Dr Greg Bahnsen - Mid-Level Apologetics: Evidentialism Part 1 (Part 13)

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.

All right, it's good to see you all tonight. Let's get underway with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for saving us tonight through your mercy and grace. We thank you that your Holy Spirit has changed our wayward hearts, that you have given us faith as a gift, that you have drawn us to yourself irresistibly, mercifully and powerfully. We thank you that you have humbled our pride, our intellectual pride, and you have led us to bow before you, not simply to bow the knee, but to bow the heart as well, to acknowledge that we need to be saved in all of our human life and activity. We need to be saved not simply spiritually and for heaven above, but we need to be saved in all of our behavior and activity and all of our thinking as well. And we thank you for such salvation. We do not deserve it. We know that it is only by your grace that it comes to us. And we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you were willing to die for us, that you laid down your life for those who are unworthy of your interest and concern, certainly unworthy of your very life, but you sacrificed it for us, that we might stand right before God. And we thank you, Holy Spirit, for new life. We thank you for new direction and hope that we have because of the mercy and grace you have given to us. We do pray that you would be with us tonight to remember the graciousness of our salvation, to be diligent in the use of our minds, that we would honor you, that we would follow the truth, and that we would witness in such a way that the nature of our salvation and its gracious character would be evident, as well as the power of your grace would be displayed. For we pray in Jesus name. Amen. We come in our course tonight to a critique of the traditional method of apologetics. We've in the last few months been examining the biblical foundations of apologetics and the nature of the presuppositional challenge that is found in apologetics. But as you know from our very first course lesson together there are two basic schools of apologetics found in the evangelical community. The one, presuppositionalism is what I have been advocating and trying to expound while we've been together. But the other deserves a class of its own, which is what I'm giving it tonight, that school of thought known as evidentialism, or, if you will, the traditional approach to apologetics, sometimes called the old Princeton method of defending the faith. The old Princeton method of apologetics. And what does that traditional method or old Princeton method amount to? Two things, primarily natural theology plus historical evidences. Now, what we mean by natural theology is the attempt to prove the existence of some kind of God through the philosophical considerations, the attempt to prove the existence of God. So I'll put that underneath here.

Of God or of a God.

