Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Classification of Worldviews (Part 25)

Was delivered by Dr. Greg L. Bonson, Scholar in Residence at the Southern California center for Christian Studies in Irvine, California. Six hours of lecture, and though we won't be doing it in the first couple of hours, we will finally get to the practice of apologetics. And that feels good, you know, kind of stretch your muscles and so forth. After a while, a guy who's in training gets just a little tired of being cooperated. You know, he's got to get out there and finally get in the ring and do some hitting. And that's what we're going to do. But we have to finish up our lecture from yesterday on the presuppositional theory of apologetics. We've gone through the concept of apologetics at some length in our first day in the history of apologetics, so we have some background meta theory, meta apologetics, if you will. We've looked at the Bible for guidance, and we've considered what modern philosophy and the history of philosophy would teach us, especially epistemology, the theory of knowledge. And then yesterday we finally started putting all this together in our presuppositional theory of apologetics. The overarching theme, I said, is the greatness of divine wisdom. And we went on to talk about how this develops into a worldview apologetic where you compare the wisdom of God in the Scripture with the foolishness of unbelief. You don't answer the fool according to his folly, lest he you be like unto him. But then you do answer the fool according to his folly, stepping into his worldview to do a lot of internal damage. You try to break up all the furniture in his house, as I said. So the greatness of divine wisdom is the guiding principle here. We looked at Kuyper and Warfield, how they were both right, both wrong. And Van Till hopefully has brought together the good insights and dropped out the bad inferences from both of them. We compared Van Till's presuppositionalism to natural theology and the concept of theistic proof. Van Till does not want to follow the theistic proofs as traditionally formulated, traditionally formulated to suit the autonomy of man. But he does believe in theistic proof, doesn't he? In fact, he offers the strongest form of proof, what we've learned to call transcendental proof, arguing from the preconditions of the intelligibility of logic or science or morality or human personality, whatever it may be. How does Van Til relate to evidences and the use of historical and scientific evidences? Many people would say, well, there's no room for that. In presuppositionalism, you just say, you've got your assumptions, I have mine, we can't talk to each other. Well, that's a tragic misrepresentation. It's not just slanderous on the part of Antilles opponents to say that, but it has deprived them of seeing the strength that presuppositionalism could bring to their use of evidences. Van Till believes in the historic arguments. He believes in arguing for the resurrection. He believes in creation evidences and things of that nature, but he doesn't believe that any of them have any strength. If presented outside the framework of the Christian worldview, there can be no neutrality and there can be no agreement with the autonomy of man. So when we present the evidences, and we present them within our worldview, but within our worldview, which the unbeliever does hold in his heart of hearts, we're going to talk about first thing this morning, then our worldview, those evidences are very strong. They should, as I said, confirm the faith of Christ's little ones. They should embarrass the arrogance of the unbeliever. They should show us the wonder of God in his world. So there is a place for evidences in history and science, but again, within the presupposition of the Christian worldview. And then the last major topic we took up yesterday, when all is said and done, we gotta form this into a procedure, don't we? We need some way of approaching all apologetical problems. That is to say, we need the abstract structure or the roadmap that we're gonna use in every case when we're arguing with somebody. And so I gave you a checklist, or arguing with unbelievers. This is the way we do presuppositional apologetics. And I say this is the way we do. I mean, this is the general outline for what we do. And after the earliest lecture this morning, we're going to finally get down to the practice, which means the details. We'll do a little bit of nitty gritty work and presuppositional defending of the faith. But before we get there, I'm going to pick up on the checklist for arguing with unbelievers and complete my thoughts there and consider two theoretical problems with presuppositionalism that you all need to be aware of at the theoretical level and feel comfortable that they've been answered. I hope you'll feel that they have been answered. And then finally we'll get around to getting into the ring and kind of duking it out with a few problems here. What is our procedure for defending the faith? As I reflected on the questions that you gave me and that I'm going to try to address more explicitly this morning and what I said yesterday, it seemed to me it would have been well for me to emphasize at the very beginning and not take as much for granted as I did to emphasize that the procedure is one of comparing worldviews and everything that we do. We're comparing worldviews. Let me give various kinds of stresses to what I'm saying here. We are comparing worldviews and that means we're considering whole outlooks. We are not arguing about just particular things. We're considering an entire worldview. Even though we can only talk about an aspect of the worldview at a time, it's the whole worldview that we're setting side by side with the whole worldview of the unbeliever. The whole worldview of the unbeliever may be difficult to get out on paper because the unbeliever hasn't thought self consciously about it. But in principle, there's an entire worldview that the unbeliever has, and we have an entire worldview. We are not approaching the unbeliever saying, here's an aspect of my worldview, here's an aspect of your worldview, and that's all I want to talk about now. I can only talk about aspects one at a time. I can only talk about one issue at a time. And I can only talk about one version of autonomy at a time. So that's one of the limitations of being finite. That's one of the limitations of human dialogue. We can only talk about one thing at a time and only talk about that one question or that one aspect of one version of autonomy. But what we are doing is we're setting two worldviews and there's only two available against one another. That's the Christian and the non Christian worldview. And the non Christian worldviews are generally tagged autonomous. You either begin by saying, my mind is not self