All right, everybody, we'll go ahead and get started. I will begin with prayer, and then we'll go into a little bit of review from last week before we take on our new topic, okay? So let's bow our heads. Mighty God, we praise you and we thank you that we have the privilege to come together and to reflect on just how powerful and how mighty your own self-defense is, Lord. I pray that we would be a people who are more and more capable of being part of your own self-witness. Lord, that we would understand ourselves not to be defenders of a weak and an impotent God, much less a weak and impotent belief system, but people who honor just how mighty your own self-declaration is in Scripture and in natural revelation and all about us, and that we would be more like heralds who are unashamed to go out and confront a world with the fact that there are sinners in rebellion who are in need of a Savior. That is what we hope for, Lord Jesus. Please bless the desires of our hearts and our efforts, Lord, to, again, grow more adept in our capacity as apologists. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, I got a question at the beginning. What is apologetics? And we talked about it the first class. Apologia is an apology or a reasoned defense of something. And what this would mean in the ancient world, it would be anything from a reasoned defense that you might offer before a court. you're on trial, but in 1st Peter 3 15 that's where we have this particular Greek word used where it says be ready always to offer a reasoned defense, a reasoned explanation for the hope that you have, and that's where we get the concept of apologetics. That this is not an irrational belief that we have with no foundation or no rationale. but that we have a reasoned defense for it. Okay, so last week we began with the topic of eternal punishment. Anybody remember the three things that we're going to try to do with every topic? We want to be able to say three things. They all start with W. What we believe, where it's found in scripture, why it matters. And what I'm getting at here, guys, I hope you're seeing this. We've only done this once. We're going to do this again this week. What I'm trying to help you guys to see is that the doctrines we believe actually guide the way that we're going to do apologetics. So last week we looked at eternal conscious punishment, right? What were some of the reasons why that was important? Establish urgency. Urgency, that's why we're evangelizing. We really press forward this question. If you don't believe in ultimate consequences that are lasting, what is the point of arguing for your belief system or worldview at all? Like what is the grand benefit if you're an atheist of finally convincing someone you're right? It's not any ultimate consequence of reward or punishment. It's actually winning someone to the belief system that there are no ultimate consequences, right? So that was the first reason that we have an urgency and we have a reason this doctrine actually makes our existence supremely consequential with what we do and what happens in it, right? So it's the second thing we observed about the importance of why this doctrine is important to us. Oh yeah, I mean that's true and that goes back to kind of at the beginning we have a rationale that others don't. The closest thing of course is Islam, but runs into other problems. The second reason, if you remember what we went through, was that this establishes something really, really profound and important. People are going to be in hell for eternity with all of the evidence in the world that Christianity is true, and they will still have a brazen, hardened, rebellious heart despite suffering. This really shapes how we think about an apologetic encounter. If your idea is that if I just supply enough evidence and enough reasons, then they're going to believe it, you've mistaken the situation. The root problem is not a lack of evidence. We're going to see this in much greater depths today. It is a hardened heart. a deeply, deeply heart and heart hatred for the God who they know exists. And we'll talk more about that today. So this concept is called the antithesis. It's the idea that the unbeliever looks at every single thing in reality through a different lens than what we look at it through. This is why in eternity, when it's patently obvious that Jesus is Lord, they will still look at that truth through a different lens. And they will do what Romans 1 says, which is they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So this is important. What this meant was when we do apologetics, it's more like a drug intervention. You know, when you have an addict in your family and everybody comes around, the presupposition isn't they don't have evidence that this is destroying them. The presupposition is it's obvious, but we have to somehow get to their heart. You guys get that? All right, then the third rationale we gave, one other reason, and I always send the notes out if you're ever wondering next time I do this quiz at the beginning. What's the third reason why this doctrine is important? Third reason we gave was that at the heart of being a faithful apologist, is really believing in your dialogues and discussions with unbelievers that you have been saved from eternal punishment. If you don't believe that, you dumb that down, the authenticity of your witness will be very different. It'll be very different if you're trying to convince someone that, hey, this is a belief that'll kind of make your life a little bit better. That's not Christianity. is that this belief saves fundamentally, eternally, from something dire. So you guys see why this is important. That's why we started, of all things, at the end. Today, we're gonna talk about our doctrine of God and the concept called presuppositions. But before we do, who knows the catechism question and could rattle it off? Morales over there? Callie? Alright, I'll pose the question. Everybody who knows the answer, say it back. What doth every sin deserve? Excellent, you guys. This is great. Knowing your doctrine, having it written on your heart. Step one. Who thinks they could bust out the proof text? But the righteous unto everlasting life. That's right. Excellent. We have one scripture memorizer over here. I know we have three others at least. Yes. That's right. 46. Auggie's going for it. Nice, Pally. Good work. 46. You didn't have to do all of you, just so you know, but you guys all wanted to make each other do it, because I warned you. I know that's why this happened. But that's all right. All right, so this week we're going to go down another path, and we're going to talk about our doctrine of God. Obviously, before we can even engage the question meaningful in any sort of reason, discussion, or debate whether God exists, we really have to talk about what type of God we're talking about. Who do you even mean when you use the word God? And of course, that's one of the main things unbelievers are going to want to argue about. Is there even a God? And we would want to be clear that we have no interest in defending the existence of a God, or any God, or some being who's bigger and higher. That is not at all what we're aiming for as Christian people. We believe in a very specific God. So we're going to begin with God, the doctrine of God. We're going to say, what does that mean first? And we're kind of answering the question, where does the Bible teach this at the same time? So when we talk about what is God, what are the two divisions or categories that we tend to divide up God's attributes into? Does anybody know two broad categories of divine attributes? That's right. God has certain attributes that he does not share with creatures. We call those his incommunicable attributes. He has other attributes that we have in some analogous way that kind of images God's manner of being in existence. And we've got to talk about these first. When it comes to God's incommunicable attributes, a passage that really puts the magnifying glass over God's incommunicable attributes is in this incredible disclosure by God himself in Exodus chapter three, just prior to all of the events of the Exodus. God meets Moses in a burning bush, and if somebody wants to go ahead and get Exodus chapter three, verses 13 to 14, let's go ahead and read those verses, and we'll meditate on those for a little bit. You want me to read it? Yeah, go for it. Then Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, what is his name, what shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent me to you. Alright, now in the Hebrew language, all throughout the Old Testament, you'll notice that when people get named, their names are not like our names. You might one day have a child, and it's a boy, and decide to name him Todd. Or you might name him Bill, or something like that. Those are just sounds. Those names, for all of us, have no meaning. But in the Hebrew Scriptures, names typically call attention to some attribute or quality that you have. So some classic ones. Esau. It means red. And it's interesting because his name, you know, he has red hair, but his name is at the very same time more definitive and even a bit prophetic of his life. Does anybody know what he sells his birthright for? Stew, specifically red stew. And there's this red connotation in his entire life. Well, okay, so you take Jacob. Anybody know what his name means? Heel grasper. On the way out, it says that he was grasping his brother's foot because they were twins and his older brother comes out of the womb before him. But for the rest of his life, it means trickster or huckster. And of course, he, In multiple ways, he kind of tricks his brother out of his birthright and blessing. So two big tricks right there. It's kind of funny because it gets turned on him. Then Laban tricks him. But the point though is, in the Hebrew language, names are more than sounds. So when God comes on the scene and discloses his name, we have every right, we even have a mandate, to read into this and to say, what is this telling us about the person so named? First thing you notice is this. God names himself. This speaks, right here, volumes. Nobody else in the Bible is allowed to name themself. Name the person in the Bible who names himself. No, everybody gets a name. The first salient fact is that God is naming himself. What this means is, not only is he self-existent, there is no mother and father to name him. but also means he is an absolute authority. The authority to name yourself is unique to God. My kids didn't do that. You guys didn't do that. It actually is one of those major affronts on the Lord in our current society when people try to name themselves contrary to what their parents named them and even try to be a different gender and all of these things. It is a usurping of a role that is unique to the creator. But look at the name itself. I am who I am. What does that denote to you guys? What concepts arise in your mind for some being to name himself I am who I am? Self-existent. That's