Dr Greg Bahnsen - Mid-Level Apologetics: Antithesis at Mars Hill Pt 2 (Part 6)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

Those two things together. But we can. We know that there are moral absolutes based on the holiness of God and all men have got to live by those. Man is not a law unto himself. So we have an antithesis between this perspective and this perspective. And when we come back, I'm going to try to show you how just that information alone can make you a very effective apologist, whether you're talking to your mailman or to the local professor. But if you're anything like me, you need a five minute break, so we'll stop here. The idea that there is an antithesis between the espoused philosophy, the perspective that the unbeliever gives, and the believer's perspective. But now I'm going to confuse you a little bit and complicate things. And in the end it will simplify things. But for a moment here, let me remind you that the unbeliever's perspective is contrary to the believer's perspective in terms of what the unbeliever says. And yet the Bible also tells us that the unbeliever knows the truth. The unbeliever, in a sense sees things the way we do as well. The unbeliever has the truth, but is suppressing it in unrighteousness. And so what happens is the unbeliever cheats. Philosophically speaking, the unbeliever cheats. The unbeliever says one thing of his or her outlook, but then acts and reasons in a way that's contrary to that. Dr. Van Til has a very helpful analogy. He had a lot of really helpful analogies for explaining these things. So I depend on him a lot. He talked about the unbeliever living on borrowed capital. Living on borrowed capital. Let me explain this. Let's say that I have a great idea for a candy shop. The only problem is I don't have the money to rent the space and get the equipment and get the supplies and do the advertisements and so forth to get the shop up and running. So I go to you, let's say, and I ask if I could borrow some money to start up this business. But the idea that we'll share the profits later, you give me the capital, I have the idea and the hard work and so forth. Now I go and I start my shop with your money. I'm living on borrowed capital, aren't I? But whenever anybody comes in says, boy, this candy is the Best candy in the world. I just love the shop and so forth. I take all the credit for that. I say, oh, yeah, I did this. And when the money comes in, instead of my giving a portion of the proceeds to you to pay you back for your investment, I said, this is all mine. This is my shop. These are my ideas. It's my hard work. Now, you would be pretty indignant and justly so. If I didn't share the glory or the fame, the reputation, if I didn't share the proceeds and so forth that come from that. I'd be living on borrowed capital. But I wouldn't be admitting that. Now, Dr. Van Till says, that's the unbeliever. The unbeliever often is very successful in this world. The unbeliever may be a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon or a lawyer may write symphonies, maybe a football player. On and on and on we can go. The unbeliever may be very successful in this world, but the unbeliever is only able to have the success because he or she sees the world as the Bible presents it. But you know what the unbeliever does? He or she turns around and says, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I did this all on my own. The unbeliever lives on borrowed capital. As Paul says, neither gave, they thanks, okay? They suppress the truth and unrighteousness. They do not acknowledge God and his prerogatives and what he has given to make their lives successful. And they don't give thanks to God. And so it's kind of complicated when you're talking to the unbeliever. The unbeliever says, this gives his or her philosophy of life. And yet the unbeliever knows in his heart of hearts this. And so now what do we want to do as apologists? We want to take the mask off, don't we? We want to talk to the unbeliever in such a way that we unmask that dependence upon the Christian worldview. In a sense, we're not trying to bring. Now, listen carefully, because I don't want this to be taken in a way that's heretical or contrary to our theology. In a sense, we're not bringing the unbeliever to faith. We're trying to show that the unbeliever has had that faith all along. Now, in that sense, God gives faith to take the mask off and to confess. I know this in my heart of hearts. And I'm a sinner and I need you okay, so that's why in a sense faith does come. But the Bible also says the unbeliever already believes these things about God and about their own guilt. And so as an apologist, what I want to do is, is to show that the unbeliever knows this to be true because he or she is using my worldview all along. And one of the ways in which I do that now to get back to method, is I expose the foolishness of the unbelievers philosophy and explain. Nevertheless, you know many things and you've been very successful in this world. You've mastered how to bake a cake and to balance your checkbook and so forth. But you wouldn't be able to do that if the perspective that I'm giving you were not true. So there's two things we are doing here. We are showing that if the unbeliever were consistent with his philosophy, he couldn't know anything. But in fact he knows many things because he's been living on borrowed capital. And it's time now to give God the glory. It's time now to admit the pretense and to confess that you know these things to be true. Two things you want to do as an apologist, then. You want to show the unbeliever that his worldview doesn't make sense. And yet you, as an unbeliever, you know many things because you've been living on borrowed capital all along. You've been knowing in your heart of hearts that the biblical perspective is true. In your Bibles you will find this twofold approach to defending the faith in Proverbs. Let's take a look at the book of Proverbs for a minute. And you're going to read about this for our