Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Foundations VI (Part 6)

Our Heavenly Father, we are again grateful that you have not left us in ignorance, nor have you left us in our unbelief and hard heartedness. But by your grace and mercy and your almighty power, your Holy Spirit has come into our hearts to enlighten us, to give us new life, to redirect us in our living and our behavior.

As well as in our thinking.

We pray that you would help us because you have saved us, to love you with all of our heart, to.

Love you with all of our mind.

And to demonstrate that in the way that we reason and the way we witness for you, and the way we defend our Christian faith. We ask that you would give us clarity tonight, that you would take away our being physically tired from days of work, that you would give us attentiveness to your word and that you'd help us to think thoughts that are pleasing to you and faithful to you. We ask that you would forgive us for the ways in which we are inconsistent with our Christian faith. We pray that you forgive us for our many transgressions and sins, and that you would by the blood of your Son, wash us clean and make us acceptable in your sight. For we pray in his holy name.

Amen. Amen.

I'd like to.

Do an overall summary of what you have seen so far and then start arguing against it tonight.

There are a few basic truths that in a thematic way you should have picked up by this point, the first of which is in the defense of the Christian faith. There can be no neutrality. We can't take an uncommitted position. Nobody knows as yet attitude. Secondly, there is an antithesis. Between the reasoning of the believer and the unbeliever. That antithesis is inevitable because the Holy Spirit has changed our hearts and our outlook has regenerated us. The unbeliever is described as having a hardened heart, as running from God, as suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. The third basic truth from Scripture that we studied in the broadest sense is that God's revelation is foundational to all human knowledge, that God reveals himself. And it's within that context that human beings are able to to learn anything at all, not only about God and man, but about the world. And then finally last week.

We said.

That ultimate authority is self attesting. That which authorizes your final authority must be your final authority. So circularity is going to be inevitable when you're arguing about the final authority in a person's system of thought. So those are some basic truths, four.

Of them.

And we can see Some applications in apologetics. The first application is that one must presuppose the truth of Christianity. Presuppose the truth of the Christian faith.

I'll put him.

That's our beginning point. I think it should be obvious to you from these four truths that that would have to be the case. Then we don't begin with a neutral position and reason into Christianity we presuppose.

The truth of Christianity.

The second application is that in apologetics in the final sense, you're going to be debating worldviews. You're going to be comparing your Christian outlook on reality, knowledge and behavior with the non Christian's outlook on reality, knowledge and behavior. Not going to be debating isolated facts here and there. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Is creation true?

And so forth.

There's a place for that. But ultimately the unbeliever has a worldview that is in conflict with the Christian's worldview. And that's what you're going to want to debate. And then thirdly, what you're going to want to show in terms of these basic truths is that all that, well, all unbelieving worldviews, but the particular one you're dealing with, the unbeliever's worldview.

Makes knowledge impossible.

It may be in some cases you're going to want to debate ethics.

You're going to say your worldview makes ethics impossible. But in the most basic sense, you're.

Going to show that no one could.

Know anything if the unbelievers approach to.

The world were correct.

Go ahead.

Question about the presupposing the truth of the Christian faith. Is it, is it any better or worse to presuppose the God of Scripture or Christian faith as truth or the.

Precision with which that set forth?

No, because you see, what I'm talking.

About is a worldview.

And so when I say the Christian faith, I mean the whole package.

It's the whole enchilada sort of thing, you know.

And the unbeliever may say, well now wait a minute, what you want to presuppose is just a few minimal truths. You want to kind of, pardon me, narrow that down and say, no, I want to presuppose the whole thing that God reveals to me in Scripture. That's where I begin.

And you may say, well, that's not fair.

I'll say, well, you don't make the rules. I do presuppose that. And in so doing I'm able to find a foundation for knowledge and for debate and logic and science and ethics and so forth.

And you can't.

So, I mean, who are you to complain?

You're both thinking and you're yelling at me.

No, I presuppose the whole outlook that Scripture gives me.

Now, what I've been teaching you is in a fundamental way found, as I say, in chapter seven of the syllabus, in the writings of John Calvin.

And what I've done here is I.

Quoted for you the beginning of book one and book two, Calvin's Institutes.

Nearly all the wisdom we possess, he.

Says, that is to say true in.

