Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Answering Islam (Part 30)

This message is a continuation of the previous tape. Evolutionists cannot get away from talking about personal attributes in what they call nature. When Christians or anti evolutionists do a cross examination of some of the arguments and evidence for evolution, they'll often ask questions about how can you expect nature to have been so creative as to do these various things? Well, they'll say, how could blind random chance have done this? And the comeback is, maybe nature's more creative than you thought. They talk about natural selection. Well, as you know, blind forces don't select anything, do they? I find it fascinating that when I was studying logic early on as a student in college many years ago, the illustration that I was given of what's called the fallacy of reification is talking about what nature does. Reification is turning a set of unconnected events into a personal form. It reifies, makes a substance out of something that is not a substance. When Bill Clinton was elected president, people said, the winds of change are blowing through our culture. Well, you know, the winds of change is a reification of the events which are different from previous events. There are no, quote, winds of change. So that's a way of speaking when it's taken seriously and used in an argument. It's the fallacy of reification. You're treating an abstract personification as though it were a concrete substance. And yet evolutionists are found to repeatedly talk about what nature does, the creativity, the selection that takes place there. Moreover, whenever evolutionists want to explain their theory, you will find they always use analogies to things like animal breeders. The problem with the analogy should be obvious. There is no animal breeder for the whole world. Unless of course, if you're a Christian, you're a creationist. And that's what they're trying to get away from. The notion of a purposeless natural process which by chance developed mutations that gradually changed life forms that fit in, adapted more to the environment, is a theory that has been thoroughly discredited philosophically, scientifically. Why then does your next door neighbor hold to it? Why then do the professors at the university? At this point, it's usually helpful to go into the history of the theory of evolution for people to realize. The theory of evolution didn't arise with Charles Darwin, didn't arise with scientists at all. The theory of evolution arose with the philosophers. Anaximander, one of the earliest Ionian philosophers, was an evolutionist. We have other Greek philosophers that were evolutionists. The notion of gradual change as accounting for the world in which we live was already in the philosophical world, thanks to Hegel before Darwin wrote Karl Marx, who took Hegel and turned him on his head, teaching dialectical materialism rather than idealism, sought to dedicate his book Das Ka Patal to a man working in England at the same time he was there. His name was Charles Darwin. Evolutionary hypothesis did not arise from science. Science only gave it a cosmetic of respectability. Theory of evolution was refuted within 18 months of Darwin's book being published. But Darwin had captured the wave of where culture wanted to go. Darwin's bulldog Huxley openly admitted, as we studied the natural world, we always came up against a barrier that had written upon it, no further exploration. By order of Moses. Darwin gave us a way around the barrier. That's what he said. So the theory of evolution, what is our reputation of it? First of all, people need to know and be embarrassed by answering the fool according to his folly. It's not good science. Secondly, it's not science at all. It's philosophy and it's desire motivated speculation. It's speculation that is held onto. It's a worldview that's held onto a perspective on how things happen in the world. Held onto because it's the way in which we get around the doctrine of special creation by a personal God. Well, Dr. Bonson, is there any internal critique that can be made of the theory of evolution now that we know that it's a worldview, that it's a philosophy, that it's not good science at all? I'm going to give you a very quick one before we take a break. The theory of evolution as a worldview tells us once there was disorder, and we don't know why, but the disorder became ordered. And this ordered matter was inorganic. And we don't know why, but the inorganic matter became living. And then this living matter, which was all made up of identical forms, began to diversify. And then from these diversified living forms for reasons we can't explain, they became varied, although unintelligent. But then the unintelligent life forms became intelligent and articulate. And then for reasons we can't explain, the intelligent articulate life forms became language using, but not moral. And then the language using life forms for reasons we can't explain became intelligent, articulate moral men. And after I finished that, that is at every step a huge leap of faith from nothing to something that looks like creation out of nothing. To me, it's just we don't want to say God did it, nature did it, did it on its own. Where'd the big Bang come from? I want to know what went bang in the big Bang? You know what you're told that all of energy was condensed down to a mathematical point without dimensions. That sounds like nothing to me. And nothing went bang. And then we had the development of the world. Isn't that incredible? It's aping the Christian story, but not giving credit to the creator. Anyway, once there was something, then, I