sufficient. Therefore, if I'm thinking at all, I must know God. I'm made in his image. I'm guilty before Him. I need a son, I need his spirit. You take the whole enchilada that we call Christianity and you compare it to the meal that autonomy represents. Autonomy represents the idea I don't need God at the outset. My mind is self sufficient. I can understand this world. I can give it rational unity as well as recognize its diversity. I can account for all These things. Now, there are various ways in which that meal is served in this world, okay? And so there's the Mexican food version and the Chinese food version and the Persian food version. But the point is you've only got two types of meals. And that's something I feel would have been helpful if I would have stressed yesterday as we began. So I'm doing that now as we review and all of what I'm telling you about the procedure. Remember we're comparing two worldviews. And then we said, how do we compare the worldviews? There's two steps. It's an indirect argument comparing the whole worldview of Christianity with the whole worldview of whichever version that is out there that we're talking about. We first do an internal critique of the unbelievers thinking. We do an internal critique of the unbelievers thinking. And yesterday I said that internal critique looks first of all for prejudicial conjecture. I suggested that about 80% of what you're going to get into when you talk to people is all based on just their unfounded opinions. They just have these conjectures which are based on prejudice, not based on research, not based on evidence. It just, it seems this way to me. So you want to look for signs of arbitrariness. In the thinking of your opponent. And you have to expose that. You have to say, well, I mean, everybody is welcome to their opinion, but this is supposed to be what a reasoned discussion between my worldview taken as a whole, I keep want to stress, I want to stress that today and your worldview taken as a whole. And in your worldview I find that you're falling back on arbitrariness. You're falling back on prejudicial conjecture. You say, oh, well, the text of the Bible must have been changed, we know that always happens, or whatever. Secondly, you look for unargued philosophical bias. Everybody you talk to has an implicit worldview, maybe an explicit worldview that we've already started to lay out for you. But everybody's got some unargued baggage in their thinking. And what you need to do is to expose their presuppositions, expose their worldview. And by exposure, the word expose in English can sometimes be used in the sense of indicting. I'm exposing you, your sin to the light. That's not the emphasis, however, here so much as it is trying to point out to the unbeliever for his own sake. Don't you see how you're resting on this kind of assumption about how we know what we know. Don't you see how you're resting on this kind of assumption about this is the nature of the world in which we live, or this is the nature of the kind of people we are. You want to bring out their unargued biases. You want to expose their worldview. Now, we want to make it real clear. Oh, I see, you've got a Mexican food meal or you've got a Chinese food meal. That's the way you think. Show the character. Don't just say, well, you've got food and I've got food. You want to point out this is the kind of thinking that you're using here. You just took for granted certain things. Remember the example of the person who says, well, we know the Bible can't be trusted because it reports miracles. We know that miracles are impossible. What underlies the statement miracles are impossible? It's a view of the world that it runs like some kind of mechanism and there are never any exceptions to the movement of the mechanism. Right? Everything operates in a law like and therefore predictable fashion. Now we can go on, and we will in the next step or so to refute those worldviews. But right now I'm saying make sure you make it clear. Clear to the unbeliever. Here's what you're saying. Here's what I'm saying. That's one of the nice features of that booklet by Van Til, why I Believe in God. In that hypothetical dialogue. It looks like a lot of wasted space to people who don't understand what's going on. But Van Til keeps bringing it up and they see this is what you've been taught. This is why you think this way. This is why you won't draw the following conclusions with me. But now here's what I've been taught. Here's how I've been brought up. You need to do that in your apologetics. This is not the four spiritual laws of apologetics. I don't mean that everybody goes in and says, okay, law number one, law number two and so forth, but this is what you have to have in your mind. It's kind of like going to a football game and knowing what the strategy for the game is. That doesn't mean you know every particular play and every particular move you're going to make on the field while the play is in motion. But it does mean that you have an overall idea of how you want to get from here to there. Prejudicial conjectures must be called down unargued Philosophical bias must be exposed. And thirdly, you need to point out the internal tensions. Or the incoherence in this philosophical bias that you've explained. So you're talking to somebody who says, oh, I can't believe the Bible reports miracles. We know miracles can't happen. You say, oh, well apparently you think then all of nature operates in a fully predictable law like fashion. It's like a machine just cogs in a machine, aren't we? Yeah, that's right. That's why miracles don't happen. You say, well, but then on the other hand, you didn't think that this conversation, what I'm saying, what you're saying is fully predictable. You seem to be acting like we're arguing here and we're reasoning. We have some kind of mental freedom to say and do what we do and to look at the evidence and draw conclusions and decide what to follow. You want to expose the incoherence or the internal tension in that philosophy of life that has been exposed in step number two. Then the fourth thing you want to do in your checklist or game plan for apologetics is to inquire into, to press the unbeliever about the preconditions of intelligibility. Not every apologetical encounter is going to get to step number four, to level number four, if you will. For all we know, the Holy Spirit may convict the unbeliever. Once number two has been done, once the unbeliever says, oh, I see what I've been saying, wow, I didn't realize that. I don't know, maybe the, you know, the point of conviction will be there and the enlightenment of the Spirit will lead the person to say, I'd rather believe what the Bible says. I don't know how God works in every case. Sometimes the internal tensions, you know, we get hung up for two or three weeks talking to somebody and that finally shakes loose