Sound wisdom, consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.

In the first place, no one can.

Look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God in whom he lives and moves. Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face.

And then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. Man not only knew his theology and how to write.

What Calvin is saying is, I really.

Don'T know myself unless I know myself as a creature of God.

That means I need to know God in order to know myself.

And likewise, I don't know God unless.

I know him as the One that made me. There is this bond between the two. And he says, I can't tell you which one precedes. I would suggest that Calvin saying, you have this Christian faith, the whole enchilada. Again, it's like we learn about ourselves and God simultaneously. Book two begins with good reason. The ancient proverb strongly recommended knowledge of.

Self to man, for it is considered.

Disgraceful for us not to know all that pertains to the business of human life. But since this precept is so valuable, we. We ought more diligently to avoid applying it perversely. This, we observe, has happened to certain philosophers who, while urging man to know himself, propose the goal of recognizing his.

Own worth and excellence.

The knowledge of ourselves lies first in considering what we were given at creation.

And how generously God continues His favor toward us.

To bear in mind that there is.

Nothing in us of our own but.

That we hold on sufferance whatever God.

Has bestowed upon us.

Hence we are ever dependent on Him.

It behooves us to recognize that we.

Have been endowed with reason and understanding, so that by leading a holy and upright life, we may press on to.

The appointed goal of blessed immortality.

The interesting thing is book one, as I say here, is called the knowledge of God the Creator, Book two, the Knowledge of God the Redeemer.

And yet they begin the same place.

Calvin says, whether you want to know.

About God's world, God the Creator, or.

Whether you want to know about salvation and the blessed goal of immortality, the.

Beginning point is always the God himself, God's revelation.

To know about anything pertaining to the business of human life, whether touching upon creation or salvation, then one must reject the autonomy that is promoted by pagan.

Philosophers or philosophies, it says here, and.

Submit to the truth of God and admit utter reliance upon him for the.

Origin, direction and enabling of our use of reason.

To put it in a phrase, Christ.

Must have the preeminence even in the world of thought.

I hope that I have presented to.

You biblically founded principles and applications.

I certainly have John Calvin on my side.

I think what we're getting at is that in our defense of the faith, Christ must be kept preeminent. We presuppose his truth, we debate the contrary worldview and show that it destroys knowledge, that all knowledge is deposited in Christ. And those who reject him, though they may not think they're doing so, and they would try valiantly to show otherwise, they are really rejecting the foundations of knowledge too. Okay, that all sounds very good, but there's something wrong with it. In fact, if you've ever tried to talk to other Christians who have studied apologetics and suggest this approach, they'll tell.

You you're dead wrong. You can't do that.

You can't beg the question by assuming Christianity to be true.

And on and on and on.

What I'm going to do tonight is.

I'm going to give you three arguments.

Against this point of view. If the Lord wills and we have time, I'll try to answer the first of those, and then next week we'll take the second and third. So everyone got this in their notes.

Can I erase the board and start again?

If we take a presuppositional approach to defending the Christian faith, assume its truth from the outset, debate the worldview of.

The unbeliever and show that it really undermines knowledge, then there is a problem.

That we may have an attitude that doesn't really befit a Christian.

On page 15 in the first full paragraph, we read.

Because this is so.

Out of line with the thinking of.

The natural man and what is common in the world, it's no wonder that the epistemological position of biblical and Reformed thinking stands out in stark contrast.

It challenges the status quo, demanding a reorienting of our lives and thoughts and.

Threatens to turn the world upside down. And whenever you have something that is.

Calling for that big a revolution, you.

Know that people are going to say, well, you're appearing to be very dogmatic and absolutistic. You've noticed those are not good qualities. In the 20th century. There were times in Western history where someone who was not dogmatic and absolutistic was thought to be the one that had problems. But in our day and age, this is really bad. I mean, this is really heavy. It doesn't fit into the zeitgeist, the spirit of our times, does it?

And I write here that the Christian.