right. belongs to him, not accidentally because it was brought into being by another, but absolutely. And in fact, this is not only pounded into your head because of the name itself, I am who I am, and the fact that he names himself. It's also pounded into your head by the sign that accompanies it. What is the sign that accompanies this disclosure of the divine name? What's going on? What sight did Moses... Not just fire, fire of a certain kind. So there's fire in a bush. That's right. It's an unquenchable fire. And it's not actually burning from any fuel. Otherwise it would consume the bush. It's just burning, burning. That is an anomalous sort of fire. And the sign you could say even speaks to this concept of self-existence. It is not dependent on anything else. A really profound theophany, right? So this is at the heart, when we talk about God's incommunicable attributes, self-existence is at the heart of that. When we talk about defending the existence of God, we are talking about a self-existent being. We're not talking about Zeus, who has a father. We're not talking about the myriad of Hindu deities. We're talking about the being who is self-existent, and not only that, who alone has the authority to name himself and to disclose himself. It's interesting, if you guys know this, how many people know what the words in your Bible when you read capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D? Do you know what that means in the Old Testament? Somebody tell me. It sounds like DJ. Yes, that name, when you read this in the Bible, when you see the word L-O-R-D with all capitals, that's actually telling you that the Hebrew word underlying it is Yahweh, which is derivative of this name, I Am Who I Am. The most frequent name of God next to Elohim, which means powers, is this name, Yahweh, which is some variation of I Am. In fact, it's been argued that the different syllables of it are a way of saying, He who is and was and is to come. Variations on the Hebrew verb, Ehyeh. And of course, what do you find in Revelation? Frequently, God says, I am the being who was and who is and who is to come. So this is talking about the self-existent being and there are several different attributes we associate with this. The first one is that God is absolute. That means he's not relative or related to anything else. He's not measured by anything else. A more profound way to think about God is that he is the measure. There is no bigger concept that encompasses him. He is the context of everything else. Nothing contains him. Self-contained is another way that we sometimes think of this concept. So if God is self-existent, what other attributes do you think you could kind of infer that God has if you know he's self-existent? What other things must he be? Yeah, he's the only possible being who can fill the role of creator ex nihilo, out of nothing, totally independent. Anything else? That he'd be all-knowing. This is important. If God is totally self-sufficient, He's not a fire that consumes anything else. This speaks to his knowledge too. His knowledge is self-sufficient. This means God does not know anything because it is a certain way. It means that everything is a certain way because God knows it. See the difference there? This self-existent God is not watching a movie to be entertained. He is the director. He is the one whose will runs through all things. This is why we can say that all things are being worked out for the good of those who love him and for God's glory. Romans 8, 28, Ephesians 1, 11. What other things can we say about God? Okay. I would say it was semi-related to the creator one. There literally is no other power in all of reality but God in that which he creates. There's not really a more straightforward way of saying that God has all power. Now there's one interesting attribute. Omnipresent, yes, you said that, was that you? Yes, God must, He is the context, the absolute. He's not in any point in space or time. He is the supreme outside of space and time have their definition relative to Him. He's trans-temporal. Trans-temporal, so that's not just that He's at all times, but that He is above all time. Which I can only think of as he sees everything at once, simultaneously. Yes. Past, present, future. Definitely. Absolutely. How do you do that exactly? Who thinks they could explain the doctrine of divine simplicity? God has no parts. Yes. This is a very wonderful thing to think about God and to contemplate. You guys, it might be said that you're loving, it might be said you're smart, it might be said you're wise, but what's the funny thing about each one of you? You were loving at one moment and hateful at another. You were wise at one moment, you were foolish at another, right? Even your attributes kind of get parted out into different moments. For God, we would say that he is his attributes. He is identical with His love with the result that He cannot not be loving. He is identical with all that He is. That is very different than each of us. That's why right here, we already have it. I am who I am. I am self-existent. God is His own existence. You, in a strange way, friends, can see that you are not your own existence in the sense that your existence can be taken away. Such is not the case with God. This led Thomas Aquinas to say this, to the questions whether God is and what God is, there is one answer, God is. It's not like with us. You can say with Brandt, whether he is or is not, you know, there was a time when I was not, a time when I would be severed from my body. Such is not the case with God. Another thing that simplicity means is that God is not composed. Anything that can be put together with parts, friends, you can imagine those parts being removed, right? That's why it's very important to say that God is not composed of parts. You might think, what could sever the one part or one half from the other? There is no half to sever. God is who he is. He's absolutely unitary and one. And these are some of the really deep and profound things about God. As our confession puts it, in Westminster Confession, this is kind of the longer way of stating it, but, there is but one only living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, indivisible, without body, parts, or passions. When it says without passions, what it means is, you know how you sometimes feel overtaken with an emotion? And then maybe you get overtaken with another emotion. Those are things that we call passions. But God's blessedness is eternal and immutable. He doesn't get overtaken as if, like a swooning woman in love. He doesn't get, he is all that he is. So it goes on, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, That means he does not change. Immense, that means he has no limits. Eternal, that means that he is not in time. He's above it, he's at all times incomprehensible. How many people feel like half the stuff we said already was pretty incomprehensible? Incomprehensible. Almighty, most wise, most holy, most free. That's an interesting one. There's nothing determining God's will beyond God himself. most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own, immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and with all, most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty." This is a rather robust statement of who God is. When you guys think about the attributes of God, I'm curious to know which one resonates with you as especially a God-defining attribute. When you think of God, which of the attributes we've discussed really comes to the forefront of your mind? Do expound. Looking for the door. To be equanimous is to not be shaken, moved, or disturbed by outward appearances, by activity, really nothing. You are equal, you're balanced. That's great. And God's equanimity is perfect. Yeah, yeah. Maybe another way to phrase the question, which attributes of God really bring you comfort? Faithfulness, yeah. And it's a rather remarkable faithfulness because we're talking about a God who cannot lie. We're talking about a God who cannot deny himself or his promises. I mean, that's just a wonderful, God has made us promises about, and he cannot deny those promises that he's made about our salvation and the gems of his kingdom. Anyone else? In this day and age of justice, just what's going on and we always want to control everything. It seems like everything is so unjust right now. Right. And just being able to rely on the fact that we have a just God and that in His timing, He will serve it perfectly. I mean, this is what we're all hoping for, a couple of days. You guys, these are the material for the first petition of the Lord's Prayer that we talked about today in church. These are things that you need to say about God. Holy God, you are most wise, most just. independent. You are free and your sovereign will is accomplished. These things need to be on your lips as praises. It's going to be very important when we talk about doing apologetics and actually defending the faith. We have to know what we believe at first. Early on at Trinitas when we were planting, We went through the attributes of God, and I asked the same question, and you know, one of the guys there, he and his family had, you know, four years into the plan, they ended up moving, but he said something very similar to what Scott said. God is, He doesn't need anything. I think sometimes when you're a provider in a home and you have even the slightest real sense of how much you need, how much help you need to do whatever it is you're doing, it is just grand to contemplate the God who is like a fire who needs no fuel, who is never lacking, who's never needing, who is super abundant in his capacity. This is what we mean when we're talking about God. And so we have one proof text, Exodus 3, 13 to 14, wonderful scripture to know, God's grand disclosure of his name in the Old Testament. But what I'm gonna have you guys plan to memorize, and I'll say this now before we start talking about why things matter, is we're gonna memorize the shorter catechism, which is much more pleasant to try to memorize than Westminster Confession chapter two. It goes like this, what is God? Question four of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. And it's a little more short and sweet. