Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Relationship to Fields Part 2 (Part 4)

This message is a continuation of the previous tape. So I could draw a distinction between more or less scholarly thinking, more or less abstract thinking on the one hand. Well, more on the one hand, less on the other. But it would be a continuum. It wouldn't be watertight compartments at all. And there's furthermore no scriptural evidence at all that revelation, God's disclosing of himself to man is always addressed to naive perception and never to my scholarly theoretical way of thinking. On the DoieVerdean scheme. A detailed exegesis of Scripture would prove to be irrelevant in every theoretical field except one. And that's the faith modality. That is, theologians can do detailed exegesis because, you know, in that narrow domain that would be appropriate. But outside of that domain, detailed exegesis can't speak to the sociologist or to the historian or the economist and so forth. What does the Bible teach us? Christians are called upon to study the deep thoughts of God. Isn't that interesting? Not just the naive addressing of certain themes to our heart, but the deep thoughts of God are supposed to be studied by us. And we're responsible to see God's Word brought to bear not on just one restricted area of human experience, faith and life in the church, but we're supposed to study Scripture and investigate what it teaches us and apply it to every everything that we do. And so Doyegaard's conception, in the end reduces scriptural authority, I believe scriptural authority in philosophy to nothing but a matter of principle, never detail. If you could never come to philosophical or theoretical conclusions based on the study of the Bible, exegesis would be authoritative, as I've said, only in a narrowly defined aspect of faith. Moreover, the power of God's Word that grips us when we have the creation, fall, redemption motif come to our naive hearts. The power of God's Word is divorced from the precise meaning of God's Word. Doyouvard says that philosophy should be controlled by the Bible, not derived from the Bible, so that the power of God's Word as we read the Bible addressed to our naive hearts, should control us, but not the details, not the precise theoretical teaching of the Bible. That shouldn't be our philosophy. Van Till, on the other hand, has taught us that what the Bible says in the area of philosophy is authoritative for philosophers. The apostle Paul, when he went to Mars Hill, preached the same kind of message that he preached in the synagogue of the Jews. He didn't think that the philosophers were on a different footing and should have a different approach. He didn't think that Philosophers should simply be gripped by the power of God's Word. Paul accused the philosophers at Athens for rejecting the truth about specific matters pertaining to creation and providence, idolatry, final judgment. In the end, Dooyevard accused Van Till of being a rationalist for deriving his philosophical content from the words Scripture. You know, just telling you that I realize most of you have probably not read the entire article, but just telling you that, it seems to me, is more an indication of the nature of Doyevaert's thought than it is of Van Till's. To try to derive philosophy from the words of Scripture is rationalistic, according to Doyevaert, and not everyone will catch on to this at this point, but let me just say it, and you can come back to it if you wish. In fact, doyouverd wants to be a transcendentalist, which I want to be very much as well. But he doesn't want a transcendent word of God to direct his transcendental analysis, whereas Van Till wants God's transcendent word to direct his discussion of the preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience. In that sense, he's a transcendentalist with a transcendent authority behind what he's saying. Doyervaird says, if that's what you're doing, you're a rationalist and a Biblicist. That's an interesting combination of accusations, isn't it? A rationalist and a Biblicist. Well, I've been attacking the esteemed Dr. Doyouvaird on his view of philosophy. What's mine? Philosophers answer questions about the nature of reality, how we know what we know, and how we should live our lives. And they answer these questions according to certain ultimate principles that they religiously hold. And by religiously, I mean their ultimate commitment for them. They are committed to them as something that regulates their lives, isn't just the outcome of their thinking and their living, but they believe there's a certain prescriptive authority in these principles. All right, so if philosophers are doing that, it seems to me that what Christians are doing in theology and apologetics is the same thing. And so I don't see a difference between philosophy and theology for that matter, although the methods are different depending upon your faith commitment. Since my faith commitment is to the God who has revealed himself in the Scriptures, my method of doing philosophy and theology is to go to the Bible and let it tell me, where did I come from? Who am I? Where am I going? Who is God? How Should I live my life? How do I know what I know? If you'll read carefully the opening sections of Van Till's the Defense of the Faith, you'll notice that this is the question he is addressing. Although it takes so long for him to get to his answer. Many people have gotten caught up in the rabbit trails along the way. But Van Till is asking us now, what is the relationship between philosophy and theology? And his answer is, they talk a different vocabulary, they're addressing the same problems. You know, the philosophers have this particular vocabulary and theologians have this particular vocabulary, but they're really addressing the same questions. And so a Christian philosophy is just a way of speaking, expressing, communicating my Christian theology. And so