January lesson in the syllabus, chapters 14 and 15. I know you haven't read that yet. I'm giving you something of advance insight to this. The Book of Proverbs tells us how to respond to a fool and offers it in a way that seems contradictory. Proverbs 26:4 seems to contradict Proverbs 26:5. We're told, first of all, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Don't answer him according to his folly. And then the next verse says, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. So you really have two things going on here. You can't do them at the same time because they are contradictory. But you have two different steps. When the fool presents his outlook. Now, is the unbeliever a fool? You probably have heard me say this before. I have to remind you that doesn't mean we go about name calling. You know, you're not supposed to go to the unbeliever and say, well, you fool. You know, Mr. T approach to apologetics. No, but you have to recognize that he's a fool. Well, how does the Bible present a fool to us? What's the biblical understanding of a person being a fool? Go ahead. Doesn't have to do with ethics. Has to do with how you use your information or knowledge. Yeah. Are fools ignorant people? He says it as far as no doubt. Okay, they're not always ignorant, but they don't use say that they think that they're autonomous. They say in their hearts there is no God. The fool does all sorts of things. The fool is lazy. The Bible tells us the fool doesn't know how to make good use of what he knows about the world. The fool delights in discovering his own thoughts. Proverbs tells us, you probably know people like, they just love to hear themselves talk. You know, fools do not honor God. Paul tells us that by suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. Romans 1, God takes the wise and makes them foolish. So we know that throughout the Bible we have the unbeliever presented in terms of being a fool. Let's look at just one of those passages. Second Timothy, chapter 2. Paul gives instructions to God's servants. Actually, verse 23 we have to start with. He says, but foolish and ignorant questions refuse, knowing that they engender strife. And the Lord's servant must not strive, but be gentle toward all apt to teach, forbearing in gentleness, correcting them that oppose themselves. If peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth. He says, ignore foolish questions. And then he goes on to tell you how to answer them. How can that be? How can you ignore a foolish question, but then answer it? Well, what he means is by ignoring the foolish question is you don't buy into the foolishness of the question. The Lord's servant is not going to be quarrelsome. It's not going to strive, but be gentle and be apt to teach in gentleness, correcting them or instructing them. And notice how the fool or the person who gives a foolish question is described. Those who oppose themselves. All of your translations have that middle force of the Greek opposing themselves. Some translations will have those who oppose in the sense of oppose the faith, those who stand contrary to the faith But I think there's a nuance there in the Greek that is very helpful. They are actually opposing themselves. They are working contrary to their own best interest, correcting them who oppose themselves if peradventure God may give them repentance. Notice. Repentance is unto a knowledge, a genuine knowledge of the truth. Repentance is necessary to know the truth. They don't first come to know the truth and then say, oh, I guess I'd better repent that. Interesting. The Bible says that it's repentance that opens the door then to them really understanding and knowing as they should. Well, back to Proverbs. The fool is the person who thinks autonomously. The person who is a law unto himself, who suppresses the truth and unrighteousness, says, in his heart there is no God. The beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord. But fools despise wisdom and instruction. They will not start their thinking with God. So how do you answer a fool? The Bible says, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. This is step one. Although it's the second verse here in Proverbs, I don't think the order is important here. I'm going to talk about this one first. Answer the fool according to his folly. That is to say, for argument's sake, you tell the fool. Okay, let's look at things in terms of your worldview according to your folly, as the Bible would put it. Answer the fool with his own philosophy. Take his foolishness and use it in answering him. Why? Lest he be wise in his own conceit. You've got to show the fool what his philosophy engenders. You've got to show the fool what happens if you think this way, so that he won't be conceited, so he won't think he has something going for him, so he won't think that he's wise. You're going to expose the foolishness of his foolish philosophy. So to do this, you stand on the unbeliever's position. You assume his perspective for argument's sake and do an internal critique of it. You want to show him from inside his own worldview how foolish this is. You don't want to leave him any place to stand lest he be wise in his own conceits. You all want examples. In the end, you're going to learn a lot more from the examples, probably than the principles of apologetics. But you need to understand what is being illustrated. You're talking to somebody who says, we don't know anything except what we see and observe what we experience. You say, okay, well, let's think about that for a minute. Let me just assume for argument's sake that that's the case. And let's ask ourselves, what do we know? Then you say, we don't know anything except on the basis of experience or observation. Well, have we ever experienced or have we ever observed out there in the world this truth that we only know things based on observation? Well, no. I mean, that's not one of the things you experience, you say, but your philosophy says you only know things that you experience. What have you