The NXR Podcast - THE CONFERENCE - Presuppositional Apologetics - Session 6 - Dr. Joseph Boot ｜ Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 2024

00:00:00.000 I do recognize some of you from last year, and it's been great talking with you also at our table, so thank you.

00:00:10.040 My task for this first session this morning is to talk about presuppositionalism and apologetics.

00:00:18.620 So before we begin, why don't we just say a word of prayer together?

00:00:21.640 our lord and our god may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts

00:00:33.380 be pleasing and acceptable in your sight o lord our rock and our redeemer open my lips

00:00:43.820 and my mouth shall show forth thy praise forgive us our sins lord we pray

00:00:50.660 For Christ's sake, amen.

00:00:58.480 So one of the critical issues, one of the critical subjects as we think about Christendom 2.0

00:01:09.640 is, of course, the presentation and defense of the faith.

00:01:17.240 Giving a defense.

00:01:20.660 Now, the requirement to get fit, which is literally what 1 Peter 3.15 is all about, to get fit, to be ready to prepare ourselves to give an apologia, an apologia, a defense of the faith is memorably set out by the Apostle Peter to the church as a whole.

00:01:43.920 but honor the Messiah as Lord in your hearts always be ready to give a defense to anyone who

00:01:51.460 asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you however do this with gentleness and respect

00:01:58.280 keeping your conscience clear so that when you are accused those who denounce your Christian life

00:02:04.580 will be put to shame so we know that's our task it's task for all of us but the

00:02:12.320 way we go about that task has been a matter of discussion of debate and of dispute

00:02:18.900 and I want to say to start with what's most important to keep in mind

00:02:23.760 taking seriously seriously this calling as an act of obedience is that this is ultimately about

00:02:31.260 the glory of God and the extension of his kingdom so notwithstanding the importance of a trustworthy

00:02:40.460 methodology in apologetics, our primary concern is a faithful witness to the gospel. It's not

00:02:51.580 about winning arguments with other Christians over apologetic strategy. We can have those

00:02:58.120 discussions, but the primary concern is the extension of the kingdom. We're surrounded

00:03:03.160 by people in a culture that do not know the lord the clamor and the noise of our diseased culture

00:03:13.600 seeks to distract people from confronting themselves in the silence there's a lack of

00:03:22.460 silence in contemporary culture people need to face their hopeless condition before god

00:03:31.120 and so with gentleness with respect we have to offer a reason even in the face of opposition

00:03:37.100 so that the quiet convicting presence of the holy spirit will still hearts before him and his word

00:03:45.200 can be heard now regrettably having said that amongst many christian people the apologetic

00:03:54.800 mandate is often misunderstood it's misapplied and that leads often to ambivalence to reticence

00:04:03.380 even hostility to the task of defending the faith

00:04:07.700 I'm slightly distracted by the bright light and you may be distracted by the bright light on this

00:04:14.420 salmon jacket it's not a mark of low testosterone

00:04:20.180 is actually a mark of very high testosterone because you need great security in your

00:04:27.400 masculinity to wear a coat like this one so thank you

00:04:33.360 now the the misunderstandings tend to arise principally because people think that apologetics

00:04:44.560 is concerned with establishing the truth of christianity by human reason

00:04:49.840 by direct rational proofs for god various forms of theoretical and scientific demonstration which

00:05:01.800 allegedly verify christian belief beyond a reasonable doubt before the bar of human reason

00:05:09.180 now i think the difficulty there is that that perspective attempts too much and accomplishes

00:05:16.680 too little it places an impossible and unsustainable burden on human theoretical

00:05:23.740 reasoning and at the same time actually fails to challenge unbelievers at the religious root

00:05:30.480 of their rebellion against god in the tradition of augustine and anselm i think the first

00:05:38.760 modern christian thinker to specifically identify this problem was the danish christian philosopher

00:05:46.560 soren kierkegaard a great critic of rationalism and romanticism in the 19th century and he said

00:05:54.020 this if one were to describe the whole orthodox apologetic apologetic effort in one single

00:06:00.840 sentence but also with categorical precision one might say that it has the intent to make

00:06:06.700 christianity plausible to this one might add that if it were to succeed then it would then

00:06:13.860 then would this effort have the ironical fate that precisely upon the day of its triumph

00:06:19.500 it would have lost everything and entirely quashed Christianity.

00:06:23.440 To make Christianity plausible is the same as to misrepresent it.

00:06:31.340 What did he mean by that?

00:06:33.000 Well, because biblical Christianity cannot be made plausible to human beings within any other paradigm

00:06:44.020 than the one which begins with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, 0.93

00:06:48.400 christianity to the unbeliever always looks implausible 0.53

00:06:53.960 until you've got the lens of the word of god on your nose

00:06:58.420 a starting point rooted in the lord jesus christ the faith appears implausible from the biblical

00:07:08.020 standpoint the unbeliever doesn't merely have some erroneous beliefs here and there

00:07:12.700 they exist in untruth 0.87

00:07:16.160 they're unregenerate they exist in untruth orthodox rationalistic and evidential apologetics

00:07:27.780 neglect to take proper account of what scripture says about the condition of fallen human beings

00:07:34.420 the nature of the creation order under a curse and the character of god's self-revelation in christ

00:07:42.700 who shatters all the assumptions and expectations of human reason.

00:07:49.960 How can human reason account for the eternal God

00:07:54.440 manifesting himself fully in the temporal historical form of the man, Jesus Christ?

