Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Foundations VII (Part 7)

Lets begin with a word of prayer. Lord, as we come into your presence, we again are overwhelmed by the graciousness that you have shown us, the mercy that is ours and our Savior, Jesus Christ, we confess to you our unworthiness to stand before you. We know, Lord, if you should mark iniquities none of us could stand. We thank you that in Christ you have put them all aside, that the blood of our Savior has covered them and washed them away and made us acceptable before you. We pray, Father, we would stand before you justified in Christ, and that that justification would speak assurance to our hearts. And knowing that we are justified before you, we would not be fearful before men. We thank you that you have loved us with an everlasting love, a love that will not let us go. And we pray that with the confidence such love gives us, we would be better witnesses for you, better equipped to defend the faith that is ours. We pray, Father, you give us a heart for the lost, for those who, though often showing their arrogance and ignorance, nevertheless need to see the light that is in Christ and provided by his word. Help us to be gracious toward them, even as you have been toward us. For we pray in Jesus name, Amen. Last week we looked at three arguments against presuppositionalism as an approach to Christian apologetics. You may have to stop and think for a minute. Why would anybody want to argue against presuppositionalism? It seems like such a biblical and faithful and reasonable way to approach the defense of the faith. And if we could summarize presuppositionalism, you'll notice if you're taking notes, my summaries get briefer every week, as I'm assuming you're compacting all of this away. And like I say, the night's going to come when I'm just going to wink and you're going to know. That's it. That's the whole system right there. Presuppositionalism says there's antithesis between the thinking of the believer and the unbeliever. Not neutrality. Presuppositionalism says that the basis of all knowledge and understanding is God's revelation. So revelation is necessary to man's knowledge. And presuppositionalism says that God's authority is self attesting that God is his own authority. I'll write it down as God's authority authorizes itself. Now, if that's a basic summary of what presuppositionalism is. No neutrality, but recognition of antithesis, the necessity of revelation for knowledge and that the authority of God is authorized by God's own say so, and therefore there's a sense of circularity ultimately in our system of reasoning. What sorts of arguments might people raise against this? We've dealt with one of them already, so hopefully that'll be the easiest to remember. What did we deal with last week? Okay, that it's dogmatic and authoritarian. Or, if you will, it's arrogant and obscurantist. An obscurity is one who obscures the argument, says I don't need to research or look into things. I'm right, you're wrong, and that's really all that counts. And of course, that's an arrogant attitude as well. What's another argument against presuppositionalism deprives the unbeliever of knowledge. And then thirdly, there'd be no common ground or basis for communication, No basis for cooperation between believer and unbeliever. They just be in their mutually exclusive philosophical towers, loathing each other. They could never talk or interact, deal with each other. Okay, now, last week we dealt with the first argument against presuppositionalism, that it amounts to arrogant obscurantism. You can put it other ways. When the test comes around, I'll let you write it up your way, but. Oh, that's right, I give that to the high school kids. I wouldn't test my Bible study group, but if we were taking a test, what would be the answer to that? Objection. Someone help me. Humble boldness. I love that expression. Can you explain it a bit to us, Carol? Why are we humble? Why are we bold? You're humble because your knowledge is a gift of God. Yeah. Who gave us the gift? God. And so if God gave it, and God stands behind our system of truth, then we can be very bold about this. And as Proverbs says, the person who refuses reproof, the person who won't listen to what God has to say, is acting like a fool. We need to be bold about that. We need to point to the foolishness of the unbeliever. Don't lose track of that. We must show the unbeliever to be foolish. Now, notice I didn't say we must call the unbeliever a fool. Obviously, from a verbal standpoint, if you want to lose your audience, just say, you fool. And the person is going to get the idea that you don't have any, you know, respect for them as a human being or anything at all. So I'm not talking about what you say to the unbeliever but the goal is to demonstrate the foolishness of the unbeliever. We have to be bold about that. But you know, in most cases, when people finally get into their hearts that they have a basis for being bold about something, then they tend to get arrogant. Boldness very easily shades over into kind of an I know it all or ain't I better than you