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And our proof text might be surprising because it's gonna have a lot to do with why this is important. Does somebody wanna read Proverbs chapter one, verse seven? Somebody other than our friend here, Nathan got the last one. Somebody who's got a Bible. If you have a phone, you've got a Bible somewhere. Oh, we got, yes, Jason's back here. Yep. All right. This is so simple, so short, and so important when we talk about apologetics. We're gonna talk about why this matters, because here's the thing, after having talked about God's attributes, it's very clear that as Christians, we believe everything depends on God. And we had DJ say that God's attributes means he is the creator. He's the only one who could possibly be the creator. What we tend not to necessarily think and know, Christians, is that not only does everything depend on God for its existence, But actually, every single person at every moment is utterly dependent on God for their knowledge. This is extremely important when it comes to apologetics. This means we must not think of God only as our creator, the beginning of our being and existence. We have to think of God as our presupposition. the first, most lucid, most important, most powerful, most informative idea that we have. The unbeliever wants you to think like this. They want you to think that you know that science is a valuable source of knowledge, that you know that reason is a valuable source of knowledge, that math is a valuable source of knowledge, and you can know those things before you know God. What does Proverbs 1-7 say? Proverbs 1 7 does not say that the fear of the Lord is what you get after you've thought really really hard about Thomas Aquinas's five proofs for the existence of God. It's this thing that you get after you know many other things. It says it is the foundational thing you know. And we're going to have to expound this idea first so you can really begin to understand what it means to be a great apologist faithful to the Word of God. I'll ask a question, I put it this way, maybe I'll pose it to you guys. When I was at Augie's football practice a few weeks back, I was there with CeCe picking him up, and I asked Nicaea, what is the most certain fact right here, right now? What is the most obvious, most certain, undeniable fact at this moment? And I'm curious what you guys would say. What is the most sure and obvious fact right now? Okay, okay, I think therefore I am. You know, I'm thinking, you know, that's the first thing that comes to mind. I'm obviously thinking. Anything I'm receiving, I see that. Okay, which is fair, but even then you'd just be someone thinking and thinking, and that's a great modern answer from Descartes. The most obvious fact is I'm thinking here right now. For Nicaea, she said the most obvious thing is that a football game is going on, or a football practice. Yeah, it's just one of those questions you get caught off guard about, like, what are you even talking about? I think if you guys were honest, you'd say the most obvious fact right now might be that we're in this room or that people are talking or Brant's talking to you. Okay, this is what you have to understand to really be serious as an apologist. The most certain and obvious fact at every single moment, without exception, is that God exists. nothing is more obvious, at every moment, at all times. That's what Proverbs 1.7 says, and if there's something in you kind of beating against that, this is because we're a lot more like the unbelievers we are going out to witness to than we have actually come to terms with. We have grown accustomed to living like you're in a movie and you're the main character. How many people have ever kind of felt like that? I'll be honest. Right. Which is a little bit insane when you think about it. We all know we didn't make ourselves. We all know this whole reality of storylines pre-exists us and co-exists with us and will exist after we're gone. It's kind of insane to think that way. It is a way of thinking we inherited from Adam and it's called rebellion and we've never stopped. We have to think this way if we're going to be serious apologists. Otherwise, what you're really like is you're like an addict trying to go and do an intervention with another addict. You actually haven't been free from your own delusions and you're participating in kind of a, you know, honestly, a fake escapade on your part to try to help someone else while you're just fine in your delusion. Guys, let me try to explain how you guys can think about this. And this is, again, at the heart of what it means to really engage in apologetics. Can you be somewhere and have a fact constantly barraging your senses as obvious and yet not notice it or not acknowledge it? Can that happen? I like to use this analogy. How many people have ever been in a room, maybe you're super involved in writing a paper, you're doing an assignment, you're doing your math homework, kids, maybe you're doing your job if you're an adult, and there's a fan on in the background. And you've been working for maybe hours. And then for some reason, maybe it's an automatic fan, the fan goes off, and you're like, man, it's the first time you really even acknowledged the fan. Ever had that happen? Okay, yeah, pretty close, pretty close, yeah. That's right. Friends, this tells you something right away. You can know something, be experiencing something, and in fact, not acknowledge it, not pay attention to it, because it has been going on so consistently, all the time, and without exception, that it's easier to actually take it for granted. Isn't this a bit of a frightening thought about ourselves? Friends, whenever I tell people what the last judgment will be like, I tell them it will be like that fan and it will be terrifying. Whatever we thought we had to say to God about his lack of self-revelation, it will be like not the fan going off, but the fan turning up and going, oh dear, my goodness, I have been denying not just a fan, but a person. who has been upholding my existence and has been keeping all things in order so I can enjoy this life at all times. And in fact, when I look at the world with that understanding, it's like everybody's actually kind of dancing to music that's playing all the time. It's the voice of God. People get up in the morning, they go to work, they do these things, and they don't even know what they're doing it for. It's this music playing, and they're doing all the steps. They don't know where it's going, but they're doing it all the time. This is the biblical picture of God's ubiquity, His everywhere-ness at all times. Right, right. That I willfully turned that down. This is why the word preached is so important, the word read is so important, because it's this thing telling you the music is playing all the time, and we all have sufficiently wayward hearts that somehow the story turns into being about us the minute we walk out of the church, or the minute we walk out of our meditations, and this is psychopathic, and we all do it. Other examples I love to throw out there for people, because part of being a good apologist is actually being good at explaining exactly what I'm saying right now and doing it in a bold-faced way with an unbeliever. If this is really an intervention, you're going to have to tell people things that they violently do not want to hear. And they'll tell you you're crazy for saying it. But here's another example. You can know and experience things all the time that you've never named. You know, after Newton, we named this thing gravity that we rely on all the time. And when I ask you what are the obvious facts right now, it's, you know, I think you tend to first think about what you're seeing, but gravity is a pretty salient fact that once mentioned, you're kind of like, yeah, it's pretty undeniable. I'm relying on that all the time. Sense of equilibrium, gravity. The classic one, of course, is light itself. Whatever you see with your eyes is actually less apparent, in many respects, than light itself. If I turned off the lights, you'd be like, well, light's totally obvious. But this puts a verse like Psalm 36.9 in its proper light. In, says the psalmist, in your light, we see light. The concept is that at every single moment, we, to use the language of Paul in Acts 17, we live and move and have our being in the context of God sustaining us, upholding us. And it's only in this light that we live in a purposeful reality. We can trust our own senses. This is a wonderful question. How do you know that you can trust your senses? Give me an answer. Give me your best bet. How do you know that you can trust the information you're receiving from the senses that you have been given. All right. I think, you know, Scott's answers are more intuitive than you might think. And yet, what Scott is saying is by experimentation or testing your senses. But even then you go, how did you know in the first place to test your senses and have this sense of confidence that by testing it or repeating something, what's going to result is knowledge or certainty or a likely probabilistic guess of what would happen next. Yeah, that's really not a very helpful answer. Yes, go ahead, DJ. Well, so you're definitely right there. God consciousness is the first answer. What we are saying as Christians and what Proverbs 1-7 is saying is that we enter the world as if with the voice of God speaking to us from the womb in a language that is pre-words and Right there, we have this sense of purpose, we have this sense that we can trust our senses, that when we cry, that someone's gonna listen and help. That is the picture of mankind from the beginning. We're constantly living and moving and having our being in this voice of God speaking around us. And to put it simply, only a person who justifiably knows something can tell you something you don't already know and expect you to have faith or trust in them. Yes, I like how you're saying that. I think the language of program is helpful. However, it's even more than program because it's self-reflective. As soon as we have a self-conception, we have a God conception. And this comes out in so many ways. Why does every culture have some God doctrine? Why? You're right. Why do people who have never professed belief in God when they're in dire circumstances cry out? To something somewhere. The biblical answer is because we know God not just as certainly as we know ourselves. In a certain respect, we know him more certainly than we know ourselves. Because we know that we didn't make it so that this world around us would be something we could understand, manipulate, or have purpose in. To have purpose presupposes someone who is purposeful and has created purpose for us to live into. This is the biblical picture. Go ahead, Scott. Yeah, that's right. Right. That's right. Well, and you know, a verse to keep in mind, so we've seen Psalm 36, 9 in your light, we see light. Psalm 139, 14, John, John, David speaks this way. I will give thanks to you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works and my soul knows it very well. This speaks to the fact that we know ourselves to be wonderfully made as soon as we know anything at all. It's not to say that we tell ourselves that or acknowledge that right away, but as we've seen, you can know things that you haven't named. whether it be gravity, whether it be the fan in the background. Another one I love to explain to people, I've taught logic for about a decade at Northwest University. My last class there was 2019 in the fall. But I love teaching logic because most of these students have argued with people many, many times before that class. But in that class, we start giving names to principles of reasoning themselves. Different argument forms that you've actually been using your whole life, and yet for the first time, we're putting a name on it. In a sense, could you say those people knew logic from day one? Yeah. You couldn't teach anyone anything if they didn't already know logic, if they didn't already have a rational sense of what does and doesn't make sense, and it comes out of your kids right away, right? You see your kids try to make compelling arguments. You don't have to teach them that, right? Yeah, well, I mean, you could labor to teach it, the better that way. But the point, though, is logic is another perfect example of something that you know before you name it or acknowledge it. The problem is the unbeliever, they want to give logic the status of ultimate standard of truth, mathematics the status of ultimate standard of truth, probability the ultimate standard of truth. And what we're saying is those things, those principles themselves only make sense on the presupposition that you are made in God's image. That is the most sure and certain truth. And that's what it means to call God your presupposition. It's that belief in light of which all other beliefs take their proper place and are given their proper sense. So is that what a presupposition is? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's something that you know before you investigate or attempt to investigate anything else. And it's the sort of belief that makes investigation possible. So for example, in the scientific method, one of the things you're assuming is uniformity. That if you do an experiment multiple times, you'll be able to isolate factors. How do you know that things actually are consistent or uniform? You could never prove that by any scientific experiment. You have to presuppose it. The theory of uniformity, that's what lies behind, oh, for instance, geology's claim that there are billions and billions of years old. since the beginning, so there are no surprises. Therefore, there cannot be a worldwide flood that just wouldn't fit the narrative. Yes. I mean, even though they posit like 15 ice ages and stuff like that. So friends, yes, go ahead, Rich. Can you explain how that's different from, say, someone, like, the charge will be raised that you're just assuming that beforehand, and you're starting with that, and then it colors. In a sense, we kind of say that, but like, Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. So Rich is asking an important question. When we talk about Yes. Yes. He's really going deep now. Rich is pointing out there's a difference between what we're saying when we say God is our presupposition and a mere assumption. You might say something like this, you know, assuming that the Seahawks win the next game, they're going to be at the top of their division or they're going to clinch a playoff spot or something. You say something like that. That's just a bare assumption, bare conjecture. Maybe they'll win the next game, maybe they won't, and I'll proceed on the assumption they do, and I'm going to try to save money for tickets for the playoffs or something. That's not what we're talking about when we describe God as our presupposition. We're saying that this knowledge of God is something without which all of these other things we take for granted would not make sense. And it's in a different category, therefore. It's more like logic as a tool without which we cannot make sense of life or reality. It is that thing that even enables us to deny God's existence because you can't even make rational arguments or thoughts without this presupposition that you are the product of a personal, rational God. Yes, so that's interesting. So when you point out that this belief in God has a powerful ability to explain other things, we'd say it's more than evidence. It's more than simply looking through the lens of the microscope and seeing something that's smaller. It's the microscope itself. But I thought that you said that presupposition was where you didn't have any evidence. You were just, well, not assuming. Right. So it's a better way to think of it is as a lens through which you understand the evidence. And in a sense, you see that lens itself, but you're always looking through it. It's always making sense of things and putting things in their proper order. So it's bigger than any one little factor thing. Sometimes big words make things harder and sometimes they make them easier. One set of big words that made this easier for me was the necessary precondition for intelligence. Right. It's not just that we assume it or guess it or posit it and then see what happens. But we're acknowledging it as the necessary thing you have to have in order to really know anything. Right. Right. And so the rub of that is that for the unbeliever, we can always point out to them how they're assuming that and yet denying it with their lips. That's right. We put it this way. The knowledge of God is something that we always already have. That's part of what we have to presume when we're talking about a being who is the self-existent, self-defining, self-revealing being. There's nowhere that any intellect could ever be without knowing him as the one in whose light we see all other things and in whose context, he's the absolute. So you could say God, the knowledge of God is something that we never don't have. That's also what makes it different. Yes. That is a reference that is not lucid. I don't know what you mean. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. the number one possibility of anything is that if God exists, then I can look and learn everything else. Right. Jason, go ahead. You were, you would. Yeah, it gets into so many things and I want to definitely want to get in the way of where you're going. No, no, hit it. A presupposition, it does play a role in a logical argument. Yeah. And sometimes it's helpful to understand things by contrast. So if I'm presupposing the existence of God, what is somebody attempting to presuppose if it's something other than that? And that'd be one way to understand a presupposition. And maybe you can even like, and I'm kind of distanced from like formal arguments, but you can almost make a little math equation and you have a little variable that's what you're presupposing there. And those are possible ways to work with the concept, too, of just what is a presupposition. Right. Well, we've got to go there next. You know, if we're saying that God is the presupposition of everything, you know, I'll deviate from my notes plan. What's the unbeliever's ultimate presupposition? The world presupposition is the original God. And that's why they can't make sense of the world. They can't make sense of the world at all. And to be clear though, we would say a presupposition can't be a mere negative. What is the lens through which they understand everything that try to make... Joanna actually nailed it over here. Their presupposition is themselves. So to be really clear, if you're not presupposing God as the being who makes sense of everything, who fits you to the world like a puzzle piece, then that places you, either individually or collectively as humanity, in the place of being the grand puzzle master. You might ask, how do we individually or collectively know for sure that this is a puzzle at all as opposed to a really cruel, frustrating game of Jenga that is just gonna collapse on our head as we're playing? This goes back into our conversation last week about purposefulness in the world, there being internal consequences. How do we know there's even a purpose when we start with ourselves? This is actually the problem of existentialism. They begin with the idea that there is no fundamental purpose, and now we have to try to create meaningful things, which is, man, if you thought Roman Catholicism was a burden to place on a human being, how about create meaning? That's a pretty burdensome thing. Very subjective. Well, and this goes back to, so I'll kind of number these things and you guys will get my notes. First, we're saying the knowledge of God is ubiquitous even if people don't acknowledge God. just like you can know gravity without acknowledging it and saying it out loud, right? So that's the first thing we're saying about presuppositionalism. Second thing we're saying is we're constantly relying on God in definite ways. Talked about how we have no way to know that our senses are not lying to us unless we believe we're already swimming in the infallible revelation of God to the effect that we can trust ourselves. So we'd say where Descartes said, I think therefore I am, We are actually saying, I think therefore God, or you're saying God therefore I think at the very same time. We are reasoning in light of God who made us fearfully and wonderfully. Do you guys see what we're saying there with God as presupposition? He was trying to start with himself in the most radical sense. I'm starting with me. And, you know, numerous philosophers showed the basic problems with his thought, not least of which is Hume, that even the statement, I think, therefore I am, that, you know, kind of presupposes a consistent I. He said, you know, the fact is you might just be a series of random thoughts who has a false sense of your own history. How would you know you weren't if you started with yourself as the ultimate authority? So as presuppositionalists, we're saying, if you do not start with God, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. I promise you, it won't be but a hop, skip, and a jump before we can show you you have no knowledge at all. That is how we argue. Do you guys see the difference? The unbeliever wants to come to you and they wanna say, you prove God. What we do as presuppositionalists is we turn around and say, you try to prove anything at all without our God. That is a radically different angle. I know for a lot of people it's frustrating that the Bible opens up in the beginning God, and it's like, well, where's the proof for God first? There is no need for proof, because He just is. That's right. He is, and in fact, He is the light in light of whom we prove and make sense of everything else. So the difference between the Muslim who says, I can serve that presupposition the same way as you can, then we do get into the evidence phase? Well, we'll get into a lot of things. Next week we'll talk about the Trinity, but I don't want to try to swallow a pill. I'd say the closest thing that could kind of mimic something along the lines of what we're saying, but we already saw last week the capriciousness of Allah actually harms our ability to be certain of anything. When we can't have certainty of salvation, how can we have certainty of any revelation that Allah has for us? He's deeply capricious. We don't really even know him. We'll talk about that next week. But our constant reliance on God, we can speak of it in terms of knowledge. How do we have the most basic certainty or trust in our senses or our minds? Another way to put it would be like this. How do you know that anything is worthwhile? I mean, really, how do you know that any project