the relationship of apologetics to philosophy is going to receive the same answer as the relationship of apologetics to systematic theology. Because in my way of thinking, these are similar, virtually identical fields just addressed in a different way. And of course, if your faith commitment is not to the God of Scripture, then your method will be different than mine. But nevertheless, you've got a method that tries to tell me what is real, how I know what I know, and how I should live my life. Okay, let's go on and ask a more specific question now. What is the relationship of apologetics to epistemology? If you've not had an Introduction to Philosophy course and are not familiar with this language, I'll take just a moment to tell you and refresh the memories of the others of you. Philosophy is traditionally divided into three general. Metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Now, in the modern world, the study of philosophy has become a lot more refined than that traditional breakdown. We have people who specialize specifically in the philosophy of science as part of epistemology, or the philosophy of psychology, which is the subdivision of the study of man, which is the division of the study of metaphysics. And so we could go into greater detail, but for our purposes, this will be just fine. Metaphysics is the study of the nature and limits of reality. The nature and limits of reality. What is real? Are angels real? Are quasars real? Is love real? Is God real? Are there ghosts? Is the physical world real? And what is the nature of these real things? Where did they come from? Questions of that nature are metaphysical questions of ethics. You probably all know about. How should we live our lives? What attitudes should we have? What actions? What conduct is approved and what is disapproved? As part of that, you can study how should men relate to each other in society? You have political philosophy and theories, questions about crime and punishment, and all that. But epistemology is the study of the nature and limits of human knowledge. The nature and limits of human knowledge. To put it simply, how do we know what we know? How is it that we know the various things that we claim to know? So epistemology is our theory of knowledge. What is the relationship of apologetics to epistemology? The answer that I am proposing is that apologetics entails an epistemology, or if you will, apologetics is always an illustration and application of your epistemology, your theory of knowledge. Apologetics answers questions of the form. How do you know that the Bible is the word of God? How do you know that God exists? How do you know that Jesus is the Son of God? How do you know that he rose from the dead? Notice that. How do you know? Apologetics is answering questions according to some theory of knowledge then. But there are different theories of knowledge to choose from. They are competing epistemologies. And so which one should we use in apologetics? Let me give you a parallel question. And then because I think in the parallel question it would be obvious how we're supposed to answer what's going to come up and then turn around and try to apply it back to this issue of which epistemology we should follow. Apologetics Evangelism involves persuasion. Evangelists don't just drop their message on people without any consideration of the audience, how they need to hear things, what will be winsome, what will be compelling, and so forth. The evangelist tries to change the minds of people. He tries to persuade people, knowing that in the end his efforts are only successful if the Holy Spirit blesses them. But the point is the evangelist should study techniques of persuasion, right? Well then what kind of persuasion, what theory of persuasion should a biblical evangelist follow? Let me give you some alternatives. Muslims make use of the sword to persuade people, and judging from Western history, they've often been very successful. There's just something about that, you know, the option of, you know, affirm that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad is his prophet, and live your life and see your children raised to adulthood that is so much more preferable to die on the spot. And so people tend to be persuaded. You probably have seen the same sort of thing in non religious settings. You have some guy who's big and burly and strong and he's upset about something out in the parking lot and he usually gets his way. And not because he ends up having to, you know, clean up with everybody, but because most people look at the options and say, okay, well this is what you want, you can take it. So if we're going to study persuasiveness in order to be good evangelists, then we might say, hey, I know how I can evangelize. I'll threaten people, right? So when I go into a church or into an auditorium to speak, I take an Uzi with me and basically I give the message and I say, okay, now how many of you want to come down the aisle and accept Jesus? By the way, I've got a gun and I'm ready to shoot. No, I mean, we look at that and of course, I'm giving you a preposterous illustration, but it makes an obvious point, right? You don't go to the world to find out how to be persuasive, do you? Paul tells us that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, and for that very reason they are. What? Powerful for the pulling down of strongholds. That's interesting. We don't worry about the worldly way of being persuasive. We don't go to guns. Well, he didn't have guns back then, but to swords and spears and physical compulsion. And because we don't, we find we have the power of God behind what we're doing. Our theory of persuasion doesn't follow the Bible, but the Scriptures. And the Scriptures say things which people in the world would not readily adhere to. The world wants to go to might and to force and to being pushy to establish things. The Bible says, don't do it that way. Well, how