there rebellion and they no longer feel like they have a good reason to resist the gospel. But in principle, and in many, many, many cases, if you keep pushing in the apologetical argument, eventually you must come to the level of discussing what we've called the preconditions of intelligibility. It would do you no good to go and sit down at the coffee shop and tell your unbelieving friend without any kind of lead into this, you know, I'd like to talk to you today about the preconditions of intelligibility. They'd say, no thanks, I'd rather talk about football or something like that. This is in House language. Philosophers, not all philosophers, but philosophers in general, should know what that language refers to. But you know what it refers to because you've been taught. We're asking, what is it that's prerequisite? What would we have to believe about man and the world and reasoning and how we know what we know? What would we have to believe to make intelligible, to make sense out of reasoning itself, to make sense out of human freedom itself? This is where the comparison of the whole enchilada of Christianity and the version of food that the unbeliever, the autonomous version of food that the unbeliever has comes into play. We especially want to line up the two worldviews here and say, well, now, here's why we think using logic and reasoning and rationality is necessary and possible. But I see in your worldview that given what you say about the nature of life, there could be no rationality or no demand for rationality or no laws of logic by which we are rational. What makes intelligible, what makes sense out of the very debate itself? That's what we're asking. And then I started to go through the various possibilities for you. A. There are atheistic worldviews, materialistic, if you will, or naturalistic. And we discussed a number of problems. I think I gave you five, right? I said, here's five real quick ones. Boom, boom, boom, boom. You can really put your opponent, pardon the violent metaphors, on the mat with these questions. Intellectually, you can just totally destroy the atheist. Attempt to be rational, scientific, moral. Atheists cannot account for what we're doing here. They cannot provide, this is our lingo, the preconditions of intelligibility. Then we considered dualistic worldviews. Plato is a sophisticated philosopher with a dualistic worldview. But there are many people today who are implicit dualists. They believe in the time, space world of matter in motion. But they also think there are laws, laws of logic, laws of morality. There's goodwill that we should share with men, whatever. And it isn't a highly complex or philosophical or precisely philosophical view that they can lay out for you. But they keep dancing back and forth between these two. So what did I say? You need to stop the dualist and say, now give some unity to this world. How do you get matter in mind? How do you. How do you get laws and particulars together? How do you account for this world that has both elements in it? Is it one world or two worlds? And what are we? Are we part of the ideal world, the world of ideas and logic? Or are we part of the physical world of matter in motion, which is predictable? And if you say both, how did the two get together? What's the relationship between these two? Okay, if atheistic worldviews won't work and dualistic worldviews won't work, you're left with one other option, and that's religious worldviews or competing religions. And now here's a convenient outline for all the religions of the world. I want to give you an outline because I think if you have cubbyholes for the various possible views, what you can do is anything that you've encountered place in this outline and the way in which you've learned to deal with each kind of cubbyhole or an illustration, a particular member of each category is the same way you're going to deal with the other members of that category as well. So is it possible for us to organize the religions of the world? I think so. I've done a lot of reading and teaching in comparative religion, and I would suggest that all religions fall into one of three categories. First, you have religions of transcendent mysticism. These are worldviews that place an emphasis on something that goes beyond man and his experience. Something that exceeds man's abilities, that goes beyond man in terms of origin, goes beyond man in terms of rationality. It's transcendent, and therefore it tends to be mystical in its religious character and its religious epistemology. Transcendent mysticism. The example that we brought up over and over again is Hinduism. Hindus say reality is ineffable. In fact, reality exceeds any one of us. Reality exceeds all of our thinking. Reality isn't even rational when all is said and done, because rationality calls for drawing distinctions operating according to laws that are distinct from what the laws are applied to. The Hindu says all is one, and the world in which we live, this world of experience is illusion. And as I pointed out a number of times, therefore, religions that stress this kind of we really can't know because realities beyond us can't argue with the Christian, can they? Because they can't argue with anybody being mystical. They deny rationality. And so there's no room for rational argumentation. One of the strangest things, one of the strangest sights in all the world is to see a Hare Krishna arguing with somebody in an airport. It's strange that they think that they're separate from the airplanes too. But when they argue, they're assuming rationality. And then when you show them the irrationality or the contradictions in the worldview Any well trained Hindu is going to say, there you go, using Western logic. Well, if someone says he denies logic, I usually say right back to him, well then you don't. He says, no, I do. Didn't you hear me? Yeah, I did hear you. But since you deny logic, then we can't keep contradictions apart from each other. Since you deny it, you don't deny it. That contradiction is not illegitimate given your worldview where you deny logic, which of course is to say you don't deny logic. So you just can't escape the demands of rationality. Transcendent mysticism. Hinduism is a basic type of religion. It's not always Eastern. Christian science is a religion of transcendent mysticism as well. You think there's suffering and evil all around you. It's illusion. If you really understood reality is transcending. It transcends our experience and our thinking. Well, we can't get into that. Second type of religion is a religion of imminent moralism. Notice we have transcendent religions. That's number one. And those that are not like them are correspondingly eminent in their emphasis. They're here and now. Religions where the basic important factors of the religion are part of man's experience. The emphasis is