It turns out to be proof of the existence of a God, not necessarily the living and true God. And that will be one of the things that we will criticize it for. They would say that they're proving a general conception that is consistent with the Christian God. But the proof does not itself go as far as showing that it's the Christian God in particular that is proven. So they would have this, if you will, generic God that is proven. And then what they want to do in historical evidences is now narrow this generic God that has been proven down to specifically the Christian God by showing that Jesus is the Son of God. And how are they going to show that Jesus is the Son of God? The primary way. The most popular argument that you find in our generation is the historical argument for the resurrection of Christ. So to summarize, the traditional method or the old Princeton method, is a two step method. First, the proof of theism in general, natural theology or proofs of God's existence. And then we add to that the more specifying step that we narrow theism in general to Christian theism by means of historical evidences and in particular the evidence for Christ's resurrection. So if we can prove that there is a God, and we can prove that Jesus rose from the dead, then we have laid the foundation for the intellectual defense of Christianity as a religion. We move from theism to Christianity now in the traditional approach, in both the steps, the proof of theism as well as the proof of Christianity. That is the natural theological step as well as the historical evidential step. In both the steps, certain things are assumed about the unbeliever and about the nature of knowledge. And what I've been trying to teach you in our course is to examine these kinds of assumptions. Are they reliable? Are they faithful to God's word? They seem natural enough, they seem popular enough. That doesn't make them good enough for Christian apologetics. And I realize that I'm swimming against the tide here when I tonight argued this way, but I just think all honesty, philosophical honesty and textual honesty, if I'm going to be true to the text of the Bible, we cannot go along with the assumption about the unbeliever that basically he lacks information, he lacks a good argument. And if he just had the information and a good argument made out of it, then he could see what it is that he's rejecting. Okay, so the first thing I put up here on the board in terms of the assumptions of the traditional method is that the unbeliever lacks information, an argument. The second thing that is assumed about the unbeliever is that he can put aside his prejudices, can put aside his pre commitments, can put aside his hostility even, and can approach the subject in a neutral and rational fashion. Now let me put down over on this side of the board some things that are assumed with respect to knowledge. Or maybe I should have written down knowing the knowing process. I'm not talking about the things which we know, but the process or method by which we know. And the first would be the assumption that the believer and the unbeliever share common concepts, are of a common ground in understanding the nature of knowledge, rationality, evidence and logic. I'm just writing down common conceptions, but to fill it out, they are common conceptions of the nature of knowledge, the nature of evidence, logic and so forth, or causality, which is another one that we have, if you will, these philosophical concepts where everybody agrees, okay, so that the believer and the unbeliever don't have to get into a philosophical argument at the outset. They can lay a certain common ground. They can agree to a certain common ground upon which they will stand as they argue with each other. The second thing which has to be seen in the traditional method is that facts are understood to be brute. And by saying that facts are brute, we mean that they are uninterpreted, that they are like posits out there which everyone has to take account of. You know, you just can't get around it. They are not facts for a theory or interpreted by a theory. They are facts intelligible in and of themselves, so that all theories now can be tested by such brute facts. Now, what I'm hoping is that I have taught you well enough to this point that you now look at the board and you say, we don't even need tonight's class. Because when people proceed to defend the faith in this way, thinking the unbeliever is lacking information and argumentation, that there's some way for the unbeliever to be neutral and rational, that we really share common ground with unbelievers about the nature of knowledge and rationality and evidence. And causality, and that there are just facts out there that everyone has to take account of. So if you just take the facts to them, and that would show them the truth of Christianity, you know how messed up that is. That isn't what the Bible says. You know how messed up that is philosophically, we've had one whole lesson on that. This is simply not accurate. So the first part of this class is, hey, I just have to do some counseling with myself here. What do I do? I know this is inaccurate, but this is so popular. You pick up most books on apologetics and they may not come out and wave a flag saying, I assume neutrality. I assume common conceptions. I assume the unbeliever really wants to find out, and the facts are brute and quite present an argument filled with these brute facts, and the unbeliever will be challenged, doesn't come out and say those things. But you don't have to read very far. And you can see that the author is taking these things for granted. He's not getting to the heart of the matter. Because the problem with the unbeliever, as you know, is that if he were true to his presuppositions, and they do have presuppositions, they are not neutral. He is true to his presuppositions. He couldn't know anything. His problem is not simply that he doesn't know God or profess to know God. His problem is he couldn't know anything on his assumptions, but he's not aware of that. And the reason he's not aware of it is because he does know a lot of things. And this brings us, you remember, I'm just reviewing for you now, this brings us then to this dialectic tension. In theory, the unbeliever couldn't know anything. And yet we do know that he knows things. And he knows that he knows things. I mean, how often this. I've played this out so many times, it's almost like in a dream sequence. You just go over it and over it and over it. You tell the unbeliever, well, you see that on your philosophy, you couldn't know anything. And then they get their backs and say, well, I do know a lot of things. I mean, I can balance my checkbook and drive a car, and I know who's the President of the United States. And on and on and on. I say, yeah, you do know a lot of things. And what that suggests then is that you obviously don't know them because of what you give as your worldview and as Your philosophy, you must know them in light of something else. What did I teach you? The unbeliever is self deceived. He says he doesn't know God, but I'm going to take his ability to balance his checkbook as evidence that he does know God. Then I'm going to take the fact that he doesn't believe in child molestation as evidence that he does believe in God. Then I'm going to take the fact that he in some sense fears death or thinks there's something special about human beings. You know, we have burial services for human beings. We don't for horses, for most people. And so he, he sees something unique about human life. All of this being evidence of his underlying belief in God. And I can push further than that. Those are the easy ones. I can say you're following scientific method. Your attempt to be consistent and logical. Your belief that there is any kind of rationality, not just Christian, pardon me, any kind of ethical absolutes, morality, not just Christian morality, we can push even harder. So I hope that, you know, I see your faces, I feel good about this. I think you know what I'm talking about. Presuppositionalist comes with a flamethrower, you know. And as Manta would say, you know, we drive the unbeliever out of the caves. You know, we say there's no place to hide. You can't run anywhere. The evidence is abundant. Anything you want to talk about we can use as a proof for God's existence. Because you can't make sense out of life. You can't make sense out of the opera, you can't make sense out of an economic system. You can't make sense out of natural science or anything on your worldview. And so try ours. In terms of ours, those things we do take for granted are things that we share. Child molestation is wrong. We must be logical. Science is reliable in terms of finding a cure for polio, et cetera. Those things we do both agree to can only be made sense out of in terms of our worldview. Well, that's previous stuff. So I'm saying if you know all that, you look at this and you say, this really is naive, isn't it? But here's our problem. This is where I come back to. I've got to counsel myself, got to do some counseling with you. It's hard to be the minority. It's hard to hold a view which, though it is philosophically and biblically strong, is not what most Christians agree to. And it makes it all the harder when those who hold this view say things about our school of thought which are, well, it really amounts to ridicule. Say things like, well, they're defeated. They just believe in begging the question. They just believe in reasoning in circles. They don't believe in argument at all. They don't think there is a proof for God's existence. They don't believe that there is any evidence. They just have this faith, commitment. And so not only are we in the minority, but we're ridiculed by those who are in the majority. This is not a popular position to hold. And so tonight we need to, in one sense, recommit ourselves to being faithful to God rather than popular. But we won't suffer for that. If we did suffer for it, it would be worthwhile. Faithfulness is what God calls us to. Not success, not notches on our belt, that we've got one more soul that we think we have brought into heaven by our argumentation and so forth. But faithfulness to God as his messenger, to people. We should be faithful even if we didn't see success. But what I want to point out to you is that if you wish to see success, faithfulness is the best