said, you fool? What you're saying is, given your philosophy, you couldn't know anything because you can't even know the principle by which you say you know things. Now, in one sense, this is a little unfortunate. I should give examples. They're not as easy. See, after a number of years of doing this and debating, you know, how to kind of reverse on your opponent very quickly, I don't expect you to have immediately seen that you can move in for the kill on that, but eventually you will, you see. So let's take a more roundabout illustration. You have somebody who says, well, I think everybody lives for pleasure. They can do anything they want. Okay, well, let's think about that. Let's say everyone has the right to live for pleasure, do anything they want. Then I guess it's okay for, say, the United States to pollute the atmosphere or get involved in warfare, you know, around the world, or to practice racism or any of these sorts of things. These modern hedonists are really contradictory because they'll say, on the one hand, everybody makes up the rules for himself, and then they get morally indignant when people make up the rules and do things they don't like. Okay, so what you're doing is you're answering the fool according to his folly. I probably have told you this before. Pardon me for the repetition, but I think it's really clear. Illustration. When I was in college, and I'd be witnessing to people, you know, talk about their sexual immorality, and they'll tell you, hey, it's different strokes for different folks. You know, anybody can do what they want. If I want to live with my girlfriend, I have the right to live with my girlfriend, be a homosexual, be a homosexual, whatever. And the very same people in the very same conversation will tell me how horrible it is that we were involved in the war in Vietnam. I said, now wait a minute. Let me think about this for a minute. If everyone has the Right to do whatever makes them happy. Then apparently the politicians in this country, if they're happy by beating up on people in Vietnam, have the right to do that, don't they? Who are you to tell them they can't get pleasure out of that? Well, they're only doing it to help these capitalist pigs. Right? Okay, but capitalist pigs have a right to choose to be pigs, don't they? And if that means killing people in Vietnam, so be it. Given your philosophy, do you see what I'm doing to the fool is I'm answering him according to his own foolishness. I've never had a student who actually did this, but I love the illustration. Or if you're in a university class, you know, these professors who think they know so much, tell us, you know, everything's relative. There are no moral absolutes. And my recommendation is that you just cheat like mad on your final exam. Because you see, when the professor catches you, you can say is, hey, everyone chooses for himself. And I chose that. This person knew more about it than I did. And so I have the right to cheat. No, in my class you got to live by my rules. Now wait a minute, you taught us I don't have to live by other people's rules. I make them up for myself. Fool. Now you don't go around calling names. But you see, that is what you're doing is you're exposing the absurdity of the unbelievers worldview. And trust me, they are all absurd. As Paul says, Where's the debater of this age? Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? And you do not have, I mean, it helps to study philosophy because you get a little more ammunition. I'm not going to deny that. But you don't have to study philosophy. You understand some of the basic questions that all people have got to answer about the nature of reality, the nature of how we know what we know and how we live our lives. And you are going to be able to tie the unbeliever in knots. Again, we don't do that because we want to show that we're smarter. We want to name call, as I've been tongue in cheek here, you know, calling people foolish. We do this because we want the fool not to think he has anywhere to stand. I saw a hand. No. Okay. The second step, actually the first one mentioned here in Proverbs 26, is answer not a fool according to his folly, that is. Now you've got to give an answer that doesn't assume the foolishness of the Unbeliever's outlook. Why not? Lest you be like unto him? I mean, if you buy into his presuppositions, you buy into his perspective or worldview, you're going to end up in that same sinking boat. And so the other step is I have now I've stood on the unbelievers position for argument's sake, right? And I've said let's think this through, given your philosophy. Now I ask him, for argument's sake, return the favor. Let's think this through from a Christian perspective. From a Christian perspective I can make sense of moral absolutes. From a Christian perspective, I can make sense of man knowing things and yet not knowing everything. From a Christian perspective I can make sense of the regularity of the world and the possibility of scientific success. And so what are the choices? When you get done talking, if you followed out this procedure, you've not answered him according to his folly, lest you be like unto him, you show that there is a way to make sense out of this world and out of human experience and those things that we all consider valuable, there is a way to make sense out of it. And given his philosophy, nothing makes sense. It's foolishness, it's absurdity. And so what you want to leave him with ultimately is the choice between absurdity and rationality. Of course, rationality is just another way of saying what the way God sees things. You can give him a choice between the Christian worldview that saves reason. Diagram's not up there. Faith, the foundation for reason. Or he can choose to not have anything make sense ultimately. Now if you do that, the next step is going to be this, the unbeliever. I've seen this happen many times in my own experience. He finally sees what the choices are, at least as you presented it. He says, well those can't be the choices because