Should not be ashamed of this fact. He ought to have the humble boldness to tell a lost world that the Christian message is unconditionally true and the necessary presupposition of all thought. That is, we ought to be absolutistic and that Christ's Gospel demands repentance, that God's word has definite doctrinal content which is authoritatively revealed. It comes directly from above, as we say, and so it is dogmatic. But I don't think that it is dogmatic and absolutistic in the derisive sense that is so often attributed to those words. We are going to be dealing with that toward the end of tonight's lesson. So the first criticism that people will level against us if we try to defend the faith presuppositionally is that we are being dogmatic and absolutistic. Another criticism leveled at the position of biblical presuppositionalism is that if knowledge can only be attained by first presupposing the.

Authoritative word of God, that unbelievers who.

Don'T presuppose the authoritative word of God.

Are deprived of all knowledge.

They cannot be said to know anything. They can't even be said to know.

Anything about the elementary facts of experience.

The truths of science.

And when you draw that conclusion from.

Presuppositionalism, it seems an easy thing to refute it because, well, the form of the argument and logic is called modus tollens. If P is true, then Q is true.

But Q is not true. Therefore P cannot be true.

And if P here represents presuppositionalism, that's just a coincidence that P and presupposition start that way. I once had a person ask me when I was lecturing at a seminary. I was doing some things on the board with logical notation. And one of the professors, unfortunately raised his hand. He said, what does the P stand for? I didn't want to embarrass him. I said, any proposition in truth. So I go back working on the board and I turn back around, raises his hand a second time, goes, well then, what does the Q stand for? Any proposition or truth. And if you do it right, they should be different propositions in truth. Ok, ok. P here stands for let's say presuppositionalism is true or the right way to go. I'm going to be real simple here. So if presuppositionalism is right in what it's claiming, then it follows that unbelievers can't know anything. Q.

Now what are we going to do?

You're going to say, yeah, well, unbelievers do know things. And so Q. Which follows from presuppositionalism is false. And it's a truth of logic that whatever implies what is false is itself. So if presuppositional implies something as absurd as that unbelievers can't know anything, then presuppositionalism cannot be true. And I would dare say that is close to, if not the most popular argument against presuppositionalism, that if presuppositionalism is true, then the unbeliever would be deprived of all knowledge. I personally debated, not publicly personally debated, with the head of a philosophy department major university, in fact one of the top five philosophy departments in the country at the time, Van Till's apologetic. And his response was, if Van Til is right, then unbelievers can't even know about the digestive track of a lion. And obviously many unbelievers know much more about certain areas of life than we do. For all I know, the expert in the digestive tractable lion is an apostate, existentialist, relativistic, you know, perverted fool. And the fact of the matter is he knows more about lions and this detail of their anatomy and so forth than any Christian does. And so presuppositionalism is just, it's out to lunch, you know. So there's another argument leveled against this. How does presuppositionalism explain that non Christians know certain things? If revelation is the foundation of knowledge.

And unbelievers reject God's revelation, then they can't know anything. Now, if you're sitting there thinking, wait.

A minute, I know the answer to.

That, then you probably have turned the key.

That will probably be one of the.

Crucial steps in your education apologetically is to realize what that the unbeliever says he rejects God's Revelation, but he doesn't.

That's the point.

That's why I wrote my doctoral dissertation on self deception, because I recognize, at least as I schematize this issue, that's the crux right there, that the unbeliever says he rejects God's revelation, yet he knows things.

Well, I'm going to account for the.

Fact that he knows things because in fact, he doesn't reject God's revelation, he just says that he does. And that's why he's in trouble with God. Because knowing God, he doesn't give thanks for what God made possible. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. There's a third. Oh, better write the second one down. The second one is that unbelievers would be deprived of knowledge, of presuppositionalism is true. So the first is kind of a stylistic thing.

You people sure are, know it alls, dogmatic and absolutistic. No one's really in a position to be like that.

The second is you have absurd consequences that follow from your outlook, namely, that unbelievers can't know anything at all, and they obviously know a lot.

And then thirdly, first column, bottom of.

The first column, on page 15, a third argument advanced against the presuppositional outlook.

Is that it would prevent any meaningful.

Discussion or argumentation with the unbeliever. That is to say, there could be no common ground upon which such an argument could commence. As one Christian philosopher put it to me, once the believer and the unbeliever would be in their mutual towers and never able to reach each other. If what you're saying is true, being.

Deprived of knowledge, the unbeliever could have nothing to contribute or learn from a.

Discussion with a Christian. That is to say, until the unbeliever.

Is converted, you can't even talk to him.

And so obviously you cannot talk to.