mean, once there was nothing, then there was something, then the something began to develop and we don't know where life came from, but then it became alive and we don't know where diversity came from. But then it diversified and we don't know where intelligence came from. But then it became intelligent, then it became linguistic, then it became moral. And now we have man. We know the theory of evolution has going against it philosophically. It just requires far too much faith. Far too much faith. I guess that's my problem as a Christian thinker. You see, I just have this Sunday school simplistic notion that an all powerful, all knowing God could create the world. And that makes sense out of my experience. What doesn't make sense out of my experience is this idea of we can't tell you why, but from nothing to something, something to life, life to diversity, diversity to intelligence, intelligence to language, language to morality, but at every major step from a quality becoming its opposite. Matter is not intelligent in itself. And yet we're to believe that matter materially evolved into intelligence. Opposites become, I mean, things develop from their opposites and without any explanation. Well, that's on a rational worldview at all. When all was said and done, it's just a worldview held on incredible faith and contradictory faith. And that is the end of the story. Evolution is a worldview that makes no sense and cannot make sense out of life. Let's take a break. All right, we continue in this, our last class session of the course on apologetics. And I come to my final illustration of the practice of apologetics. We turn from philosophical attacks and scientific attacks and I want to look at now a religious attack on Christianity. And I do hope that you'll all grant that. When I chose an illustration in the first category, I chose the toughest one, the one that's been the reigning problem in philosophy over the last 30, 40 years. I think the scientific illustration I chose was not, you know, I didn't take one of the, you know, the loopy ones out there. I took the one that's supposed to have all these credentials against Christianity. And again, I purposely chosen as my illustration the religious domain, what most people think is the Toughest religion to answer, and that's Islam. How can a Christian following the presuppositional approach give an answer to Islam? The Islamic world comprises approximately a billion Muslims. Indeed, about one out of five people in the world today is a Muslim. It's projected that within 25 years, the Arab world will double in size. The missionary outreach to the Muslim world is very, very meager. In 1987, there were estimated only about 300 Protestant missionaries working in the predominant Arab areas of the world. By Contrast, there are 4,500 North American missionaries alone working in the United States and Canada. So this is a very meager field, there's no question about it. In the United States, Islam is the fourth largest religious denomination. There are over 6 million believers. The fourth largest. It trails behind only Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists and United Methodists. There are very large Muslim populations in most European countries. And in England, many old churches are being turned into mosques. Some of the most important events, news events over the last 25 years have occurred in areas or have involved countries where Islam is the dominant religion. One thinks of the 1972 Munich Olympics where Israeli athletes were killed by Muslim terrorists. 1973, the oil crisis, the Arab Israeli War, 1979, the Iranian Revolution and the embassy kidnapping. In 1981, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists. In 1983, American Marines were killed in Lebanon by a Muslim terrorist. In 1990 and 91, we engaged as the United States in what's now called the Gulf War. In 1991, 1992, Algerian people, in a democratic election, voted for the Muslim Fundamentalist party to rule over them. In 1993, here in New York City, the World Trade center was bombed by Muslim extremists. I'm only bringing this up so that you have some idea that we as Christians had better get busy dealing with Islam. There aren't many people doing it. It is a rising, if nothing else just, population bomb. But it's also a rising geopolitical bomb, to use the metaphor in this. Why do Muslims oppose Christianity? Why are they so angry? Why is the United States the Great Satan according to Islamic fundamentalists? In a speech that was given at Princeton University by one of the leading American experts on Arab culture, Bernard Lewis. The speech was given in 1989. It was the Jefferson Lecture of that year, and it was reprinted in the Atlantic monthly in the September 1990 issue. The title of it was the Roots of Muslim Rage. And I just can hardly believe what I find unbelieving scholars telling us about this matter because as a Christian, I could hardly have asked for a better analysis of what's going on. Lewis tells us that though it is jarring to Americans to hear the expression enemy of God, to Muslims, it's very familiar and it's a very noble concept. He explains that leaders of a widespread and widening religious revival in Islam sought out and identified their enemies as the enemies of God. Suddenly, or so it seemed, America has become the arch enemy, the incarnation of all evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good. And specifically for Muslims, surely they have specific complaints, such as our backing Israel. But Lewis believes that probably that only is a paltry part of the rage Arabs feel toward us. What is the source of that rage? He says, and I quote, it is