what I don't agree with the Christian worldview and yet I'm able to make sense of things. I can balance my checkbook, I can discipline, I can love my wife, I do a pretty good job at work and so forth. Whatever it may be, the unbeliever will say it can't be those two choices because I don't accept Christianity and yet I'm pretty successful in this world. Well the issue here is how he can make sense of his success given the absurdity of his philosophy. Dr. Van Til put it this way. We don't challenge that unbelievers count. What we say is they cannot account for their counting. Unbelievers can do math, but Given their view of the universe, it wouldn't make any sense to do math. And so when the unbeliever says, well, I'm getting by just fine in this world without your worldview, that's of course when you move in for the evangelistic kill, in a sense, right? That's where you say, yes. And in every way that you are successful in this world, you give testimony that you know the truth in your heart of hearts. Your ability to balance your checkbook is a testimony that you know God in your heart of hearts. And so you know there is a principle of order and you can count on the laws of mathematics and so forth. They are universal and abstract and absolute. You treat them that way, and yet your philosophy says you don't treat them that way. And so what we are telling him is every bit of his success in the world is a testimony to his suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. You don't acknowledge it, and yet you know the truth. And that's why God's calling you to repent. Go ahead.

Could you please repeat that phrase?

You said you not challenged count. But how did you say that? We don't say that unbelievers do not count. We say they cannot account for their counting. Is that the one you wanted to repeat it? Okay, we're challenging them to give an account of their success in this world. Balancing the checkbook is a good one. Everyone has to do that or something like it. He says, I can balance my checkbook. And you say, yeah, but given your philosophy, you couldn't. So what does that tell you about yourself? Tells you that you're living on borrowed capital, that you know in your heart of hearts this perspective that makes sense out of mathematics, or if you're talking about ethics, make sense of absolutes, or if you're talking about science, make sense of the uniformity of nature, whatever you know in your heart of hearts, and that's why you live this way, and yet you say this other. This comes down to a version of actions speak louder than words. You say one thing, you do another. You say there are no universal, absolute, abstract principles. That is to say, there can be no mathematical order. And yet you go ahead and you balance your checkbook, you say there are no moral absolutes, and then you get unhappy when someone steals your car. You cannot live with your philosophy. And every bit of your success in this world is proof that you don't live by your own philosophy, that you know in your heart of hearts the gospel is true. You've probably thought about this. Not so much in a systematic or scholarly or systematic way, but you've thought about this. When you notice that unbelievers will tell you there is no God and yet they fear death. That's just another illustration of the unbeliever not being able to live according to his profession. Or if they don't fear death, they honor the dead. You thought about that. There are so many absurdities in the unbeliever's life. An unbeliever says that we are just, you know, the furthest reach of evolution. We're on the cutting edge of the evolutionary arrow. We're nothing more but slime that's evolved from the primordial slime. We're just advanced animals. Why do unbelievers have funerals? Well, you know, you get a lot of Mickey Mouse answers to that when unbelievers talk to you. But in the end, what they say at funerals about their loved ones and their friends and so forth belies all of their belief that we're nothing more than animals that are snuffed out at death. You know, they secularize the Christian hope. There's no doubt about it. I'm not trying to say you can go to an unbeliever's. You know, they put on a funeral and what you hear, there's just going to be good Christian theology. It's a secularized, naturalized, perverted form of it. But they have something about human dignity, about something goes on right. Even if it's this week. The memory of so and so will always be an inspiration to us and so forth. We don't do that with dogs and horses and aardvarks. We bury people and we honor the dead. Why? Why do unbelievers fear to die? Fear of the unknown, you'll be told. Well, but I mean, if there is no God, even the unknown is nothing to be afraid of. Another version of the contradiction that you will find inside the unbeliever's philosophy, whenever you talk to them is the unbeliever will ultimately say, nobody can know anything for sure. You push them real hard and they'll say, this is the best we've been able. But, you know, there isn't. You have to go back a number of years to find philosophers who were real confident in the 20th century. Philosophers are not confident. You know, in fact, they've narrowed what they specialize in and so forth. It's really kind of a pathetic thing, late 20th century philosophy. They don't answer the big questions. They don't have worldviews that they defend and so forth. But even outside of philosophy departments you'll find people who, when you push them will say, well, no one really knows. And this is an ultimately mysterious universe, who can know for sure about anything? So on the one hand the unbeliever acts very tentative, very, if you will, humble. It's kind of a perverted humility. But humble about what we can know, no one can be sure. But if you give your perspective to the unbeliever, you'll notice the unbeliever is absolutely confident that you're wrong. Oh, it can't be that. See, the unbeliever won't say, well, no one knows for sure. So I mean, maybe Jesus is God, maybe he did rise