Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Evidence (Part 22)

This message is a continuation of the previous tape, and in that case it is even an insult to him. And having insulted God, his displeasure rests upon you. God, and you are not on speaking terms. It's one of the things that always endeared me to Van Tiel. He had such a nice way of putting this stuff. But, I mean, just stands to reason, right? I mean, if you're insulting God, you're not on speaking terms, are you? And you have very good reasons for trying to prove that he does not exist. If he does not exist, he will. I mean, if he does exist. Pardon me, if he does exist, he will punish you for your disregard of Him. You are therefore wearing colored glasses, and this determines everything you say about the facts and reasons. Now we're getting a little hurt for you. Now we're telling the unbeliever something about himself he doesn't want to acknowledge. You're not neutral. You're not on speaking terms with God. You have an axe to grind, and therefore you've got colored glasses on. Glasses that color everything that you say and think and do. I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain. Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are. In our arguments for the existence of God, we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree. But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life. Truly, we really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter. We should have told you this more plainly than we did, but we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you to be a very odd or extreme position. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our God. But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than he really is. He wants to be presented as the all conditioner, as the emplacement on which even those who deny him must stand. This is a brilliant presentation for every man of the transcendental argument. God says he wants to be presented to you, the unbeliever, as the very foundation on which you must stand, even when you deny Him. Now, in presenting all your facts and reasons to me, you have assumed that such a God does not exist. You have taken for granted that you need no emplacement of any sort outside of yourself. You have assumed the autonomy of your experience. Now what we're doing is we're pointing out to the unbeliever. In all of this argumentation, all of this dialogue between us, you have taken for granted the very thing you're supposed to be proving. See, we're turning the tables, right? Because the unbeliever's been saying to us, well, you're always assuming what you're supposed to be proving. We say, yes, and you too, you too have all along assumed your autonomy. But if the God, if God of a sort, as I presented to you, exists, you're not autonomous. You've insulted him. You've thought. There's no emplacement on which you need to put your reasoning and your appeal to experience and facts. Consequently, you are unable, that is, unwilling, to accept as a fact any fact that would challenge your self sufficiency. And you are bound to call that contradictory, which does not fit into the reach of your intellectual powers. You remember what old Procrustus did in if his visitors were too long, he cut off a few slices at each end. If they were too short, he used the curtain stretcher on them. It is that sort of thing I feel, that you have done with every fact of human experience. And I'm asking you to be critical of this, your most basic assumption. If you know the history of philosophy, that line is just a knife through the heart. Because what is it that Enlightenment thinkers had said that they would do? They would be critical of every assumption. Every assumption must pass the test of their critical analysis. Van Til says, fine, then I want you to be most critical of your most basic assumption, that you're autonomous. Are you willing to consider that critically? Vantil says, on page 14, I might present to you great numbers of facts to prove the existence of God. And he goes on to talk about, I might say that every effect needs a cause. I might point to the wonderful structure of the eye as evidence of God's purpose. I might call in the story of mankind through the past to show that it has been directed and controlled by God. All these evidences would leave you unaffected. And when the evidence for Christianity proper is presented to you, the procedure is the same. If I point to the prophecies of Scripture having been fulfilled, you will simply reply that it's quite naturally appears that way to me and to others, but that in reality it's not possible for any mind to predict the future from the past. Van Til talks more about the sorts of things he present as evidence, and then he comes to this line, but you have an always available and effective answer at hand. It is impossible. You always assume your autonomy. And whenever I present these evidences, as good as they may be, you've always got an answer from within your worldview. It's impossible. Human mind can't do. Nature is not like that. And so then Van Til says, now before I drill into the nerve of the matter, I must again make apologies. The fact that so many people are placed before a full exposition of the evidence for God's existence and yet do not believe in him, has greatly discouraged us. We've therefore adopted measures of despair. Anxious to win your goodwill, we have again compromised our God. Noting the fact that men do not see, we have conceded that what they ought to