on this life, not on that which exceeds human experience. And consequently they all tend to be moralistic. Religions that emphasize lifestyle issues, live this kind of life, Be pure, be kind, live according to the wisdom of Confucius. Follow the example of the Buddha. Religions that emphasize lifestyle, here's how you should live, given the eminent authority of Confucius, Buddha, the Dao, whatever it may be. And as I told you yesterday, I said you have religions that crucify rationality. Secondly, you have religions that have arbitrary authorities, right? Whenever somebody says we should live according to the Dao, you have every right to say, why not Buddha, why not Confucius? Everybody has a right to their own opinion. These religions end up falling under the condemnation of step number one up here. They're just prejudicial conjectures. They're just arbitrary. There's no authority behind them. And then thirdly, we have religions that are biblical counterfeits. That is to say, they really rest upon and are parasitic upon the biblical worldview, Biblical teaching, maybe the very book itself, the Bible, Biblical counterfeits. I'm going to define these religions even further. But by calling them biblical counterfeits, that is to say, they rest on the Bible in some way, then they go on to counterfeit the Bible by adding new religions or not reading the Bible properly And so forth by being biblical counterfeits. How do you deal with these religions? I said at the end of class yesterday, you deal with them biblically, since they're biblical counterfeits, then argue from the Bible with them. They hand you biblical authority, something that they allegedly will honor. Force them to honor that authority. Just go right to the Bible. This looks like I said the one kind of worldview that might unsettle the presuppositional approach. That's because they've got something very close to what we have. They've got a Koran, they've got a Book of Mormon, we've got a Bible. What are we going to do? Well, the answer is, actually, they're the easiest to deal with. In theory. They may not be the easiest people to crack in terms of where they're coming from. But in theory, you just say, well, since you've given me biblical authority from which to argue, I'm going to argue from the Bible. But now I can organize the religions and cults of the world a bit further. Underneath this category of biblical counterfeits, it'll help you to notice that we have Unitarian counterfeits, We have polytheistic counterfeits, And finally we have pseudo Messianic counterfeits. I hope this will help you, because when you go through it, all of the cults that are biblical counterfeits either have corrupted the doctrine of the Trinity or they have a different Savior or different understanding of the Savior. Christianity. I mean, if we're to boil it down real quick to its distinctives, Christianity is a triune God and a Savior, a Messiah who's come into this world. And the biblical counterfeits, eventually, that's what they get wrong, the doctrine of the Trinity, instead of being triune, they're Unitarian. There is one person that is God. The Unitarian counterfeits would be like the Muslims. Muslims are not trinitarian. They think Allah is one person. And they find the doctrine of the Trinity. They claim to be polytheistic. They don't understand the doctrine of the Trinity. There are polytheistic perversions of the Bible too. At first blush, that surprises us because after all, Christianity is against polytheism. Well, at least one major professedly Christian cult is not against polytheism, and that's the Mormons. Mormons teach there are many gods. In fact, you will get to be a God if you handle things right in your life. So there's but one person that is God. Here you have, well, you'd have Jehovah's Witnesses, right? You'd have Orthodox Jews, you would have the Muslims, polytheistic corruptions of the Trinity, the Mormons, and then finally pseudo messianic cults that have one kind of savior or another. Good example. I don't know if we'll have time to get to it today, but we might. Look at Sun Young Moon, for instance, the Moonies, as they're called, the Unification Church. Sun Young Moon maintains that Jesus as the Messiah failed in the job God gave him to do. And so now Moon has come into this world to create a new divine family to make up for what Jesus didn't do. In fact, poor God is actually in the embrace of Satan right now, according to Moon, and he's waiting for the new Messiah to take care of the problem. The problem with Moon, of course, is that he couldn't possibly expect people that are in a Christian culture or in Christian churches to listen to him if he didn't say, but I honor Jesus. Jesus was the first Messiah. He fell short. But we should all respect Jesus. That's what you want to watch for. Whenever one of these biblical counterfeits does obeisance to, to the Bible or to Jesus, that's what you want to grab. Hold on. You say, okay, now let's go find out what we know about Jesus and compare his claims to yours and so forth. Okay, that's the outline then of how you pursue the presuppositional approach in its first step. The first step is an internal critique of the unbelievers thinking. I take the autonomous worldview, the autonomous man with whom I'm arguing, and I do an internal critique, looking for arbitrariness, unargued philosophical bias, incoherence, and then ask questions about the preconditions of intelligibility regarding this worldview, be it atheistic, dualistic, or in some way a competing religion. I'd like to give you a summary before I put the second step up on the board, a summary of what this amounts to. What we are doing here is arguing that any worldview, any worldview must simultaneously explain and integrate the following kinds of things. I'm going to give you a list here, but I want to introduce it. Please turn the cassette over. At this time, By block, you lay down these blocks and then another row of blocks and then another row of blocks until you finally get the worldview or your house or your philosophy built. I emphasized at the opening of this morning's lecture, what I think didn't get enough emphasis yesterday is that we're looking at whole worldviews. We're not just looking at the question of how can you get logic into the picture block? 