is worth your time? In good grief, look at reality, all the people around us who every day are getting up, working for something. Go ahead, Josh. Right. Yeah, and I know, but I always like to ask people, like, how do you know that you are not headed for just pure, unremitting pain? I mean, how do you know this? There are some pretty miserable existences, you know, just drive up the I-5 into Seattle. There are actually states of being that we would think of as worse than dead. Well, and I'll tell you too, like, it's like when you feel like you got something so good for so long, eventually that thing absolutely and this is where all of our doctrines start beginning to work in concert one of the things we say about God is that he's incomprehensible what good news what a horrifying thought it would be if we got to heaven we're like we figured it all out we figured out God Like it's like a video game you played enough and it's not fun anymore. It's like half of the glory of what we're saying about God is He is absolutely inexhaustible in the depths of who He is. Hence Psalm 16 where God says, at my right hand are pleasures forevermore. And of course we're talking about that in His presence, the enjoyment of Him. So you can come at this from the angle of knowledge. You can come at it from the angle of purpose. But isn't it incredible that everybody gets up as if there's some point? There's some reason to be doing it. And children from the youngest age live and exist like there's a striving for life in existence. You know, we are living, literally, with God as our context, singing to us, saying to us, there is purposefulness. Another one is obviously morality. We'll have a whole class on moral arguments and stuff like that. But, you know, just, it's so ridiculous to ask a totally worldly individual, you know, how do we know murder is wrong? Oh, because it hurts people. It's like, how do we know that hurting people is wrong? You know, it's like, oh, you know, I mean, do you like to be hurt? It's like, yeah. No, I don't. I can get hurt a lot less maybe if I hurt and swindle other people. So, I mean, where do we go? And how do we have this sense? Our children from day one have this idea that there are premises to argue from, that what they did to me was not acceptable. It's all the time. And these things are not self-explanatory. We could really even say beauty, truth, geometric principles, even the very idea of God. Every culture developing in this sense. You go ahead. Yeah, absolutely. Even that betrays belief there's some sort of purpose. You have a problem, you're trying to solve it in the darkest and most confused sort of ways, but even then you're relying on this idea that you're in a world where problems can be solved and hurt can be alleviated, you name it. Where did that presupposition come from? Why are you not just consigned? Why are you not a rock? These sorts of things we're gonna say, they're all the fruit of the fact that we already know God at all times, and we have to be good, first of all, at articulating that to ourselves before we say that to anyone else. It's true. Yeah. It's a different language. It sure is. Totally. Well, this is why we talk so much about, you know, our, you know, education of our kids from day one is being important. The world is not designed to tell your kids that the only reason their math assignment makes sense is because numbers are made by this absolute self-knowing, self-existing God. And we... That's why you got out of school. Oh, of course. Yes. Increasingly. And it's increasingly absurd. You know, let me point out a few other things that you'll want to keep in mind. So you look at the scriptural testimony. Tell me if the things that we've just said sound true to Romans chapter 1, verses 18 to 21. This is Paul opening up his argument. John begins in a very similar way in his gospel, but he says this. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened." Man-made religion exists not because man did not know God or know the answer. It's because they did not like God, and they didn't like His answers. And we've all done this. I talked last week about your state of mind when you're in a really bad argument and like, you know, an hour later you've cooled down and you can kind of see where you went astray and you can repent and say you're sorry. How many people have done that? The picture of humanity is that we are in a constant, unremitting, angry argument at God in a way that we do not have the capacity of ourselves to step back and say, oh my goodness, what have I done? And that will be the final judgment. The music turning up, all of our facades trying to explain away God, and all of our pursuits that we try to give primary meaning over God, those things will all dissipate. I actually would argue that a presuppositional perspective is really set before us even in the Ten Commandments. What's the first commandment? You shall have no other gods before me." Now listen to this, it's actually very subtle. I thought about writing about this, you know, so I'm going to pass this on. All right. The commandment is not, you shall not deny me as God. That's not even an option. The only thing you can do is put things in front of me. I will always be your presupposition. That's that. The only way you could go astray is by having a God before me, and fundamentally what that is, is worshiping yourself as God, trying to be your own presupposition. You can put other things there, science or the pursuits of the world and fame, but all of that, it's so futile as the commandment even articulates it. You're just putting something in front of me like a moon to eclipse the sun, and it's not gonna last long. Because I'm the one keeping the moon and the earth in its orbit. I'm the one keeping you existent. So everybody has me as God. It's just a matter of whether you try to put something before me. You see that? This is the picture throughout the Bible again and again. That's why we sing these Psalms, you know, the heavens declare the glory of God. But we also read that, you know, the ant teaches us how to work. This is one of those thoughts that's worth considering as well. So if God is absolute self-existent, he pre-exists everything. What was the inspiration for whatever God made? You think about you, if you were to draw something, Callie's a drawer, you know, where are you gonna get ideas for what to draw? Something you see, yeah, other stuff. Okay, so where did God get inspiration for the creation? Everything in creation is self-inspired by God. What does that mean? Every single thing in creation without exception provides some insight into the God who made it. This means everywhere you're looking at all times, you are confronted with God's wisdom, His attributes, His creativity, and these things tell you true and important revelation. And when we talk about, you know, we'll talk about teleological arguments for God, but looking at design and creation, we'll talk about things like that. Yeah. Absolutely because it's all self-inspired Absolutely Yeah, good question. So these things, we could say a few things about them. All perversions are usually taking something good and using it for evil purposes. So first of all, you have to start with something good in that perversion. And usually what is involved in that perversion is someone attempting to assume a godlike activity over it. That's actually what makes us angry about it when we have a tyrant who has a perverse orientation to his people. We'd say, There are two things that are revelation there, someone doing whatever he wants, and that's part of what's perverse, but doing whatever you want is appropriate when your God and your every want is holy. And so even then we're having these indirect things, and the problem is we've destroyed or ruined the shalom of it, or what we'd call the peace of it. But even then, every evil thing only exists to reveal God's glory so he can stomp on it and overcome it and reveal his glory the more. And I would say in that sense, Self-exceeding is one of the attributes of God that we're talking about. Self-exceeding. God is inside of Himself. If you were to look outside of the Son, if you could imagine or phrase it that way, you would just see the Father and the Spirit, and if you looked beyond that, you'd just see the Son. There's this overflowing sort of conception. But with that in mind, friends, I hope this proof text, it's so simple, it's in the first chapter of a book, a book all about wisdom, Proverbs 1.7. It's actually repeated in all of the wisdom literature. So Job 28.28 says the same thing. Psalm 111.10, which is a wisdom psalm, says the same thing. Proverbs says it two other times, then Ecclesiastes says the same thing in Ecclesiastes 12.13. They all say at some point, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. and fools despise wisdom and instruction." That's your proof text. Make sense? All right. So we want to talk about these other presuppositions that Jason talked about, and that's where we're going now. We're going to talk about something called the transcendental proof for the existence of God, which is, it is the broad proof for the existence of God that we as presuppositionalists are going to articulate. So first, if God is not your presupposition, what did we say is your presupposition? Where did we first learn to treat ourself as presupposition? Adam, in the fall. Someone spell it out for me. Isn't it fairly obvious that that is the beginning of thinking autonomously as if we are self-sufficient? Someone try to... Rich can do it. What did the serpent tell Adam and Eve to do? Yeah. Okay, so he said what God said is not certain, Adam and Eve. So if God said something uncertain, how do you figure out if it's certain or not? You've got to do an experiment, actually. Go ahead, DJ. See, look what he just said. That is the beginning of us thinking like we are the main character in a story, which means that we are the main reference point of true and false, which means that we are the starting point of all that we do. And this is where we get the worldly mindset that says, you prove to me that God exists, as if you are judge and jury, and God is this defendant who is making his plea that I exist. This is when we began to think like this. examination of fruit and finds that it is good to eat. That's right. They do a scientific experiment, and friends, this is so frightening because at our worst we all do this. How many of us, we test the limits of what God has called us to do, we cross the line, and we don't immediately get punished because God's gracious, and then we go, well, we're good. We're gonna be okay. I'm gonna keep doing this sinful thing. Trust the science. I'm not dead yet. Trust the science. Trust the science. But friends, this is, I mean, here's the thing. I mean, you jest in some ways, but guys, we are living in a world where science is as overtly as possible a religion. And yet the problem is, just like each one of us is deeply manipulable, science is deeply manipulable