Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Methods II (Part 11)

We're on chapter 14 today. This is a convenient point. It's not exactly the beginning of the new section in the syllabus, it's one chapter in. But it's a very convenient point for making the transition and taking new students into the course, because I'm now turning to the question of method in defending the faith. It's convenient, and you won't find it hard to follow picking up at this point. However, I do think if you have not been part of the seminar up to this point, that it would be advisable to go back and read the chapters that you've missed, because much of what I'm going to say, though it will make sense and hopefully carry some persuasion, will not carry the kind of force that it could or clarity that it could without the foundational chapters. Up to this point, what I have done is I have said that the nature of apologetics is often misunderstood by people. And it's misunderstood because people think apologetics is kind of like in a unique no man's land. It's a neutral territory when it comes to reasoning and logic and evidence. And the reason for that is we are told no one's supposed to beg the question. No one's supposed to have their conclusion in mind when they start investigating. And so though it is all right to presuppose the truth of Scripture, if we are talking about evangelism or systematic theology or prayer or whatever it may be, you can't do that in apologetics. And so the opening of the course was a demonstration of how, in fact, you must do that in apologetics. You must beg the question. And everyone does beg the question. And so the question is not going to be whether you'll have presuppositions, but rather what will be your presuppositions. I secondly pointed out that not only is neutrality excluded, but there is a principal antithesis between the reasoning of the believer and the unbeliever. Now, when we start using words that you aren't familiar with, don't let me get away with that. Don't be embarrassed, raise your hand and say, what do you mean? Principal? What do you mean? Antithesis. Okay, can't, for your sake. As a matter of fact, you do know. But thanks for being so nice to help others. Principal in principle, not necessarily in practice, not the way things actually work out, but in principle, on paper, in theory, if you will, there is an antithesis that is complete antithesis, a fundamental conflict, an irreconcilable conflict between the way the believer reasons and the way the unbeliever reasons. You see, the difference between us and unbelievers is not just that we come to different conclusions, but we reach conclusions in different ways. Okay? Our reasoning is different. It's as though we have two answers to our homework problem when we come back and we find out that it's not just that somebody did their homework right and somebody did their homework wrong, but we have different ways of doing homework, too. We have different ways of working out answers. We have a different ultimate authority. We have a different method of reasoning. We have different standards than the unbeliever. Okay, so that being the case, things look a little hopeless, maybe. I mean, well, we're just completely different. But then, and here's the thing that most apologists will not buy into, and our challenge to the unbeliever is, and on your standards, you could know nothing. It's not just that you fail to come up with a few right conclusions about Jesus rising from the dead and God being the Creator. It isn't enough for us to defend the doctrine of creation over against evolution. It is not enough for us to show the literary integrity of the New Testament documents or to show the historical probability of Christ's resurrection. That is what most apologists today aim at. And what I'm saying is, no, we're going to go deeper than that. And what we're going to say to the unbeliever is, I mean, those of you who have been there know we have to answer detailed questions when they come up. We can't just say, oh, well, I can ignore your questions, but ultimately you must ask the unbeliever, what is your philosophy of life? What is your philosophy of knowledge? How do you know anything at all given your view of the world? And our claim is, without the triune God of Scripture and without the Scripture wherein he reveals himself, we couldn't know anything. Not simply, we couldn't know about religious things as they are narrowly understood, but we couldn't know about the created order either. That knowledge depends on the revelation of God. Then in the next portion of our seminar, we had three objections to this point of view raised. One of which is, well, that's pretty arrogant. That's pretty dogmatic. And we answered that objection by saying what? Yeah, it's pretty dogmatic, but it's not arrogant. Because as we showed in our reading of Scripture, we only have that point of view by the grace of God. It's not like we're smarter than unbelievers. Now, Greg Bonson may have a couple of Master's degrees and PhD. But that's not why I'm a Christian. Okay. Whatever skills God gives you, whatever he gives me, however the gifts are distributed, they're all gifts of grace. But none of us have become Christians because of our gifts. We've received our gifts because of God's grace, right? So our message is a bold one, but it's a humble one. We have to say very humbly but boldly, if you don't know Jesus Christ in principle, you don't know anything. Because in Christ are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge deposited. Paul says in Colossians 2, 3. The second objection is, well, on this presuppositional approach that you've taught, this antithetical presuppositional approach, unbelievers couldn't know anything. And since we know believers. Excuse me, since we know that unbelievers do know things, therefore your approach is just completely out of whack. It's wrong. And to that, what did we say? Kathleen, you were there. I remember us having a conversation that night. Anyway, I didn't mean to catch you off guard. Gail. Go ahead. Craig. Anybody? Okay. What we would say is that in principle, that's right. They wouldn't know anything. But they do know things because they do know the God that we said is the foundation of all knowledge. That is to say, they claim to deny our fundamental assumptions about the world, about life, but in fact, they don't. And I think that may be kind of where the coin drops for a lot of people in understanding presuppositionalism is that when I talk to the unbeliever, I'm talking to him, in a sense, at two different levels. One, the level of what he says about himself, and then at the level of