way to do it. And so I'm going to be forced to do something tonight which for the remainder of the evening, I want you to remember what I've just said. I'm going to, in a way, be playing the devil's advocate. That's a dangerous thing to do. Think about that. Advocating the devil's position. You can't be an angel's advocate. Well, it's a fallen angel. I'm playing the devil's advocate. And then I need to show you that the arguments that are ordinarily or traditionally associated with proving God's existence and Christ's resurrection are bad arguments. That if you had a philosophically astute and personally tenacious unbeliever, he or she would not have to be pushed or troubled at all by these arguments. Now, let me put that to you again. You may want to get this in your notes. If you have a philosophically astute and personally tenacious unbeliever, he or she would not have to be troubled at all by these proofs, the traditional proofs, so that you know what my thesis is all about. Notice I said philosophically astute. Are all unbelievers philosophically astute? No. You know, they're rank amateurs in most cases. And those who had a course in philosophy at the college usually think they know a whole lot more than they really do. So I'm not claiming that every unbeliever is able to escape these arguments as easily as I might be able to with some experience in philosophy. So I grant that. But have you ever felt uncomfortable when you have somebody you agree with? I mean, whether it's in political realm or in theology or even apologetics, you have somebody arguing for a position that you agree with the conclusion, but the argument, you know better, you say, that's a bad argument, and yet you don't want this person who's listening to get confused. And so you don't jump in there and attack your friend, your fellow conservative or your Christian buddy or something and say, you know, that really is not a good argument. Please don't throw that out there, you know, and yet you feel kind of guilty because if the person agrees with it, you're saying, ah, I'm letting this guy get away with a fallacious argument. And for what reason? Because it's a good cause. And then you say, so I guess the end justifies the means, huh? And we're all put in that compromised position. You're chuckling because every one of you has been put in that position at one time in your life or another. Well, you're saying it's what C.S. lewis called the embarrassing advocate. You have the guy advocating the right position, but in such a way that he's embarrassing you either in his personal style. And how many times have you had Christians, you know, they're just acting like real. Well, the words that come to mind shouldn't be put on tape are really not acting in a way that they should. And you're going, oh, I just. This is embarrassing to me. And yet I agree with the position he's arguing for. Well, that embarrassment can also be academic and intellectual. You know, I was on a radio call in show a few months ago where the format features a Jew, a Roman Catholic, and a Protestant minister. Okay. And then people call in and you're supposed to get this, you know, different points of view. I'm always the prickly one on such a show, you know, because they love to get these three where it's the lowest common denominator and don't we love each other and show all this ecumenical tolerance and so forth. Poor Dr. Bronson just can't play that game. You know, I try to be polite and everything, but I say, well, you know, but the Bible says. And then that gets everyone riled up. Well, anyway, I was on this show one evening, and somehow the program director had gotten messed up. They had two Protestants show up. Well, so instead of choosing between us, they just had us both up to the microphones and so forth. And so here I have. Well, it's a Baptist, but it could have been any number of other denominations. But so I have this Baptist minister, and a person calls in and they say, well, I'd just like to hear real briefly from each one of you. If I were to ask you, it was something like, if I were to ask you for evidence for God's existence, why do you believe in God? What would you say? Okay, so you get the answer from the Roman Catholic and the answer from the Jew, the Protestant who is with me answers, now follow this and ask yourself, what would you do if you're on public radio, in fact, this most popular religious show on Sunday night in Southern California, you're on Widespread radio broadcast. And here's this guy who's supposed to be representing your point of view. And he says, well, he asked the caller, he says, well, what do you mean by God? The caller says, well, I forget what the caller said, but it's something to the effect, you know, some supernatural personality, almighty creator or something like that. And so the Baptist pastor says, well, then see them. That proves it, then, there is a God. The caller says, what? Beth says, well, you've got some definition for God, and you can't define what doesn't exist. And so since you've defined God, then God exists. And I just wanted to go right through the floor. I just was sitting there going, I cannot believe this. What am I going to do? And you can order the tape from Covenant Tape Ministry and listen to how Dr. Vaughnson handled that. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, then I'll tell you, you can get more detail if you're interested in this. I first of all gave my own proof for God's existence, which, as you already know, would amount to without God, you couldn't prove anything, something to that effect. Okay, so in other words, I didn't want to just immediately in the presence of an unbeliever, actually, all those unbelievers, you know, pick out my Protestant buddy and beat up on him intellectually. So I was kind of like, all right, he said that. Now let me give you. And from the standpoint of the unbeliever, it's another line of thought. Okay, so here's something to think about, too. But then eventually I had to go back, and it wasn't immediately, but I said it isn't really that if you have some conception of something, it must exist. After all, we can define Santa Claus, but none of us believe it's Santa Claus exist. Okay, But I didn't say that immediately, and I didn't say it so directly to this guy that I was trying to say what a ninny you are. That doesn't help to get back to my main point where you have people who offer arguments like this. I mean, I've sat in an audience in university settings where people get up there to defend the Christian faith and they give this kind of thing. And I'm saying, I am so glad that the people who studied philosophy at SC with me are not here, because they would shoot holes in this thing and they would think that they had therefore weakened Christianity as an intellectual option, and yet they wouldn't have touched it at all because that's not the consistent playing out of Christianity. So that's what I mean. We have to do a little bit of counseling tonight. One, God calls you to be faithful, not successful, but faithful. And two, you'll be more successful if you are faithful than if you're not. So I have to play the devil's advocate tonight, and I have to look at these arguments and try to show you how they are philosophically weak, if not downright fallacious. And then I would like to suggest that there is nevertheless some value in these arguments. If they were put in a different context, if they were put on a more sure foundation, if they had our presuppositional framework, then these arguments could be recast to have value for confirmation of what we believe. But you see, if we put it in a presuppositional framework, we're going to deny everything I've written in green on the board here tonight. That is, we will deny that the unbeliever is lacking information and a good argument. We will deny that he can be neutral and rational. We'll deny that knowledge involves common conceptions between believer and unbeliever and that the facts are brute. Once we get rid of all of that and put the transcendental framework that without Christianity you couldn't know anything, then we can go out and look at all sorts of things as proof of God's existence and verification of the historical accuracy of the Bible, etc. So you all with me, you know where I'm going. Because before I get into this being the devil's advocate, I. I don't want to be misconstrued and I don't want to suggest that we don't have arguments. I don't want to suggest that we don't have evidence. So I Want to suggest that it isn't well used on the traditional approach. Oh, and a P.S. here. Does that mean no one was ever saved by the use of the traditional approach of apologetics? Now, how often do I have people bring that up? Just recently I spoke at Liberty University, which, as you know, it's kind of a seedbed for evidentialism and traditional approach. Norman Geisler taught there for a while. Gary Habermas was head of the department of philosophy. It's a real strong evidentialist in terms of the resurrection of Christ and so forth. And I was glad that they were willing to have me come and speak about presuppositionalism and hopefully set the record straight and show some of this relative our comparative strength of presuppositionalism. But it's interesting, Afterwards, one of the students who came up talked to me and there were many who wanted to get into this. But one of the students came up and his real concern was, oh, you're saying that God then doesn't use this other method at all, Is that right? I said, no, I'm not saying that any more than I'm saying that bad preaching can't be used by God. I think people are saved through inadequate preaching. I think people are saved through inadequate witnessing. But now, having said that, does that mean, okay, let's just continue being inadequate? Do we expect that God should, by the power of the Holy Spirit, have to make up for the deficiency in our arguments and preaching and presentations? No. So just to make it clear to you as well as the class, I think many people have been saved by the grace of God through arguments which were less than, as faithful as they could have been, and less than as philosophically sound as they should have been. So if we put all that in the right context, I can start in. But now I see I haven't even begun the actual stuff and I've generated questions. So that's good. I know you're thinking, I will start here.