about behavioristic psychology? Maybe we should study behavioristic psychology so we can be good evangelists. Sadly, some seminaries actually believe that nonsense. We go and we study secular theories of human motivation. What makes people operate the way they do. And we come to look upon people as really glorified white rats that have been conditioned in a certain way. And we need to learn how to push their buttons so that the white rats will come forward and accept Jesus. Well, that's preposterous. Anybody who thinks clearly should step back and say, a behavioristic psychology is insulting to the biblical picture of man and God. So why would we use an approach which is predicated on that insulting view of man in order to do the great favor to man of bringing him to know God? Obviously, the persuasion that we utilize in evangelism must be consonant with the message about which we try to persuade people. Let me say that again. You want to get that in your notes? Obviously, the persuasion that we use must be consonant with the message about which we persuade people. Now, let's Go back to my original question. What epistemology should we choose? Epistemology. How do we know what we know? Apologetics answers the question, how do you know that there's a God? How do you know that the Bible is true? So you need to have an epistemology to answer the apologetical question, well, which one should we go to? Well, let's go study Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Hegel and Dewey and Bertrand Russell and all these guys and find out which one of those ugly, deformed points of view can best adorn the beauty of the gospel that we're trying to bring to people. Now, does that make any sense? We don't study the Muslims when we want to talk about persuasion. We don't study behavioristic psychology. Why then in epistemology, do we do it? I don't understand this. Apart from the sad sin of pride by which we want to be held in high esteem by worldly thinkers, why do we go to the philosophers who hate Christ to find out how we can convince people to love him? The epistemology that we're going to endorse must be consonant with the message that we're trying to get people to believe, the same way that our techniques of persuasion have to fit in with the message that we want people to be persuaded of. So our techniques of argumentation, our epistemology, our approach to knowing must be consonant with the message we claim to know. Our epistemology must arise from the message of Christianity. We need a scriptural theory of knowledge as well as a scriptural conclusion that we claim to know. The kind of defense that we use with the unbeliever must then be consistent with the faith that we're defending, rather than undermining the faith that we defend. People are going to tell you, once they realize the implications of this. Oh, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're reasoning in a circle. I ask you how you know what you know, and then it turns out that you use the theory of knowledge that was derived from what you claim to know. Of course, as I presented it a few minutes ago, I think most of you, unless you're just falling asleep because of the boredom of this lecture, most of you were going along with this. You weren't sitting there going, oh, no, there's something wrong with this. Oh, no. Yeah, that just makes perfectly good sense. Your theory of knowledge has got to be consistent with the message that you claim to know. And yet when we do this in apologetics, over and over and over again, people like Van Till have Been accused of reasoning in circles. You're begging the question. That's illogical, that's fallacious. You can't do it that way. To which the answer is, what's the alternative? Use the theory of knowledge that is contrary to Christian faith in order to prove the Christian faith is true. When all is said and done, everybody's theory of knowledge is adjusted to their concept of reality. Everybody's theory of knowledge is adjusted to their concept of reality. I'm going to take a few minutes to discuss this, so in your notes you may want to get this theme. A person's view of knowledge is determined by and determinative of one's view of reality. A person's view of knowledge is determined by and is determinative of one's view of reality. Let me say it another way to make it memorable. Epistemology and metaphysics are interdependent. Epistemology and metaphysics are interdependent. Okay, now those of you who don't have the philosophy vocabulary, let's just remind you what I'm saying. One's theory of knowledge, epistemology, and one's theory of reality are dependent on each other. So we want to ask ourselves, what is real? That's a metaphysical question. Well, the only way you're going to be able to decide that is by looking at your epistemology. How you know what you know to determine what you believe is real. But then what epistemology should you endorse? Well, it turns out what you believe is real will determine the kind of epistemology you should endorse. And I can illustrate this from the history of philosophy for you. Plato believed that there was a realm that was real that goes beyond human experience and goes beyond time and space. And he believed that in this supra sensible realm there were forms or ideas, conceptual essences, if I can give you a simple approach to it, that existed. So according to him, you have the realm of ideas, and then you have the realm of physical experience. I'll just put the physical world. Now, how do we know the realm of ideas according to Plato? He said, well, we can be reminded of the realm of ideas by our experience in the physical world. But in the end, the physical world never will get us properly to ideas, because nothing in the physical world is ideal. Nothing in the physical. No triangle you ever encounter in the physical world is a perfect triangle. But our concept of the triangle is a perfect triangle. You know, straight lines