what he really is. And it shouldn't surprise us that people are not always correct about what they think about themselves. I've used the example over and over again. Pardon me for repeating them, but there are people who have tuberculosis who don't believe they have tuberculosis, and they're not. Believing that they have tuberculosis will not save their lives. And the unbeliever may not believe that. He believes in the God of creation who has revealed himself and has these standards and so forth and so on. He may profess with all of the sincerity outwardly in the world that he doesn't believe those things, but I know that he does. And I know that because God told me so in his book. In fact, God said they know it so very well that that's why they're motivated to suppress it because in knowing it, they also know him in his wrath toward their sin. And that's the one thing the unbeliever does not want to face up to. And so he'll run from God and suppress the truth and unrighteousness, but what he's suppressing is the truth. Yeah, you've played the game in the pool with the volleyball. And who has the volleyball? Right. Somebody shoved it under the water, is sitting on it, holding it down, you know, and you might call it, tony, do you have the volleyball? Nope, not me. Now, does the fact that he says, no, I don't have the volleyball mean he doesn't really know where the volleyball is or about volleyballs or anything? Does the fact that it's below the surface of the water and suppressed down there mean that what he's saying is to be believed? No. And unbelievers are in contact with the truth. And they may even say to themselves, oh, I don't know the truth. They may even convince themselves that they don't know the truth. I wrote a doctoral dissertation on that. It's called self deception. But all the while they're sitting on the volleyball, they're holding it down, holding it down, holding it down. And so when people say, well, on your basis, unbelievers couldn't know anything, we'd say, well, they could only be deprived of knowledge if they didn't know the God that I'm speaking of. And they do know him, though they deny it. And then thirdly, people will say, well, you can't even talk to an unbeliever. Then in principle, you couldn't cooperate at all with an unbeliever in a conversation, couldn't cooperate in a scientific lab or in a social project or just being neighbors. He'd have nothing in common with them. And in principle, that's true. But again, the unbeliever doesn't live up to his presuppositions, what he professes. And just because he is inconsistent, we are able to have conversation. We are able to work together, to reason together, maybe to cure polio together, whatever it may be. We can do things in this world with unbelievers because they aren't what they say they are. And they don't really operate on the assumptions that they claim that they operate upon. So that brings us into the question of method. How should we approach the unbeliever? How should we speak to the unbeliever? In the one chapter that you've missed thus far, I argue that you have to have the right conception of the unbeliever if you're going to reason with him effectively. And the right conception of the unbeliever in biblical terms is he is a fool. And that leads us then to a biblical discussion of foolishness. You know, and foolishness isn't always just the way little children act. Adults act very foolish too. Adults even who hide socially their foolishness are very foolish in their mentality and their attitudes and their way of reasoning. And so chapter 13 in the syllabus goes through a biblical description of the things characteristic of a fool. And the reason why you need to put the unbeliever in that category is not so. As I said before, you could act like Mr. T and just say you fool, you know, and dismiss him is because the way you're going to reason with him is going to have to take account of that's his problem. His problem is not a lack of information. His problem is not that he doesn't have time to do his homework. His problem is that he's a fool about everything, everything in his life. That gives you a lot of lead ins. By the way, he may be having some kind of financial problem. Be the lead in to your apologetic showing the foolishness of the way he spends his money perhaps, but he's a fool nonetheless in his reasoning according to the Bible. And Paul says in first Corinthians, and this is what I said is really the war cry of Christian apologetics. Where is the wise? Where's the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn't God made foolishness foolish the wisdom of this world? And so your goal as an apologist is not simply to answer the detail questions. It's not simply to defend your own pride or to show that you know you can think for yourself too. Your goal is to show that he is a fool and God has made foolish what he calls wisdom. Now how are you going to do that in chapter 14 for those of you who have brought the syllabus today? How many have brought the syllabus today? Good. Chapter 14. I won't report the results to you. Dr. Van Till is quoted at some length. And all I want to do is read the quotation from Dr. Van Till, give a real quick explanation of it, and show you that what he is saying comes right out of the Bible and then we'll quit. The struggle between Christian theism and its opponents covers the whole field of knowledge. Christian theism's fundamental contention is just that nothing whatsoever can be known unless God can be and is known. Are we hearing that? What's our contention? What are we pushing? What's our conclusion? That nothing whatsoever can be known unless God can be and is known. The important thing to note is this fundamental difference between theism and anti theism. On the question of epistemology, theory of knowledge, there is not a spot in heaven or on earth about which there is no dispute between the two opposing parties. That is don't think will we agree on things like the redness of the rose and and how to measure 2 cups of flour for baking a cake. We agree on those things. But when we don't agree on religious things, he says there's not a spot in the universe we can agree with him on. The method of reasoning by presupposition may be said to be indirect rather than direct. The issue between believers and non believers in Christian theism cannot be settled by a direct appeal to facts or laws whose nature and significance is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate. See, it's not as though we have what are sometimes called brute facts out there in the world that have no interpretation, but every interpretation has got to conform to them. There are