1, how can you get science into the picture block 2. How can you get human personality into the picture block? Three, build it up one by one by one until finally we get the whole Christian worldview over against the failed block. The failed block. We're saying that any worldview must simultaneously explain and integrate the following things. Now why do I say simultaneously? We don't believe, as Van Till put it, a very apt metaphor. We don't believe in the blockhouse method. We don't build up our worldview block by block by block. You lay down these blocks and then another row of blocks and then another row of blocks until you finally get the worldview or your house or your philosophy built. I emphasized at the opening of this morning's lecture, what I think didn't get enough emphasis yesterday is that we're looking at whole worldviews. We're not just looking at the question of how can you get logic into the picture block? One, how can you get science into the picture block? Two, how can you get human personality into the picture block? Three, build it up one by one by one until finally we get the whole Christian worldview over against the failed block, the failed block and the failed block of this autonomous philosophy. No, we're taking this philosophy as a whole over against our philosophy, our worldview as a whole. And we're asking which worldview simultaneously explains and integrates this list of items that I'm going to get to. We're not studying it issue by issue, trying to argue directly for there must be a God. He must have personality, he must have intelligence, and so forth, block by block. We're saying we're starting with the whole story. And by the way, our whole story says you don't have the right to tinker with it. You don't have the right to go in there and, and have removable parts. You don't like this aspect of our theology? Well then sub in something that's more acceptable to you. Ordinarily the enchilada comes with this kind of cheese, but if you like different kind of cheese, you can. No, our worldview is accepted on authority, isn't it? The self attesting authority of Christ speaking in the Bible. I think a lot of people thought that Dr. Van Till was just being kind of homey when he explained his approach to things in the festival of Jerusalem and Athens by saying, jesus writes me a letter. Well, that may seem homey, but that is very important to Our apologetic When I come to the unbeliever, I don't say, you know what? One day I was thinking about logic, and then I came to this conclusion. Then another day I was thinking about human personality and I came to this conclusion and then I thought about the there must be a personal God. Then I thought about my sin, and then I thought about my need of a Savior. Block by block by block I put this thing together. No, I go to the unbeliever and I say, jesus wrote me a letter. I mean, if you want it, you can make it just this adventitious. One day I was walking along and I found this book on the road and I picked it up and I said, wow, what a story. Takes a while to read it and put it all together, but in a sense you can say the Bible is a story about life and about human life and reasoning and what's wrong with us and how we should live and so forth. So when I go to the unbeliever, I take my whole worldview and I say my worldview, it turns out, simultaneously explains and integrates all these items that I keep telling you I'm going to give you. Now, I can't talk about all those items at once. I may have to have one cup of coffee and talk about logic, and then next week come back and have another cup of coffee and talk about personality. Maybe I'll talk about a few things in this session and. And next time, different things, maybe we'll repeat them. We can't say everything at once. I stress that, but in principle, what I'm comparing is simultaneously what my worldview does and what Your worldview does, Mr. Autonomous man, with respect to. And now you want to be able to write fast because I'm going to really steam through these things. By way of summary, comparing the two meals that are out there. How do you know whatever it is you're claiming over and over and over, over and over and over again, you as an apologist must keep saying, how do you know that? How do you know what is your theory of knowledge? How do you know that Confucius was in touch with Tien the heaven? How do you know that? How do you know that miracles are not possible? How do you know that it's wrong to kill other people? How do you know over and over again? That's the key question. Why? Because apologetics is about a reason for the hope that is in us. So we're going to compare reasoning styles, theories of knowledge. How do you know whatever it is you're Claiming. How do you account for logic, number two? And the demand for rationality number three? And scientific inference or the uniformity of nature number four. And abstract concepts and general principles number five. How do you know and account for prescriptions are moral absolutes in your worldview? And then how do you account for mental freedom? That the mind of man is not just a weed that's growing subject to the laws of biology, but we have the freedom to consider evidence and to make decisions as to what's right or wrong? How do you account for man's free will? It's not just that man has a mind that is free, but man also has a body which you say he controls with his free will. Yet the body is part of this natural order that you have already had to explain as uniform in the way that it operates. I'm not nearly done, but maybe you'd like me to review. How did I know that? No, that's the first question you ask people. How do you know? How do you know whatever it is you're claiming? How do you account for logic? How do you account for the demand for rationality? How do you account for scientific inference? How do you account for abstract concepts and general principles? How do you account for prescriptive general principles or moral absolutes? How do you account for mental freedom? How do you account for free will, yet man has a body subject to the uniformity of nature? How do you account for human dignity? How do you account for human uniqueness? The human race is unique. From aardvarks. How do you account for individual. Well, how do you account for individuality among human beings? So you have human dignity, human uniqueness and individuality. How do you account for the origin of life? How do you account for the particularity and diversity that we encounter in our experience? Okay, the last set of conundrums that I've listed. Human dignity, uniqueness, individuality, the origin of life, particularity and diversity. And then the one that is, I think, many times overlooked and may be the answer to one of these questions, indeed, that you've asked me to take up for you. Another thing we have to account for is limitations, to put it very abstractly. See, we've been talking about a lot of positive things, logic, rationality, moral demands. But how do you account for our not being logical, our not being moral? How do you account for our falling short of these things? What is it that brings about limitation? Errors of the human mind and sins in human morality? Every worldview's got to account for that. It's one thing to account for moral absolutes. How can there be moral absolutes? But then in terms of your view of human nature, how do you account for the fact people don't live