Okay, two things. I was thinking about the problem with the natural. Yes, in a sense, it seems like the evidentist doesn't want to deal with the negative. He just wants to present a positive argument instead of attacking first and then showing positive. Basically say, well, here is positive, and ignore the capturing your system of the unbeliever. They try to attack it maybe subtly or whatever. But before the positive was not step on their toes.

But yeah, well, the suggestion is that the traditional method doesn't see both sides of what we saw in Proverbs. Answer the fool according to his folly. Don't answer the fool according to his folly. And the question, I'm repeating this for those who might not have heard it on tape. The question is, do they not see the need for the negative critique? Okay.

Yeah.

I think that the traditional method, it would be fair to say as a generalization, the traditional method sees the conflict between the believer and the unbeliever, conflict of conclusions, whereas we see it as a conflict of starting points and methods as well. And so it is incumbent upon us to do an internal critique of the unbeliever in a way that's much stronger. It's much more important to us to do an internal critique of the starting point and method of the unbeliever than it would be for the traditional method. The traditional method is satisfied to see the conflict come to expression only as we look at the conclusions of the two thinkers does that make sense. So let me repeat that for those who wanted to get it into their notes. We believe the traditional method sees the conflict coming to expression at the level of conclusion, whereas we see the conflict coming to expression in terms of starting point and method. Next question, the other half was, does.