Him in order to get him converted.

Because there isn't any talk possible because you guys have completely different worldviews, completely different presuppositions.

There could be no common ground. On which to argue.

Not just argue, let's say on which to.

How did I put it here?

I do have argument. It's really.

They can't talk with each other.

They can't really be in touch with each other to discuss it, communicate. Okay, We'd just be in completely different worlds. You know, we're talking different. Different languages. Okay, I think we've had enough suggestions, thanks.

Okay.

I say here that all these attacks on the biblical epistemology that I'm trying to lay out for you rest upon either misunderstandings or incomplete information about the position.

I do not believe now to launch.

Into the first one. I do not believe that presuppositionalism, if taken seriously, would create an arrogant approach to the unbeliever. Well, then why are so many presuppositionalist arrogant people? Well, that's something we're going to have to deal with. Have to come to grips with that, because I do know a number of presuppositionalists that are arrogant and are obscurantists. That is to say, I saw this when I was in seminary and I've seen it plenty of times since then.

You have people who will read a.

Little bit of Van Till and they come out with the attitude, well, the unbeliever, he's in a completely different worldview.

And he can't really know anything anyway.

And so I don't need to deal with his arguments. I just need to tell him that he's got the wrong presuppositions. And that really does come across as arrogance and obscurantism that will not take seriously the questions addressed to you. Presuppositionalism is not intended as a shortcut. So now we don't have to really deal with when the unbeliever says, well.

How can there be a good God.

That'S all powerful and yet sin in the world? You know, we say, oh, well, obviously.

You don't even have a foundation for.

Logic, so I don't have to talk to you about that. Well, when the chips are down, he doesn't have a foundation for logic. And that's true. But to short circuit the discussion and not take seriously his problems and show him how there's a connection between what.

He'S struggling with and the fact that he really couldn't justify any moral absolute value by which to say there's evil.

In the world anyway.

We need to be able to deal with these people and not just say.

Well, I've got the truth and you don't. In fact, you couldn't.

And so.

Now no one I know.

Says, nyah nya nya nya nyah.

But I'll tell you, the attitude comes across. Here's what Dr. Van Till wrote in his book A Christian Theory of Knowledge. Believers themselves have not chosen the Christian position because they are wiser than others. What they have, they have by grace alone. And just as an aside, if I could give my own personal testimony and observation as someone who's at least gone through the ranks no matter what you think of the performance there for philosophical and apologetical study. It is a shame that somehow we find so easy to divorce our intellectualism from our heartfelt Christian faith. You know, I often felt in classroom study and so forth that we had lost touch with those things that made us get up in the morning and realize life is worthwhile. And what Dr. Van Til is saying is, you know, even if we have the most sophisticated, intellectual and philosophically defensible position, what we have, we have by the grace of God. That isn't just something I say in terms of my salvation. Or I could say I say that about my salvation. And my salvation is much broader than.

Just going to heaven when I die.

My salvation includes what God has done for my mind, my ability to understand the world, and so forth. Anyway, what they have, they have by grace alone. But this does not mean that they accept the problematics of the fallen man as right. That is, I have to tell the sinner, the fallen man, that I'm no better than him. And what I have, I have by the grace of God. But the fact that I have it by the grace of God doesn't mean I have to accept his way of putting things. I don't have to accept his understanding of the problem.

Fallen man does in principle seek to be a law unto himself, but he.

Cannot carry out his own principle to its full degree. He is restrained from doing so. If the sinner were able to carry out his independence from God in the way that he wants to consistently and.

Fully, then of course he would not.

Be able to communicate. He would not have any knowledge whatsoever. In principle. In principle, the unbeliever's outlook destroys all knowledge. But the unbeliever doesn't live consistently with it. Dr. Van Til used to say, and.

It will be the crack of doom.

When the unbeliever isn't able to do so. It will be hell when God finally says, then fine, think your way.

He is restrained from doing so in.

Spite of what he does against God.

He can and must work for God.

Thus he is able to make a positive contribution to human culture. That is, he is able to know some things and to communicate with people and so forth. But he's able to do so because.

God is restraining him from carrying out.

Consistently and fully that principle of autonomy that he wants. Now, what is the technical theological term.

For God's restraint upon the rebellion of the unbeliever?