Western capitalism and democracy that provide an authentic and attractive alternative to traditional ways of thought in life. Fundamentalist leaders are not mistaken in seeing in Western civilization the greatest challenge to the way of life that they wish to retain or restore for their people. It's the way of life that they hate, and it's the way of life that they see embodied here in American culture. Their way of life, he says, mandates Islamic rule over the world. He says, alone among great religious leaders, Muhammad, and I quote him, was not only a prophet and a teacher, but also a ruler and a soldier. Hence his struggle involved a state and its armed forces, end of quote. To put it simply, troops fight for God. If you're a Muslim, anybody who is not a Muslim is an enemy of God. Ergo, it's all right to destroy them violently. To Arabs, what is truly evil and unacceptable is the domination of infidels over true believers. Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord false full equality to those who held other beliefs and practiced other forms of worship. Their belief is the one true belief. And tolerance for other beliefs is made even worse, according to Lewis, by the Arab sense of being overtaken and overwhelmed by those who consider their inferiors, those who are enemies of God, who are spreading modernism and secularism. The real rage, he says, burns within the Arab, and I quote him, this is no less than a clash of civilizations. And that clash stems, he believes, from an ancient rival against our Judeo Christian heritage, our secular present, and worldwide expansion of both. Now, the time is not going to allow a full description of what's going on or analysis of what's going on. But on the one hand, I'm telling you, Islam is growing and becoming a geopolitical threat. On the other hand, the rage of the Muslims against the Western world, even by secular Scholars who's identified as a worldview difference, they have a completely different ethic. They have a completely different approach to culture. For instance, there's no tolerance for those who disagree, no tolerance for those who are inferior to them. The Christian ethic, properly practiced and understood, would suggest that people are to be left free to hear the Gospel, consider its merits, and make a choice to follow. Follow Jesus. Right? The Muslim doesn't agree with that. You shouldn't have that freedom to follow Jesus. And if you choose to follow Jesus, Muslims believe that they have the right, under certain circumstances anyway, to kill you. Now, they should offer the way of Islam to you, but if you resist, you have the right to be. They have the right to kill you. This is not politically correct to make this observation. When I publicly dealt with Muslims, many of whom are kind and want to engage in the kind of tolerant discussion that we promote in America, they will openly deny this. And then I open the Koran and read it for them. Their religious revelation endorses the eschewing of apologetics in favor of violence. And so one of the first things you should be aware of when you engage in Muslim apologetics is that your opponent is not necessarily committed to an apologetical resolution of this problem. Now does. Am I saying that so that you'll be careful? You know, don't be in a place where you're unprotected and you're talking to the Muslim? No. Although maybe in some cases you should. I know I wasn't real comfortable when I was debating a Muslim out in Southern California and a number of Arabs were in the audience chanting when I was trying to talk. I thought to myself, well, this really doesn't promote reasoned discourse, does it? It's kind of like we're going to physically make it impossible for you to be heard. Or maybe they were just trying to be true believers and make sure they didn't hear me. But the point is, I was counting the number of them out in the audience and thinking, there's me and a couple of other friends here. Anyway, my point is not that you need so much be concerned about your own physical safety. You need to be aware of the fact that you're now dealing with a worldview which itself is not rational. Not rational. As you understand, rational Muslims will say that their worldview is true and therefore true reason will follow it. But it's not rational in the sense that when all is said and done, we need to be able to prove it and to give counter evidence and so forth. Islam in history has never been Spread by apologetical arguments. Even if it is possible. There are some apologists for Islam and for the Quran today, to be sure, but even if it is possible to provide that sort of thing, it has not been the preferred way of spreading this worldview. I think you all know how it's been spread. It's been spread by the sword. And so maybe we want to establish first of all when we're talking to our Islamic neighbors, that as we have these discussions, we need to be committed to the merits of the case and following reason and evidence. Because if you can get them to be committed to that, you've already got them. To do what? To revise their worldview. Their worldview says that is not a thing of paramount significance. Let's take this a step further. Where does their worldview come from? Well, we all know the pillar of Islam is that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad is his prophet. And where has Muhammad prophesied for the one true God? Most Christians, Well, I don't know. I hope most Christians would be able to answer immediately the Quran. What most Christians are not aware is that according to Islam, the Hadith is equally infallible and inspired. The Hadith is a series of sayings from Muhammad and