too. For example, you can't ever find scientifically what you're determined to not even look for. When we talk more about arguments from design, what do you think would happen if every single brilliant scientist in the world, instead of looking for more and more ways to validate evolutionary theory, went looking for design, looking for evidence of a designer? Do you think we wouldn't have encyclopedic volumes of just profound ways that this world bears the evidence of a brilliant designer? Mm-hmm. Oh, that's right, because you can't have any God before him. And even when you try that eclipse, it's only an instant before the sun starts shining again from the other side of it. So this is how worldly thought is, and you need to know what you're going up against. Friends, if you're going into battle, you study your enemy. Here's the thing. You have a really firsthand insight into your enemy, because you all still think like this. And you got the Bible as a light to shine back onto you as a mirror. But here's how unbelieving thought works. First of all, unbelieving thought loves human expertise. Love human experts. Fact checkers. If you're in the medieval church, you love a Pope. Remember the lawyer we talked about last Sunday? You need a human being who can talk to you because you know what? You will settle for a fallible human being who looks like you and can answer you and is accessible for your particular wants and desires over the infallible God and his infallible constant speech to his existence and his revelation of himself and his word. That is characteristic of unbelieving thought. Love of experts, which is a bit crazy because you guys all know that it wasn't even 150 years ago that the experts in medicine would slit your wrist to get the blood out of your body if you had an infection. Those are the experts. Literally, you'd be bloodletting. We look at that and we're like, that's insane now, right? That's what barbers were set up to do originally. Barbers? Yeah, not haircut. The striped pole was blood running around the pole. You would go for a bleeding. Wow. Thank you, Scott. And these days, the experts just take out inconvenient facts and figures. That's because you can't take a wayward heart out of the scientist. It's not to say science never reveals anything of value. It's just to say it is not a savior. I mean, who knows what we'll look back at 100 years from now and be like, oh my goodness. Like, you know, I mean, will they think that way about radiation therapy? Will they think that way about, I mean, all of these things. But the point is, the world loves the experts. The serpent put himself in the position of the experts. So that's the first thing. The world loves their feelings. Oh, good grief, does the world love feelings. Express yourself. That is the authentic you. There is no more important value in all of reality than doing justice to yourself and how you feel. This is frightening. Proverbs 12, 14 says, there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death. The world loves their feelings. There is perhaps nothing that quite comes to the place of deity and worldly thought and autonomous thinking so much as feelings. And this Christianity is so different, this is so problematic when Christians try to defend the faith on the ground that it'll make you feel good. Oh my goodness. That's actually the Book of Mormon that does that. Anyone know how the Book of Mormon ends? My dad knows, he'll tell you. What's the prayer we pray, the Book of the Mormon? Well, you have to pray the prayer that, Lord, tell me this is true and give me A burning in your bosom. You will have a burning in your bosom. That's how you'll know that this is true. It is literally like I got a warm feeling. That's how you know. That is the answer of Mormonism as to how you know. It's very important for us as Christians we're saying something different. I was talking to one Mormon about the difference between what we mean when we talk about faith in the Lord. What we mean is we're starting not with a feeling, but objective knowledge that we are absolutely hopeless sinners. That's not a feeling. It's a fact. And from that fact, with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, we are looking at the only medicine on the shelf that says this is actually to save sinners. There's an objective answering of the gospel to this objective problem that we have, and that is radically different. I'm not saying that as Christians, we absolutely do have affections for God, warm moments of just incredible communion with our Savior. However, We don't value feelings above ultimately objective things. And so that's super important for us. So you got experts, you got feelings, and then you have science and you have reason. That's how the world thinks. Those are their authorities. So the transcendental proof goes like this. We cannot try to prove that God exists based on feelings, based on science, based on reason, based on numbers, and all the things the world wants to keep most authoritative. Why can't we go about trying to defend the faith by proving God with those things? Why would that be a problem? We'd be actually affirming the unbeliever in everything they think about themselves. The unbeliever likes to think, I work fine. I'm like a properly working machine. When I get enough good evidence, then I have a belief in that thing and I'm working properly. Our claim to the drug addicted person is you are not working properly. And so it would be problematic on that front for us to begin with the way the world thinks and try to prove God using human reason. And not only that would be a problem, when it comes to the sort of God we're talking about. I had a buddy at Daniel's who, Daniel's brother, when I worked there, he, everybody was an atheist and agnostic, you know, we're in downtown Seattle. But he's like, you know, prove to me that God exists or something like that. I'm like, hold on, what do you mean when you say that? What do you want me to do? He's like, well, I want you to give me evidence. And I'm like, hold on. If I were able to prove that God existed by appealing to those other things, the being I'd be talking about wouldn't be the God of Christianity. Rather, God would be those things that are the foundation that I'm trying to lay under his feet. So if I could prove that God existed by pure reason, reason itself would be the more authoritative certain thing than God. I'm trying to tell you God is the most certain thing. and that human reason ultimately falls to dust without starting with him as your presupposition. So now you can see that it'd be problematic for me to even try to jump through your hoop. I would actually be defeating my own claim, affirming you in the sense that you are reasoning properly, and I would be demoting God to something less than he is. He's the beginning, he's not the end. Didn't we all know it, but we couldn't say it. We couldn't articulate it. Yeah, and even more importantly, we wouldn't articulate it. When confronted with the objective claims of the Bible, we're first inclined as an unbeliever to discount it, to make fun of it, to reject it. So, couldn't and wouldn't are going on at the same time. So, how do we defend the faith? If we don't stand in this position where we start with unbelieving rules and reason and evidence, how do we defend the faith? Well, here is how we go about it, and this is what transcendental argumentation is. That's a big word, but it goes like this. We start by saying, listen, we have totally different presuppositions, you and me, all right? I begin with the whole Christian worldview. I believe everyone knows God exists, even you. I know that's a bit subversive to tell you that. And I believe that we as sinners, all of us, are inclined to deny Him. But here's what I can do. The way I can go about proving that God exists is by stepping into your worldview, and for a moment, just pretending like your presupposition were true. And it won't take me long to show you that if your presuppositions were true, you and I couldn't know anything at all. We couldn't even be having this discussion, and therefore, we can be sure that your worldview is not correct. And you must actually be living in the world I described, where we all know God exists, but we are running from Him like sinners, and there's only one way out of that plight. It's Jesus Christ, the Savior. Do you see how this differs from most apologetic methods? It ends with you need Jesus, not that you need more evidence. It ends with you're broken and you need a savior. You guys see the difference there? I've heard that many times where without the intellectual start and argument and logic and all that, where you usually somebody who's already broken, so they're ready. Oh, that's the best, when you're in that position already. You need Jesus. Totally. And they're more open to receive that. Right. That's right. When you meet people who are already broken, this is where life circumstance really collides with your apologetic. Who are the people who are ready to accept Jesus in His ministry? The proud, the wealthy, the successful? Are those the people? Absolutely not. It's those who cannot even pretend like they're not broken. It's the same when I go about sharing the gospel with people at random. I'll tell you what, those who are homeless, those who are minorities and first generation in our country, those who are obviously not well-to-do, they are the most willing listeners. The single hardest profile of person to share the gospel with is a man who has any relative success, who's in his 40s, who feels like he's made something of himself, that guy. will shut you down so quick, you can't even believe it. But see, here's how one apologist put it. A really brilliant guy, Francis Schaeffer, I couldn't recommend his books more. You know, the God who is there, amazing. He was a, first he was a Presbyterian pastor, but then he went and started a commune called Labrie, and their plan was to invite anyone there who wanted to stay with them, and he would talk philosophy and talk theology with them, but he described it like this. He goes, To do apologetics is like going to someone's house and before you can get them to even think about coming into your house, you have to rip the roof off their house so that they can get rained on for a little bit. Experience the elements and the harshness of this world. You should really think of apologetics as that. It's even more than just mere defense, it's offense. it's going into someone's worldview and showing that it is broken. So let's do a few examples of this. Say I'm talking to someone who believes in evolutionary theory. Okay, so evolutionary theory. There are a lot of specific holes that we could punch in it about how, you know, it's fallen on some hard times, it's had to radically change itself, so it's now neo-Darwinianism. We'll talk about this when we, I think, our fifth class. However, Here's the thing about evolution. First of all, no one's ever observed it in any sort of observational