and all the angles add up to 180 and so forth. And so, according to Plato, we intuit. We intuit the realm of ideas. Now he had an interesting way of explaining this. He said our souls, which are in this world of time and space, once existed in the realm of ideas. And don't ask me how this happened, but somehow they got captured in the prison house of the body Soma sema. The body is the tomb. And our souls in these bodies encounter the physical world. But they intuit by recollection, remembering. Oh yeah, I remember what a triangle is. I know what cowness is, and so forth from a previous life. Well, we're going to forget that little history. Part of it, you know, that's how we got here. But in simple terms, according to Plato's metaphysics, there, there is an ultimate realm of reality, ideas and a subordinate realm, the physical world. And we know these ideas by way of intuition. Now I'm going to talk to you about another philosopher, David Hume. David Hume said that everything we know we must know on the basis of sensory experience. Money out of room on my board. Put it here. I'll just put sensation. We need to have observation or experience of things if we're going to know them. So sensation is the way that we know. And what is it that we know, according to Hume, what is real? He said momentary physical experiences, right? Or to put it in an over simple way, the physical world. Now here's the fascinating thing. This little short history of apologetics is not important in itself. What's to be observed is that Plato did not think the physical world was ultimately real. He said the world of ideas is ultimately real and you know it by intuition. So here's his metaphysics. What's real? Ideas? What's his epistemology? Intuition. Hume, on the other hand, says the ultimate world is physical, not ideas. That's his metaphysics. What's his epistemology? What we know, we know by observation or sensation. You will not find these things broken up and recollected in the history of philosophy. It's no accident that Plato believed in ideas and intuition. Hume believed in the physical world and sensation. They go together. He had this epistemology because he had this metaphysic and vice versa. Likewise with Plato, and that's true of everybody. What we believe about the nature of reality is dependent on how we think we know. But how we think we know is dependent on what we think is real. You cannot break these two apart. Now there's a much different approach to this subject in the history of philosophy and in evangelical apologetics that I need to stop now and say something. About and try to refute. And that approach is sometimes called Methodism. I'm not talking about the Wesleyans here, but philosophical methodism is the view that method precedes your view of reality. Method, how you know epistemology must precede what you know. And so you have people still in this day and age laboring long and hard to resolve all the questions of epistemology so that once we get clean tools and know what the proper method and standards are, then we can bring the information of our senses and research and science and history so forth to bear, put it through the machinery, as it were, and decide what's real. I don't know how anybody really could make that big a mistake, get caught up in it. But it is a prevailing mistake, and sadly, it's a prevailing mistake in Christian circles too, when apologetics is taught. This mistake is especially noteworthy because you'll have people who say, until we decide how we know what we know, we can't really get on to defending the faith. How can I prove that God exists until I first know how to prove something? My method must precede my conclusions about the nature of reality. But I believe that philosophical methodism is in fact very bad, very naive epistemology. And I have a little story to tell you that I think will prove this point by analogy. Let's assume that I wanted to develop an apple sorting machine. That'd be helpful to have, right? You have people who pick all these apples out in California and Washington and so forth. I mean, they come in thousands and thousands of apples. It'd be really helpful if a farmer could just dump all the apples into a machine and they went down through it. And I don't know what the inner workings of the machine would be like, but at the end, some apples would come out this side into this bin and some this side. And all the ones that come out over here are the good ones that you can sell. The ones that come out over here are the rotten ones that you can't sell. That would be a valuable thing to have, right? It'd be good to have an apple sorting machine. Beneficial. And so I set out to do it and I want. I told you a minute ago, I don't know what the inner workings of this machine would look like. But now I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to decide what would have to take place in the black box here to shove the apples this way or that, what kind of touching, what kind of, you know, light scanning, whatever so forth. But whatever it is that took place in there. I know what the outcome is supposed to be. Good apples here, bad apples there. Now, is it possible for me to ever know that I've discovered the right apple sorting machine? Is it possible for me to ever be convinced that I finally developed the method of sorting the apples automatically in this machine if I don't know in advance what a good apple is and a bad apple is? No, because any machine that I test, I'm going to test according to what my previous knowledge of apples. If I've worked on it and I dump all these apples in there and I find some worm eaten apples in the good bin, I'm going to say, this is not a good method. This method isn't good. Why, somebody else could come along and say, Dr. Bonson, you know, it must be a good method because you developed it and worked on it so long. You've got really good machinery here. So you just got to accept it looks like