from the dead. Maybe I better get serious about that. That's one of the possibilities. No, the unbeliever will say that isn't true, that's superstitious, that's wrong, that's old fashioned, I don't buy that, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when you push them about what they can know and what the foundation for their, you know, their conclusions are, they'll say, well, nobody can really know for sure. And so when it again, no one comes out and says it to you just like this. But what you're working toward is getting the unbeliever to say that, to see that what he or she is saying is no one knows for sure, but I'm sure you're wrong. That's their bias, that's their commitment made in advance. No one knows for sure, but I know that you're wrong. So to the degree that the unbeliever will use science against Christianity, the unbeliever will say the scientific outlook shows there can't be miracles. The Bible is superstitious, this, that and the other. And they'll seem like they really know something. Then you push them on the foundations of science and they say, well, no one really knows why the future will be like the past, or why nature is uniform or why we can trust our senses. We just kind of take that for granted. It's very arbitrary. And so on the one hand we don't know it's arbitrary, but on the other hand we know enough that you're wrong. Well, when they say that they don't.

Know, they are then contradicting themselves there because they're saying that they know that.

They don't know, right? Although there are some, they're not as clever as they think, but there are some clever epistemologists who are secularists today who are now saying no one knows anything for sure. And we don't even know that we don't know anything for sure. But see, just the asserting of those things is living contrary to what they are actually asserting. I liken that to my saying to you. I'm not going to tell you that I don't like your shirt. But didn't you tell me that you didn't like my shirt in telling me that you weren't going to tell me? It's one of those things where just the utterance of it is a contradiction. But you are right. When someone says we can't know anything for sure, what you want to say is do you know that for sure? You sound like you know for sure that we don't know anything for sure. In which case you're wrong. Your assurance is misplaced. Okay, Mike, does that have to go both ways? As you push on the rationalist side, up top, irrationalist and as you push there. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Dr. Van Til had a wonderful expression. He said the rationalism and the irrationalism of the unbeliever are like two wash women to take in each other's wash. You know, the one receives laundry to do and she gives it to this one. But you see, when this one receives laundry, she gives it to this one. So it's just whenever you push on the rationality part and show that there's problems there, the unbeliever will then start in. It's irrational in the sense that we don't know for sure. It's the humility side of the pole. And then when you push on the humility side, you know that you ought to be willing to hear the Christian message because, you know, you don't know everything. Then they get real rationalistic. And so that's right. They're always trying to balance these two out. Trying to balance the randomness and the predictability of the universe. Trying to balance the observational and yet the universal sides of knowledge. Trying to balance the autonomous and yet the absolute aspects of ethics. And they can't do it. The only way in which those things can be brought together is if you have a personal creator who knows all things and then he can reveal to us how we live and how we know and what the world is like. Yes. Is the balance himself. Well, you could say that in a sense he balances himself. It might be a little more sophisticated to put it this way, that in God's knowledge there's nothing to balance. It looks like a balancing act to us because we're finite and so we have trouble bringing these things together. But God doesn't have. It's not like God doesn't have trouble bringing them together. There's no contradiction or apparent contradiction in his thinking where they need to be resolved. Okay, so our method of defending the faith. Let's look in our last few minutes here at chapter 12 for a summary of what you did read for tonight's lesson. Basically, the presuppositional approach to apologetics asserts the lordship of Christ in the theory of knowledge, what I call Christ epistemic lordship, and then argues that the way in which we reason must presuppose God's revelation or else reasoning becomes impossible. Let's go over these summary principles real quickly. Under Christ, epistemic lordship, God's knowledge is original, that is, he is the Creator of all things. It is comprehensive, universal, and it's creative. There are no higher principles or standards of truth to which he looks and attempts to bring his thoughts into conformity. So we don't allow the unbeliever to bring standards that even God has to answer to. We say if there are any standards, they come from God. They don't test God himself. There's no mystery surrounding God's understanding. He is infinite. And because, and we were just reflecting on this a minute ago. God's mind is what gives both diversity and order to all things, guaranteeing the reality of particulars. Huey, Dewey and Louis, the multiplicity of things, and yet assuring us that they are intelligible, that there's a unity duckness to them. God's mind is the duckness as well as the particularity of these things. You remember Huey, Dewey and Louis? Okay, I just wondered why you're all. All knowledge and wisdom have been deposited in Christ. According to the Bible, Christ is the source of truth, the standard of truth, and of course the embodiment of truth. And thus God's Word must have supreme authority in our defending the faith. It must be absolute and unquestionable, not just in our morality, but also in our