no uninterpreted facts. All facts are interpreted facts. So when someone says, well, you've got your hypothesis and I have mine, let's go to the facts to let them determine that. You need to remind the person what we're going to go to is already interpreted. And so if it so happens that the way the facts are being interpreted is crucial to the hypothesis being tested, you're just going to be begging the question when you go to the facts. We're going to have another Sunday school lesson on this. Don't let this blow you away yet. The Christian apologist must place himself upon the position of his opponent, assuming the correctness of his method merely for argument's sake in order to show him that on such a position the facts are not facts and the laws are not laws. Okay, so Van Til says the indirect method says, let me reason like you do, Mr. Unbeliever. Let me put myself on your position. And then what I want to show is that the facts will turn out to not be facts and laws will turn out not to be laws. And in fact you can't know anything at all. He must also ask the non Christian to place himself upon the Christian position for argument's sake, in order that he may be shown that only upon such a basis do facts and laws appear Intelligible. So there's two things we want to do according to Dr. Van Till. We want to reason the way unbelievers reason, to show them that it destroys all reasoning. And then we want to invite them to reason in the way that Christians reason, to show that we're the only reason we have, the only position that can save reasoning. Therefore, the claim must be made that Christianity alone is reasonable for men to hold. This is, by the way, what has been so offensive in Dr. Van Til's teaching. Most apologists don't want to make it that black and white. They want to say, you know a lot of things, I know a lot of things, and we're going to take what we know together and show that very likely the things I claim that you deny are true. Van Til says no, we want to say not just that we're more reasonable than the unbeliever, we're the only reasonable position to hold. And it is utterly unreasonable, wholly irrational to hold to any other position than that of Christianity. Christianity alone does not crucify reason itself. The best, the only, the absolutely certain proof of the truth of Christianity is that unless its truth be presupposed, there is no proof of anything. Now that's a sentence worth memorizing, putting into use. You may want to write this down. The absolute, certain proof of the truth of Christianity is that unless its truth be presupposed, there is no proof of anything. Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the idea of proof itself. Those of you who did not hear my debate with Dr. Stein so many years ago at UCI may want to pick up the tape of that. Those of you who were there, you'll remember that what I fundamentally said to Dr. Stein is that if you believe what you say you believe, you wouldn't show up to debate at all because there'd be no basis for debate. There couldn't be any logic by which we would debate with one another. On your worldview. I showed up for the debate because on the Christian worldview, debate makes sense and logic makes sense, but not on yours. That's just one illustration of what Van Till is saying. The absolute proof of Christianity is that without it you couldn't prove anything. Okay? Now, some people have tended to say of Dr. Van Till, because he doesn't do a lot of biblical exegesis, he does some in his preaching. He's a marvelous preacher, Was a marvelous preacher from God's word. But people will look at his academic writings and say, well, there's not a whole lot of Bible in there. Well, of course there is a whole lot of Bible. It's just he doesn't give a lot of proof text. But I would like to give you now a proof text for this approach to answering fools. It's found in Proverbs 26, 4 and 5, and then we're going to stop for today. Proverbs 26, verses 4 and 5. How should we answer the fool? Solomon says, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Verse 5. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. This seems to be contradictory instructions. The one says, don't answer him according to his folly. The other says, do answer him according to his folly. But that's because, as Van Til said, there's really two steps in apologetics. To answer a fool according to his folly is to answer him according to his mentality, according to his outlook, according to his philosophy. You take the fool and you say, tell me if you're. Of course, you may not say, tell me, fool, about the foolishness of your philosophy, but you take his philosophy, his view of reality and how we know things and how we should live our lives. You take his worldview and you answer him according to his own worldview. And on the other hand, you don't answer him according to his own worldview. But what are the two aims in doing this? The reason I answer the fool according to his folly is what? Lest he be wise in his own conceit, lest he think he can know anything, lest he have any pride left at all. I say, give me your position. Let me show you what happens when you assume this and you want to show the destruction of knowledge that comes. You want to show him that you have nothing to be conceited about. You have nothing to be proud of here. This position destroys all knowledge. On the other hand, don't answer him according to his folly, lest you be like unto him. You accept his presuppositions and make that the basis of your argument, and you're going to end up in the same sinking boat that he's in. And so there's two things you do. And though Dr. Van Till didn't quote Proverbs and so forth, it's very biblical in what he's saying. We answer fools by doing two things, showing that they are really foolish and can't know anything on the basis of their philosophy. However, we're not caught in that problem because we have an answer that doesn't assume their foolishness. Now, that's what we're going to be expounding for the remainder of these three months in Sunday school is that method of apologetics for. So we'll finish going through the syllabus and when we're done with that, I'm going to choose a few of the juicier apologetical problems, the common ones that come up, and we're going to try to apply this method to answering those problems. So you get some experience in doing it and we may even do some acting out and so forth. Maybe I'll have some of you come up here and I'll pretend to be the unbeliever and expect you to start answering things. Nah, nah, nah, you don't have to worry. Any questions on today's lesson? First of all, Kent said that without.