00:08:03.620 this also leads this assumption about apologetics where it's misunderstood leads to i think

00:08:16.740 unwarranted beliefs that before anyone can seek to defend their faith their intellectual

00:08:22.360 development and their relevant knowledge base must be highly advanced

00:08:26.520 their capacity to follow and retain lengthy chains of reasoning tightly honed

00:08:34.040 so i hope that in the course of this lecture we may get past some of those misunderstandings that

00:08:41.340 you don't have to be a brilliant philosopher to defend your faith so let's think about the

00:08:47.240 governing assumptions for a minute of a presuppositional method so i've said the

00:08:52.020 important thing about apologetics is winning the lost there are debates about how to do it

00:08:57.280 and obviously being asked to talk about presuppositionalism means that there's a

00:09:01.500 distinction between that view and other views what are the governing assumptions of the

00:09:06.940 presuppositional method well before summarizing the particular apologetic challenge we're facing

00:09:13.160 let's mention a few of those the first is to notice that there is no such thing as a view

00:09:21.120 from nowhere the autonomy of human reason is an illusion

00:09:28.780 there is no such thing as a neutral view from nowhere human understanding human reasoning is a

00:09:37.860 tool that can cut in various directions that's why by the way there are so many schools of thought

00:09:45.500 competing in the various academic disciplines and they all claim to be logical and reasonable

00:09:52.140 they all claim to be rational but there are multiple different perspectives laws of thought

00:10:01.660 even though laws of thought are god-given do not ensure that our beliefs and assumptions are true

00:10:09.460 laws of thought work on our beliefs logic may help us reach valid conclusions

00:10:15.800 and show the implications of our assumptions but it doesn't supply us with the premises

00:10:21.460 with the beliefs with which to begin

00:10:23.360 this means that reason is far from being neutral or independent or absolute it's

00:10:31.640 not a framework it's not a paradigm it is always constrained by the world and life view or what we

00:10:39.340 might say the plausibility structure within which a given individual is operating. So even on its

00:10:47.700 own terms, reason can never function as an independent final arbiter, as a final court

00:10:55.040 of appeal to settle disputes between completing claims. Because the justification of any worldview

00:11:02.880 is happening within that paradigm, it's happening within that framework. So a presuppositional

00:11:11.080 apologetic actually focuses on an internal critique of an unbeliever's worldview on

00:11:18.940 its own terms. When we engage unbelieving worldviews, we're internally criticizing

00:11:26.060 and showing how it collapses under its own weight. If what it says were true about the

00:11:30.720 world, it collapses. And then we're inviting people to put on the lens of the Word of God

00:11:37.560 and to see the explanatory power of biblical faith and how it accounts for the failure

00:11:45.600 of these competing views, as well as providing the truths that make the rich diversity of human

00:11:53.500 experience intelligible. But it does so within the structure of the Christian faith. Over the years,

00:11:58.960 i've done lots of debates on the existence of god i never pretend that i'm starting as

00:12:03.380 a neutral objective observer seeing where the neutral facts might lead because that would be a

00:12:12.320 lie all the facts are created facts governed by god secondly this leads us to the importance of

00:12:25.200 the concept of world and life view in christian apologetics something that again classical forms

00:12:32.680 of apologetics have typically ignored sometimes even denied simply put a worldview is a framework

00:12:39.920 it's a structure of understanding some people say a paradigm that rests on certain foundational

00:12:47.040 beliefs certain basic faith commitments and no human being is without one they may not have

00:12:53.240 analyzed it but no human being is without a set of assumptions through which they are looking at

00:12:59.000 the world now non-christian perspectives would all regard the basic claim of christianity

00:13:06.300 that the eternal god is manifest in the temporal manifestation of a man

00:13:13.040 the lord jesus christ dying for sin raised to life in power and glory as implausible

00:13:19.420 as implausible for it to become plausible one's worldview and thinking has to be transformed by

00:13:29.200 the reality of christ a person's and this is a more technical term but a person's epistemic

00:13:36.680 position has to be changed epistemic epistemology where we stand in relationship to knowledge

00:13:44.680 has to be altered a new faith commitment for understanding our life and world is required

00:13:51.780 and where that change is not taking place people simply take offense at christ

00:13:58.480 you know there is no way even in apologetics around the offense you know that don't you

00:14:05.380 people have to go through the offense

00:14:09.260 Jesus had to say to his disciples blessed is he who is not offended in me do you want to go away

00:14:19.840 as well we have to go through the offense we live in a culture that doesn't want to be offended

00:14:29.480 but we have to go through the offense

00:14:32.920 people will take offense because they are constrained by prior life reviews from which

00:14:40.980 they have to be liberated greg barnson put it this way each worldview has its presuppositions

00:14:46.460 about reality knowledge and ethics these mutually influence and support each other

00:14:52.220 there are no facts or uses of reason which are available outside of the interpretative system

00:14:58.520 of basic commitments or assumptions which appeals to them the presuppositions used by the christian

00:15:06.480 and non-christian determine what they will accept as factual and reasonable

00:15:11.940 that's a fairly paradigmatic statement actually of the presuppositional view of human knowledge

00:15:19.400 this makes clear that the choice is either or barnes talked about pushing the antithesis

00:15:28.660 either a personal god or the empty void or what kierkegaard called the vortex

00:15:36.440 lies behind everything as the central principle

00:15:41.460 now this doesn't mean that a world and life view is a hypothesis that we're simply testing rather

00:15:50.920 it's where our thinking rests it's a kind of faith-based certitude by which ideas are tested

00:15:58.460 so we put the lens of the word of god on and the claims of christ and we test everything in terms of

00:16:04.400 that again according to the great critic of rationalism kirkegaard he said a life view

00:16:16.060 listen to this closely it's a little bit involved because it's in translation from the danish

00:16:20.280 but a life view he says is certainty in oneself whether this has oriented itself only in all

00:16:29.000 worldly relationships a purely human standpoint by which means it keeps itself from contact

00:16:35.060 with a deeper experience or whether in its heavenward direction the religious it is found

00:16:43.480 there in the center as much for its heavenly as its earthly existence has won the true conviction

00:16:49.060 that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor the present nor

00:16:54.720 the future nor height nor depth nor any other creation will be able to separate us from the