see is hard to see. And our great concern to when men we have allowed the evidence for God's existence is only probably compelling. Do you suppose that our God approves of this attitude of his followers? I do not think so. The God who claims to have made all facts and to have placed the stamps upon them will not grant that there is really some excuse for those who refuse to believe. Mantle says, if I have not offended you, I have not spoken of my God. For what you have really done in your handling of the evidence for belief in God is to set yourself up as God. You have made the reach of your intellect the standard of what is possible and not possible. You have thereby virtually determined that you intend never to meet a fact that points to God. Facts to be facts at all, facts, that is, with decent scientific and philosophic standing must have your stamp instead of that of God upon them as their virtual creator. I do hope that you'll pick up the pamphlet and read it through and then read it through and then read it through again over and over again, because it is the clearest expression of all this fancy theological and philosophical stuff that we've been talking about. Van Til says, when I defend the faith, I need to set the two worldviews over against the that doesn't mean I have to use fancy vocabulary or jargon or even tell the unbeliever this is what the strategy is. But I need to get it all out before him. You need to know the sort of God I believe in. You need to see that within my worldview all of your objections can be handled quite easily. And on the other hand, you need to say that you see that you've got a worldview and that you haven't been willing to be critical of your most basic assumption about your autonomy. But if God doesn't lie behind all the facts of our experience. None of the facts have any meaning. You can't make sense of your reasoning. You can't make sense of your appeals to history or to science and so forth within your worldview. And therefore I maintain that the God I worship, the all conditioner, is the explanation that makes sense out of my belief and your disbelief. And at the end of the pamphlet, Van Till will go on to repeat the argument that the proof of the Christian God is that without him you couldn't prove anything at all. And so then Van Till very quietly says, and so I must leave you in his hands. He's the one who has conditioned everything in my life and brought me to faith in Him. And it's in his hands, the hands of God, the all conditioner, that I leave you. That's the presuppositional theory of apologetics. I hope you have some understanding of its distinctiveness. Over against natural theology and the traditional formulation of theistic proofs. We are not giving up theistic proof. We are reformulating theistic proof in a presuppositional fashion. We're going to take a two minute break here, a real brief one before our afternoon break. And when we come back, I want to talk to you now about evidences and how they fit into the presuppositional approach. All right. We have been looking at different personalities and schools of apologetics that can help us understand, by contrast, more clearly what the presuppositional theory of apologetics is. We've looked at Kuyper and Warfield, their differences, and how Van Till really stands in the gap between them, agreeing and disagreeing with them. And that leads to the transcendental argument for Christian theism from the necessity of the Christian worldview. Assuming that there are two sciences that are developing, we want to attack the credibility of the science of the unbeliever, showing that by right reason there's an objective proof of Christianity and it comes from the destruction of the unbeliever science. And we've now studied the issue of natural theology over against natural revelation and have pointed out that the traditional ways in which God's existence have tried to be proven or proved have fallen short of doing so because they're philosophically fallacious, but even more important, theologically unsound. But that doesn't mean we don't believe in proving God's existence objectively. Van Till very definitely believes an objective proof of God's existence. And it's a transcendental proof, the proof of God's existence. The Proof of Christian theism is that without this God you couldn't prove anything. And I've been reminded at the break by Bill that we should stress here that it's Christian theism that we're talking about. Van Till did not believe that we first defend an abstract or basic notion about God, and then we go on to have arguments that prove a more specific character about God so that it becomes the Christian God. When he speaks of theism, it's always Christian theism. That is the Christian world and life view taken as a whole. And we've gone over a little pamphlet. I really wish we had time to do more in Van Till, but in that nice popular presentation, we see the distinctives of the presuppositional theory worked out by Van Till in a hypothetical conversation with an atheist. The next thing on our agenda is to ask about the place of evidences in presuppositional apologetics. Unfortunately, some very misleading implications are taken for granted from the labeling of the two basic popular theories of evangelical apologetics. The two basic schools of apologetics which are popular in the 20th century have come to be called evidentialism and presuppositionalism. And what I'm saying is that some very misleading implications are taken from that kind of labeling. That