It seem like also that they're focusing on more like the problem lies in knowledge, like we're saying here, where we're talking more to problem lies in ethics.

Well, I can see why it would be a tempting way to characterize it, to say that the evidentialist sees it as a matter of knowledge. We see it as a matter of ethics. So let me try to capture what is right about that, but put it, I think, a little more accurately, we would say that it's a matter of knowledge as well. And that's because we believe that knowledge, the knowing process, is ethically qualified. We see the way people use their minds is a matter of ethics. They refuse to think God's thoughts after him. They refuse to submit to the Bible. They refuse to love God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind. So in a sense, the difference between us and the traditionalist is that the traditionalist separates ethics from epistemology, theory of knowledge, and we say that epistemology is part of ethics. Another question, I was going to say.

That I was talking to my wife the other day about similar what this, what we were talking about now and about apologetics. And I said, what you, what the gentleman said to you, Are you then saying that this is a week where the came up to you and said, then are nobody, Are no people saved by this method? And it sort of walks along the same lines as saying that some people come to the knowledge of our Lord in the love of Him. Some people come to the knowledge of our Lord through the fear of Him. You know, some people come to the knowledge of our Lord to the fellowship through loneliness. How a preacher will preach on loneliness, somebody will step up then, and another time he'll preach on the fear of God and another person steps up then also. That was more my response to our Lord was, was the preaching of his power and his judgment on me what brought me to my knees. And his love was evident to me, but that was not the driving force. So there's many applications, like you said, we would say that theirs is philosophically weak.

Right.

For being things.

Yeah. The suggestion is that God brings people to Himself through a variety of needs or emotions. Sometimes fear, sometimes love, sometimes loneliness. Various things, you know, are used by God to draw us to Himself. And then if I hear you, you're suggesting that's the same way it is with apologetics. God uses some methods of apologetics for some people, some methods with other people. Right.

A bad method God will fruit out of is what I'm saying.

