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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.
God & Presuppositions
Series Apologetics 101
| Sermon ID | 11162234166942 |
| Duration | 1:44:49 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Bible Text | Matthew 25:46 |
| Language | English |
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