kind of labeling leads the unwary to think that evidentialists do not have presuppositions and that presuppositionalists do not use evidence. And both of those, both of those notions are thoroughly mistaken. Evidentialists, those who are in that school of thought called evidentialism, have their presuppositions. They often don't acknowledge that. They don't realize that, but they have their presuppositions. And on the other hand, presuppositionalists do not argue in such a way that's allergic to the use of evidence. In fact, if you've been listening closely, what I've been teaching is that we think everything is evidence, not just the special evidences that support biblical accounts or show some kind of wondrous order in the universe. We think every bit of evidence supports Christianity because without the precondition of the Christian worldview, you couldn't make sense out of any human experience. And so, regarding the presuppositionalist attitude toward evidence, I hope you'll see how very far off the mark Van Till's critics have often been. In his article for Van Till's Festrif, Once upon an a Priori, John Warwick Montgomery misrepresents Van Til as presenting the unbeliever with an a priori dogmatic instead of the factually compelling evidence for the Christian truth claim. Clark Pinnock in his the Philosophy of Christian Evidences in the same work alleges that Van Til, and I quote him, refuses to have anything to do with rational arguments and empirical demonstrations. End of quote. To hear these men, Montgomery and Pennock, you'd be led to believe Van Till recoils from presenting verifying evidence for the faith and would dismiss the unbelievers questions without a hearing. There is no argument, there is no appeal to evidence, there is no rational argumentation with the unbeliever you have no right to ask questions. End of the story. I mean that's the way Van Till is portrayed in the literature. And I think again it's morally scandalous. The actual truth is that Van Til does not in the slightest reject the proper use of inductive reasoning and empirical evidences in apologetics. Could I quote him, put it in his own words? Listen to what he says about the phenomena of Scripture. The point is, we are told that any in an infallible Bible there should not be any discrepancies. There should be no statement of historical fact in Scripture that is contradictory to a statement of historical fact given elsewhere. Yet higher criticism has in modern times found what it thinks are facts that cannot possibly be harmonized with the idea of an infallible Bible. What shall be the attitude of the orthodox believer with respect to this? Shall he be an obscurantist and hold to the doctrine of the authority of the Scripture, though he knows that it can empirically be shown to be contrary to the facts of Scripture themselves? It goes without saying that such should not be his attitude. That's a pretty categorical denunciation of the very thing that Montgomery and Pinnock are trying to pin on him. The presuppositionalist is not at all allergic to employing empirical inductive study according to the scientific method, but just the opposite. Let me give you a series of quotations from Van Til. It is quite commonly held that we cannot accept anything that is not the result of a sound scientific methodology. With this we can, as Christians heartily agree. The Christian position is certainly not opposed to experimentation and observation. Another depreciation of the sense world inevitably leads to a depreciation of many of the important facts of historic Christianity which took place in the sense world. The Bible does not rule out every form of empiricism any more than it rules out every form of a priori reasoning. The greater amount of detailed study and the more carefully such study is undertaken, the more truly Christian will the method be. It is important to bring out this point in order to help remove the common misunderstanding that Christianity is opposed to factual investigation. The difference between the prevalent method of science and the method of Christianity is not that the former is interested in finding the facts and is ready to follow the facts wherever they lead, while the latter is not ready to follow the facts. End of quote. Once again, how could Van Till's opponents have gotten it so wrong? These affirmations by Van Til fully comport with his presuppositional thinking and method. They're not out of character, they're not inconsistent with his system as a whole. Evidentialist critics, of course, would at this point jump back from the challenge and say, why then does Van Till rule out the historical argument for the resurrection? And that kind of question would only display all the more the blinding effect of their preconceptions. Listen to Van Till in his own words. Quote, Historical apologetics is absolutely necessary and indispensable to point out that Christ rose from the grave. Not only is it indispensable in general, Vantil says of himself, in particular, quote, I would therefore engage in historical apologetics. Man, I wish, you know, Montgomery had to have that written on his forehead. You know, Van Tilzel. Van Tilz says, I would engage therefore in historical apologetics. Why doesn't he? Why didn't he? Vantil said, because I worked in a seminary where others who knew how to do that better did. And so I specialized in what was my gift, philosophy and analysis and so forth. And I left it to others primarily to develop historical evidences and all that. But he