Okay, so you see, then when you say a bad method God can bring fruit out of as well, then there is something of a false analogy. Because when you're talking about God using fear, God using love, God using loneliness to draw people to himself, those are all legitimate human needs that God meets legitimately in the gospel. And that's different from saying, well then, but then we would expect God to use bad arguments and good arguments to bring people to himself. I would rather say God uses bad arguments and bad people even to bring others to Himself, because by his grace and power he's able to do that. However, he calls on us to be as faithful to him as we can be and to glorify him even in our thinking process and our reasoning and argumentation. Okay. You were asked to read my review of a book entitled Classical Apologetics, a book written by R.C. sproul, John Gerstner and Arthur Lindsley. And I hope you all had copies of that and were able to get through it. That's what I'm going to turn to now as our lead in to problems with the traditional method of apologetics. Because this book explicitly criticizes the apologetic of Cornelius Van Till then, we know that this is a self conscious presentation of the alternative approach. Right. And I'm not going to focus on that portion of the book that criticizes Van Till. I think most of you in reading what I said can see what the problem is, and there are other lectures that have defended Van Til and so forth tonight, however, I want to look at the strength, or lack thereof, that's found in the traditional method. On page six of the original review in the second column, first full paragraph, I say the book opens by identifying the object of its apologetical concern, namely the crisis of secularism. The central axiom of secularism and key challenge to Christianity in our day is the view that all possible knowledge is restricted to the temporal. The book's primary self defined task is therefore to refute that view. And then I say, but it does nothing like that. In fact, the question is not even raised again in this form. What the authors try to deal with instead is proof for God's existence. They say, okay, what's wrong with that? If you can prove God's existence, then you have shown that the secularism, the axiom of secularism is wrong. Isn't that correct? Now I know that you might have been tempted to bite on that, but I hope that our class has begun to give you some philosophical tenacity here and you stop and think about this. If I believe that man's knowledge is restricted to the temporal and somebody proves to me that there's a God that exists, I don't have to give up my presupposition, do I? All I have to say is, well then the God you've proven is a temporal God. You see, if you don't deal with the unbelievers presuppositions, then the proofs that you offer are going to all be recast in light of his fundamental antithesis to your worldview. And so I say, but given secularism's axiom, this proving the existence of God is futile. The only things we can know, and hence the only things we can prove, are temporal in character. Accordingly, even if the authors prove the existence of some first cause, which we call God by the way, that's the way the argument goes, there must be a first cause. And then we call that God. If you wanted to be kind of belligerent, you could say, well, wait a minute, first cause isn't what we mean by God. You got to go a lot further than that. But it's fairly traditional to do this. They show some first cause which we call God. It will necessarily be part of the temporal order of nature. In short, without analyzing and refuting the presupposition of secularism about what is knowable, the authors simply beg the question they set out to answer. Let me pause at this point and just give you an opportunity to jump in. Does anyone not follow that? I'm trying to. Again, we're looking at the philosophically astute and personally tenacious unbeliever. So he sits around, he lets the authors go through all this, and he goes, okay, there's a first cause, and it's a temporal, natural first cause. You haven't even begun to touch, much less make uncomfortable the philosophically astute unbeliever. It wouldn't have to be a pantheistic view of God, the unbelievers. Well, God could be. In terms of what we said so far about temporality, God could be non physical, but still a temporal, non physical being, and one that is part of the natural order and subject to certain factors or forces or principles that are natural and not necessarily sovereign over the natural process. Remember, when we say God, what happens is we automatically think of God in personal, almighty, sovereign categories. But all the argument gives us is what first cause? Remember, we're just calling that God. But a first cause could be a temporal first cause. Yes. Could be an alien. Sure, yeah. Now if somebody says, well, where'd the alien come from? Then if the aliens eternal. Unfortunately, Dr. Gerstner, as I understand him, and I don't wish to purposely misrepresent, but I think I have this right, Dr. Gerstner would say, well, then that is your God. Then if you have this eternal being, this alien who does that. And so I'm satisfied that I've proven God's existence. By that I mean, that's horrible reasoning. Let's move on beyond this. There's more than a little philosophical confusion in the author's conception and method of proving God's existence. For instance, to evade the charge of naturalism and the idea that man has an unaided intrinsic ability to reach a knowledge of God, they hold that natural theology, which is the human activity of devising proofs for God's existence, is reflection dependent upon divine revelation. Well, I mean, they can do better than this. Isn't this obvious to you? Since a divine revelation already assumes what the divine that there is a God, then what they mean by natural theology depends at the outset on what it's supposed to be proving at its conclusion. The natural man, using his natural reason, for whom the proofs of natural theology are intended, does not look upon the facts of nature as a divine revelation at all. Isn't that obvious to the natural man? When the authors go on and try to demonstrate that the Bible itself endorses natural theology, they are unable to do so for all the evidence they adduce pertains rather to natural revelation. The psalmist and Paul say absolutely nothing about inferences and proofs devised by human reflection. Our authors seem not to be aware that they ambiguously switch back and forth between the two concepts of natural revelation and natural theology. And then I suggest the concept which has somewhere been lost by our authors is that of man's total depravity, including the noetic effects of sin. Note this well, because they claim to be reformed, this is a devastating criticism. They have overlooked the noetic effects of sin. They tell us that rational apologetics as pre evangelism can establish the cognitive clarification of Christianity and bring the natural man to an intellectual ascent. But to take him beyond that to a personal trust in the heart, emotions and will, is solely the work of the Holy Spirit. And then I say Scripture teaches otherwise. The problem with fallen men is not simply in their will and emotions. What we mean by total depravity, the totality of man's depravity is it extends to everything about his being and behavior. They have just as much become vain in their reasoning, like fools. According to Paul, in Romans 1, according to the Bible, will such natural men use their natural reason to receive the things of the Spirit? Not only will they not do so, the Bible says they cannot do so. 1 Corinthians 2:14. And in terms of reasoning from nature to nature's God, Paul had this to say about the natural man. There is none that understands. There is none that seeks after God. Romans 3:11. And so I believe that the work of the Holy Spirit is just as much needed to bring intellectual ascent as it is to produce emotional trust. And by suggesting otherwise, the author's conception of apologetics is untrue to their reformed theology.

Right here there's a difference between emotional trust and. And truth. Truth could be different in another person's eyes.

Yes, there is a difference between emotional trust and believing something to be true. Right? Let's ask ourselves this. Do the demons intellectually believe that God exists? Do they emotionally trust God? Unless you mean emotionally trust him to be true to his character. And therefore they're scared to Dickens. They tremble because they know God will live up to his holiness and condemn them. But they don't. Emotional trust in the sense of entrusting themselves to God in His care. And so there is a difference between intellectually assenting to something and emotionally entrusting yourself. Go ahead.

Proof then. Proof isn't relative, but for different people it might be well considered fruit.

Now, I'm not saying Proof is relative. Proof is objective and universal. If it's valid, it's valid. If it's strong evidence, and strong evidence, proof is not relative. But the response people have to what is proven is relative. That is, there's different psychological reactions to that. Some people see that God has been proven and they get all the more angry and will get vicious with you, maybe even never want to talk to you again. Others will see that you've proven God's existence and will cry out for mercy because of their sin. I mean, so reactions will be relative and different, but proof itself is not different. Here. What you just read here seems more.

Consistent with the quietest view of manic.