up to those absolutes? What's wrong? What's man's problem here? And then finally, how do we recover from these limitations and errors, either of intellectual or moral sort? Every worldview's got to have a recovery plan or else it's got to say, yeah, there's these limitations and there's really no hope that we're going to get beyond them. Or it has to say, we don't have limitations and no one ever makes any mistakes. Not many people are going to fall for that one, though. So everybody's worldview if it's going to be true to human experience, after all, we're looking for the preconditions of the intelligibility of human experience. Every worldview is going to simultaneously have to solve the problems of knowledge, logic, rationality, scientific inference, abstract concepts, general principles, prescriptions, moral absolutes, mental freedom, free will, human dignity, uniqueness and individuality, the origin of life, particularity and diversity, limitations of the mind, limitations in behavior and the recovery that we have available from them. And maybe you're not going to talk about all that in one lunch group, that's okay. And maybe you're not going to talk about all of that ever to the person before the Holy Spirit either cracks that nut and they finally say there isn't any hope for the way I've been thinking, or hardens them. So they say, I don't want to talk anymore. So you can't talk about all of these things at once, only one by one by one by one. I know that. And you may not talk about all of them one by one with every person you talk to. But if anybody is going to present a credible worldview over against ours, those are the things they're going to have to do. And that's why I say there isn't any other option but that of the Christian worldview. One of your questions. I'm just going to read it for you here and then hopefully you can see in terms of what I've been saying this morning, what the answer is. The question reads, I understand the method of seeking proof for Christianity on the meta level. That is, without God's existence, there's no predication possible. Without the Christian's worldview, no proof is possible. To deny God is to presuppose him. Or as I put it in summary form, anti theism presupposes Theism. But I do not understand why this principle or method establishes the God of the Bible. It appears to only establish theism to a materialist. There's more to the question, but at just this point, you hear what I said at the beginning is I'm not presenting theism to my opponent. And if he thinks I'm only establishing theism, then he's mistaken me to be talking about one issue after another in a blockhouse method, trying to construct my worldview. So if I talk about some of these things, I only get so far in the conversation. He may say, well, you've only shown the need for a God. You haven't shown the need for a Christian God. But I want to correct him. I'm going to say, I haven't been trying to show you the need for a God based on our autonomous reasoning. I've started with my worldview, a particular God who has revealed himself in the Bible. And I've said, standing here, I don't understand how you can make sense out of logic. I know why I want to be logical standing where I am. But if I come stand over here, I don't understand how you can make sense out of logic. But I didn't come standing over here to say, now logic is the one and only thing that's necessary to prove the Christian worldview. No, I'm comparing worldviews, right? I'm comparing the whole enchilada against the particular meal that he wants to offer. And I'm saying, your meal stinks. Your meal is poisonous. And one of the ways I know that I haven't even got dessert yet, but already you've destroyed logic. So this meal is not going to be edible. I'm not offering him just a little bit of a meal over against the part of the meal that he didn't make edible. I'm saying I've got a whole worldview. My worldview doesn't destroy logic. What about yours? See what I'm getting at? It's not a matter of saying, let's start with logic and see if that gets us to God. I'm saying, as a Christian, I see I have to be logical. Do you have to be logical? I debated Gordon Stein at the University of California, Irvine. I basically said, given the meal that you want to serve to these poor people out here tonight, you're telling them that only matter and motion exist. But if only matter and motion exist, then there are no laws of logic that did not in one fell swoop, as an autonomous point of philosophical analysis, prove Christianity. To be true. But in comparing Christianity, where logic is possible and reasonable and sensible, to materialism, where it is not, logic helps us to see the only meal available is Christianity. Okay, so the first point is when you say, I don't understand how this principle establishes the God of the Bible. You have to remember we're starting with the God of the Bible. That's the comparison. We're starting with the story. We picked up this book on the road one day and we read about Jehovah and his son Jesus. And that's what we're talking about. We're not just talking about logic out here leading to either this worldview or that worldview, because there is no consideration of logic out here apart from this worldview or that. Everything that is argued. You begin to remember this now, didn't I teach this to you? Everything that we argue about is argued about within a worldview. If we could imagine. Worldview A here, worldview B here, and these items that we're arguing about as somehow brute facts that are outside of worldview. So now we have, over here, XYZ issues. The way I put this up on the board, where X is not in this worldview or that worldview Y is not in this worldview or that worldview is the only presupposition that will make sense out of this question. The question's not malicious, it's a very good question. But you have to understand that if you think we're talking about the laws of logic as an X outside of this or that worldview, then it naturally would follow to say, well, okay, even if X fits worldview A but not B, you haven't really shown the Christian God. You've only shown a God necessary for logic. Well, that would be true. But what have I said? I've said already this week, no one can argue about X, Y and Z out there and then decide how they fit worldviews. The consideration of X, Y and Z is always a consideration that takes place within a worldview context. So all I can do is I can stand over here, Dr. Van Til says, and say, notice this, on the Christian worldview, you've got to be logical. The demand for rationality is there. But, you know, as I think about it, on your worldview, Mr. Atheist, there isn't any logic or demand for rationality. So you can compare A and B and you can put logic here and logic here and see which one will digest it and which one vomits it out. But you can't put logic