said, I do that. That's to be done. That's important for a Christian. The plain and simple fact is that from the very start, Van Til's presuppositionalism has not been antagonistic to, has not been meant as a substitute for evidences and empirical reasoning in support of the historic Christian faith. He has always had tremendous confidence in evidences. Listen to this. Every bit of historical investigation, whether it be in the directly biblical field, archaeology, or in general history, is bound to confirm the truth of the claims of the Christian position. A really fruitful historical apologetic argues that every fact is and must be such as proves the truth of the Christian theistic position. End of quote. That's not a man who's against evidences. That's not a man who's against empirical study and investigation of nature or of history. We must not forget that Van Till lays strong emphasis upon natural Revelation and is apologetic since he takes natural revelation to be a clear communication from God through the facts of nature and history, one that leaves men guilty for rebelling against God. It's altogether consistent that Van till then endorses the work of scientists and historians in offering verification for the claims of the Christian faith. So let me suggest to you four uses for empirical evidences within a presuppositional theory. Four uses of empirical evidence in what ways will an empirical study of the facts of nature and history benefit the Christian apologist? 1. It will be of particular value. First, in strengthening the confidence of believers. Evidences offer God's children the answers that they need so as not to be intellectually troubled when hearing the learned objections of non Christian scholars. We should engage in evidences, if nothing else, as Machen used to put it, to help Christ's little ones, to show them that when the world presents all these counter evidences, allegedly there's nothing for them to be upset about, that the proper study of the world and history actually supports Christianity and they don't have to worry about these objections. Second, empirical evidences can be used to embarrass unbelievers in their sarcasm and criticisms against the Bible's scientific and historical claims. Evidences can silence the futile empirical objections of unbelievers to the claims of Christianity. It's not unusual for us to be in an environment where people say, how could any intelligent person believe these things? Don't you know that evolution has been proven? And when you have somebody who is talking in that way, don't you know that the Bible's been discredited historically? Don't you know that there are all these textual variations? We don't even know what the Bible originally said. When people start immediately kind of blowing off that kind of arrogant opposition to Christianity, the evidences are very valuable. To embarrass them right then and there and say, oh, evolution has been proven to be true. Well then what about this? And then you appeal to something that makes it look like evolution in fact is a preposterous theory. Or we don't know what the original text of the Bible is. Apparently you don't know that we have more manuscript evidence for the New Testament, for instance, than any other ancient document. So if we don't know what the original of the Bible is, even worse, we don't know the original of anything from ancient history. You really want to live with that conclusion? Now I'm not saying that you use this evidence because all of a sudden people are just going to drop down dead in front of you and say, oh, you win. But it's the shut them up hardly. It's the silence, our opponents and their arrogance when they say, any rational person knows better than this. Thirdly, an effective use of empirical evidences might also be helpful in clearing away the mental debris of intellectual prejudice held by so many unbelievers so that those to whom we speak can now better hear and consider the full message of Scripture. See, if you're talking to somebody who says, well, don't you realize that you can't trust what Moses said? Because Moses makes reference to seven armed candle stands. And we know from history that that sort of thing was not developed till the Persian period. And so obviously Moses didn't write this. Well, if that person is hung up on something like that, it may seem strange to us. But then again, remember how desperate unbelievers are. They'll take something like that and say, I don't have to worry about the Bible now, because I found this. It may be very helpful for you to point out that recent archaeological. Actually, not so recent now, but archaeological discoveries have shown seven armed candle stands before the Mosaic period, not in the Persian period. And so what was apparently this desperate way to hold on to. I don't have to pay attention to the Bible. It's been taken away. That's very valuable. Finally, used in the proper way, evidences can display to the willing unbeliever, that is, one whose resistance is curbed by the Holy Spirit, can display to the willing unbeliever the wonder, the wonder of God as the original creator and providential sustainer and miraculous redeemer. It is wondrous after all. I must say I am sad to see the way in which many who claim to be presuppositionalists have been willing just to say, well, we have the autonomous man out there. We can't grant him his autonomous, and that's the end of it. We should be showing the wonder of the evidences that God has given. There are plenty of them. It's just