00:17:00.160 love of god in christ jesus our lord it's either the imminent or the transcendent and here is the

00:17:10.100 transcendent referent that later men like cornelius van till and herman doiver called the

00:17:17.540 archimedean point for the christian remember archimedes he's trying to find a lever and a

00:17:23.740 position with which to raise the world a position with which to truly understand things here it is

00:17:30.640 this is the transcendent referring in christ that lies outside space and time in the eternal god

00:17:36.580 even though it's manifest in history so that's something of the christian mind but the problem

00:17:42.980 we're dealing with today is the collapse of the christian mind the immediate difficulty

00:17:49.120 is that the Christian life view has collapsed in our time and not just in the culture quite

00:17:58.040 frequently in the world some years ago I was speaking in California in the Santa Cruz area

00:18:03.520 on apologetics and after my lecture I was taken out to lunch by a very nice young couple one of

00:18:10.500 the questions they asked me with a smile was how long I'd been an Apollo Jedi

00:18:14.380 i which was a humorous question but it it highlighted a misperception of the real

00:18:23.420 challenge that we're confronted with today we're confronted with the near total collapse of a

00:18:31.340 christian world and life view in the culture and often amongst believers and so it is not simply

00:18:37.720 better techniques in evangelism that we need, or smarter apologists, a kind of elite bunch of

00:18:44.620 Apollo Jedi who will do the heavy lifting for us, what we need is a recovery, and in many respects

00:18:51.180 a discovery, a fresh discovery of what it means to think Christianly and to be Christian before

00:19:00.060 a watching world. The current reality is that the questions confronting believers in the West

00:19:07.800 are qualitatively, not just quantitatively, different from the questions we faced even

00:19:14.760 25 years ago when I began in the work of Christian apologetics, because there is no longer a shared

00:19:21.180 understanding of reality that can undergird a common discourse. The common discourse is hard

00:19:28.720 to have now isn't it you've got all these disparate groups screaming at each other

00:19:33.440 because the basis for that common discourse has eroded beneath us the plausibility structure

00:19:41.720 based on christian foundations has been eroding and so for the first time in centuries we can

00:19:47.320 actually be talking with people our own neighbors whose basic religious presuppositions are

00:19:54.520 antithetical to our own if you'd have told my grandparents that by the time their grandson

00:20:02.400 or grandsons were having children of their own that there would be 72 genders

00:20:08.900 they'd have thought you'd need committing to an insane asylum but this is where we are now

00:20:17.020 these differing worldview starting points have we've said determine the kind of questions

00:20:24.500 people would deem relevant to addressing the existential socio-cultural and theoretical

00:20:32.240 problems of life it's quite unusual these days to be confronted with a question for example 0.93

00:20:37.440 unless you're talking to a muslim about the trinity or to be asked for five good reasons 0.84

00:20:42.380 to believe in the historicity of the resurrection 0.87

00:20:44.460 the pervasiveness of these unbelieving worldviews within the culture have had an impact on the

00:20:53.680 contemporary church now there were cultural prophets who saw it coming i think that's enough

00:20:58.480 for that slide um and uh there was a man named harry an english thinker called harry blamire

00:21:05.200 back in the 60s he wrote a book called the christian mind had a deep impact on me and he

00:21:10.000 opens this classic with a fairly commonplace observation that the thinking of modern people

00:21:15.460 has been secularized but he says that's not the primary challenge for believers this is what he

00:21:20.460 said tragic as this is it would not be so desperately tragic had the christian mind held

00:21:27.580 out against the secular drift but unfortunately the christian mind has succumbed to the secular

00:21:33.100 drift with a degree of weakness and nervelessness unmatched in christian history there is no longer

00:21:39.460 a christian mind there is still of course a christian ethic a christian practice and a

00:21:44.120 christian spirituality as a spiritual being in prayer and meditation the christian strives to

00:21:49.800 cultivate a dimension of life unexplored by the non-christian but as a thinking being the modern

00:21:55.780 christian has succumbed to secularization he accepts religion its morality its worship its

00:22:02.460 spiritual culture but he rejects the religious view of life the view which relates all problems

00:22:08.240 social political cultural to the doctrinal foundations of the christian faith the view

00:22:14.840 which sees all things here below in terms of god's supremacy he said that in the 60s

00:22:21.260 and it's interesting even when you read that you think well actually you know because of the

00:22:26.660 paganization of our culture people are exploring things like meditation and actually many christians

00:22:31.220 don't give a great deal of thought to an objective moral framework that we're all agreed we're all

00:22:36.340 agreed on we'll deal with that this afternoon when we talk about god's law as a consequence

00:22:42.620 it's not enough anymore to simply speak of equipping Christians to answer a few disconnected

00:22:48.580 questions about their personal faith or respond to an isolated question about a Christian doctrine

00:22:56.080 as all we need is a couple of seminars on the five most popular objections to the faith and

00:23:01.340 all will be well for the church and Christian apologetics let's just have a youth day and have

00:23:05.960 the three top questions and all will be well it's not enough we need renewal and reformation in

00:23:13.640 terms of a comprehensive scriptural view of reality we need to be able to reformulate the

00:23:21.580 questions of our time explaining their religious roots and their meaning

00:23:27.640 and that helps us deal then with the unbelievers own queries and difficulties whether they are real

00:23:35.840 or imagined and that can only be done within the context within the framework of a robust

00:23:41.480 biblical world and life view blamire understood this he says there is something before the

00:23:47.100 christian dialogue and that is the christian mind a mind trained informed equipped to handle

00:23:55.520 the data of secular controversy within a framework of reference which is constructed

00:24:01.040 of christian presuppositions the christian mind is the prerequisite of christian thinking and

00:24:07.500 christian thinking is the prerequisite of christian action you know we have a lot of young christians