Okay, the question suggests that what we're reading about in classical apologetics seems more consistent with the views of Thomas Aquinas. Well, that's very astute. And you might be interested to know that these three authors believe that Thomas Aquinas is what we need today in Protestantism. In fact, in a book written by Jack Rogers and this other fellow, Kim, on Scripture, the. The authority of Scripture, I believe, is the title of it. They actually footnote RC Sproul at a Bible conference in Glendale where he said, what the Protestant church needs to get Back to is St. Thomas Aquinas. And then he says, apparently on the tape. That's right, you heard it. You can quote me. That's a Protestant who is saying that. Talk about put the noose around your neck and then tighten it. That's exactly right. They believe that Thomas Aquinas had it right. And of course, we know that Aquinas had a defective view of man's fall with respect to the intellect. I think Schaeffer has overstated what that is. He doesn't say that the intellect is totally unaffected by the fall, but it's not as much as the emotions and the will. And we also know that Thomas Aquinas, you know, had this natural theological approach, the sacred secular, you know, dichotomy and all the rest of the. And here's Sproul, a Protestant apologist, saying, that's right. We need to get back to Aquinas. Well, I can go you one better. I mean, Sproul is one of the authors of this book. And so you're right on. Recently, an evangelical, Norman Geisler, has written a book on Thomas Aquinas trying to show Thomas Aquinas in a more evangelical light. And so, if nothing else, those people who oppose presuppositionalism are becoming more epistemologically self conscious and that they're becoming more aware of where they really stand. And you're right, they stand with Aquinas, not with Augustine.

What do they respond to you when you challenge them on their bad view of the or non application of the doctrine of the noetic effects?

I don't know that I can answer your question how they would respond to that.

What do they.

What kind of things can they put forward that seems this is stuff that a third grader could understand about.