we should never present the evidences for something they are not. My problem with evidentialists like Montgomery and many times the creation science people and so forth, my problem with them is not that they don't give us helpful information, but they present it as though it's somehow neutral, objective, scientific, historic research that is presuppositionalist. It's not at all. I mean, I think that's just mistaken. But having said that, there is nevertheless wondrous evidence out there. Let me give you an example. The biological fact that life does not spring from non life is the fact that spontaneous generation does not take place and that life cannot be produced artificially, even under the most advanced and controlled technological conditions should help us to see God's work of creation. That is, it gives evidence of what we know to be true. That God created the world. Life couldn't come from anything, but from God, who eternally is life itself. Another example, the chemical fact of of molecular bonding in the case of H2O water allows for water to form as a liquid and not constantly escape as a gas. And yet the bonding breaks upon evaporation so that it can spread over other areas and not lie heavy upon the ocean. The fact that water, unlike most liquids, expands upon freezing, achieves a maximum density at 4 degrees centigrade, brings it about, that it floats so that lakes do not completely freeze from bottom up. Such a remarkable thing helps us see God's work in Providence that were not true, we'd lose our water supply. The very sustaining of life on this planet depends upon God's providential ordering of of this particular fact about water. What does Proverbs tell us? Jehovah by wisdom founded the earth. By understanding he established the heavens. By his knowledge the depths were broken up and the skies dropped down dew. So the study of the world has helped us to understand all the more the marvel of what the Bible tells us about God's providence. Take another example from history. The historical fact that the closest followers of Jesus still did not understand or expect his resurrection, but were in fact shattered and depressed by his death, coupled with how easily the Jewish leaders and Roman guards could have produced his body if it were there to produce, helps us to see the wonder of our Savior's miraculous resurrection and helps give an explanation of the early church's confidence and preaching. After all, Paul could say to Festus, this hasn't been done in a corner. I'm moved by that. I think that's very important. Is that the sort of thing they made up, they didn't even expect it. Jesus had to rebuke them for not looking for the resurrection. See, it's not the sort of thing, therefore, that if you're going to be a good historian, you're going to say comes from the imagination of those who didn't expect it. Evidences thus should powerfully impress us with the reality and truth of God and they should aid us in pressing those claims upon the unbeliever. Now I've said it, it's on tape. I trust that will settle it. No longer will we be maligned and misrepresented as thinking evidences should be askewed. We don't want any of that kind of stuff that isn't true at all. Of course I'm tongue in cheek. I fully expect for the rest of my career we'll continue to hear this kind of slander that presuppositionalists are not evidentialists and therefore they're against evidences. No, presuppositionalists are not evidentialist and therefore they don't present evidences in an allegedly neutral light that the right reason of the natural man can put together as raw data from his experience and understand that very probably God exists. We present evidences to the unbeliever, but we present them within what the framework of our worldview. According to Scripture, evidences cannot stand alone as indispensable and as valuable as they are, it would be a misleading conception to think that evidences can stand on their own in Christian apologetics. Please turn the cassette over at this time and I think that should be obvious. It should have been obvious to all of us from what God's Word teaches. First of all, the Bible shows us that what people will think what people will think about the observed evidence is affected by certain non observational beliefs. What people think about the evidences the observed evidence is going to be affected by non observational beliefs. Matthew 28:17 There was observed evidence of the resurrected Savior, but what people thought about that evidence was affected by something they didn't observe because it says they doubted. The same holds in John 21, verse 12 with respect to doubting Thomas. Thomas had evidence, but he said he wouldn't believe unless he had a different kind of evidence. Obviously he had some kind of non observational belief that was directing him as to how he should interpret it, and he valued the observational beliefs that he had. Secondly, in dealing with the claims of Christ, nobody is truly detached and uncommitted one way or another. No man can serve two masters. He who is not with me is against me. Jesus said. What one presupposition takes as foolish, the other sees as wisdom. Thirdly, the non observational commitments of the unbeliever are objectively foolish and lead to the destruction of knowledge because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fourthly, all men inescapably have an inner knowledge of God, the one whose sovereign power and plan uphold the universe with regularity, working all things after the counsel of his own will. 5 Yet, yet unbelievers are deeply hostile to this knowledge and as Paul says in Romans 1, suppress it in unrighteousness and says in Ephesians 4 prefer to walk in the vanity of their minds and darkened understanding. 