00:24:13.060 today especially the younger generation they want to get straight into action they're out there

00:24:17.780 talking about social justice and engagement and everything else but they don't have a christian

00:24:21.380 mind they can't have a christian dialogue because they don't have a worldview constructed of

00:24:26.160 christian presuppositions and so their christian action often ends up being carl marx baptized

00:24:32.820 we have to have a christian mind before we're capable of serious christian dialogue and then

00:24:40.020 careful christian action effective christian apologetics today then requires a total christian

00:24:46.780 view of reality as rooted in scripture systematic unbelief being confronted by systematic belief

00:24:54.720 in every sphere of life now what i'm not appealing for is a new kind of evangelical

00:25:00.940 scholasticism a kind of elitist intellectualizing of the faith i'm talking rather about relearning

00:25:09.080 to think and live by the simple profundity of the word revelation of god in every aspect of life

00:25:16.800 human identity sexuality marriage family law politics economics philosophy the art science

00:25:25.960 business media education and all things besides how do we give an answer in those contexts

00:25:31.980 i began to ask myself that question about 15 years ago where is the defense as i was looking

00:25:38.500 for it as an apologist where is the defense of the christian view of law of education

00:25:44.600 of economic life of political life of the family of identity i'd spend a lot of time talking about

00:25:51.700 who is jesus why did he die what about the resurrection and is that what about evil and

00:25:55.080 suffering well those are important they're not unimportant but where was the defense of the

00:26:01.340 issues where the attack was actually taking place most uh younger people today in the universities

00:26:06.900 aren't biblically literate enough to make objections that were made 30 or 40 years ago

00:26:13.480 we need to then think christianly now what i've said this kind of programmatic

00:26:21.620 agenda a programmatic defense of a christian philosophy of life might seem a bit radical

00:26:27.140 a bit unnecessary a bit over the top even for this conference um roy closer framed the question

00:26:36.200 of the christian skeptical of this kind of thinking in this way he said an excellent

00:26:40.920 christian philosophy he said this while one can articulate a christian view of god a christian

00:26:45.240 view of how to stand in right relation to god and a christian view of ethics why is it necessary to

00:26:50.040 articulate a distinctly christian view of everything that seems like a fair question

00:26:55.740 doesn't it after all isn't the faith we defend centered on the hope of heaven and afterlife and

00:27:00.480 deliverance from an evil world why must we defend a distinctly christian view of everything since

00:27:09.620 on that basis everything is not really very important is there really a christian way to

00:27:16.400 boil an egg besides isn't it only areas of morality and spirituality that christians

00:27:23.000 and non-christians disagree isn't the vast majority of daily life essentially neutral

00:27:27.440 many christians of course will agree that we should think about christian things

00:27:34.240 and themes we should be spiritual people but surely there isn't a distinctly christian view

00:27:41.460 of everything and those questions themselves actually belie the collapse of the christian

00:27:48.580 mind they reveal the need for developing a presuppositional apologetic the fundamental

00:27:55.620 confusion in those objections is equating thinking christianly with thinking about christianity

00:28:01.700 this is how blamire puts it to think christianly is to accept all things with the mind as related

00:28:13.720 directly or indirectly to man's eternal destiny as the redeemed and chosen child of god

00:28:19.340 you can think christianly or you can think secularly about the most sacred things the

00:28:24.700 sacrament of the altar for example likewise you can think christianly or you can think

00:28:29.200 secularly about the most mundane things there is nothing in our experience however trivial

00:28:33.540 worldly or even evil which cannot be thought about christianly the fact that many people

00:28:39.040 are writing about things christian is in itself irrelevant to the question whether there is still

00:28:43.780 a christian mind you see what he's saying we've got christian bookshops today we've got christian

00:28:49.980 authors we can we can stack shelves with endless christian books plenty of people are talking about

00:28:54.700 things christian and yet very often these books do not contain a christian mind

00:28:59.560 they look at all of this content but not from the world view of the word of god

00:29:04.720 now to establish this point biblically is important otherwise you might think well

00:29:11.520 this is the gospel according to joe how do we know there is a christian world and life view

00:29:18.380 a truly christian mind well here's a good place to start the fear of the lord is the foundation

00:29:24.680 of true knowledge or the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom the word translated

00:29:34.080 foundation there or beginning literally means principal part principal part jesus makes the

00:29:43.380 same point when he's rebuking the pharisees you'll remember with their misleading interpretations of 0.75

00:29:48.100 the law he says woe to you experts in the law you have taken away the key of knowledge 0.96

00:29:54.380 what is the key of knowledge well it's the knowledge of God especially through the

00:30:01.420 son as revealed in the word of God this is the heart knowledge that Paul calls having the mind

00:30:07.300 of Christ and so the apostle Paul directs us actually to Christ Christ himself as the one

00:30:16.560 who alone gives true understanding he says by him you were enriched in a few spiritual churchy

00:30:22.860 things sorry i missed did i misquote that by him you were enriched in everything in all speech

00:30:30.780 and all knowledge in all speech and all knowledge clearly what paul is saying is that knowing god

00:30:44.220 through christ affects everything including all knowledge not some artificially restricted

00:30:49.300 ecclesiastical or churchy knowledge so a little later on he says the lord knows that the reasonings

00:30:57.120 of the wise are meaningless everything is yours you belong to christ and christ belongs to god

00:31:09.760 don't spiritualize that text away too quickly into pious sentiment it means that every area

00:31:16.040 of knowledge every area of life in all creation belongs to those who belong to christ

00:31:20.700 truth and life are not captive to the meaningless reasonings of unbelievers to the emptiness the

00:31:29.120 speculations of the philosophers paul says elsewhere in fact they know neither truth nor

00:31:34.360 life as they should the implication of this is that though unbelievers know many things partially

00:31:42.000 as creatures made in God's image, their knowledge of all things suffers from a critical lack.