attitude. How is it that a presuppositionalist can avoid letting his or her boldness become arrogant? Vicki. Right. And what I'm trying to do is share with you the gift that God's given me. That's exactly right. Since it's a gift of God's grace, there's no room for arrogance in a Christian apologist. And I'm afraid that many of the best known apologists of our day, be there on the radio or debaters or what have you have really given a black eye to the Christian faith because their attitude is so unbecoming. It's so. Well, it's so lacking in humility. There was a hand over here. Yes. When people are upset that the content of your message is so challenging, sometimes they'll say, well, who do you think you are, God? And the answer is no, absolutely not. It's the Bible. It's God's word that's saying this. And if I haven't interpreted the Bible correctly, you know, you show me that, but I'm trying to show you what the Bible says. So you're right. That should take some of the edge off. But we need to remember who we are and where we're coming from. You know, as Christians, when we defend the faith, it is very easy for us to think that it's a matter of my personality versus the other person's personality and that I need to score debating points against this person. No, you don't. Now, if you're in a formal debate, then I think God calls for you to do a God glorifying job and try to debate. Well, but even in a debate, a formal debate, I don't think a Christian apologist should be up there with the attitude that, see, I'm better than you. We don't need to score points with the audience or with the other individual. We simply need to be true to the Lord. After all, Jesus said that God could raise up to himself a witness through stones. We see in the Old Testament, God was able to use a jackass to accomplish his purposes. And so the fact that you're up there testifying for God makes you no better than a jackass or a Stone, except for the grace of God, that you're a human being who happens to be saved. And so, you know, we can laugh at that. But really, if you remember that when you're debating with the other person, you say, well, God could use a jackass here. He can use me. It will tend to keep you from having an attitude that I'm better than this person, because that comes across. Remember this person. Why is this person fleeing from God? Why is this person arguing against God? What is it that makes this person so unwilling to listen to what you're saying? Simple word has three letters in it, begins with S. Good, Good. Sin. That's right. And if it's sin that the unbeliever is feeling, then the unbeliever is already feeling guilty. And what do guilty people usually do? Let's think about children for a minute. Not mine, necessarily. You think about somebody else's children. What do children do when one gets caught doing something and gets punished? But he. But she. But, you know, I want you to know there are other guilty people. We start looking. We start looking to shift, you know, the focus and to blame others and so forth. The unbeliever is really childish. And though he or she may not be able to analyze their own case and admit they're doing it, when the unbeliever feels the guilt of sin weighing on them, they're going to want to look for something in you say, but who do you think you are? Look what you did. Now, maybe you're not. Maybe you're not robbing someone or stealing hubcaps or doing some terrible thing. The only thing they can point to is what a bad attitude you have. Well, even if it's true, you shouldn't say it that way. I mean, you're all giggling because you've heard people say that kind of thing to you, right? Well, that's where it comes from. Now what good is it going to do to come back and defend yourself, your own personality? Is that what you're there to defend? They're to defend the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we have to be very careful that arrogance does not come across a kind of authoritarian, I know it all attitude, because believe me, the message we have is going to carry enough punch without us adding to that our own personalities. So in answer to the first objection, that arrogant obscurantism will result from being a presuppositionalist, as Carol said, we need to be humble and bold. We need a humble boldness. Now let's look at the second objection. Which brings us to our lesson for this evening. The second objection says that if you're a presuppositionalist, the unbeliever can't know anything. It deprives the unbeliever of knowledge. Let's make sure everyone understands why that objection is leveled. What is it over here in our summary of presuppositionalism that seems to undermine the possibility of the unbeliever having any knowledge? Cindy? Revelation. Because God is revealed in all things, therefore they have a common grace type of revelation. Oh, you're getting way ahead of me, boy. You're a good reader. What over here, though? What is it in presuppositionalism that would lead someone to level that objection that what you're saying the objection is? Presuppositionalism deprives the unbeliever of knowledge. Why is that? Which of these things