all Christians say this Jesus is Lord. Maybe the first elementary statement of Christians made Jesus is Lord. In fact, Romans 14:9 says that Christ was crucified, resurrected and ascended in order that he might be confessed as Lord. Paul summarizes the message that we must confess if we're to be saved. In Romans 10:9. What is it Jesus says? Are we beginning to catch on? The elementary Christian confession is the lordship of Jesus Christ. These are passages very embarrassing, by the way, to those who say Jesus will be Savior. And then maybe later on you can move up a notch in your Christian life and make him Lord of Jesus.

As Lord, or he's not Savior either.

So to become a Christian, to put it simply, is to submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. That's why, going back to our passage now, in Colossians 2:6, it doesn't surprise me to read, as you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord so walketh. He doesn't say Jesus the Savior. He could. It would be theologically true. Emphasis, though, is upon the lordship of Christ at the outset of our salvation. What does it mean for Jesus to be Lord? The loving of all our heart, soul, strength and mind. Right. 2nd Corinthians 10:5. In our Bibles, it's a great verse. 2nd Corinthians 10:5 shows us another implication of the lordship of Jesus Christ.

We are destroying reasonings and every lofty.

Thing raised up against the knowledge of God and taking every captive to the obedience of Christ. So if Christ is Lord, we love him with all of our minds, and we bring every thought captive to Him. I want to test every line of reasoning, every presupposition, every method of thought that I have. I want to test it against the teaching and the light of Christ's word. And so when Paul directs us to walk in Christ in the same fashion that we received him as Lord, then obviously the way we should proceed today is in the simplicity of faith, bowing the knee and the heart of Jesus Christ as Lord, and bringing every thought captive to Him. That's the way we came to faith, and that's the way we carry out a life of faith as well. As Paul says in Colossians 2 will then be rooted in Christ rather than in vain worldly presuppositions, Colossians 2:5. For even though I'm absent in body, nevertheless I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ as you therefore have received Him. Walk. This kind of firmness of presuppositional commitment to Christ is what resists the worldly temptation to neutrality that robs us of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So in Ephesians 4 we saw that worldly thinking is characterized by ignorance, darkness, and futility. In Colossians 2 we learned that the thinking of the believer is radically different, that the believer is a new man, even in his intellectual commitments, in his way of thinking. The newness of our life in Christ comes to expression in our thinking. So in Colossians, turn to chapter one, verse 18. This will be, I hope, well known to many of you. He is also head of the body of the church, and he is the beginning, the arche, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself might come to have preeminence in everything. Why did Jesus rise from the dead, the Firstborn of the dead. Not just so we have some interesting miracle to prove the faith, but that he might come to have preeminence in all things. The way that I think, the way that I reason. It's going to be a little bit frustrating to end the lesson about here tonight because now that hopefully I've convinced you, you must think in a way that's different from the world. You'd like me to flesh that out and say, how is that different? What is it that makes Christians think different? Well, I have to keep you coming back. Obviously we have the rest of the symbol to go through, so I can't answer that question tonight. But I can assure you that if we finish this by God's grace, you will have a good idea the way in which your thinking has been stained by the world and how you can bring it into greater conformity and consistency with your own faith. I ended this chapter with a long quote from Dr. Van Till and I think I'll end tonight's lesson by reviewing that he says it is Christ as God who speaks in the Bible. Therefore, the Bible does not apply appeal to human reason as ultimate. In order to justify what it says. The Bible comes to the human being with absolute authority. Its claim is that human reason must itself be taken in the sense in which Scripture takes it, namely as created by God and therefore properly subject to the authority of God. Nutshell is our apologetic. I told you before, the argument for God's existence is that without God you couldn't prove anything. So how do you prove God's existence? By showing that without him, proof is impossible. As Van Till says, the Bible doesn't wait for human reason to say you're okay. Human reason is not okay until it is understood in the light of what the Bible teaches about the two systems. Then that of the non Christian and that of the Christian differ because of the fact that their basic assumptions or presuppositions differ. We mean by antithesis on the non Christian basis. Man is assumed to be the final reference point. That says prediction should be predication. The word tradication simply means making judgments. If you say the barn is red, you've predicated the redness of the barn. You have to forgive him. He's a philosopher. He talks about too. What he's getting at is human thought is impossible. It makes no sense when man is taken to be the final reference point. That is man is the ultimate authority in terms of which he can say anything about the world. The reality is frankly, from above, we don't hide that we say, look, we're beginning with God and the authority of his Word. You're not beginning with God and the authority of his Word. Let's just admit that neither one of us are neutral. It would presuppose God. But in presupposing God, it cannot place itself at any point on a neutral basis with the non Christian believers themselves have, have not chosen the Christian position because they were wiser than others. What they have, they have by grace alone. But this fact does not mean that they must accept the problematics of the fallen man as right or even as probably or possibly right. That is, we tell the unbeliever your way of understanding the difficulties, the things that have to be answered, is in itself wrong. For the essence of the idea of scripture is that that it alone is the criterion of truth. Again, this is not going to please an unbelieving audience. And many believers would say, hey, we do a lot better. Let's kind of tone this down. Let's look for a way to kind of make some compromises and draw them a little closer to us, you know, a halfway house to that kind of strong, you know, position. What Dan Till says, and I think we can see that Paul is on his side. Is it from the outset that we must present the idea that there's only one criterion of truth and you don't reason in terms of it and I do. And that's the way the battle is going to be fought. It's going to be fought in terms of antithesis, not for a moment, allowing for neutrality. Any questions? Joe? The lords of Jesus Christ being in question says that you can make them saviors. And Lord, that truly is a false gospel. I mean, it's not called a false gospel. We almost allow it. It seems like our Christian circles as being an acceptable way of presenting the gospel, but it really is a lie, isn't it? It's a socially awkward situation that leads many people, I think, to want to compromise and say, well, that's really a watered down gospel. But I have to agree with you. If someone honestly believes they can be a Christian, have Jesus to save them from their sin, but not submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ, Christ won't settle for that. He will not leave his crown at.