events in Muhammad's life that have been written down to help us interpret the Qur'. An. So you are going to, if you're going to be accurate, have to take a second step and find out the source of this particular Muslim's authority. Keep asking why do you believe what you do? Ask him, do you believe the Hadith is an infallible help interpreting the Quran or not? Now let's, let's hope for argument's sake you have somebody who says yes. Any educated Muslim should say yes. Well then you need to have read the Hadith. And if you read the Hadith, you're going to read stories that are absolutely phenomenal. Adam, the first man, was 90ft tall. According to the Hadith, when you fall asleep while you're praying, Satan urinates in your ears. That's true. The sex of a child, whether it be a boy or a girl, all depends upon which of the two partners in the sex act reach climax first. Now this is all infallible revelation. Remember, it'd be one thing if you had folklore and all these things are being said, but this is supposed to have come from the God Allah. And so to do an internal critique of Islam, I suggest that you get in contact with the Hadith and have a few of these stories available to talk to people there is incredible superstition and magic and views of war sex to be found in this book. And you want to bring that out not because ridicule is the way to refute your opponent, but you have to bring it out to find out if your opponent really is committed to the inspiration of this Muslim sources to say now, do you really believe this is inspired? I'm trying to get a read on your worldview. Do you believe in apologetical argument? And do you believe the sources of inspired information are in fact God's unerring word? Early embarrassment, if it's not done just for the sake of poking fun or ridiculing, early embarrassment is very legitimate in an apologetical debate. But then the third step is of course that all Muslims believe, whether they can give an apologetic for it or not, whether the Hadith interprets it infallibly or not. All Muslims believe that Muhammad has revealed the word of Allah in the Quran. Christians who deal with Muslims are not going to be affected if they have not read the Qur'. An. You got to do your homework, that's all I can tell you. After all, would you think somebody's effective in refuting the Bible if they said I've never read it? If you're going to do a comparison of worldviews, comparing your whole enchilada to the meal being offered by the Muslim, then you better know his worldview in the same way that I need to know religious, excuse me, religion. I need to know philosophy of language better than the secularist and I need to know the theory of evolution better than the scientist. So I need to know Islam better than the Muslim to whom I speak. And so I'm going to share with you some of the things that I've learned in studying the Quran. First, about the Quran itself. Muhammad admitted he was unsure of the source of his revelation. Indeed, at the outset he was quite concerned that demons were speaking to him. Maybe when we get done, we might think that's a hypothesis to reconsider. But his wife convinced him that it was not demons and that he ought to share with the world these religious revelations early on in his life. Because my Muhammad saw himself as standing against Arab polytheism and idolatry. He wanted to make common cause with Jews and Christians who are also against polytheistic idolatry. And that's why you'll find portions of the Quran that read very favorably about Jews and Christians. Those portions are when Muhammad would get his revelations, alleged revelations at a time in his life when he was trying to make common cause. But by the time he ended the Koran, he had become a determined enemy of Jews and Christians and was even endorsing that after you offer them the convenient articles of peace, you may kill them if they will not submit. Let's do an internal critique of the Qur' an now. And ask about its historical accuracy. You'll notice if you read the Koran that it embellishes biblical stories greatly. Contrary to Exodus 1, verses 7 to 10, that tells us of the numerous Jewish population in Egypt. Surah 26 of the Quran says the Jews were scanty at that time. And Surah too says they returned to Egypt. Surah 21 tells us that all of Noah's family were saved from the flood. But then the 11th Surah says that Noah's son, one of them, drowned in the flood. Now this is supposed to be an infallible book from an all knowing God. And yet you have these kind of historical contradictions and problems that have to be dealt with. Surah 28 says that Pharaoh's wife adopted Moses rather than Pharaoh's daughter adopting Moses. Surah 19 says that Mary, the mother of Jesus was the sister of Aaron. You understand that mistake? Muhammad was an uneducated man who did not have good sources. Who was the sister of Moses? Miriam. And he made the mistake of running together conflating Mary, Miriam. And so he turns the mother of Jesus into the sister of Moses. According to the third Surah, Zacharias was speechless for only three days, contrary to the Gospel of Luke chapter 1 where Zacharias was speechless for nine months. But perhaps the greatest contradiction to be noted is that Surah 4 teaches that Jesus was not crucified. So there are numerous historical gaps and contradictions within the Koran and there are historical contradictions between the Quran and the historical claims of the Bible. Now somebody might think at this point, well, they don't have to be bothered by that because after all they think the Koran is God's word. Well, they also think the Bible is God's word. At least the books of