sense like we're doing here, right? So it is conjecture, and that's why it's changed so much over time. But most importantly, what are your beliefs if you believe in evolutionary theory? Anybody know what your beliefs are? All of the things that you would call knowledge, what is it? Your beliefs are nothing at all but matter in motion. And chance. And most importantly, the only beliefs that we would retain on evolutionary theory are beliefs that help us to survive, right? That means that everything we think we know, when we even talk about knowledge, are just things that work. It's a way that works. It works better. It's helped us survive. But it's nothing like true or certain. We can very literally say to the evolutionary theorists, if your belief system were true, I'd have every reason to doubt that it were true. I would have every reason to doubt every belief that I have is true at all and is anything more than a useful thing that helps me survive. So when you say Christianity is false, that's actually meaningless in your worldview. There is no truth in falsity. There's just things that work. And why would we trust, by the way, that mere matter in motion actually rightly represents the way things are at all? This is the sort of thing that we would engage in when we engage in presuppositional apologetics. We'd actually confront the unbeliever. And you know, somebody who's actually really good at this is Jordan Peterson at exposing the pure pragmatism of, which is just, these are just beliefs that works. They're rules of thumb that help us get around. but they don't really represent reality. He at least understands that. But do you guys see what I mean? Driving that home that if you don't start with God, you don't have anything like knowledge at all of anything. Some people even go, fine, have it your way, Brant, I don't know anything. Well, great, you know, you don't know anything either. And you know, I would even point out like right there, my friend, you're engaging in logical reasoning. You're saying, you know, if I don't know anything, then maybe we all don't know anything, then therefore maybe you don't. You just use logic like you knew logic was reliable. But in your worldview, you don't know anything. To be sure that reasoning is reliable, you've got to believe first that you're made in the image of God, which is what I'm saying. And the fact you just use logic against Christianity and the God I'm telling you about, Admitting you have no objective basis for trusting reason itself is just proof of what a hardened sinner you are. And I'll tell you, sinners don't like to be told that. That's what apologetics is like. It's why people wanted to kill Paul. It's why people wanted to kill any person going out proclaiming a gospel that you know God exists, you're rebelling against him, your worldview is broken, and you need a savior. All right, similarly, let's take another worldview. You're talking to a Mormon. Okay, so what is the Mormon's ultimate authority by profession? What do they say is the ultimate authority, thing they can trust, their presupposition? The prophets? Prophets of their gods. Their gods are like supermen who live within a created universe that they did not, excuse me, a universe they did not create. In fact, no being created it. I always like to confront... Oh, it's true. That's as true as can be. I always love to confront the Mormons with the fact that they're really atheists. They don't believe there's a God like we've described, absolute, outside of time, created everything, out of nothing. He is the absolute sovereign in terms of whose will everything comes to pass. They don't believe that. The biggest thing in reality is not their God. It's pure impersonal space-time. So you just say to the Mormon the same way you'd say to an unbeliever, how do your gods know anything? They didn't make the world. They didn't make the process by which they were birthed in the law of eternal progression. They believe there's an infinite number and regress of gods. Who knows and how do we know that our minds are actually fitted for reality in your worldview? Who could ever say? So what in your mind would be the person most likely to be influenced or convinced of Man, I wish I could say that I thought Mormons were even a step closer. You know, I just talked to two missionaries right around Easter time this year and I I said exactly this to the missionary kid, and I was like, you know, your worldview is atheistic. Like there is no personal being who is above everything. In fact, every personal being is in an impersonal universe that they didn't make. And I'm just wondering, and not only that, like some of these gods are evil. So I mean, like, why should I trust, your highest authority is of a category of being, some of which are evil and wayward. Who in the world can we trust? It sounds like they can't even trust themselves. Absolutely. And so again, we'd say this would destroy your certainty or knowledge of anything. If God himself is one of many beings who did not create, he is not identical with his attributes. He can change. He came into being, he used to be a man. Now he's, once you say that God is mutable and changing, how do you have an absolutely certain reference point who can speak to you with all authority and clarity? This was the thing about Jesus. He was like a man speaking with authority, they said. That was not like the teachers. He was the Word of God in human flesh. And people knew his voice because he was the voice of the Creator who'd been singing to them since their infancy. That's the difference. So we'd attack the Mormon belief system in exactly the same way. Friend, if your belief system were true, I'd have every reason to doubt that you or I or the gods or anyone else could know anything. Indeed, I'd have reason to doubt the reality of any sort of certainty and truth at all, because impersonal chaos, chance, time and space is supreme. That's what the presuppositionalist does. We are attacking the unbelieving worldview, which is totally reverses the tables. The world thinks that they're attacking Christianity with their brilliant arguments for why it can't be true. We're attacking unbelieving worlds of thought on the ground that there would be no truth at all if what they were saying is true. Yes. It might be off topic, but you know, Mormons like, The guy who ran for president? Yeah, Romney. To think that he believed in the Marvel Avengers as God makes me kind of like giggle. I just... I can't lie. It was a really, really... I could not overcome that in my voting decisions. It didn't mean that I voted for the other alternative. Something really problematic about that. Right. Well, guys, I'll give you another one. What about pantheism? I want you to think about it. This is one of the major sorts of perspectives of Eastern religion. On some level or other, Hinduism in its most philosophical form is pantheistic. Anybody want to define pantheism? What is that? Many gods? Let's try polytheism. That's Mormonism. It's many gods. Pantheism. Everything is God. Once again, guys, this would be destructive utterly to the possibility to have any certainty or knowledge or truth. If you say God is everything, that means God is Hitler and God is Jesus. That's a rather frightening thing. Am I talking to the Hitler side of everything at the moment or am I talking to the Jesus side of everything? You could do a modified Zoroastrian thing where Hitler and Jesus are brothers. Well, okay, so now we're talking about dualism, a constant battle between two apparently equal and opposite forces. That wouldn't help us if knowledge and error, truth and error, were equal and opposite. Am I hearing from truth right now or error right now? Friends, every other worldview is really going to be absolutely problematic for you to have certainty about anything. Hopeless. You might put it this way. If you're talking to a pantheist, you could say, your highest authority is a God who is identical with the material world. He's actually identical with each and every one of us. That means when I'm in error, that part of God is in error. I mean, this is not helpful if I'm looking for a reference point of truth that can be trusted or even trying to explain how I could know any truth at all right now. I mean, This belief requires the admission that error and evil and illusion is inherent to God. What hope would we ever have that we're going to be free from error and falsehood and pain if those are God himself in a certain expression? a part of what the God being everything is? If I'm at fault or I'm doing something because everything is God in this scenario, wouldn't that just mean that it's a part of God also? That's absolutely right. And then you'd ask this question, how would you ever know what part you're part of? The error part or the truth part? How could you ever know that you're headed for eternal life? What's the point of anything, by the way? There's no distinct end or goal because everything right now at this moment is gone. And most pantheistic worldviews therefore just become cyclical. You kind of are headed for another age of suffering and then maybe existence is this or that. There's really no point or purpose any longer. So linear history comes only in worldviews where you have a creator. Yeah. So I was curious if you'd see a little bit like a subordinate natural law argument here. Yeah. Because part of this conversation assumes people desire truth. Yes. Or need it. Right. Because it reminds me of Pontius Pilate, like what is truth? Right. Or some other. But maybe some people just think, I don't need truth. I can just function. Yeah. Right. But that never works in reality in any kind of functioning community. Nope. Essentially communities, and so that's kind of where I would see like a natural law. You never have a functioning society without standards of essentially truth. But how would you kind of handle that? Yes. So kind of what people want or presume truth. Absolutely. You know, so here's the thing. Arguing for there not being truth requires Right. Right. See, that's exactly our argument. It's the person who's like, you know, well, you know, I don't need truth. First off, that is an inference, as in you're saying truth is not necessary for me to do the things I want to do. Therefore, I'm going to jettison truth, you know, do things. You're using logic right here. And the fact you would even feel inclined to articulate it to me presupposes that you have some purpose in setting me straight on this topic. And at the end of the day, however, if a person just keeps saying in the most blatant fashion, I don't care about anything, I don't care about you, you hit the point in your intervention where they're getting up and leaving. And it's not your job to stop a person in the intervention from leaving. In fact, the way it's said in the proverb is it goes like this. It says, do not answer a fool according to his folly or you will be like him. That, in the realm of apologetics, you could say means this. Don't embrace the