The door, as it were, in order.

To come in so he can be your savior. And I think we do have to say that it's a false gospel and provides to people carnal security that they will be saved. I've used this expression many times in this country. Congregation, you're Used to it by now, but it really gets the point across. We must tell people they cannot live like hell until they have. So then, if a person, if Christ is not the Lord alike, He is not the Savior. Well, of course, in a categorical sense, he's not the Lord of any of us in the sense that we purely follow Him. But if we have not bowed to him as Lord, we have not taken him as Savior, I would. We're just ruling ourselves if we think otherwise. There's an essential confusion there. Under what other identity could you know that God would. Who would he introduce Himself as, if not God? Well, as some kind of basin to hold. You don't understand all there is about this, but I'll always rescue you from your eternal despair. I heard people preach that, you know, that Jesus just shows up and he kind of, you know, he helps you out of his bind and he's not the fire insurance policy or something. And maybe later on you'd like to go a step further and get to know him as, you know, what he really is, Lord, but you just can't cut the cake that way. I don't think. Go ahead, Joe. This may belong to a future Lincoln, but given the fact that you have the Christian worldview with its own assumptions, and you have the unbelieving worldview with its own assumptions, what's the point of contact? Chapter 11, where point of contact is and is not found. Keep coming. Okay, John. Well, improving that unbelievable presented areas of knowledge. Well, I think the more you know about a field like philosophy or linguistics or something or resulting. You're good and you can present a clearer and more detailed case. But I would suggest to you that even a high school dropout can understand the elementary case that I'm going to present for Christianity and could prosecute it with a PhD from the local university. I know that's a big question, but again, if I could train a person to force the guy with the PhD to explain himself and not use big vocabulary and so forth. There are fundamental ideas about reality and about knowledge that everyone has. And the more you hear some of the arguments, the better you are in relating your faith to them. I really do think the untrained is able to say not when they're. When they kind of like Socrates. I'm really dumb about these things. You got to explain this to me. You're saying on the one hand that this world came from chance and nothing controls what happens in history and anything's possible. But on the other hand you're telling me that everything's determined in advance. And that's why scientific advance and prediction is possible. And you just have to help me here. How? How is it that it's both ways, that it's unpredictable but predictable? And on the one hand you'll say, well, everything has to be kind of unpredictable. That's what accounts for human freedom. But then everything must be predictable because that's what accounts for scientific success. So I mean, now I could take you to some big names in the history of philosophy, Descartes and Kant and others who face that. So how do you bring these two realms together? And only the Christian has an answer to I think. And we can say in a very simplistic, Sunday school, childlike fashion, God created this world and we are, we have creativity and freedom even as he does. And yet because he made the world, there's regularity to it. That's how it happens. But in the unbelievers approach, he can't have those two. He can't have oil and water. Go ahead. Yeah, I have a list written up of the 27 major consistencies. Although Lord willing, if I get finished with a project that David Adofi and I are working on, there will be some examples of this sort of thing. We're trying to do a book on Christian thinking, How to arguous Christian. And part of what I'm writing is for like when college students go away, the sorts of worldviewing consistencies they should be looking for in the professors. I'm not sure that Even with a PhD I would be able to give you an exhaustive list, but I can give you some enough to keep you talking. Can we practice on this? Sure, yeah. If you want to do some roll to work that into the class, that'd be good. Okay, I need to stop at this point so you have time to pray. And next week I'd like you to read chapter five in the syllabus.