00:31:48.720 Klauser puts it this way, there is some kind of mistake with respect to every kind of truth

00:31:53.380 and knowledge that can't be avoided if one does not know God, but can be avoided if one does know

00:32:00.920 God. Now, what's not being said here is that if you want a distinctly Christian view of quantum

00:32:07.760 mechanics or the mating habits of the common cockroach or the functions the physiology of

00:32:14.740 the human heart that all you need to do is look up the relevant verse in the bible if you were to go

00:32:21.280 in for heart surgery next week and when you got in and the surgeon's putting his gloves on and

00:32:26.300 and putting his robes on and they're just about to put the mask over your face and you see him

00:32:30.880 with a bible in his hand flicking through and saying to one of the nurses where's that passage

00:32:35.180 about the heart again because i'm now what are we doing you'd be pretty concerned

00:32:40.600 the bible does not give us exhaustive or encyclopedic knowledge of all things and

00:32:47.980 disciplines it doesn't intend to part of the task that was given to human beings at the beginning

00:32:54.900 of creation according to scripture is to observe discover name created entities and their functions

00:33:03.020 to bring out the potentiality of creation by learning about God's laws for all aspects of

00:33:09.040 created reality in light of his spoken word there was no point in the history of human beings where

00:33:15.540 they were simply left to look at creation and learn and understand there was always verbal

00:33:22.740 revelation from God those two things together is what are important a distinctly Christian

00:33:30.840 worldview and apologetic then rests not on finding a proof text for thermodynamics or heart disease

00:33:36.260 in the bible but recognizing jesus christ as the religious foundation for all knowledge and that

00:33:44.560 means taking full account of what scripture says about god and his creation about his lord and

00:33:49.980 redemptive work in history in all of our observations in all of our thinking and all of our theorizing

00:33:57.180 and living that's the starting point for a faithful apologetic and then of course we aim 0.81

00:34:03.940 to show the unbeliever that if they reject that biblical starting point the biblical paradigm of

00:34:12.620 creation of a fall into sin of redemption through christ of a consummation of all things

00:34:19.580 that paradigm of the scriptures if we reject that we make a perilous religious mistake that

00:34:27.060 sets aside the principal part the key of knowledge

00:34:31.220 and that mistake will then misdirect one's total understanding and it will eventually reduce all

00:34:42.260 of life to meaninglessness and unintelligibility so let me conclude this section with don't get

00:34:49.280 excited i'm nowhere near finished but just this section um with a definition then of apologetics

00:34:54.980 by the best-looking apologist in North America today.

00:34:58.840 Christian apologetics is the work of articulating,

00:35:03.480 defending, and translating the Christian mind,

00:35:07.640 conscience, hope, and imagination into all aspects of life

00:35:11.500 so that the embodied Christian world and life view

00:35:14.540 is set forth as true, satisfying, and full of meaning.

00:35:19.640 it's an art as well as a science christian persuasion is an art under the guidance of

00:35:29.720 the holy spirit as well as a science and that that vision for apologetics integrated into normal

00:35:34.860 christian life that is part of your priestly service and my priestly service to god paul

00:35:40.840 said that his ministry was for the defense and confirmation of the gospel we are to bring each

00:35:48.560 area of life into relation to the gospel procedurally then from a procedural point of view

00:35:56.860 the believer armed with a christian mind with christian presuppositions ready to defend and

00:36:05.440 translate the faith into all of life has set apart christ as lord not reason as lord

00:36:12.500 has set apart Christ as Lord in their hearts,

00:36:17.500 and that includes a surrender to the authority of his word.

00:36:22.500 As such, God's word in Scripture becomes our ultimate criterion for truth.

00:36:30.380 Think about this.

00:36:31.480 If the reach of our reasons or of our grasp of various external evidences

00:36:39.940 are more reliable and more authoritative

00:36:43.200 to stand as proofs of that word

00:36:46.360 than it's actually our thinking

00:36:48.360 and our logical procedures

00:36:49.880 that are the ultimate criterion for truth

00:36:52.560 displacing God's word, isn't it?

00:36:57.780 The reality is nobody proves

00:37:00.720 their most basic assumptions,

00:37:02.880 their most ultimate criterion,

00:37:05.220 their Archimedian point directly.

00:37:09.940 Otherwise, they wouldn't be their most basic assumptions, would they?

00:37:13.620 What you proved them with would be your most basic assumption.

00:37:21.220 Here's a tongue twister for you.

00:37:23.940 All arguments must begin with assumptions.

00:37:27.220 Therefore, it is impossible that all assumptions be based on arguments.

00:37:31.120 I'll give you 30 seconds to think about that.

00:37:32.820 all arguments must begin with assumptions and therefore it's impossible that all assumptions

00:37:41.360 be based on arguments the ultimate questions of life always come down to religious authority

00:37:47.460 to a given faith where does ultimate authority lie with the author of all things

00:37:55.000 or with me or you or Oprah or Jimmy Fallon or whatever it is these days

00:38:04.360 where does ultimate authority lie it's therefore important that we seek to defend the faith in a

00:38:12.280 manner that's consistent with our fundamental beliefs about God and his word the very notion

00:38:17.840 actually that god the god about which i've been speaking needs my feeble efforts to prop up

00:38:26.680 his sovereignty and lordship to prop him up on the face of it is absurd isn't it

00:38:34.560 i do not establish the reality of the one who establishes me

00:38:42.660 when moses asked for god's name he asked for a definition effectively

00:38:51.620 god says i am who i am i am that i am i will be who i will be you can't define me moses

00:39:02.880 because i am the source of all definition

00:39:06.640 human beings reason from existence not to existence you analyze all of your thought

00:39:20.580 you will discover that you are reasoning from not to existence the holy spirit through the

00:39:27.320 scriptures reveals to us the god of all truth whose word is law whose creation is meaning

00:39:36.420 and who knows the end from the beginning the only kind of word that such a god can speak

00:39:45.140 is an authoritative and totally infallible word there's nothing new that can be brought

00:39:52.280 to god's attention that will change his mind about something oh i didn't notice that one

00:39:58.020 Oh, I let one slip my mind.