thinking, the way that we reason. This also means God's Word must be the final standard of truth for man. If it's the final standard of truth, it ultimately cannot be challenged by some more ultimate standard. Everyone has an ultimate standard of truth. It's God's mind revealed in the Scriptures. The unbeliever has some ultimate standard which you're going to do. What you're going to show the internal contradictions, show that they don't make sense. We aren't going to be led, like so many evangelical or evidentialist apologetics are, to say, yes, well, we must show that God answers to the laws of logic and to empirical evidence and so forth. Consequently, the teaching of Christ in Scripture has self attesting authority. We believe the Bible the gives its own evidence of its truthfulness. It attests to itself. It does not look to some outside authority or man for its verification. Christ clearly speaks with the authority of God, is the repository of knowledge and is subject to no authority or standard more basic than Himself. He declares he's the way, the truth and the life. He alone is adequate to witness to Himself and to His Word. I say that because some apologists will say, well, we know the Bible is true because it matches up to what we would expect of God. D.J. carnell was famous for doing that. This is what a rational man would expect to which the answer is, how does a rational man know what to expect from God? See, only God can tell us what the standards for deity are. But if God has got to tell us, then obviously God's got to testify to his own telling us. Did I do that too fast? Do you understand what I'm saying? I have a book here, Bible, okay? And someone says, I know that that's the word of God. So now you're looking at this pointing device and how do you know that's the word of God? Well, because God tells me these are the standards that you use in finding his word. You say, okay, where'd God tell you? Well, if he didn't tell you in this book that you're pointing at, then he told you somewhere else. But then you're going to get the same problem over here, aren't you? How do you know this is God speaking? Because God told me to expect him to say that kind of thing about how to. When all said and done, only God can testify to himself. So when the unbeliever wants evidence, in a sense, the unbeliever has got to understand in the nature of the case, only God can present the evidence of His Word. It's kind of funny when you say, I believe the Bible to be the word of God because it claims to be the word of God and it attests to itself and nothing makes sense apart from it. The unbeliever says, oh no, wait a minute, the Bible claims to be the word of God. You can't believe it just because it claims to be the word of God. And you want to say, well, you see, this is an interesting dilemma if it claims to be the word of God, you say that's reasoning in a circle. And if it doesn't claim to be the word of God, you say I have no right to take it to be the word of God because it didn't claim to be so. And so you see the unbeliever, he wants to, you know, say you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. In the nature of the case, God must identify his Word. And then how do you know that God identifies himself in this Word? And that's legitimate here. That's not just arbitrary. Because if you do not assume what is presented in this book, the rest of life makes no sense. The choice is between an absurd worldview are one that makes sense based on the self attesting authority of God in Scripture. What about man's exercise of reason? We believe there is absolute truth. We believe that knowledge is accessible to man. While he does not know things exhaustively, doesn't know everything, he does have adequate knowledge. He does know some things based on God's own revelation. For man to know things, he must be be receptively reconstructive. That is, he receives God's revelation and he thinks God's thoughts after him. God is original and creative. I am receptive and reconstructive. What does this mean? The starting point of knowledge is God. As the proverb says, the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord. If we're going to know anything, if we're going to give an account of anything that is known, we're going to. We have to begin with respect for God. Particularly, we submit to the truth of God's revealed Word. Man must be grateful to God for whatever he possesses, including his understanding and knowledge, because everything comes from God. And for that reason, belief or faith precedes understanding. Faith is foundational to reasoning. Revelation undergirds reason. Likewise, man does not have the prerogative to call God's word into question based on his own reasoning. The only way in which we could test anything is if we could make sense of our reasoning. And we can only make sense of our reasoning if we presuppose the Christian worldview. And thus philosophy which suppresses rather than presupposes the truth of God is evidence of a darkness, the darkness of a sinful mind. It is epistemal rebellion as well as moral rebellion because it is epistemology, theory of knowledge because it is epistemological rebellion. It is man's arguing with God, rebelling against God in the way that he thinks that kind of thinking is made foolish by God. It leads to futile conclusions. It makes the use of reason impossible. Thinking which submits to the elementary principles of worldly philosophy and the traditions of men will thus delude men, deceive them with crafty speech. It misleads them into spiritual destruction. This is what's happening in our universities all over the land. Neutrality in scholarship, apologetics or schooling is impossible. It's also immoral. No man can serve two masters. You've got to choose to ground your intellectual efforts in Christ or your own self sufficient reason. There is no middle ground. Neutrality would erase the distinctiveness of the Christian's position. It would muffle the antithesis that we've seen in the Bible between godly and ungodly