6 that explains why it is regarding such empirical evidence as the resurrection. If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead. Luke 16:31 the non observational beliefs within the net, within the web, pardon me, affect what you take to be the observational beliefs that you have. And the Bible says that people will not be persuaded by the resurrection if they do not put the resurrection within the context of what God's word teaches. And 7 nevertheless, the objective revelation provided by God in the evidence of history and Scripture is such that we can through the resurrection and I'm quoting, know for certain, not just probably know for certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ. Acts 2:36 Isn't that great? The Bible says we can know for certain that he rose from the dead. Evidentialists Their problem is they haven't gone far enough. They present the evidence as though it's probable that. But the Bible says we can know for certain from this. And so let me now turn to philosophical problems with autonomous evidentialism. We're not against evidence. I've listed for you four good uses of evidence by the Christian apologist. It's just that we understand that the evidence has to be placed within the proper framework in order to be understood as evidence and effective. What I want to do now is look at the evidential approach to apologetics and indicate some philosophical problems with it. The Biblical insights the seven biblical insights that I've just listed for you sadly are ignored by those who call themselves evidentialists in our day. Their hope and their aim is to have the unbeliever approach the uninterpreted facts in a neutral fashion to see how they demonstrate the probability of Scripture's truth. And according to the evidentialist, no presuppositions are supposed to intrude in the reasoning of the believer or the unbeliever as they open mindedly approach the observational particulars of the world and of history. But in taking such an approach, for instance to the resurrection of Christ as a historical datum, apologists have actually fallen prey to many detailed errors in their outworking of a non presuppositional argument based on evidence. For example 1 what I'm doing now it's sad, it's painful, but I've got to do some criticism within the family have to talk about my Christian brothers and say from the philosophical From a scholarly standpoint, here are some real problems with the way in which they try to argue their case from presuppositionalist neutral observation of the facts. Why should the unbeliever accept the basic reliability of the extant New Testament documents simply due to their early date? We sometimes labor to show that we have an early date for documents that support the New Testament. But why should the unbeliever be impressed by that? If a document is full of what is taken as the most obvious absurdities and superstitions, even if we possess the autographical copy of it, the naturalistic unbeliever wouldn't grant its basic reliability. I mean, if you bring me hot off the press, the National Enquirer, and on the front page it says woman gives birth to her father, am I going to say, well, I've got to grant the basic reliability of this thing because it's a very early copy? No, the early copy or the early date of the copies of the New Testament does not grant the basic reliability of what's being reported. Secondly, how can the naturalistic unbeliever be expected to treat these documents simply as reliable reports of what Jesus said about himself? Why should the unbeliever say, well, this is probably what Jesus said about himself because such reports have a mere man, according to the naturalist, a mere man claiming an incredible divine character and prerogative as well as predicting his own resurrection. It will certainly seem far more probable, to the consistent use of common sense, that the apostles misconstrued what their teacher was trying to say. We do have plenty of evidence that students make those kinds of mistakes. After all, it's far more probable that the apostles exaggerated what Jesus said and later veneration for him. It's far more probable they simply didn't recall it accurately. Again, remember who you're talking to. What is the naturalistic critic likely to think? Well, what is he going to think is more likely here that a man, a mere man who was sane, actually claimed these things? Or that his followers misconstrued him, exaggerated him, didn't remember him properly? Thirdly, the defense that is made to this last criticism by virtually every non presuppositional evidentialist is that we can assume that the apostles remembered what he said correctly because Christ promised the gift of the Holy Spirit to his followers to enable them to remember and interpret correctly what he taught. You should be rolling your eyes, and that's presuppositionless reasoning. In Fact that defense blatantly begs the question at hand because it assumes the very deity of Jesus which the argument from the resurrection was supposed to prove. It assumes that Jesus was God and so could grant the Holy Spirit to his followers to remember accurately what he said. But you see, that Jesus granted the Spirit to his followers to remember accurately is part of the presuppositionalist evidential argument for