Moses, the Psalms of David and the Gospel of Jesus. And this leads now to a further level of internal critique. What is the Koran? Well, according to the Quran itself, it is the inscription of an eternal book. In Surah 2, this eternal book is continuous with the Bible. It is the drawing out of what Allah has already said previously in the Bible and it is the confirmation of the previous revelations of Allah. Please turn the cassette over. At this time. Surah 4 asserts that there are no contradictions in this eternal book. The Quran teaches that Allah never abrogates what he has said previously. It's an eternal book. It's continuous with previous revelation. No abrogation is allowed. There are no contradictions within it. Surah 42, verses 1 and 13 teach that Muslims are not to be divided against Moses and Jesus. That's a command, an unabrogatable eternal command. Allah not to be divided against Moses and Jesus. But then when you read the theology of the Quran, you find out two things very prominently. One, there is an utter repudiation of the doctrine of the Trinity, considered idolatrous and polytheistic. You're not to be divided against Moses and Jesus, but what they taught about God is repudiated. Moreover, and actually the specific application of this repudiation of the Trinity, the Qur' an openly, categorically denies that God can have a son. Don't say that God has a son according to the Qur'. An. What a blasphemous notion. Or that he would be born of a virgin. What's that a reference to? The Christians who claim that Jesus is the son of God born of a virgin. Well, now, let's just ask. Can you coherently put this worldview together? Can you coherently have a worldview that says Allah never changes his mind? There are no contradictions. This is the confirmation of previous revelations. But even though the Bible says Jesus is the Son of God and was crucified, the Koran says he was not crucified, he was not the Son of God. And indeed it denies the Trinity. Furthermore, and this comes out, if you listen to the tapes of my debate with the Islamic scholar, if you read the law of Moses and the Psalms of David and especially the Gospel of Jesus, you read that God will never be at peace with sinners, apart from blood atonement, apart from substitution and the penalty of sin being exacted. And there is not the slightest, the slightest indication in the Quran that that is how we are right with Allah. Indeed, the mercy of Allah present in the Quran is predicated on your good works. Allah is merciful in that he acknowledges your good works, that they outweigh your evil deeds, and then will reward you with eternal life. As a passing comment, I won't pursue this. The concept of eternal life in the Quran is far different from the concept of eternal life in the Bible. In the Quran, those who are granted eternal life, especially the men, really have it made in the shade. They will lie around on golden couches and have girls with large dark eyes, feed them fruit and grapes, and satisfy their every desire. Now I'm not saying philosophically it's impossible that that could be the way things are all set up and that's what God's going to do. But part of our apologetic, I said, is just telling the old, old story of Jesus and his love, just laying out the Christian story. And I think it's apologetically powerful to simply set our story over against their story. Just say, well here's their version of God in his holiness, their version of salvation, not calling for atonement, how holy is Allah. Therefore their version of salvation by good works which we're not able to do because that's what's made Allah angry with us in the first place. And then their version of the reward of good works that over against the Christian conception of heaven or the new heavens and the new earth. The theology of the Koran openly conflicts therefore with the theology of the Bible. But if the Qur' an is the continuation and confirmation of previous revelation, we have every right now to do a further internal critique and ask the Muslim, don't we have to expect, according to the teaching of Moses, that any new prophets will only prophesy and speak what is continuous with there are no contradictions. Remember they'll only say what does not abrogate previous revelation? Well yes, of course, but previous revelation in the law of Moses tells us that a prophet mustn't do the very things that you admit Muhammad did. Muhammad disagrees with the Gospels of Jesus, the Psalms of David and the law of Moses. So once again their worldview can be internally destroyed just by going in, stand on the unbelievers position and say where does this take us? It takes us to Moses who teaches us that the Qur' an should not conflict with previous revelation. But at the same time it openly conflicts on historical details, on theological details, indeed on crucial worldview notions. It's a completely different worldview. But there's one more internal criticism needs to be made. And this comes closer to the kind of philosophical presuppositional refutation that I think many of you have been looking for. I think I've done enough to destroy Islam as a worldview by criticizing internally the Koran. But it turns out that the Quran also says something about Allah which is going to make the Quran itself impossible. Surah 42:11. No human language can positively describe God. No human language is adequate to describe Allah. Why? Because Allah is so different, so incomparable, that he's utterly transcendent. Muslim theologians have labeled this the doctrine of Tanza T A N Z I H Tanza Allah is so transcendent, so incomparable, so unlike anything in this changing world of our human experience that