up here would indicate that. 1, 2 or 3, All were getting help from class tonight? Revelation is necessary to knowledge. Is that what you were saying? I agree with you, but why do you say that? If revelation is necessary to knowledge, why does that appear to deprive the unbeliever of knowledge? Why does it appear. See, I want to make sure you feel the weight of the objection before I give you the answer to the objection, Willie. Because he appears to not have revelation, right? And believers says, I don't accept God's revelation, or what you call God's revelation. And you've said, well, that revelation is foundational to knowing anything. So if he rejects God's revelation, then on your basis of thinking, on your reasoning, he couldn't know anything at all. How does that sound, though? We say, well, unbelievers are all a bunch of ignoramuses. They don't know anything. What's that? Okay, what if I said it in a very humble way, you know, very meekly, I have to say, unbelievers really don't know anything. It's not true. We shouldn't lie. And people are going to be able to tear that down. Unbelievers know things. They know how to balance their checkbook. They know where Cucamonga is on the map. They even know how to bake a cake or in some cases have atomic, you know, physics. Have no atomic physics better than Christians and so forth. Unbelievers know a lot of things. So if presuppositionalism implies that unbelievers can't know anything, presuppositionalism is wrong. Because whatever implies what is false is itself false. Now, does presuppositionalism imply this. Well, that's what we want to talk about. I see you all shaking your heads. Answer is no. Doesn't apply this. Well, it says right here in the. That's right. The answer is in the book. Does presuppositionalism really imply any such thing? No. Far from it. In fact, the presuppositionalist claims that only his epistemological position, that is only his theory of knowledge, guarantees that unbelievers can make positive contributions to the edifice of knowledge. Presuppositionalism maintains that if you don't see things in this, like, you really don't have any basis for thinking anybody can know anything, much less the unbeliever. But we can guarantee that unbelievers know things. Listen closely. What the critic has erroneously inferred is that if revealed presuppositions are necessary to understanding of the world, then non Christians are totally ignorant, since they do not admit to revealed presuppositions. Since they don't admit to revealed presuppositions, then they obviously don't have revealed presuppositions. This is the assumption of the critic. And you see, the amazing thing is, once you put it that way, almost anybody can see through it. And yet, until you put it that way, most people just take it for granted. The unbeliever doesn't have God's revelation at the basis of his thinking. Because he says he doesn't have God's revelation at the basis of his thinking. He. He rejects it. Since he says he rejects it, then he actually rejects it. Am I going too fast? If the unbeliever says with his mouth, I don't believe these things that are found in God's revelation, then we say, well, then I guess he doesn't believe it since he doesn't say so. Well, there's some reason to take a person at his word when he talks about what he believes. Ordinarily, we do in common discourse. If somebody says, well, I don't believe that the rams are playing on Sunday, you would ordinarily think the person has told you what he actually believes and is correct about his beliefs. However, I wrote a doctoral dissertation on this subject just because it turns out some of the most interesting human problems and conundrums we face arise from the fact that the that premise is not always reliable. People are not always correct about themselves. How about this? What if I were to say a person, this person doesn't have tuberculosis. Pardon me? Because he doesn't think he has tuberculosis. That settles it, right? The only thing that can be true about him is what he believes about himself. And so if he doesn't believe he has tuberculosis, then he doesn't have tuberculosis. Now, in that case, everybody's going, well, that's absurd. Of course not. There can be things true about a person that he doesn't believe. And maybe he doesn't even want to believe it. Maybe he's got a very strong motive to resist believing. It can still be true, though. Can it? Person's medical condition, that's not difficult to understand at all. But when we bring it into a condition of what he himself believes, we tend to think, well, he knows what he believes. No one else knows what he believes. Only he knows what he believes. And he can't ever be wrong about what he believes. Have you ever been wrong about what you believe? It's almost too silly to ask. Well, of course we're wrong about what we believe a lot. And now let's refine it more. But are you wrong about what you believe about yourself, about your beliefs? Are you ever wrong? Do you ever believe incorrectly about your beliefs? We use S here for Sam. Or any subject S believes. Why do I always pick up the bad chalk? Well, one of these