these are bad apples to you, maybe, but you know that they are good because the method proves that they are good. Now we would say, no, forget that, we'd go back and rework on the method so that we wouldn't get worms in the apples that are in the good bin. But that assumes what? That I already know what a good apple is and what a bad apple is. Please turn the cassette over at this time. Now, my little story is calculated to show you you could not have the supremacy of method if you were trying to grow apples and sort them. Your knowledge of apples, what is really good and what is really bad, your knowledge of apples would inform the method that you use to make sure that the outcome corresponds to what you already know to be real. Everybody follow that. Likewise, apologetics requires an epistemology. There are competing epistemologies out there in the world. Some people would say, put apologetics aside, put your religious faith aside. Study methodology, study epistemology. And once you've got a really good apple sorting machine, then we can go decide what's real. Hey, but guess what? The epistemology that I choose, the epistemology that I find reliable, is going to be judged by what? What I already think is real. Now, I can tell you this. As long as God by his grace keeps me faithful to his covenant, the day will never come that you offer me an epistemology that leads to the conclusion God does not exist. And I'll say, that's a good epistemology. I'm going to automatically say, if that's your. If that's the outcome of your epistemology if your apple sorting machine leads to that kind of bad apple, I know it's not working right now. That all makes sense to you. In fact, I hope that encourages some of you. And you say, I want to be faithful like that too. But guess what? The unbelieving world does the same thing. The unbelieving world says, well, if this is your epistemology and that epistemology requires that God exists, then I don't want that epistemology. You say, yeah, but you don't know in advance whether God exists or not. Say, oh yes we do, and we're determined that he will not exist. The fool has said in his heart there is no God, and out of the heart are the issues of life. And so fools are not going to choose an epistemology as much as they. I mean, unless they're just not thinking and they make a mistake, they're not going to self consciously endorse epistemology that demands a Christian metaphysic. But Christians, on the other hand, are not going to self consciously endorse an epistemology that demands a non Christian metaphysic. Well, we're really in trouble, aren't we? That means that apologetics requires an epistemology. But the epistemology used already assumes your answer to the apologetical question favorable or unfavorable. In the end, all of us are going to run around in circles, aren't we? All worldviews are defended in a circular fashion. All worldviews are defended in a circular fashion. Questions that arise within a worldview are not answered in a circular way. But the worldview itself can only be defended by assuming the worldview. So let's say we all agree that God created the world. He made us to be able to understand the world, indeed to have dominion in this world. Based on our research and so forth. He's given us standards by which to live, where we're to tell the truth and not contradict ourselves. Now, if you assume that, and I assume that, you and I can get into a fruitful discussion about the price of eggs at the market and we know how to resolve our disagreement. If you say eggs cost $1.59, I say, oh no, it's $1.89. We're able to handle that because we share a common approach to reality, how we know what we know and our moral standards. So we go to the market, we use our eyes, we look, you know, and I don't want to give you all the refinements of that, but it should be obvious we can do this. But now what do you do when you're talking to somebody who doesn't accept the reliability of our senses? What do you do when you're talking to somebody who doesn't accept the reality of our experience at all, but says it's all illusion? What do you do with somebody who says, there is no God and what you know is nothing more but a passing phenomenal experience and there's no relationship to any other experience that you've had. In fact, we don't even know that there's a central personality, a self that is having these experiences. What do you do with someone who says what you say is true and false has nothing to do with your research and your choosing to believe things because you can only say what the laws of chemistry and biology and so forth dictate that you're going to do because of the gray matter in your head? I mean, we don't have a similar worldview. And so we're not sure that we can resolve questions about our worldview together. I'm debating with a Hindu. I realize that the reason we come to different conclusions is because he has a different view of reality than I do. And so I go to him and I say, I guess we better resolve our view of reality. Because we're never going to make any progress until we get that settled. Because that's determining all these other debates that we're having, all these other disagreements we're having. So I say, now listen, I can touch this podium. See that pounding on it? That's real. Now, we can settle that right now. You can't disagree with that, can you? Does that make any sense? I mean, if you know Hinduism, he's going to say, you haven't done anything to convince me. I know that we have the illusion of things being solid out there in the world, things being different from us. I never doubted that. But it's an illusion. That's not the real world. The real world is all is one. How can. I mean, if he were consistent, if he really lived faithfully by his religion, how could he ever be convinced by me? He couldn't, could he? In order to be convinced by me, he'd have to renounce his worldview to even give me the possibility