00:40:03.980 The Bible does not contain hypotheses.

00:40:10.140 It doesn't contain scientific argumentation.

00:40:15.320 It doesn't contain, as far as I can tell, any classical apologetic arguments.

00:40:21.120 it is the infallible word of god christ is the final word as god incarnate he is god

00:40:35.340 incarnate by definition then without such revelation from the all conditioning god

00:40:41.760 there can be no ultimate objective truth no absolute eternal reality there's only an endless

00:40:49.120 series of human hypotheses and rationalizations applied to brute facts that's uncreated facts in

00:40:57.920 a chaotic cosmos that is impervious to true interpretation

00:41:02.840 the facts of experience become as van till said like beads without a chain to give them unity

00:41:13.420 it's like trying to gain knowledge gaining knowledge is like an attempt to sew without

00:41:21.180 fastening the ends and without tying a knot in the thread Greg Barnson puts it this way he says

00:41:27.340 for the Christian every fact is created pre-interpreted and divinely revelatory 0.60

00:41:33.000 the unbeliever holds just the opposite one begins with the creator and approaches the world thinking 0.97

00:41:42.640 god's thoughts after him while the other attempts to interpret experience by imposing abstract 0.94

00:41:49.280 formal unifying principles on concrete contingent diverse facts that sounds like a bit of a mouthful

00:41:57.920 just get some greg barnson and read his introduction to presuppositional apologetics

00:42:05.300 but he's basically saying look for the non-believer without the creator god who

00:42:12.700 governs and rules all things the world is just a chaos of brute fact of uncreated fact

00:42:17.480 from that's emerged from the womb of chance and the human mind must somehow rationalize

00:42:23.520 for the first time the chaos that's out there 0.99

00:42:26.280 but the unbeliever is unable to establish a relationship between the human mind and the 0.99

00:42:34.080 chaotic facts out there in our experience this is all to say that the bible's truth

00:42:40.120 and explanatory power carries self-attesting authority the lord jesus never appeals to

00:42:49.020 greek systems of logic he doesn't footnote any philosophers he doesn't quote any human

00:42:56.620 authorities to support his claim it would be absurd for him to do so as both god and king

00:43:03.200 the word made flesh through whom all things were made to whom all things belong who says before 0.51

00:43:08.640 Abraham was I am let me just consult Socrates to make sure that's correct

00:43:15.520 his word is totally self-attesting and this is what caused and still causes such offense 0.83

00:43:27.040 now in our apologetic efforts we can legitimately speak about the text of the bible seen through

00:43:36.200 historical investigation we can point to ancient and plentiful manuscripts which show the accuracy

00:43:43.120 of its transmission we can answer the questions of those who ask about textual variants we can

00:43:48.780 point to discoveries and archaeology to grab people's attention that's fine we can use

00:43:56.280 evidence is to grab people's attention but none of this proves or demonstrates the bible to be

00:44:02.080 the word of god historical inquiry can only ever produce varying degrees of confidence in any

00:44:11.360 specific event and sinful people are no more likely to accept god's revelation of himself

00:44:19.100 in history as they are to accept god's revelation of himself in the bible if they don't like it

00:44:24.500 in a few weeks time i'll be doing a debate on the resurrection around easter time in a

00:44:31.100 college setting in the uk but i won't be offering

00:44:34.560 10 historical reasons for to believe the resurrection as my fundamental argument

00:44:39.960 jesus was raised from the dead but i cannot prove that unequivocally by human reason i believe it

00:44:51.480 on faith i believe it and it's only by believing it that i can understand anything else

00:45:01.620 faith in the word of god is our starting point then in apologetics as in the rest of the christian

00:45:13.180 life why would we move out of the normal christian life and then suddenly when we get

00:45:17.900 into christian apologetics say well now we need to use a different form of authority

00:45:21.380 this is the result of course of placing our trust in jesus christ rather than the epistemic

00:45:31.900 confusion confusion of human beings and their empty reasoning we boldly and unapologetically

00:45:38.620 stand on the word of god and presuppose the christian worldview we submit a priori

00:45:45.020 to the dependability of god's word i do not hold that the bible is true

00:45:50.360 after i've analyzed it and decided i think it's logical by my judgment

00:45:55.460 or ethical by my estimation

00:46:01.700 or sufficiently supported by the most recent historical research the lord jesus says in

00:46:10.400 john 17 17 when he prayed to his father thy word is truth psalm 119 declares thy law is truth that's

00:46:21.800 our sure foundation let me say something radical to you prayerful reflection upon the word of god

00:46:28.440 by the holy spirit is our archimedian point of departure and apologetics it's the word of god

00:46:35.300 the work of the Holy Spirit and our prayerful dependence upon both the word and the spirit

00:46:41.600 that is the point of departure for us and that contrasts with traditional views of apologetics

00:46:47.940 that must first seek to prove God and the validity of his word first usually they try and prove some

00:46:53.960 kind of abstract conception of theism then move to try and establish that maybe Jesus was raised

00:47:01.200 from the dead probably and now might you please consider the bible as the word of god and jesus's

00:47:06.860 claims van till says

00:47:11.060 traditional apologetics built into it the right and ability of the natural man apart from the

00:47:19.020 work of the spirit of god to be the judge of the claim of the authoritative word of god

00:47:23.500 it is man who by means of his self-established intellectual tools puts his stamp of approval

00:47:29.920 on the word of god and then only after that grand act does he listen to it god's word must first

00:47:36.920 pass man's test of good and evil truth and falsity but once you tell a non-christian this why should