days we're going to have real chalk because we have a real. Okay. S believes that. S believes P. And what does the P stand for? Class? No. Any proposition. Now, if I put a Q up here, what's the Q going to stand for? Any proposition. What I'd like you to do is to hide this somewhere. So that no one else. So that no one else can use my chalk. All right? S believes that S believes B. Now, this belief is about S beliefs. Correct. The object of the belief here is a sentence about what he believes. Now, I realize, you know, this sounds a little complicated, but when you visualize it, it's not all that difficult. Okay, S believes things. He believes that today is Thursday. Okay. He believes that he has tuberculosis or doesn't have tuberculosis. Well, of the many things that S can believe, he can believe some things about his beliefs. For instance, he might say, I believe all of my beliefs are true. Or he could say, I believe that I believe today is Thursday. Now, what evidence do I have for believing that I believe today is Thursday? Well, how about when I have to put down on an application the day of the week and the date I put down Thursday, I say, see, there's a basis for me believing that I do believe it's Thursday. Because when I'm asked, I say, it's Thursday. So I'm not talking anything complicated. If you're sitting there going, oh, is this getting really deep? No, it's not. It's very unsophisticated. We believe things about our beliefs. Now, what I want to know is if we can have beliefs that are false about the world. Say I believe that the Rams are not playing on Sunday, and they do, and if I can believe things falsely about myself that I don't have some disease, when in fact I have it, why is it thought that I can't believe something false about my beliefs? Seems to be a special relationship between me and my beliefs. Ordinarily, we take a person's word about its beliefs. In fact, in many cases, we don't even know what a person believes unless he's willing or she's willing to tell us. And yet, for all of that, you know what it is to see people believe something about themselves, about their own beliefs, and be wrong. Okay, what if S believes P amounts to. Sam believes women are equal to men. Sam believes women are equal to men. Now, if I go to Sam and I say, sam, do you believe that women are equal to men? And he says yes, then we would say, S believes. Sam believes that Sam believes women are equal to men. Y' all follow me. He has a belief about one of his beliefs. Now, in that situation, if Sam said that sort of thing, in fact made a point in the office of always flattering the women about their getting ahead of men or being deserving of promotions and so forth, we would say, well, there's some evidence that he really believes that about himself. And yet, when he's not at work, let's say when he goes home, he's on his way home, and he goes to get a drink with the buddies and so forth, he's always demeaning women and telling jokes that put them down and ridiculing the people and in fact, saying of the women who get promoted and so forth, well, it's only because of this liberal society and da, da, da, da, da. And he makes his wife walk 10ft behind him everywhere he goes. And every time his wife, you know, gives birth to a girl child, they put it up for adoption. I mean, how much more do I have to say? I mean, would we say that though there's some reason to think Sam believes that Sam believes women are equal, there's overwhelming evidence that Sam is wrong about that. He may believe it, but he believes it falsely. So unbelievers, what I'm saying can be motivated to have a wrong Self image. Though they believe in the God of Scripture, the God that's revealed constantly through the natural world, though they believe this God condemns their behavior and so forth, they won't say that they do. They say, I don't believe that. And yet they do. That's what we call self deception. The unbeliever is actually double minded at base. All men know God, God as his creatures. Since the unbeliever has been created by God, has been made in the image of God and lives in the midst of God's world, he cannot avoid knowing God, receiving God's revelation and acting on the basis of God's revelation. But as a sinner, all men refuse to acknowledge their Creator and to live by his revelation. Hence we can say, and this is a crucial sentence in the chapter, hence we can say that men both know and do not know God. There's a sense in which the unbeliever knows God, a sense in which he does not know God. He knows God in judgment because of natural revelation. But the unbeliever does not know God in blessing, in virtue of the saving grace of God in his supernatural revelation. Now this means the unbeliever is able to gain knowledge despite what he says. Okay, so let's say you have a college professor who just repudiates Christianity, totally repudiates the existence of God and all revelation and so forth, despite what he says. Because he operates in God's world on the assumption of the various things revealed by God in nature and in Scripture. Because he actually operates that way, he's able to learn things about