of being right. Because in my worldview there's a difference between God and man. And we're alienated from God and we need the saving work of Jesus Christ. But the Hindu doesn't believe any of that. It would offend his most basic conviction about reality. If you were to entertain that as even possibly being true. For the Hindu, it's not even possibly true, by the way. For the materialist, it's not possibly true either. Materialists don't go about their business studying the world, just waiting for us to bring them some kind of evidence of the immaterial world, and then they'll believe it. Now, they say that sometimes, and Christians make the mistake of thinking that. But if you'll stop and reflect on it, no materialist will ever be affected by any evidence I bring him at all. And he'll have every right philosophically, not morally, but he'll have every right philosophically not to be affected by the evidence I bring him because he's a materialist. The evidence I bring him of something that is immaterial would automatically be misconstrued according to him. Okay, here's how we can do it. Someone thinks we'll show that Jesus rose from the dead. Then he'll have to accept that there are miracles. There's nothing more to this world than matter in motion. So we labor long and hard to prove what? That there was a man by the name of Jesus who lived the ancient world in Palestine, and he was put to death by a Roman procurator whose name we know, Pontius Pilate. And this man was laid in a physical tomb and his body was dead. And three days later he was walking around and he was alive again. And that's got to prove that Jesus was God. Now, if you go to a materialist and give him all this evidence and let's just assume for argument's sake that he's willing to accept it all, he goes, that's right. I think you're absolutely right. If I'm going to follow the facts of history, the only conclusion I can draw is that Jesus was once dead and then he was living again. You say, there you have it, I've proved my point. He says, proved what point? I've proved that Jesus is the son of God. There's something beyond the physical world. You say, no, you haven't proved that at all. You've just proven that in this physical world, a man who was physically dead was once dead and then physically alive. And there's some physical explanation for that. We don't know what it is. But give us enough time and we'll explain how resurrections take place. There's obviously some, you know, dynamic out there in biology and physics that is rare and we haven't found yet. Now, I've seen Christians who are put into that spot with intelligent unbelievers and they'll say, no, no, no. If you don't know how it could happen, you. You have to admit it's a miracle. Boy, is that naive. Any of us know where AIDS comes from. Any of us doubt that there's some biological explanation. There's some dynamic that we haven't discovered yet. No one wants to say, oh, AIDS is a miracle. Although some of us may want to think it's the judgment of God, nevertheless, it's not a miracle just because we don't yet know how to. There was a time when, when people didn't know where bacterial endocarditis comes from, and now we do. But before we found out where it came from, was it a miracle? Of course not. And so the materialist, the physicalist, the naturalist is going to say for any evidence that you present that there is something beyond the natural world, even if he accepts the evidence, he goes, and there's a natural explanation for it. Give us time working on it. If anyone is consistent with his view of reality, he's not going to accept your epistemology. And if you're consistent with your epistemology, you're not going to accept a conflicting view of reality. This is what I've been trying to get across to you from Apple sorting machines and all these other illustrations. Everyone has a worldview that involves a view of reality and how we know what we know and also how we should live our lives. And everyone's worldview is defended in a circular fashion. It's inevitable. Sometimes the circularity of the argument is not made apparent. It's not explicit, put out there with, you know, red flags waving, but they are nevertheless always circular. If what you're defending is an ultimate commitment about the nature of reality, always circular, it assumes an epistemology and itself is the result of an epistemology. So what's the relationship between apologetics, epistemology? The answer that I've been pursuing is that all apologetics entails a particular epistemology. And the epistemology that we will use in apologetics ought to be consistent with the message that we're defending, rather than something that goes beyond the message that we are defending. The kind of defense we use must be consistent with rather than undermining the. The faith that we defend. All right, one more field or question to address under F here in terms of the relationship of apologetics to other things. What is the relationship of apologetics now to evidences? Many Christian schools and seminaries will actually have a course in apologetics on the one hand, and a course in evidences on the other. Okay. And though I can't, even with my point of view, give you some reason for doing that sort of thing, I want to ask the question, can you have apologetics on the one hand, the philosophical approach, and then the evidences on the other hand? It's frequently said that apologetics deals with theism in general, and it deals with it in a philosophical way, whereas evidences deals with Christianity in particular, and deals with it historically and scientifically. Okay. What version of apologetics would that fit in well with that I illustrated earlier today. I didn't like it. But I mean, it fits in well with what? The idea that you have this lower story and then you have a more refined upper story, and then more like that. It's like we begin broadly and philosophically. There must be something.