00:47:43.340 he be worried by anything else that you say you have already told him he is quite all right just

00:47:48.220 the way he is the scripture is not correct then the scripture is not correct when it talks of

00:47:53.560 darkened minds willful ignorance dead men and blind people with this method the correctness

00:48:00.000 of the natural man's problematics is endorsed that is all he needs to reject the christian faith

00:48:08.320 it's because of this so when the apostles are engaged in evangelism in the book of acts and

00:48:15.260 giving an account of the faith to the skeptic we're told they reasoned with them from the

00:48:20.760 scriptures act 17 17 they didn't reason to the scriptures as though they were establishing their

00:48:27.540 authority but from the worldview of the scriptures now that doesn't set aside careful thinking or

00:48:37.520 reasoned arguments as witnessed paul in the areopagus on mars hill but it is reasoning

00:48:45.700 with the scriptures and in light of the scriptures not pretending to neutrality to see if god's claims

00:48:54.160 in scripture are valid it's important that actually we remember in our evangelistic and

00:49:01.180 apologetic efforts that it is god the holy spirit who reveals christ to people and not us our task

00:49:10.200 is to be faithful to be obedient to glorify god it is the holy spirit who reveals christ to people

00:49:15.440 When Jesus asked Peter, who do you say that I am?

00:49:23.460 And Peter replied, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.

00:49:27.300 Jesus said, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

00:49:34.840 so the scriptures make crystal clear that all people have a duty to acknowledge God's self

00:49:43.420 revelation in creation in Christ in scripture and conform their thinking to it every word of

00:49:51.620 God is a law word it's the condition of our existence his word is the condition of all

00:50:00.060 life and it is this word we take by faith and trust and which we presuppose in our engagement

00:50:10.220 with the world that's thinking christianly but to wrap up we could also think unchristianly

00:50:17.260 those who reject christ and his revelation obviously do not have a christian view of things

00:50:24.160 but that doesn't make them neutral it does not mean they don't have a faith foundation

00:50:29.480 for their thinking rather something takes the place of the living god for the unbeliever there

00:50:37.100 is a god surrogate consequently the problem we face the challenge we face in engaging the

00:50:45.660 unbeliever is what we can call the epistemological sin of the heart 0.68

00:50:50.240 it's a sin of the heart it's a refusal to acknowledge God's word revelation and respond

00:50:59.280 with obedience Paul tells us doesn't he what the situation is for God's wrath is revealed from

00:51:05.720 heaven against all and godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their

00:51:11.040 unrighteousness suppress the truth since what can be known about God is evident among them

00:51:17.000 because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes that is his eternal power and divine

00:51:21.920 nature have been clearly seen since the creation of the world being understood through what he has

00:51:26.680 made as a result people are without excuse for though they knew God they did not glorify him

00:51:34.620 as God or show gratitude instead their thinking became nonsense and their senseless minds were

00:51:43.580 darkened they exchanged the truth of god for the lie it should say really a lie and worshipped

00:51:52.140 and served something created instead of the creator who is blessed forever what is the lie

00:51:59.260 the lie right back in the garden of god has god really said

00:52:07.540 you will not surely die but you will be as god

00:52:16.060 you can define good and evil and truth and falsehood for yourself you can know it for yourself

00:52:23.700 it is this reality that we confront all worldviews have their own religious starting

00:52:32.520 point with a presupposed criterion of truth and this is where the truth is exchanged for a lie

00:52:39.380 the unbelievers explainer for reality will always posit something that just is that's just there

00:52:48.460 something that doesn't depend on anything else for its being an unconditioned reality a divine per

00:52:56.720 say everybody either believes in the living god or they will give something created

00:53:05.920 a god surrogate the status of divinity and the bible calls that idolatry

00:53:13.760 it's this religious foundation that it impacts then all knowledge and all truth

00:53:22.140 And over the centuries, the idol factory, as John Calvin called it, of the human heart

00:53:28.520 has tried to give divine status to everything, from planetary bodies to numbers,

00:53:37.600 like the Pythagoreans who worship numbers, to ideas, to logic and human reason,

00:53:44.500 to emperors and states, to energy and matter, and to many other things besides.

00:53:52.140 Roy Klauser helpfully summarizes it this way it's almost lunch so hang in there

00:53:56.680 those who don't see the divine as the biblical transcendent creator will make it some part of

00:54:04.220 the world instead and regarding anything in the world as self-existent will slant

00:54:09.940 guide and control the deeper content of every concept the name given to this way of explaining

00:54:18.120 meaning the way that identifies what part of the world all the rest depends on is reduction.

00:54:26.420 A reductionist explanation is one that claims to have found the part of the world that everything

00:54:32.980 else depends on. A Christian should say these are all wrong. They are all examples of regarding 1.00

00:54:40.860 part of creation as the creator. The ultimate explainer is no part of creation at all.

00:54:47.060 every one of these divinity candidates is real but they all depend on god the christian would

00:54:54.600 adopt a systematically non-reductionist approach to every sort of theory every sort of knowledge

00:55:00.940 and every concept of everything now this idolatry can take very then sophisticated and deceptive

00:55:10.780 forms so that man's creativity in finding god's surrogates can appear very very sophisticated

00:55:19.100 these idols then shape people's thinking and through people's thinking they start to shape

00:55:25.400 culture and society for example some people try and make the physical aspect of reality material

00:55:32.940 reality, sometimes in tandem with the biological, as the only true reality and use it to explain

00:55:43.300 everything else. The physical is said to be truly real and everything else, all the non-physical

00:55:50.680 properties like logical thought beauty love number even history are either illusory

00:56:01.960 or they are simply byproducts of what is physical philosophers call that epiphenomenal

00:56:08.760 they're just a byproduct of matter everything is made dependent on the physical aspect of reality

00:56:15.760 so every other facet is diminished in status as less real i was reading uh this past week about a