the world all along, denying the foundation of his knowledge. Think of it as a child. I love this illustration from Dr. Van Till. He was so good at that kind of thing. Dr. Van Til said it's like a child sitting on his father's lap and slapping his father's face. You couldn't slap your father's face if you didn't sit on your father's lap. You're not big enough. And so here's the unbeliever, as it were, saying there is no God slapping his father's face all along. What? Only because his father's holding him up is he able to do it? Okay, Paul, is that to say that the unbeliever knows God as Creator but not his Redeemer? Or is that too much of a distinction between the two? No, I think that is basically what we do want to say. He doesn't know God's Creator. Really? Yes, yes. But they would say that they're Denying that. But they would deny it. Yeah. See, I'm claiming the unbeliever has knowledge that he is not willing to live up to. He's not willing to own up to. He is. Well, there are some people in this world who go out and borrow lots of money to start a business or buy a house or whatever. Now, once they get the business going or have their house set up, they act like, hey, this is all mine. I did this all myself. Most places you go into, you know, entrepreneur guy has gone to the bank and borrowed money, started a business. He doesn't, you know, display, you know, here's my bank loan and everything. I'm really living on someone else's capital. He just acts like this is my place. Some people are so arrogant as to. Even if you were to ask them, oh, no, I did it myself. You know, just a big why the unbeliever should be thought of that way. Someone who's living on borrowed cash capital, he's living in God's world on the basis of what God has revealed to him. And all along he keeps saying, oh, no, I've done it myself. I don't believe. I. I don't depend on anybody else living on borrowed capital. So he knows God as creator, but he doesn't know him in virtue of redemption, he doesn't know God as the Redeemer. And so this next sentence needs be emphasized as well. We have to conclude then, in principle, the unbeliever could not know anything. In principle, his unbelief would preclude understanding of anything. In principle, if somebody says, well, on a presuppositional basis, the unbeliever couldn't know anything. We say, in principle, that's true. If he lived up to his principle, if he lived up to his professed philosophy, he couldn't know anything. And we're going to show you why that is. However, the unbeliever doesn't live up to his principles in practice, he acts like a believer now, not all together. And of course, that's why God's going to hold him accountable. Notice in Romans 1. Let's turn to it. Romans 1. Paul talks about the unbelievers suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. And he has this very interesting expression. Romans 1, verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who. Paul, what's it say? Suppress the truth and unrighteousness. They know it, they've got it, but they hold it down. They suppress it because they that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them. God's revealed himself, they know it. In fact they can't escape it because God's the one who's sending the message. And when God sends a message, it always gets through. God doesn't have to wait for the unbeliever to say, well I'm going to let you into my universe, God. This is God's universe. And when God sends the truth, it gets through. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse for even though they knew God, notice that they knew God, they did not honor him as God. And here's the expression or give thanks here they've borrowed from God everything they've needed to set up their business, their life, their family, their house. But they won't give thanks to God for it. They say, no, I did it. Everything that I've learned, everything that I know did it on my own self made man. But in fact God is the one who provided it. So here you have the unbeliever suppressing the truth and not giving thanks to God. He knows the revelation of God, but he won't own up to it. And the thing that really gets the Christian who's considering which apologetical system to use is that the unbeliever never will own up to that. What we want is, well, let's go out and get some unbelievers to admit to this and then we'll agree that the Bible's right. But of course, what do we call it when the unbeliever admits that he knows God called conversion. Exactly. When he admits that he finally says I was wrong so he's no longer an unbeliever. You can't get unbelievers to say this sort of thing. And yet they are depending upon God. They act like believers in this world. I can give you some easy illustrations. Go to, go to an ethics class at the state college, have an ethics professor tell you that everything is relative, that there are no absolutes. But you know, when he gives his examinations, he acts like a Christian, acts like he believes in God and moral absolutes. Because on the test about everything being relative, he wants you absolutely not to cheat. He tell you that there are no moral