the resurrection which proves that Jesus is God. And there's a number of other gaffes in the traditional evidentialist reasoning that might be pursued as well. Let me give you an example. It's sometimes argued by evidentialists, if Jesus rose from the dead, then he's God, and if he's God, he speaks the truth at every point. Now, are those two steps in reasoning really unbiased? Do they show the accepted and uniform conclusion of thinking among the world of advanced scholars? If Jesus rose from the dead, then he must be God, and if he's God, he must speak the truth on every point. That is the logic of this argument. The pattern of reasoning is itself derived from and is warranted by the Scriptures, which means that Christ's interpretation is, after all, still based on Christ's own word. That this reasoning is subject to dispute is perhaps illustrated by considering three aspects of it. One, the inference, if resurrected, then divine is hardly acceptable if it's applied in a discriminating and special pleading fashion. But of course you have to apply it in a discriminating, special pleading fashion, so you avoid concluding that Lazarus is God. If resurrected, then divine. Lazarus was resurrected, therefore Lazarus is divine. Well, we don't want to do that. So what we do is we say, if resurrected divine in the case of Jesus, not in the case of Lazarus, well, that's special pleading. Two, the committed secularist would almost certainly look upon such an inference pattern as a manifestation of primitive mythic God of the gaps thinking and would present an alternative inference pattern congenial to his naturalism. He would say, if Jesus rose from the dead, then very complex and sophisticated biological principles and factors surpassing those presently recognized and utilized by scientists remain to be discovered and rendered in natural formulas. You want to know what people are going to infer from the historic resurrection? They might infer, boy, there's a lot more about the world we have to learn. 3. One clearly begs many important questions. If he simply reasons that if Jesus was God, he always spoke the truth, because that naively utilizes only one of many competing conceptions of deity. After all, the Greek gods were not unfailing truth to were they and so even if the resurrection proved that he's God, you can't go on from that saying, therefore he spoke the truth about everything. And yet this kind of argumentation for the resurrection of Christ is found over and over and over. It's repeated ad nauseam in the evangelical evidentialist literature of the 20th century. Van Till's presuppositional approach to evidences takes account of the fundamental philosophical and theological truths that we have been studying in this part of our lecture takes account of the fact one that all empirical observation is inescapably theory laden. You want to make sure you get this list in your notes. All empirical observation is inescapably theory laden. That is, there are no brute facts, facts, facts that we understand totally apart from a conditioning worldview or set of presuppositions. 2. The acceptance in the interpretation of what one takes as factual is not determined by sense perception alone, but in interaction with one's fundamental philosophical convictions. The acceptance and interpretation of what you think is factual is determined not by perception alone. 3. Empirical inductive study in itself has certain preconditions. Empirical study has certain preconditions which cannot be intelligibly accounted for except on the presupposition of Christianity. What I'm saying here is that all scientific historical study already unwittingly assumes what believers are trying to defend, or what is assumed by the consistently non Christian understanding of empiricism and induction contradicts biblical teaching but also renders empirical inductive reasoning impossible. On philosophical principle, for instance, if we rigorously reject the intrusion of arbitrary metaphysical prejudices, man's mind is taken as a tabula rasa in a completely contingent chance universe where only particulars, not abstract universals, exist. Now, if that's the way the unbeliever approaches things, in such a case there can be no logical or natural laws, there can be no generalization or probability, no intelligible appeal to causality. In such a case, language could not be learned, radical subjectivity could not be avoided, and there could be no justification for maintaining the reliability of sense perception on the one hand and memory on the other. 5. Unbelievers, like believers, are not at all unbiased, impartial without motive and goal, completely open minded, purely disinterested in where they will be led by handling the empirical evidence. No one is open minded in that way. 6. If the unbeliever's espoused presuppositions are not challenged, and if he holds tenaciously to them and consistently, he can for very good reason, refuse to be driven from his position by consideration of empirical evidences alone. If he's tenacious, you can throw all the evidence at him you want and every bit of the evidence going to be chewed up and digested in a naturalistic way by itself. Those evidences will not drive him from his position. You need stronger stuff. You need to get beyond that, then to a more philosophical attack which shows that it's impossible for him even to reason to make sense out of his experience and evidences. Likewise, seventhly, because the believer's intellectual basis for certainty about the claims of the