00:56:22.520 new um exhibit about the human brain that everybody's raving about these experiments

00:56:29.920 being done on rats and other animals and this sort of neurological science deep investigation

00:56:35.240 of the brain look how these electrons are firing and look at this activity over here when someone's

00:56:39.320 praying and this activity as though you can reduce human existence to the movement of atoms

00:56:44.480 to the firing of neurons it's actually self-defeating if you if you follow the

00:56:54.220 logic of that view out there's no such thing as a historical exhibit within science

00:56:59.020 everything is made dependent on the physical the importance of the physical aspect is then

00:57:05.940 overestimated relative to everything that is said to depend upon it and this is the nature

00:57:12.460 of reductionism it performs a grand leveling matter leaps from one aspect one level of

00:57:19.700 existence to the next as though the law for the movement of atoms can account for the psychical

00:57:25.240 the moral the cultural and the faith life of man by contrast the christian will regard everything

00:57:32.660 though is in creation is equally real equally subject to god equally dependent on his word

00:57:39.300 no part of the cosmos generates or explains the rest the christian mind is non-reductionist

00:57:48.120 does not reduce the universe in whole or in part to one or more aspect in fact it doesn't even

00:57:54.880 reduce remember the cosmos to god we're not pantheists we don't identify any aspect of

00:58:04.780 creation as the source of the universe and we don't reduce the universe to god as though god

00:58:09.820 and the universe are somehow one there is a creator creature distinction that the bible begins with

00:58:15.840 that the gospel of john begins with that it asserts meaning the dependency of all creation

00:58:22.420 on god and every aspect every constituent aspect of creation equally real no part reduced in its

00:58:30.460 importance relative to the rest and that is the root of the christian mind in him all things

00:58:39.100 hold together in him all things consist now that might have sounded a bit abstract i know

00:58:47.880 that's apologetics for you but when this is applied into the real world of political life

00:58:53.960 and social life you get national socialism nazism communism marxism and millions of people lose

00:59:02.060 their lives when you have a reductionist worldview and then you apply it historically

00:59:08.220 people die human lives are destroyed

00:59:13.260 perhaps the most popular idol of our age the favorite god surrogate of our age is the state

00:59:22.060 the political where truth morality and law as well as cradle to grave security is found

00:59:31.660 in the infallible state as the arbiter of life the crowd the mob the democratic will expresses

00:59:40.400 a mutiny against god so actually today politics it's politics that fights god and his claims

00:59:47.960 tooth and nail everything is politicized marriage identity life it's all made an aspect of the

00:59:59.000 political that's why pastors get up into their pulpit and they want to talk about abortion and

01:00:02.860 then they're accused of being political and bringing politics into the pulpit

01:00:05.940 which is exactly where it belongs by the way

01:00:11.300 interestingly uh kierkegaard foresaw that atheistic and neo-pagan movements would make

01:00:20.440 their appearance as political trends and then manifest their true identity he said this the

01:00:27.160 future will correspond inversely to the reformation then everything appeared to be a

01:00:33.200 religious movement and became politics amen now everything appears to be politics but will become

01:00:39.920 a religious movement let me end with this in this view of apologetics the how

01:00:53.640 of the christian faith the how of coming to faith is as important as the what

01:01:01.100 in this view of apologetics the how of the christian faith is as important as the what

01:01:09.140 because the what cannot be ascertained or established under the illusion of some universal

01:01:16.360 capacity of autonomous human thinking and the attempt to do so always ends with the accommodation

01:01:23.760 of the christian faith to the culture the gradual diminution of the gospel human reasoning itself

01:01:33.600 needs redemption it needs reconciliation to the truth just as every other aspect of life needs

01:01:42.920 reconciliation to the truth to learn the truth capital t we must recognize that heretofore we

01:01:52.480 have lived in untruth and so acknowledge our dependency upon god and his spirit and it's only

01:02:01.600 here that christ who is the truth becomes for us constitutive of a new paradigm he becomes

01:02:14.160 constitutive of a new paradigm the christian faith no human perspective is higher that might

01:02:24.820 be invoked to bring christ and his revelation into judgment let me say that again no human

01:02:34.260 perspective is higher that might be invoked to bring christ or his revelation into judgment

01:02:42.660 faith in christ is the archimedean point the difficulty in believing for sinners

01:02:51.660 is not the reach of their reason it's the hardness of their hearts

01:02:57.940 that's the fundamental challenge it is difficult to believe because it is difficult to obey

01:03:06.900 it is difficult to believe because it is difficult to obey and so we have to invite

01:03:14.100 the unbeliever to take a decisive step pascal talked about this a lot to put on the lens of

01:03:24.280 christ and the gospel and look again at the world by all means internally critique their worldview

01:03:32.320 put on their lens and show them where it leads then offer them the lenses of the gospel of jesus

01:03:38.120 christ and the scriptures and invite them to take a decisive step to take his word and pray for

01:03:47.180 insight to hang out with christians to go to church and listen to preaching

01:03:55.140 to take up his word and surrender their illusions and grasp the truth

01:04:04.480 ultimately we must call them to follow and believe in order that they may understand

01:04:12.280 i close with the words of the danish philosopher if someone wanted to be his follower

01:04:21.080 his approach as seen in the gospel was different from lecturing

01:04:24.840 to such a person he said something like this venture a decisive act then we can begin in

01:04:33.520 other words follow me what does this mean it means the one does not become a christian by hearing

01:04:39.840 something about christianity by reading something about it by thinking about it no a setting

01:04:46.360 is required venture a decisive act the proof does not proceed but follows is in and with

01:04:58.020 the imitation that follows Christ.

01:05:03.480 Amen.

The NXR Podcast - April 16, 2024

THE CONFERENCE - Presuppositional Apologetics - Session 6 - Dr. Joseph Boot ｜ Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 2024

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