outside a worldview and say, okay, point Number one, in favor of the Christians. We've got logic now. Blockhouse. I mean, block number two, by the way, we've got science, too. No, what we're saying is we've got a worldview. What do you want to talk about? And we know we're going to have to talk about this, that and the other. Logic, science, human personality. If their worldview is going to be intelligible and can make sense out of why we're having this argument, the question continues, what is it about Christianity which uniquely provides the preconditions for reason, proof, etc. Well, the thing about Christianity that makes it uniquely provide that is that it alone simultaneously solves all those problems that I gave you. And if we are at a more advanced level and I had more time, I could give you even more on that list, that checklist of things to think about. You see, Christianity isn't preferred just because it has logic. It makes intelligible use of logic. It also makes intelligible use of science and acknowledges human freedom. Watch what happens if I have a worldview that doesn't have all of those things, in fact, much more. Let's say I have a worldview. And you're going to run into people who will say this, who studied philosophy. They'll say, well, in my worldview, the laws of logic are transcendental. Try denying the laws of logic. Every time you try to deny them, you affirm them. So the laws of logic establish themselves. I've had people who have looked at presuppositional apologetics, have come to understand some of its thrust. Then they run up against that and they go, ooh, maybe it doesn't work after all. I said, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're having a cup of coffee with this guy who says, I can establish the laws of logic by this transcendental of logic itself. You're not going to stop talking to him at that point, are you? Aren't you going to ask him? Oh, and how do the laws of logic get into my mind? I mean, we've just begun to scratch the surface of things. We've got to get settled here. Because, you see, the laws of logic are universal, aren't they? By their own character. But my mind is not universal, it's particular. Now, what I'd like to know is, on your worldview, how did the laws of logic become particularized in my mind? Also on your view, how do the laws of logic apply to the operation of the natural world? We do use logic when we try to build bridges but why should what is in my mind, the demands of my mind, be applicable out in the world? That, according to your worldview, is sound and fury signifying nothing. See, now we got something else to talk about. So he may think, well, I got the laws of logic, but if that's his entire worldview, then he doesn't have any human personality. He doesn't have human freedom, he doesn't have the uniformity of nature, and he doesn't have the application of what I think in my mind to the world outside. That's why I keep stressing the simultaneity of the Christian worldview. All these things, amazingly, hang together. We got a world that operates in a uniform way, and yet I've got human freedom. We've got abstract laws of logic, but I have a particular mind that can use those abstract universal laws. How does that come about? Well, we have to tell you some theology. We have to tell you about God and his character and creation and being made in his image and his providence in the world and so forth and so on. But the point is, our story takes care of all that. And let me press even further. And our story takes care of what I'm going to call, for the sake of summary here, the redemptive need of man. Please don't think of redemption as simply a matter for one's eternal destiny. Men are lost in their thinking. Men are lost in their living. Thinkers are livers in this world. And they're lost now, not just in all eternity. And it's because. Because we are fallen human beings that we're having this argument. Let me back up a second. Why is it, if we're all so rational, let's just give this guy the laws of logic and we're really going beyond anything he deserves. But let's just say he can explain why there is a mind that has the laws of logic that applies to the particulars of a chance world outside, and that I have the freedom to think about that even if he had all that going, he'd still have to account for what? Why is it that this rational person living in this rational world that you're talking about makes mistakes? And why is it that when we make mistakes about the nature of reality and so forth, that we sometimes come to argue about it? Now we're having a very suavitary and moto argument, gentle and so forth. But most people would have to grant that when it comes to important issues like the nature of human beings and how we should live and so forth, most of these arguments prove Violent. That's what the history of the human race is all about. Your worldview is going to have to account for more than just logic, rationality, and the uniformity of nature. Now, it really can't do all of that. But for argument's sake, even if you had somebody who keeps going after those issues, you have to say, why then do human beings disagree with each other? And why do they fight with each other, each other? Why do they mistreat each other? Why do they lie to each other? Why are there schools of philosophy that teach you to deceive people to win the argument? Now, I want an explanation for that. I want to know about the limitations of this rational person that's got free will in this world. Why is it that you have that? Again, our worldview is all about that story, isn't it? We've made the mistake, as Christian philosophers and apologists often, of making apologetics some kind of intellectual, abstract parlor game, in a sense, forgetting that apologetics is part of the nitty gritty of living in this world. Fallen men argue, men who need redemption, and that means they need to have their minds saved. They need to have their worldviews corrected and cleaned up. Now, how does the unbeliever account for that? The reason why it's only the Christian worldview that will do the number is because even if you could get all the abstract positive things in order, you now have to start taking care of the negative limitations in human life and thinking Christians can, non Christians can't. You can't put it all together if you're a non Christian. You already know that I have some real strong reservations about the philosophy of Herman doyoubert. I don't need to repeat them, but I'm not telling you that I would like to endorse doyoubairg in a real basic way. But you know. Doyouva did have some real brilliant insights along the way. One of which is unbelievers tend to get one thing right about the world, and then they idolize it. They get math right, then they make math and the experience of math the absolute modality. They create an idol out of