thinking. And so a Christian who strives to be neutral not only denies the lordship of Christ in the thinking process knowledge, he loses a solid ground for reasoning and unwittingly endorses the assumptions of the unbeliever which will prove hostile to his faith. Here you have answering the fool according to his folly, but not realizing that you're doing that and becoming like him. So let's remember that the believer is a new man in Christ. According to New Testament teaching, we are renewed in our thinking. When we were converted, we had a change of mind. We repented from our attempted autonomy. We now walk by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. We do not live self sufficiently, either intellectually or morally. It is our job to make every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. He is the Lord of our thinking. And so we presuppose the truth of his word and we seek to apply it. Then, even in apologetics, we are not questioning the truth of God's word by arguing with the unbeliever. We are applying the truth of God's word. God calls us to love him with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind, seeking to glorify him in everything, which means we have to glorify him in the way that we think and reason as well. Now, how can we expect men to be converted if we take this bold an approach in the first place? We know that men come to this presuppositional approach. They come to presuppose the truth only by God's grace. Since we know God has been gracious enough to change our hearts, we trust he can do that with others. He can bless that kind of witness. We know that all men are without excuse for their rebellion, that they really do know the living and true God. By means of this revelation that he's given. And so there is a point of contact. They are suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, and they cannot rid themselves of their knowledge of God. They are living on borrowed capital. And this is what we seek to reveal to them, that they have really been relying on our worldview even while they argued against it. Because God created everything for Himself and sovereignly directs everything, since he owns everything. There is no neutral ground. There is no neutral ground, but there is plenty of common ground. The common ground of God's creation and the fact that we're made in his image. And as we've already said, that means we have a point of contact with the unbeliever at all times. Okay, what questions do you have on tonight's lesson before we stop? And I should tell you, next time we come together, we're going to be spending a lot of time with illustrative material because. Well, let me put it to you this way. If I were teaching you how to, how to hit a baseball, if I were a batting coach, I might spend a lot of time telling you things about how you twist your wrist when you're hitting or how you lift your leg too soon, or how you drop, you know, your one elbow before you move forward and hitting and so forth. I might explain all those things. I might even take you to a blackboard and show you the dynamics of that and why that hurts your hitting and so, so forth. However, I would not expect when you go to the plate that you're thinking through that diagram about the elbow dropping and so forth. However, by explaining to you why you don't want to do that and so forth, it helps you to get out there and do it. And eventually what happens is when you hit better following these procedures, then you pick it up as kind of a skill, like riding a bike. How many people do you know who are able to ride a bike because of a lecture you've given? However, a person might understand better about riding a bike and become more skilled by studying that sort of thing. Now, you need to understand we're in the phase of this batting instruction or the lecture about riding a bike. How are you going to become good at apologetics by taking these principles and putting them into practice? And what happens is it will become almost second nature to you. You will learn, you see the kinds of moves to make in the argument once you've gotten out there and have done it, but you will not be able to do it when you're talking to somebody saying, okay, what did Dr. Bronson say? Conversation Just doesn't work that way. Okay. So in our next lesson, I'm going to be putting a lot more stress on hitting the ball rather than just on the theory of hitting the ball. We're going to be doing more illustrative work. And you may have some questions at that point that you might want to hold off if you're looking for illustrations right now. But on tonight's lesson, what can I answer those three things you're talking about up on the board? The first one, that leads to the astrological question. Question of the nature of reality. Right. And then the second one would be the epistemological sense. That's right. Theory of knowledge. Very good. You've made my day. I'll smile all the way home because of this. It's good you all understand what he was asking. He was just giving the philosophical vocabulary for what is up here, which I've been trying to minimize because I don't want to scare you off now that it was so impressive. Yes. Okay. Although ontology was used just in terms, if you want to talk to people, study philosophy. It's more commonly called metaphysics. Ontology is kind of an older term and actually is a subdivision of metaphysics in the way some people use it. Anyway, metaphysics, the nature of reality. The next question is epistemology, the nature of knowledge, theory of knowledge. And then the third question is the ethical question, how we should live our lives. Everybody's got a metaphysic epistemology and an ethic, but they won't know it under those terms necessarily. Everybody has a view of reality, has a view of how they know what they know and how they should live their lives. And obviously it's not important that we teach them the vocabulary, but it is important that we show them they've got those views and then deal with them. Okay, here, then, here.