absolutes. But when you come in and report that his car has just been stolen, he screams bloody murder. We can see this in kind of sensitive situations. I mean those are real easy illustrations. But watch unbelievers in the presence of death. There are some who keep a good, you know, front up. Not many. They'll. They'll show momentarily, maybe five minutes, maybe five weeks. They show that. That throws them. And why is that? It's because they know there's a life after death. They know that there's an answer to the maker of all mankind. But of course, their system tells them there can't be, so they struggle with that. So we can catch unbelievers acting, quote, unquote, like believers. We can find it in their emotional life. We can find it in their moral lives. We can find it in their intellectual life as well. I give you one intellectual illustration that we'll try to bring tonight's lesson to a close. Unbelievers in their intellectual. Of course, that's where apologetics are going to focus, because you're going to say, hey, you couldn't know anything without God's revelation. Unbelievers, to know anything in terms of the world around them, must assume that there's a regularity in this world. Okay, but if there is no God, you either have got to get regularity as something that's within the natural order, Natural law, as it were. The Greek philosophers, the early ones, of course, they didn't know what to do with that. And so they said things like, everything's full of gods. They couldn't get away from the idea of God, but they didn't want to believe in a God outside the world, so they just said, it's a God inside the world. Thales said all is full of gods. That's where emotion comes from. That's where the activity and the change and the way nature progresses comes from Heraclitus as well. He said, you know, the world really is eternal fire. It's a logos, it's a God, the world itself. So you see, people don't want God out there to account for the way things happen here and what gives regularity. And so they try to bring God into the world. Well, then, in our day and age, people don't like that. They say, well, then we don't want to be superstitious and believe there's some kind of principle of motion or change or regularity within the natural order working its way out. So there's no God outside and there's no God inside. And so they say anything can happen. This world is just random. How many scientists do you know who act like the world is just random? I mean, these guys almost get to have Dull personalities because they expect everything to happen in regular mechanical succession. And so they'll say one thing with their mouth about the nature of reality. There is no God. There's no God outside or inside, and this world is just a chance universe. And then they'll go right about their lives living as though there's regularity. And they have to. We can't have science without regularity. Francis Schaeffer used to use an illustration. This is a nice one as well, kind of reversing it. He says, the unbelieving scientist believes there is no personality. There are no personal values. He just thinks there's mechanical, material things. All of reality is matter operating according to. According to strict mechanical laws of motion. He'll say that. He'll teach that. And then when he goes home, he says to his wife, hi, honey, and gives her a kiss. Shaver says, where does that come from? Wait a minute. What is this love and high honey stuff? In a world that's only matter in motion, the unbeliever says one thing and continues to betray that he believes another. And I want to suggest that you would do much better at defending the faith if you would learn to catch those inconsistencies than in mastering all the detailed arguments for Christ's resurrection and fulfilled prophecy and so forth. Those arguments are useful. I have a tape on that. You can pick it up to see why. I believe evidence can be used to embarrass unbelievers when they think, well, you know, how can you believe that stuff? Say, well, how can you not believe it, given the evidence? But that's not going to change the unbeliever, not usually, because the unbeliever's got a philosophy of life that has to be shattered. And the way in which we do that is we say, you know, what I'm telling you is true, and you're trying to hide it. Now, sometimes you want to actually say that sentence. Other times you may want to be a little more subtle and indirect about it. But the point is to reveal to a him that he's been depending upon God's revelation all along, even though he's been denying it. So the answer to the objection that presupposition would deprive unbelievers of knowledge is that it would only deprive unbelievers of knowledge if we thought they really rejected God's revelation. But we don't. We think that they know what God reveals, and then they say they reject it, but they don't really do so. And so the real problem with the unbeliever is he's really a believer. The unbeliever is a believer in his heart of hearts and he's lying. He's not giving thanks and he's not living up to the fact that he depends upon God. Okay, some questions or