no human language can positively describe God. Well, if no human language can possibly describe Allah, then what is the Qur'? An? The Quran is supposed to be, in human language, a revelation of Allah. But the revelation itself says such a revelation could not be possible. And so level upon level upon level upon level of reputation is actually very easy. If you're familiar with Muslim sources and you're familiar particularly with the Koran itself, Islam does not represent a viable alternative to the Christian worldview. It cannot deal with the problem of sin and redemption. It cannot deal with its own internal contradictions. It cannot be endorsed on its own terms because it conflicts with the previous revelation of God in the Bible. And that really should be the end of the story for this one. P.S. Muslims are not willing to abide by this reputation, so they've got one answer that they finally give. And I've already hinted at it earlier in our class, but I'll rehearse it quickly here as we come to a close tonight. What they say is, well, yes, the Koran does conflict with your version of the Bible. But you see, the reason for that is that your version of the Bible is corrupted. Now, that claim would be worthy of investigation and apologetical refutation if that claim were advanced on the strength of what evidence? If the followers of the Koran were to give us some reason to believe this, apart from what arbitrary special pleading? Well, in my checklist of things we do in apologetics, what do we not allow? Arbitrariness, Prejudicial conjecture. So if their argument is the Bible has been corrupted so that what you read today is nothing like what it originally said when Moses and David and Jesus gave us these words, if their argument is the Bible is hopelessly corrupted because it conflicts with the Koran, then what are they doing? Their first reasoning in a circle? They're saying, my worldview is true because it claims to be true. So your worldview must be false. The Bible must be corrupted, even though there is not the slightest shred of evidence of that. The Muslim scholar that I debated at the college tried to offer evidence of that by saying, look at all these textual variants. 200,000, I think he said, textual variants in the New Testament alone. But anybody who's done any reading about textual criticism knows that the vast majority of those variants all amount to inversion of a letter or a misspelling and so forth that don't affect the sense of the text at all. Those who have Done the statistics. I haven't done it. I'm resting on them. Have come to the conclusion that we have the original text of the New Testament in full agreement or reconstruction in over 98% of all of the words and lines of the New Testament. And yet he will throw that out to kind of, you know, cloud the issue for people. See 200,000 variants. Should it surprise you then that we think, think that the Bible has been corrupted and that it really originally agreed with the Koran? Well, what we want to ask for is, could you give me an illustration, just a little bit of illustration of the textual corruption that led to Jesus not being crucified, turned into Jesus being crucified. You see, that's not a textual corruption at all. That's a whole scale rewriting. And for that whole scale rewriting, we don't have the slightest evidence in the history of the New Testament manuscripts. And so what this is, is an arbitrary and a prejudicial conjecture that is given as a rescuing device for their book, the Quran. Now, why would Muslims be willing to do that from a scholarly standpoint? It's really silly. I mean, no one can say you've got anything to stand on just because you think the Bible's been corrupted. We need evidence of that. I want to suggest that the reason Muslims feel comfortable in doing that is because they know very well that's what they did. And the third Caliphate, all of the variants on the Qur' an, were called in upon pain of death. And so what we have is a major recension of the Quranic text so that it would become uniform. By the way, it wasn't perfectly done even then. But just for argument's sake, if they want to say the Quran is the Quran is the Quran, everywhere through history we say, well, yeah, upon pain of death, anybody who has a variant is going to lose it and maybe life as well. So perhaps because Muslims themselves have played fast and loose with the actual manuscript evidence, it isn't hard for them to presume that we would have done so as well. But against all of these presumptions, the only thing we have to go by are the facts available to us, and the facts available to us do not support their prejudicial conjecture about the biblical text. If Islam is supposed to be the best alternative as a religious challenger to Christianity, the Christian worldview, I hope that our short remarks, sadly, all too short that our short remarks have shown that in fact, it's not a cogent worldview at all. It doesn't have an adequate Doctrine of authority does not have an adequate doctrine of reality, an adequate doctrine of how we know what we know, how we should live our lives, because everything that it's predicated on is contradictory. You can go right within the Qur' an and destroy all the folks furniture of Islamic theology. We'll see if we can bring this course to a close as the minutes finally ebb away from us here. I am very appreciative of the way in which you've given me your attention and then so understanding of my weaknesses and so forth, the need for breaks and so forth. And you've hung in there. No matter what your age, you hung in there, appreciate that you've been here. I do hope that there's enough coherence from