I already, very lamely, I might say I've already tried to do this at.

Work with some guys that I praise the Lord, good day with, and good.

I have found that most people that you talk to is even, you know, even asking them just questions about, you know, nature or, you know, the nature of them. They've never.

Most people don't even ask themselves these questions ever.

So they don't have answers.

No, they do have answers. But what we want to say is these answers are implicit. They are not self conscious. They are not well thought out. Okay, you see, they have. I'll show you that they have answers. Okay, let's say something strange happens at work. Some bizarre incident takes place and you ask them to say, well, what happened? And they'll say, well, I just know this thing was here. I mean, I touched it and so forth. Now that shows you in living, you know, proof that they have an observational approach to knowledge, at least to a certain degree. They think they know things because they experience them. You know, however, when, when they do that, they're not aware that they're answering a philosophical question. And so it will sometimes be the case that apologetics, how can I put this? Apologetics should not be thought of as the guy who, you know, makes a quick hit and then retreats from this position. Often apologetics is going to be a long term process of getting a person to start thinking about the questions clearly. And you may not. I mean, the evidential approach would like to suggest that you can push people on the evidence and units like ABC and then you're there. The presuppositional approach recognizes that many times you have to get people to think through things more clearly. We don't want them to just take their naive philosophical approach and apply it to Christianity. And we say, see, we've given you evidence for the resurrection. You should believe we want to do better than that. We want to push them to show that they've got to repent, they've got to see the world in a different way, see themselves in a different way, see God in a different way. So I'm glad you brought that up and I hope everyone hears that. If you haven't been practicing this approach, I'm sure you'll find the same thing to be true when you do start. In many times you got to get people to ask the right questions and say, well, what do you think? And why do you assume that the future will be like the past and so forth? And they're not going to say, oh, well, yeah, I studied that in Philosophy 203, and my answer is the following. You may have to give them a week or two and then come back and say, did you ever think about that? I mean, why do we assume that everything is uniform? We say this is a chance universe and yet we act like it's not a chance universe. And I'm going to get into next time's lecture if I can see much further. But in a sense, what we're going to say to the unbeliever is you can't make sense of the things that you know, but I'll give you a worldview that does. You know these things to be true, but you can't account for them. Christianity Can. Okay, Larry. Yeah.

You stressed in here that because God is who he is, we have no right to call his word into question. Right now that is talking more about attitude, right? And not so much the act of questioning itself. I mean, because it seems to me if you push that to the extreme, then you've really gotten yourself into the corner because then the Mormon will come up to you and say, ultimately you don't really have a right to question the Book of Mormon because if you truly submissive to God, he'll show you that this is the way. And here you have, you know, two conflicting claims, both saying that you were to submit to God's authority and, you know, you're not to question it. So there's a sense then that is there not where, you know, there is a humble questioning, humble seeking or a humble proving of God.

There's a sense in which God testifies to his own truth and glory by reducing those who rebel against him to foolishness. And when we do that process, we are not saying, God, you're in the dock and we're going to be your defense attorney, God, and we're going to show that you're innocent and so forth. What we are doing rather is we're saying, God, you're the commander and you've sent us out into the world to do this work and we're going to go out and do it in submission to your word to glorify you. Now, the process of reducing the unbeliever to absurdity then is. Is an application of the faith rather than an attempt to say God, we're not sure of his authority until after we've completed this process. In the case of the Mormon, we can talk more about this later. But it's the Mormon who is challenging God's veracity by bringing a new revelation that conflicts with previous revelation. So again, what you're going to do is you're going to say, because I assume the truthfulness of God's Word, I cannot allow the Book of Mormon to be countenanced as the Word of God. And my putting it to the test is not an insult to God because the very fact that it contradicts the Bible shows that it cannot be the word of God. There are some subtleties to arguing with what we call Christian heretics, those who are Muslims and Jews as well, that we'll have to get into. But we're not ready to do that just yet in the class. Well, I've taken you overtime tonight, so I give my apology for that. And next time we get together, we'll be a little more prompt. Have a Merry Christmas.

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our website, bonseninstitute.com where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.