observations. Yes, Glenn? That the only way that an unbeliever can change his mind is show him the inconsistency. Well, I would say there are other ways that God uses, but I would suggest that the nature of the problem is such that you want to show him his inconsistency. The Holy Spirit has to be the one to change them. So everything is that a message of the Holy Spirit? Yeah, What I'm saying is that God can bring people to a knowledge of the truth and the gospel through people who don't even represent the biblical message correctly. I mean, Arminians are used by God to bring people to conversion and they don't actually understand the gospel in its consistency and its full graciousness. And God can use weak arguments too, but what he calls us to do, I mean, the fact that he can use incorrect theology and weak arguments doesn't mean, well, we should settle for them. We should use arguments which best reflect the nature of Christian faith. And so what I'm saying is the best argument reflecting the nature of Christian faith is to go to the heart of the unbelievers problem. Say you're not giving thanks to God for what you, you know to be true. It's not as though I need to give you evidence because, you know, God somehow has just left us in the dark. It's that you've been living in light all along and then going like this, saying I can't say anything. I can't say anything. You got to expose him for his rebellion against God rather than catering to his demand for, well, if you just, you know, if there was just enough evidence that I would believe. That bothers me when people say that if they're, if you could just give me some evidence, then I'd be a believer. You know, from the 500 witnesses of the resurrection to the millions of stars in the sky, everything is evidence for this. God has not left himself without a testimony in this world. The problem with you is that you keep suppressing the truth. So I don't want to suggest to him the problem is that God hasn't given enough evidence. I want to say the evidence is there, but you're not accepting it. You're not admitting that you accept them. Okay, John, you both know me. Is this what he was referring to when they were arguing, I would want to look at the specific passage because there are some that are similar and he makes those kinds of remarks. But I think there are places in the Gospel what Jesus is saying is, you know, from the very, very authority with which I teach, the convincing nature of it and the works that I do, that I'm from the Father. And yet it's possible even to suppress redemptive revelation in its convincing power. I mean, when Jesus was on earth, there was something about him that people should have accepted him at his word. Evil generation seek of after a sign. Yeah, I think that can be applied to apologetics too. Jesus was saying that the Jews were an evil generation because though he had given them sufficient evidence, they wanted something further. They wanted a sign. So at some places it appears Jesus says he will give no sign because of their evil hearts. And at one place he says, the only sign that will be given you is that of Jonah. He said the resurrection is going to be a testimony. And now notice this, presuppositionalist friends, the resurrection is given, the evidence is right there, and the soldiers were paid to lie about it. What a beautiful illustration of what I'm saying. With all the evidence in the world, the unbeliever, if his heart isn't changed, if his worldview, his outlook on life isn't changed, will even suppress that kind of evidence. It's remarkable. Pharisees knew that he was going to rise from the day of the third day, and he sent those soldiers to prevent that truth from hanging out. Yeah, they're the ones who paid to have them tell a lie. I mean, can you imagine when you know this person's risen from the dead, that's the worst bet in the world to bet against someone who rises from the dead to put your money, you know, and say, go out and tell people otherwise. That's how blind. I mean, those of us who are believers, we can laugh at that. But just imagine that actually happened. There are people in this world who were so hard hearted that they didn't even see how foolish their own sin and rebellion was in paying people to lie about that. So there is, there is evidence and we can use it. And like I say, you can pursue elsewhere some of the uses of evidence. But what I'm getting at here is that we should go for the inconsistencies in the unbeliever system. And I think the Holy Spirit is honored by that because it's most faithful to the nature of the faith we're defending. Okay? Next week, review chapter 10, which I didn't get to tonight on the third argument about there's no basis for communication and cooperation. And chapter 11. Do 10 and 11 next week, where point of contact can be found, where we can communicate. And then the week, not next week, two weeks from tonight. And then the week following that one, we'll do the summary of the first 12 or 11 chapters, and we'll kind of put this together. And then finally, what you all have been waiting for, we'll start thinking about, well, how do we do.