beginning to end that as you leave tonight you feel something of a revolution and a correction of your own inconsistencies and apologetical approach. The conception of apologetics that I've set out for you, which is based on First Peter 3:15, says you need to understand that Christ is the Lord. Lord, and if you'll set him apart as the Lord in your thinking, in your heart, then you'll be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks a reason of you. As Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 10:5, if you bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, if you'll be committed to your worldview, its infallibility, its ultimate authority, then every high thing that is raised up again, God, every reasoning that is imagined against God, can be cast down because all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited in Christ. So make sure that you are not robbed. Make sure that your strength, the riches of your position are not taken away from you by vain philosophy, deceptive and pointless philosophy. That's after the traditions of men, after the elementary presuppositions of the world, and not after Christ. The best way, and ultimately the only effective way to defend the faith is to do so within the circle of the faith itself, by comparing our ultimate authority and our worldview against all other comers. Philosophy would teach us the same thing. If you understood modern issues and epistemology, it turns out the only way you can deal effectively with other philosophies of life is to do an internal critique of them and recognize they have their privileged views, their privileged beliefs, which are at the very center of their web. When apologists through the history of the Christian church have not taken these things into account, they have always ended up saying yes to the world. We agree with you in your starting point, but we disagree with where you end up. And that has meant that apologetics has compromised the authority of Christ and the purity of the Gospel throughout history. I hope that the revolutionary approach that Dr. Van Till has taught us, though it has its foreshadows in Calvin and others, that this revolutionary approach known as presuppositional apologetics, has really captured your attention. I hope that you'll remember the four steps, the procedure that we use in the summary of the questions and issues you want to be throwing at people, and that you remember that it's always the whole enchilada that we're defending. And if you want to know how that's done, just notice that the most avid philosophical attack on the faith today is reduced to foolishness that about religious language and meaningfulness. Notice the most avid scientific attack that we know today from the theory of evolution is just preposterous from a scholarly standpoint and reduces the philosophical nonsense. It too is foolishness. Remember that the most competitive, the most credible competitor to Christian faith in the eyes of many people, Islam, is easily reduced to nonsense and historical errors and internal contradictions within their own revelation. To put it very simply, where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? I hope as you go home and throughout the rest of your lives this will be left ringing in your ears. Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Let's praise God that he's given us a faith so worthy of defense. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do. We thank you for the time you've given us in this class. And we pray that the diligence that we've given to it and the attention that we have paid in taking our notes will in fact pay off in our lives, pay off in more godly living, more faithful reasoning, more effective witnessing for you. We pray that you would help us all to realize the outlook of the Apostle Paul, to have that same confidence and the ability to drive at home that you have made foolish the wisdom of this world. Our Heavenly Father, we would thank you as we leave this class because we know from the things we have studied that we did not come to this position because we were smarter than other men. We did not come to this position because we were more righteous than other men. We did not come to this position because we were more inclined inclined to be believers than other men. We've come to this position not simply because the credentials of it are so strong, but because you've opened our blinded eyes and taken away the darkness of our hearts and enlightened us to see the truth as it is in Jesus. Help us to hold to the simplicity of that faith. Help us to be effective in promoting promoting it in the world. The men might come to know that they only have two options, the option of life and death, light and darkness. Help us to promote all that you have taught on your final authority. Don't let us make the mistake of thinking that anything stands above you and can judge you. Help us to not make the mistake of putting the Lord our God to the test, Lord. Help us to assume the truth of what you have taught us and then apply it to this world. Would you pray that you would make good use of our efforts to bring men to yourself that the light of the gospel might take away more of the darkness of this world? Help us, Lord Jesus, to be good ambassadors for you and not misrepresent what you have said and not put you in the dock while man in his autonomy is yet at the bench. Help us truly to be disciples who bow to you. Help us to know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. We pray that you would accomplish all these things for your glory. In your own name we pray. Amen. 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