Tim? Common grace.

Isn't that wonderful?

We started out by saying we have what we have by what the special grace of God. And the reason why apologetics is possible is because God, in his common grace, doesn't let unbelievers be what they say they are. Let's turn to chapter eight. I think I have time to fly through this and deal with the first problem of dogmatic and absolutistic attitudes. It's a shame that Christian scholars, apologists.

And philosophers have so often neglected a.

Detailed study of the Book of Proverbs. I wrote this, I don't know, well over 10 years ago and so forth.

So I finally got around to a.

Detailed study of the Book of Proverbs and it's consumed two years of my life and I'm not done yet.

Anyway, we could learn a great deal.

Just about a biblical epistemology, that is to say theory of knowledge from a biblical perspective in the Book of Proverbs because it abounds in allusions and insights to wisdom, instruction, foolishness, understanding, etc.

And I think if we look at.

The Book of Proverbs, we'll see an elaboration of the presuppositional approach that I've been trying to teach you in this course.

The second paragraph here just summarizes what we've already seen. That we're demanding unconditional surrender by the non Christian and our approach doesn't want to compromise. It doesn't seem that we're being very easy to get along with them. It's a very stringent outlook, it condemns the unbeliever, and it could only arise from overwhelming self esteem. How should we respond? Should we defend obscurantist arrogance? Should we confess that we've become dangerously close to self aggrandizement in Proverbs 15:32,33? If you had your Bibles, let's turn there.

Or you can take the translation that I offer you.

He that refuses correction despises his own soul, but he that hearkens to reproof gets understanding. The fear of Jehovah is the instruction of wisdom. And before honor grows humility. And I suggest there are two thrusts in this passage that call for attention. The first place, the critical Christian must be bold in his challenge to unbelieving and compromising theories of knowledge. The man who will not heed instruction, that is will not submit to Christ's lordship in the world of thought, is really doing desperate to his own soul. And I think we have to be consistent in that witness to the unbelieving thinker. If the reproof of the Gospel and the gospel challenge is heeded, then understanding will be possible. To him. But we can't compromise with unbelieving standards. We can't compromise with the methods of thought used in the world, because that would be a disservice to the person who desperately needs to hear the Gospel. It will not be spiritually healthy to give in to him in his demand for neutrality rather than listening to the reproof of God's word. And so we have to present the facts without wavering. Reasoning is not built upon reasoning, which is not built upon the presupposed word of Christ, is geared toward intellectual foolishness and spiritual death. He that refuses correction despises his own own soul. That should give you some encouragement when.

You talk to Dan.

Bloom said, the reason why I'm being so firm with you is because you're despising your own soul. You're working against your own best interest and reasoning that way. The one who gets understanding is the one who hearkens to reprove. God is reproving you in his word. God is showing you the light and directing you in the proper way. Don't turn back from it, because if you do it to be self destructive. I'm saying this because I'm in a hurry to get the lesson over with, but I want you to reflect on that. It is self destructive to have the philosophical outlook of the unbeliever. That's why we don't water down the Bible and we don't take an approach that is more wimpish than this. We have to be bold. We have to call for repentance on the part of the unbeliever. We must be bold, as Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 10:5, casting down reasonings and every high thing exalted against the knowledge of God, as Romans 3, 4, says, Let God be found true, though every man is a liar. Ephesians 3, as we've noted many times over the last few weeks, says the unbeliever lives in ignorance. What he needs is repentance, a change of mind. And I argue here that faith precedes knowledge, that if he will not submit to God, he will not be able to have the knowledge which is offered to him by the Lord. 2nd Peter 1:5. Let's turn there real quickly.

Now, for.

This very reason also applying all diligence in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence knowledge. You notice that it's faith that leads to moral excellence that leads to knowledge. However, Proverbs, the passage we began with, has something else to say here as well. Not just that refusing the correction of God's word will be despising your own soul and preventing you from getting understanding. But it also says, the fear of the Lord being the instruction of wisdom.

Honor.