their approach to the world via math. But others, you see, may have some insight about sociology. Correct. And they'll idolize sociology and they'll see all the math stuff as sociological stuff. Sinners tend to do that. And that's helpful for you to know. You talk to somebody, he may get something right. He may say, oh, yeah, well, here's why logic is possible. Here's why science is possible. But he's got to do more than that. He can't make an idol out of the uniformity of nature. He makes an idol out of the uniformity of nature. He destroys human free will, and then he can't account for sin and salvation and so forth. So I hope this helps you see why it is that Christianity uniquely provides the preconditions for reason and proof, the intelligibility of human experience. Because only Christianity doesn't fall into idolatry. It follows the living and true God which can account for the positive things about me. I'm made in the image of God, the positive things about the world. It's under the providential care and control of God, as well as accounting for why I'm limited, why I am fallen sinful, and how I can take care of that. Because, you see, even if you had an account of man's sin, it wouldn't be enough unless your worldview could explain how it is that we come back from that. Because for all we know, if we're fallen sinful to human beings, what we're saying right now is an expression of our fallen sinful nature. But everybody assumes when they're in an argument, especially of a philosophical nature, that what they're saying is true. Well, how did we get, as fallen human beings, to being able to say what is true about human life? Where did this recovery come from? Or to put it simply, why is it that we need more than deism as our worldview? Because deism doesn't take care of man's sin and explain how men can have the light again shine in their minds. The Christians have got the recovery plan. It's all part of the story. Okay, so the question was it could appear that the transcendental argument only proves a specific kind of theism, and the evidences for Christianity must be utilized to argue specifically for Christian theism. But on the approach that I've been teaching you, the evidences and the philosophical arguments are all doing the same thing. They're being presented within this worldview, over against that worldview. So I don't go so far with my philosophical argument. A God and then the evidence, take me to the Christian God, but rather it's the Christian God that I start with in my comparison to begin with. Now then, the second step in our presuppositional approach, the order here temporally is not important. The first step, internal critique. The second step is to set forth the Christian worldview as the context, as the context for, well, our argument and so forth. The context for the Preconditions of intelligibility. If the main method is comparison, then you better get something out there to compare to. Don't be shocked to find that when you argue with people, even intelligent people, even university trained people, even people who have read a lot in other fields, that they don't know what the Christian claims are, they've got it muddled. It is little wonder that they think their worldview, you know, can do pretty well over against this muddled version of Christianity. What did Van Till do in his little pamphlet why I Believe in God? He said, I have to apologize often we who are Christians have not made it plain to you that we worship a God who is absolutely sovereign and no one has the right to question him. Now, I'm aware of the fact that God is presented by Christians, Van Til says, but not all that they need to know about God. They don't present his absolute authority. Now if I'm going to argue for God, I have to explain to the non Christian, well, this is the kind of God I worship. Now you need to understand also that within my worldview, given this kind of God, anything that happens has got a morally sufficient reason. You have to understand that within this world you've given that kind of God, no one has the right to challenge him. God says, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Now all of this is presented, it may not be accepted by the unbeliever, but that's okay. Because what does Van Till say? He says, I realize you think you have reasons to reject everything I'm going to tell you, but you can at least follow the argument for argument's sake. So I want to tell you why I'm a Christian. I want to tell you what it is to be a Christian. Early in the course this week, under the concept of apologetics, you remember how I emphasized that testimony is part of apologetics, putting that testimony in the biblical history as part of apologetics. You got to lay that out so that the unbeliever has a proper conception of apologetics, understands what it really is, and can understand why it is. A Christian needs to be rational. Why a Christian thinks nature is studyable, shows uniformity, why we're supposed to live our lives in a particular way, and how we get redemption when we haven't lived our lives in that particular way. So set forth the story of Christianity. Is this too homey? Tell people the old, old story of Jesus and his love. That's what Van Tilb did. Here's one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. Yet when you hear him preach or look at his writings, he was able just to tell the old, old story. And he thought that was philosophically significant. I know that people snickered at him for doing that. I've heard them. I've listened to their ridicule. I've read their ridicule. It's like, when's he going to start doing philosophy? Well, he had a very unique understanding of philosophy. He thought he was doing philosophy when he told the old, old story, set forth the Christian worldview and say, now, see, I found this book on the road one day. I picked it up and read it and I said, wow. This book says I was created by God. This book tells me that I'm just as guilty as my first father for rebelling against him. In fact, it tells me that I have a blinded set of eyes and a hard heart and there's nothing I do that is right and can gain his attention and favor and on and on. Within that context, we can explain what is both good and positive about human life and reasoning and what is bad and how we can take care of what is bad. Set forth the Christian worldview and then I'm going to say as the context for one, dealing with objections, two, the intelligibility of human experience, and three, conflict and redemption. Set forth the Christian worldview first as well. Not first in the sense of. These are three things you're going to cover, but there are three things you want to make sure that you're prepared to make the Christian worldview the context for. First, dealing with objections. I want to set forth the Christian worldview to you, Mr. Autonomous Man. It.