fool's rules of reasoning. Don't embrace their absolute trust in science, their absolute trust in human reason, their absolute trust in human feelings, or you'll be just like them. That's the problem with other apologetic methods, we'd say. However, the next proverb says this, You turn the tables on him and you show him how his foolish presuppositions fundamentally are self-defeating of any sort of truth, any sort of certainty, any sort of morality, any sort of purpose. And if the person just continues on in that hardened unbelief, you got to let them go. And that's where the example of Jesus is so comforting. When people are off the mark and just fundamentally ill-disposed toward Him, Jesus is not afraid to move on. He's not afraid to just go, you're stuck. Let me read one verse and then I'll get your question, Talisha. Jesus says this in the Sermon on the Mount, do not give what is holy to dogs and do not throw your pearls before swine or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. When you hit the point that I'm dealing with a truly rebellious, truly calloused, hardened, angry unbeliever, it is appropriate to move on. Go ahead. Yeah, so it says, do not answer the fool according to his folly. So that means do not reason with the fool according to his foolish way of thinking. Perfect example, when I worked at Spaghetti Factory, one of the hosts said to the other host, hey, will you pick up a shift for me? And the other host says, no. And then the host responded, at least I'm not a ho. OK, that would be an example of like, I don't even understand what reasoning process took place right there. There was something about swapping a shift. And this was an immediate ad hominem on your person. And I don't know how you're ever going to get a shift from that person again. There's a very fallacious bit of reasoning going on there. And sadly, the other girl returned it with the same folly, and you can imagine all hell breaking loose at that point. That is the most extreme example of fallacious reasoning. But what it would also mean is this. Someone says, you know, the reason I'm a Mormon is it makes me feel good. Our argument isn't, you know, hey, try this medicine, it'll make you feel better, like I'm a drug dealer trying to take another client, you know? That's how we don't answer the fool according to their folly. Now, when he says the exact opposite thing, answer the fool according to his folly, presumably what he's saying is, I'll step into your world for a minute and show you how crazy this is. And maybe a sober mind in that moment between those two hosts could say, really, we're just going to call each other names? Surely you can see that if this is not going to go anywhere, and you can kind of deconstruct that sort of foolish reasoning. But of course, if they're the dog or the swine, you probably should realize that someone's going to call you names like that in the middle of an argument that probably time to move on and find a different person to swap switches, shifts with, right? So I hope that makes sense. It reminds me, that comment reminds me of your comment from Francis Schaeffer as far as tearing the roof off. There's something that we have to do when we're engaged like this. We need to peel back the apparent rationality of the unbeliever in order to show them their hopelessness. That's right. And the reason that we need to do that is because our apologetic endeavor is one of showing and always being ready to answer for the hope that's within us. And I think that's two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, you don't show hope without showing the hopelessness that the unbeliever is stuck in. But at the end of the day, our objective is ultimately to show the answer for the reason that the hope that is within us. And that doesn't necessarily result in the conversion of a person. It's something that the Holy Spirit can use. That's right. Something that we're called to do in the process of evangelism. But we don't go out with the hope that we're so sharp and brilliant that we're going to come out with the sword that's going to slay them. We start thinking that way. Now we're putting ourselves in the place of the Holy Spirit. Right. I say this because I've had a lot of these discussions, and I know we've got some people here who really understand this stuff, and that's exciting to me. One thing that has, in my experience in the church, been really important is to be humble about the fact that what we're doing is simply answering according to the hope that's within us and setting that forth. And it's not on our shoulders to go and fix everybody else's problem. At some point, you know, it is pearls before swine, and you need to just pray. That's right. You know, in fact, here's the problem. There are a lot of people who understand presuppositional apologetics as I'm describing it, but really don't understand it in this very important respect. they'll actually measure the success of their faithfulness in doing apologetics and their witness by whether or not they get an immediate response of, you know, belief. Friends, if we actually have Christian presuppositions, we know that all of our efforts to evangelize for Christ and do apologetics is something mysterious going on in us begging for a miracle to occur. And if we start to assess the successfulness of our ability as an apologist by whether or not we get that immediate response we wanted, we're actually treating apologetics as a mechanical thing. Like, I should just be able to input the information and get the result of conversion. That is badly wrong. And when you think that way, you'll think, man, this person needs more argumentation from me. And then you have these instances where people lose their composure. Holiness becomes a backseat item that they don't even care about. When if we really believe we're appealing to the Holy Spirit to work in someone's soul, then actually sometimes being content with saying something very simple to the effect of, friend, if you believe and carry on professing to believe those things, you are going to lose everything. Your mind, your relationships, your purpose, and leave it. Jesus is remarkable for this lack of felt need to go on and on and on and on with people. And part of being a presuppositionalist is believing in how powerful it actually is to tell someone, no friend, you do know that God exists. I know it's not the sort of thing that you acknowledge on a day-to-day basis, but that's kind of how it is. He's the context in which we live and move and have our being. You can't not know him. And it's going to be a frightening thing on your last day if you carry on denying him, because it will be obvious that every single moment of your life you've lived in his hands. Those sorts of things we can say, and you know what? You can't let it put a chink in your armor if people brush you off, blow you off. If you really believe the word is powerful, you know that's just a show and a charade. I like this verse of Jesus and I like to put it in apologetics context. Matthew 16 is when Jesus is laying the demands of his kingdom before the disciples. Verse 24, he says this, Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. I like to insert the word mind for life there. Whoever wishes to keep his mind will lose it, but whoever loses it, his mind, for my sake, will find it. I think of that as Jesus laying before people this basic option. You have to shed your worldly way of thinking completely. It'll feel like losing your mind. Everything is orbited around what makes sense to you, what you think you can prove with science, which changes every 50 years, for crying out loud, and that's your ultimate presupposition. And if you live like that, you will lose your mind, you'll lose your soul, you'll lose your purpose, you'll lose it all. But if you recognize how empty and broken and vacuous that is and give it up, give it to me, I will give you more than the mind that you have previously had. I will give you real certainty. I'll be the rock. And that's, it's just so simple and pithy really, you know, in terms of summing it all up. And so I'd say, you know, part of Apologetics Friends is not just mastering this sort of argumentation, but it is really like being a poet who can actually tell a person what their situation and unbelief is like in terms that is just strikingly true, because we believe in a sense that they already know it. We're at 7.45, or 7.50 right now, 52. So, here's my question. Yeah, we're down to our last, got a couple, intermission, everybody get a coffee. I would just simply leave you guys with this question to meditate on, that the biggest hindrance to reasoning like presuppositionalists is that we're all really pretty bad presuppositionalists ourselves. One of the reasons it's so hard to confront people with the obviousness of God's existence is that honestly we live so much of our day with it being a backseat sort of observation. There's just something about meeting someone who really knows and believes in the Lord and it's mighty and it's powerful in itself. Jesus was that way. He lived in constant reliance on what his father called him to do. And so I would just point out to you guys, this is where your apologetic is intertwined with your prayer life, intertwined with your ethic and your following after Jesus, your worship life. It's kind of fake if we go up to people and say God is, you know, the presupposition, we all know Him, and by the way, I don't ever talk to Him. Or when I run into a problem, I praise precious little. This is where genuine Christian piety and living a Christian life is so intertwined with being a faithful apologist. I want you guys to, more than anything, want to leave this course saying, I want to be a faithful apologist, even more than I want to be a good apologist. If you understand what I mean. or a successful apologist. Your job is to be faithful to Christ and His claims about the gospel and who He is and who His Father is. And so here we go. We do three things every class. What, where, and why. So today we talked about what, which is our doctrine of God. We talked about where the Bible teaches it. Exodus 3.14 was excellent as a proof text, but also Proverbs 1.7 is gonna be our proof text, especially for God is presupposition and why that's important. He talks about it's important because if God is who we say he is, we're not trying to prove a powerful being exists, a Marvel character. We're trying to confront people with the existence of the God who cannot not be known. So it's very different. So I'll send you guys my notes, but let's go ahead and do, you guys repeat after me, we'll do Westminster Shorter Catechism, question four, and then we'll just, we'll do read and response, repeat after me the proof text. So, what is God? What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal. And unchangeable in His being. And unchangeable in His being. Wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Proverbs 1.7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.