Before honor goes humility. We must not only receive the correction and reproof of God's word, but the Christian scholar who presupposes the truth of Scripture must be fully aware that his wisdom is not his own. It comes from what? The fear of the Lord? Reverence for God at the beginning of his thinking. Without that reverence, the Christian scholar would be as foolish as all other men. He'd have no more clue as to the meaning of the universe, the meaning of life, and what the foundations of knowledge are than anybody else. I've said this before, I repeat it. Our wisdom is not due to our superior mental ability. Our wisdom has been granted by the grace of God. In Ephesians 2:8:9, you know the passage for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Faith is God's gift. It's not your attainment, it's not your accomplishment, it's not your good work. Acts 5:31 tells us that repentance, our change of mind, was granted graciously by the Lord as well. In order to have faith you have to be born again. 1 John 5:1, 2 Timothy 2:25. I do want to look at that. One tells us that when we do have repentant faith, that is, unto or with the effect of of gaining genuine knowledge of the truth, Paul says, with gentleness, correcting those who are in opposition. By the way, the Greek there, I think means in opposition to themselves. With gentleness correct those who are in opposition to themselves. If perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, they will not come to a knowledge of the truth without repentant faith, and that must be granted by God. And so the Christian is in a position to know about the ultimate truths of life in the world and man's place and his relationship with God. Only because of the grace of God, we've been born again, we've been regenerated, and this regeneration has brought us a new mind. In fact, Paul says in First Corinthians 2:16 that unlike the natural man that cannot receive the things of the Spirit, we have the mind of Christ because of our regeneration, and that's the source of our knowledge, and we must honor that source. We must be honest and thankful about it. And as such humility is called for in Philippians the second chapter, Paul exhorts us to have the mind of Christ. And what is it that he is referring to when he speaks of the mind of Christ? In Philippians 3, he says, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who humbled himself, emptied himself. And so I want to suggest that arrogant presuppositionalists are the foulest of contrary creatures in this universe. A person who understands presuppositionalism has nothing to be proud of, has nothing to be arrogant about, but should be the most humble of men. And therefore.

Let me put this down.

Therefore, the presuppositional approach to the theory of knowledge demands of us two things, and we've seen them in this Proverbs passage and other passages that enlighten us further on that both attitudes are inherent in the position. We've learned that the position is. We've been told it's dogmatic and absolutistic, you know, in a negative way. But I'm saying no. Inherent in the position. The this is not just a sugar coating that we put on it to make it more palatable, but inherent in the very position, in the essence of what presuppositionalism teaches, is the fact that we must be bold in our approach and yet humble about it. There's a humble boldness to a presuppositionalist. Knowledge is impossible apart from presupposing God's truth. We have to be bold about that. That's what God tells us to declare and to defend. And yet we have to be humble because the reason I presuppose God's truth is found in the grace of God, not in my intellectual accomplishments. The fear of the Lord is truly foundational to wisdom, and the wise man is a humble man. Notice First Corinthians 4, 5, 6. We'll conclude with this walk in wisdom toward them that are without that is technically the outsiders, those who are not in the circle of belief, walk in wisdom toward them that are without buying up the opportunity, let your speech be always with grace. Be gracious, gentle, patient, seasoned with salt that you may know how you ought to answer each one. You want to be a better apologist? Then learn some lessons about humility along with the boldness of the message that.

You'Re trying to defend.

Okay, I'll take a minute or two for questions tonight, John.

Yes, yes.

Keep coming, John. It'll work its way out. Most likely when we get to the third section that deals with how to defend the faith and method, that that would be the natural place to do.

That sort of thing.

If you'd like tonight we could have a couple of examples of arrogance and humility and. But I don't want to embarrass anybody.

Tim.

Yes.

A kind of snappy attitude. I don't know how my Bible is, but I think it's Psalm 115 and 135 where the Psalmist mocked the idols of the heathen as being deaf, dumb and blind. Essentially with kind of the attitude, you can almost fix them snickering and pointing at them and saying, you know, your religion is ludicrous and deplorable. Am I maybe exaggerating the attitude there or how does it fit in with this whole discussion that you've presented here?

No, I remember one of the most beloved pastors that I ever sat under preaching a sermon. Not on that text, it was pretty preaching on Elijah's confrontation with the priest of baal. And the title of the sermon was Holy Mockery. Holy Mockery. And there is a place for a humble, seasoned use of what you call snappy dialogue that points out really the absurdity, even to common sense. What you're referring to, of course, is in the prophets, but it's in the Psalms 2. They say you go out and you cut down a tree and you carve it and you polish it, and then this thing which has been under your total control all along, you set up and you say, this is my God that controls me. I mean, that's just a way of doing an internal critique of the unbeliever system and needling him a bit about it. Now, I have to admit, I'm hesitant to tell you that the Bible has some of that because there are some Christians who like the needling part, but they don't understand the thrust of the humble message that's being conveyed in a.