Christian faith is broader than his limited and fallible reflections upon the incomplete pool of available empirical indicators alone, those claims should not merely be considered or presented as probably true. In order to present them as more than matters of limited statistical assurance. Many apologists like Montgomery and Pinnock and Sproul resort to subjective matters like experiential proof, or the practical certainty which compels us to take action despite risk, or the inward convicting witness of the Spirit. And they appeal to these things in order to enable them to take the leap of faith from the level of what intellectual proof honestly warrants. That's probability alone, to the higher level of full belief and personal confidence. Evidential apologetics always ends up doing that. Honesty says we can only have probability. But Christian, you know, theology and morality suggest that we're supposed to have full assurance. And so what they say is, well, we go so far with the probabilities, and then the experiential proof bumps us up to the higher level. They also press the fallacy of overstatement and hasty generalization into service so that they can maintain a public stance of being committed to full biblical inerrancy exclusively on the pattern of evidentialism or natural theology. The reason why I say that's overstatement is that they haven't verified every claim of the Bible, they haven't answered every objection to the Bible, and yet publicly these men have come out and said we're committed to the inerrancy of the Bible, and they turn around and say, and we're committed on the basis of empirical inductive study. Well, you know, that's just a little too much self flattery to swallow. They haven't studied every claim, nor have they answered every objection. So if they really are presuppositionless inductive empiricists, then they can't be committed to full biblical inerrancy. They can only say, we're working on it. I praise God that they're inconsistent. Mind you, I praise God that though they claim to be presuppositionalist evidentialists, they are in fact presuppositionalists. My objection is that they're presuppositionalists who are pretending they're something else. And that pretense, unfortunately, may flatter their pride and maybe promote their reputation, but it does not make them stand. Well, I think, before the Almighty Van Till tells us, and I quote, for any fact to be a fact at all, it must be a revelational fact. So do we believe in using evidences in our apologetic? We certainly do. But we also believe that philosophical apologetics forms the context within which the use of evidences is intelligible and can be forceful. Without recognizing his biblical presuppositions and their epistemological necessity, the Christian cannot make sense out of his own apologetical argumentation with unbelievers based upon empirical evidences. And before we take a break here, let me just quote Van Till and comment a bit more. Van Till says the apologist will throw all these facts at the unbeliever, facts about the resurrection and evidence. And the unbeliever throws them over his back into the bottomless pit of chance. David Hume, the great skeptic, has effectively argued that if you allow any room for chance in your thought, then you no longer have the right to speak of probabilities. No one hypothesis would have any more relevance to facts than any other hypothesis. On this basis, nature and history would be no more than a series of pointer readings pointing into the blank. Van Till, as I've already told you, says you can throw the facts of the resurrection at the unbeliever all the time. And what the unbeliever should say, well, let me quote it, he says, but the completely unusual, the nearly unique nature of, of such an occurrence like the resurrection must be appreciated. But how exactly one treats the realm of the unusual is open to a wide variety of intellectual options, and evidentialists don't seem to be aware of that. And this is the cryptic observation by Van Till on non Christian assumptions. Far from needing to be a matter of religious solemnity or significance, the resurrection of Jesus would be a fine item for Ripley's Believe it or Not. And so do we believe in evidence? We most certainly do. Do we believe the evidence stands on its own, that the facts speak for themselves? No, we do not. We believe that the evidence, to be understood properly, must be put within the proper framework or set of presuppositions or worldview. And the evidence does verify the worldview. In fact, we believe all the evidence verifies our worldview and we believe that the attempt to approach that evidence in an autonomous way destroys the possibility of any intelligible interpretation of it. And I'm going to drop the rest of this and we're going to take our afternoon break. We've now seen presuppositionalism set in contrast to Kiefer Warfield, natural theology and evidentialism. And I hope you've come to appreciate more the true character of the presuppositional approach. When we come back. I'm going to lay out now the theory of how we approach people in a more step by step basis and talk about various possibilities that arise. And Lord willing, toward the end of today we'll finally take a long question and answer period. This recording is distributed by Covenant Media Foundation, a non profit educational organization. Unauthorized reproduction of this tape is strictly prohibited. A free catalog of the Foundation's tapes and articles is available by calling 1-800-553-3938.