The Christian worldview, they're unable to prove anything over against what you said earlier where you said that they do have a Christian worldview. It's kind of like the problem that I run into is, you know, like.

They gave that objection.

Well then according to.

On his principles, he could not prove.

Things, actually proves the Christian worldview and not his worldview, because a better way, maybe a different way or way to say that you say unless the Christian worldview were absolutely true, then the atheist couldn't prove anything. Because if you tell them without the Christian view, they may interpret that to mean unless you hold the Christian worldview, you can't prove anything. But the fact is that even though they don't hold the Christian worldview, they still depend on the Christian worldview to make their proof.

Yeah, well, it's not real clear because you're equivocating on the word hold, but what you're saying, I catch the drift of it and I think you're absolutely right. We want to make clear, clear to him that you really do believe these things and you operate in terms of them, but then you profess that you don't. And I'm going to answer you on the basis of what you profess. And if what you profess were true, we wouldn't be able to know anything. This happened, by the way, after I debated Dr. Stein, we had, I don't know, seven, eight, nine months of correspondence back and forth between us that got rather heated at the end and I challenged him to publish our correspondence and then he didn't want to do anything. But in the course of it, when he finally figured out that what I was saying is that on your worldview you can't prove anything, he answered, well, but I do prove things and I do know things and so forth. And when I wrote back, I said and that shows that my position's right, because my position can account for your ability to balance your checkbook and drive your car, but yours can't. So I think he, at that point, realized that the noose was around his neck. And now he'd better come up with some answers to these philosophical problems. I don't feel he ever did, but okay. Any other questions on today's lesson? John? I'm sorry. Okay, well, just one second on that. Helga. Someone help me. I couldn't hear. Do they have any wisdom? Yes, but the right Proverbs tells us at the beginning of wisdom, actually in Hebrew, the rosh, the head point. The very first thing, the first step of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. And since unbelievers have no fear of God before their eyes, we have to say they have no wisdom. That's different from saying that they don't know how to live in this world. They don't ever make correct choices. They don't know anything at all. But everything they do know. And everything they do is an expression of their foolishness and rebellion against God. Even when they're loving their children and giving them Christmas presents, they are demonstrating not a love for God and his kingdom, but rather something that falls short of that falls short of the glory of God and therefore, as a sign of foolishness, Tim. Upon the.

Grounds for knowing things towards.

The point, or is it that we.

See things as being created by God.

And therefore an ethical point? It's both. They are ungrateful for what God has given them and has made possible to them, and they are also epistemologically unable to offer an account of the world that will square with what they believe about knowing. For instance, the unbeliever will treat logic and the principles of logic as though they exist and they are universal. But then he has a worldview, a metaphysic that makes things which are immaterial and universal impossible. He has a worldview that says only material particulars are possible. So on the one hand, his view of reality makes impossible what he's trying to do in epistemology. So I mean both. And I also mean in his life. He doesn't give thanks to God. Pardon me. Pardon me. He doesn't give thanks to God for what God has granted him, what he is able to do. We're going to talk more about this as we go along.