Way you want to say to the.

Unbeliever, even you know better than this. I don't want to really pin on you the things you claim for yourselves. I mean, you don't worship this lump of wood out here. I mean, this wood's under your control. I mean, you could see how an opening like that, that would enable you to do a little bit of kidding, if you will, a little bit of pushing, a little bit of mockery. Now, I must say, in the case of Elijah, Elijah was in a life and death situation. And God called upon him, I think, to make a confrontation that would be dramatic and stinging.

Don't forget, at the end of that.

Story, the priests of BAAL were hacked and pie. God was bringing vengeance upon them. So, you know, unless we think, you know, that we're leading to a place where we're going to hack the unbeliever in pieces. I wouldn't try to draw complete parallels with Elijah in terms of the kind of mockery like where's your God? I mean, Elijah is really low down. He says in very base Hebrew terminology, has your God gone to the bathroom? Really? Is he out peeing against the wall? Is that what your God's doing? I mean, the priests of BAAL were obviously going to be insulted by that kind of talk. I do believe there's a principle that the unbelievers system is so foolish that we need to, for his benefit, point that out. Maybe that's the cutting edge, maybe that's the way you can tell the difference. Are we doing this for his benefit or for ours?

And I'll be the first to confess.

Sometimes when I'm sarcastic with unbelievers or sometimes with believers, sometimes when we're criticizing and showing the foolishness of the other person's position, we're getting a lot of strokes out of that ourselves. And that I think is base.

I think that's wrong.

If we're doing it because we want to really show this person you don't.

Want to believe this nonsense, that's a different matter altogether.

Another place in the stinging, lashing, judgmental attack. And that is if the person you're speaking to has proven to be unapproachable by this line of thinking, yet is leading many astray.

And you're.

Exactly.

Public perspective. I mean, if he's not amenable to God's truth yet, you know, it needs to be demonstrated. You know, I believe the spiritual bankruptcy of his position, but the ludicrous aspect.

Yeah, I think that is prophetic condemnation.

Though, and we're not really qualified.

Well, some of us are. I think I've been ordained to be prophetic and I would hope it'd never be my denomination or my congregation. But I believe faithful pastors do need to call down the sin of the world prophetically. And if the sin is in the church, call it down there. However, there's a difference between prophetic condemnation and apologetics. Apologetics is the defense of the faith. You're dealing with somebody evangelistically and trying to get them to change their mind. What you're talking about is a different social context than a different spiritual function altogether, I think. Anything else?

He seems unselfconscious almost about presuppositionalism, and yet you can see how well it harmonizes with your position. But it's kind of like he's just taking it for granted and wading in. I guess the question is.

How do.

We account for Calvin's position? Was it because Scripture was so universally recognized that he didn't need to provide an apologetic in a modern sense of the term, or did he have a premonition of.

No. Calvin studied the pagan philosophers. He was an expert on Seneca, and he certainly knew of the infidelity, the infidels in Geneva, and European thinkers and so forth. So no, I wouldn't say it's just because he took it for granted, but it is true that he lived in a cultural context where the assumption of divine revelation was much more amenable than it is today. I think Calvin, living prior to the Enlightenment and so forth, had a little bit easier time than we do. With the coming of the Enlightenment and skeptical and critical thinking Christians have taken it upon themselves that they've got to do what the unbeliever's doing and beat.

Him at his own game.

And so there weren't a lot of people running around in Calvin's day proposing the kind of apologetic that we're opposing tonight. And it's because it wasn't there to oppose or wasn't as clearly there to oppose that I don't think you see Calvin going through the discursive steps of developing a presuppositional approach self consciously. But you are when you read Calvin. It's just a very easy and and ready endorsement of the sorts of things that I think Van Till has been talking about. Okay, next week would you please read chapters nine and ten and we'll try.

To dismiss these two objections.

I'll leave them on the board until.

We get done with them, then we'll erase them. Thanks.