Okay, the best you get is that yes, the intellect is affected, but it's affected because of the will and the emotions. That is man can think perfectly all right, but his emotions, which are fallen and his will, which is rebellious, get. Get in the way so that he doesn't choose to think the way that he could. And I think we just need a more integrated view of human personalities than that. I mean, this is just two neat watertight compartments, you know, this intellect, will and emotion stuff. The Bible says man is fallen so that he's even messed up in his reasoning. Let's continue at the bottom of that page I say their book on apologetics is flawed by a number of philosophical lapses as well. They responded, by the way, with I guess they were personally stung and thought it was uncharitable of me to say this. I did not mean it in an uncharitable way. But you need to know that when positions taken by philosophers are represented in the book, they are too often oversimplified, jumbled, are handled with little more than slogans rather than analysis. Their discussions of the alleged non negotiable and virtually universal assumptions about logic, perception and causality in the knowing process is painfully naive. Interacting with none of the modern epistemological problems surrounding empiricism, induction or the foundations of science and logic. Let me stop for a minute here. If it was as easy, if these things were so universally acknowledged and non negotiable, then it's like why was I wasting time in graduate school studying philosophy? What is it we were going over? If all these things are just taken for granted, they are not achans for granted. One of the other things you were to read for tonight was an article I wrote entitled Inductivism, Inerrancy and Presuppositionalism. And so what I'm going to do is at this point in the review of Sproul, I'm going to take a little digression and turn to that article and in particular I'd like you to notice via photocopies of it on what was page 296 I have a section entitled Unargued Philosophical Baggage. So let me give you some background on this article and then tell you why I'm pointing to this portion of the article. 296. The reason I wrote this article is that a number of years ago, 1973, Clark Pinnock and Daniel Fuller, two men that I know and have regard for as Christian brothers but not presuppositionalists, unfortunately, had exchanged critical remarks about each other. So now you need to know why. Why are Pennock and Fuller criticizing each other? Well, one at the time was defending biblical inerrancy and the other was saying the Bible is not inerrant. But both prided themselves in being evidentialist and empiricists in their approach to knowledge. So you see what I'm getting at here. There's a family squabble going on here. Two people who pride themselves in their empirical credentials, they take an inductive approach to knowledge, and yet one is a believer in inerrancy and the other is not. So they're criticizing each other. Well, in the process of criticizing each other at different points, they say things kind of like playing against the foil of a Ventilian approach. Well, we certainly don't want this presuppositional approach. Presuppositionalism gets pulled in as kind of like, well, none of us want that, of course. And the assumption is that they don't have presuppositions, they are taking a purely empirical approach to knowledge. And then also that Van Till is a fetishist and all that sort of stuff, which I'll let you read on your own, we've done enough defense of that that it doesn't call for another class period. That's in this article, the defense of Van Till. But what's also in this article is, well, if you want to be an empiricist, if you want to say you don't have any philosophical baggage, that you're completely neutral and you're just going to let the facts speak for themselves. And fellows, you're going to have to answer a few questions. You see, it's kind of like a reality check time, okay? You theologians get together and you banter this way at one another about being inductivist and empiricists. Well, let me ask you a few questions that a philosopher is going to ask you about this pure, unadulterated, philosophically neutral approach to letting the facts speak for themselves. And so that's what you get in this section entitled Unargued Philosophical Baggage. I'm trying to say, you know, you're pulling a lot of stuff in here. There are a lot of issues that you're not addressing, that you need to address if you're going to defend empiricism. Maybe I can Briefly summarize these. 1. I say inductivists are not as thoroughly inductive as they think, or the theoretical statements of the inductivist about their procedure and practice. Reflexive means looking back upon themselves now as they reflect on when they give theoretical statements about what they are doing. I'm saying those reflexive theoretical statements about their procedure and practice, its merits and criteria, are not inductive or empirical in nature. Stop and think about it. Okay? An inductivist says, we're going to believe only what our senses tell us. Then you're going to say, well, let's look at that statement itself. Let's reflect on what you've just given as your theoretical presentation. Did your senses tell you that you're to believe only what your senses tell you? See what I mean? It's just one quick step. Once you understand the philosophical issue, said so much for empiricism. The only thing they can do at that point is they say, grant us one arbitrary assumption, and then empiricism will go after that. Just let us get up and running. But the first thing here is. So wait a minute. Your very statement of your position violates your position. Number two. Should the Christian inductivist. This is the Christian inductivist. Now, should the Christian inductivist assume universal uniformity or regularity in nature and history so as to provide the metaphysical precondition of his inductivism? Let's stop and think about it, you inductivist. Do you assume that nature is uniform? Well, if you don't, then of course there is no inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning says what we've learned from the past applies to the future because nature works in a uniform way. But if nature is uniform, notice what I say here. And you thereby exclude miracles. Because if nature is uniform, then there's nothing which is out of the ordinary, right? And so you've excluded miracles if you're going to be an inductivist in that sense. Or should you begin by allowing miracles? Of course, if the inductivist does that, if he allows miracles, he's made a supra empirical commitment to what is possible, the range of what is possible. There's no way that the question what can and cannot happen? Can be answered by Just appealing to your observations. Your observations can't tell you what is possible, only what is actual. So if they begin with miracles as possible, they've already given up their inductivism or their philosophical neutrality. But if they do that, they also dismiss the reliability and uniformity needed for inductive knowledge. Now this is a real conundrum for anybody who uses historical evidences and says, okay, I take an inductive, empirical approach to history. You say, oh, okay, well then you don't believe in miracles, right? Did you believe in uniformity? No, no, I believe in uniformity, but I also believe in miracles. You know, wait a minute. I believe in uniformity and I believe in miracles. As a presuppositionalist, I can make sense out of that. But you can't make sense out of that because according to you, you're beginning only with empiricism. Now, if you follow what I just said over the last couple minutes, what I'm telling you is you have a lot of people who say they are not presuppositionalists. And when you scratch them, you find out they bleed presuppositionally under the skin. They're always bringing in these Christian presuppositions, all the while saying, oh no, no, we don't have any presuppositions. We're neutral, we're just empirical. We're just inductive. I'm saying, oh, you are? Well, if you're only inductive and you assume uniformity, then what you're saying is miracles are impossible. Oh, we don't like that. Well, when we believe miracles are possible, I say, oh, well, then you're not purely empirical, are you? For a Christian apologist to claim to be purely empirical is embarrassing. You cannot, as a Christian do that and be consistent. Well, I'm taking too long, aren't I? 3. What sort of rational basis or evidence does the inductivist have for his implied belief in natural uniformity? How do they answer the skepticism of Hume at this point? 4. The nature of evidence that should be given for the theory of induction will be determined by the nature of that theory's objects and methods. And so we can ask what kind of entity is spoken of in the inductivist? Self referential theoretical statements. Again, that's just a quick way of saying, when the inductivist lays out his theory of induction, what's he talking about? What are the entities that he's talking about? To make empiricism credible, he'd have to explain what a proposition is an idea, a belief, a directive, a rule. He would have to have some philosophical conception of properties, relations, substances, individuals, dispositions, functions, cognition, modes of cognition, on and on and on. When you hear these traditionalists in apologetics say we just take a simple empirical approach, and there is no simple empirical approach. There are a lot of philosophical issues that have to be resolved. Number five is a fairly technical problem that I don't think I can boil down in the time that I have here real quickly, and the others I suppose I should let you look at as well. I hope I've at least given you an idea of what's going on in this section of the article so you understand why it is there and how it is used. Going back now to Sproul and Gerstner and so forth, when they talk about these non negotiable, universally agreed to premises or procedures, I'm telling you they are not universally granted and there's a lot of philosophical issues that have to be settled that haven't been.

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