Thank you again for all your labors. So you said you wanted to go for three hours? Sure. How long do we not want to go for? Take what you need. my best to answer them as clearly as I can. And so the first one says here is coming to the Bible with a blank slate, how people deconstruct the faith. And I want to say in essence, yes, Some Christians try to do this, but what I would say is that at the end of the day, I don't think that they're coming with a completely blank slate. They've smuggled ideas in the back of their mind. You know, they don't treat the Bible just like any other book. They'll think, oh, this is the Word of God, so I have to handle it more carefully. But for those who come to the Bible as a blank slate, with themselves as a blank slate, the way that I would pose the question is, if you treat the Bible like any other book, then isn't the God that is in it going to be like any other God? And that's the problem, I think, that comes when you to the whole question of, you know, do I come to the Bible as a blank slate? Because at the end of the day, I think what coming to the Bible with a blank slate presupposes is that it presupposes that we as the lone reader come to the Bible in abstraction and in isolation from anyone else. I alone am the arbiter of what this book means. Whereas, think of Acts chapter 8, with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. The Ethiopian eunuch was sitting there by his chariot, reading the scroll of Isaiah, and here comes Philip, and the Ethiopian eunuch says, who is the man talking about? Is he talking about himself or about someone else? And Philip comes along and helps him and teaches him. In other words, the Bible was never meant to be read in isolation by ourselves. It's always meant to be read in the context of the covenant community in the church. So that means that as we read it individually, we're joined together with the rest of the church. As our young ones are growing up, we're teaching them, we're catechizing them, we're instructing them so that they come to the Word of God as the Word of God. the God of the, you know, the triune God of the scriptures who supremely revealed himself in Christ, and who has given us the only plan for salvation. You know, John 14, six, on the way to truth and to life, where no one comes unto the Father, no one comes unto the Father but through me. So yeah, I do think that if you come to the Bible with a blank slate, you're gonna probably walk away with a lot less, and you know, just, Let's see. Next question. Everything you said about reformed apologetics sounds to me like it's just good apologetics. Amen. Can you describe the alternative or alternatives to reformed apologetics? There is, let's see, there's some similar questions, so I'm going to group those together. How do you briefly define and critique Vantillian apologetics? And then how does arguing from the light of nature relate to presuppositional apologetics? So three different questions here that are somewhat related. Within the reformed tradition, this is going to prejudice my answer. If I was answering this question, Prior to the 1930s, these questions would not be asked. More or less, apologetics, with some qualification, but apologetics large in part was practiced more or less the same from the early church up until the early 20th century. And then Cornelius Van Til enters the scene and proposes what he calls presuppositional apologetics. And it's a school of apologetic thought that says you don't do what you would call a blockhouse apologetic approach, which is you stack evidence, one thing upon the other, until you reach, you know, to the God of Scripture. But rather, he says, you argue by way of presupposition, which says you assume or presuppose the Bible's truthfulness, and you argue from that truth. You just start out right from the gates, from the authority of scripture. And then what you do is you tell the unbeliever, you explain this world according to your presuppositions, positions of scripture, and I'll show you that my explanation of the world and of reality and of human beings is more consistent with the facts than your explanation of these same things. Now, I don't want to say that it's entirely without merit, but the challenge that I find with Van Til's approach is that, one, He was highly critical of all Reformed theology that had gone before him. And this almost sounds like an exaggeration, but I think you can verify it from his own writings. He set himself up as the only consistent Calvinist since the Reformation. He was critical of Calvin himself on key points. When you set yourself up as the only consistent Calvinist since the Reformation, high bar that you've set for yourself. To say everybody else is wrong and I alone am the only one that got it right? Not so sure about that. A second thing is that Van Til, I think, often misunderstood traditional sources, whether it's Francis Turretin or whether it was John Calvin. For example, he said something to the effect that Calvin begins with the Christ of Scripture in his institutes. And I want to say, no, he doesn't. In the first five chapters of the Institutes, Calvin does purposefully does not cite scripture because he's trying to follow Paul's line of argumentation in Romans one. He's showing from nature that God exists. The problem is, is that in 1960, the publishers of Calvin's Institutes inserted 43 scripture references that were not original to Calvin's Institutes. Because they're like, well, why doesn't he have scripture here? We need to put more scripture in there. And so if it's anything with a bracket in the Westminster edition of Calvin's Institutes, then Calvin didn't put it there. Along those lines, he's very critical of Thomas Aquinas. but he never cites him. Hardly ever. Nine times out of ten, he just rejects Aquinas and never explains what Aquinas is actually saying or doing. You don't have to agree with Aquinas, but at least be fair to say, well, let me try to cite the source to explain this is what I see. So he sets himself up as the only consistent Calvinist. He frequently, I think, misunderstands sources from the past. And then third, he often writes very bombastically which makes it sound as if he's saying one thing, but then it'll come out and somewhere else he'll say another thing. So, for example, he said in a letter to Francis Schaeffer, there is no form of natural theology that speaks rightly of God. So you think, okay, that sounds pretty definitive. And then he writes in another essay, Well, the natural theology of the Westminster Confession seems very different and seems okay. Okay, so what is it? Some forms of natural theology or no forms of natural theology? Case in point, he says something similar about John Calvin when he says, Calvin says that we are as blind as a mole with regard to the things of heaven, but we understand things of the earth to a reasonable degree. I differ with Calvin and think that Calvin is wrong. We are blind as a mole with regard to the things of heaven as well as the things of earth in our sinful, fallen state. And then he turned the page over and he says, well, sinful man knows things after a certain fashion. So you wanna say, then is he not as blind as a mole? Which is what you just said a page before. So his writings are often very difficult, I think, to assess. And a point on this is that there are various different people that claim that they're the true successor for Van Til. And then other people are like, no, it's not him, it's somebody else. When you need a successor for your thought, I think that that means that you weren't very clear from the outset. You don't have to have a successor for classical, traditional, reformed apologetics because there's so many advocates of it that go all the way back to the first century or the second century. It's fairly simple to understand. So, you know, to have to have a definitive interpreter, I think, belies it. And it goes to such a point where some Vantillians have said, like Greg Bonson has said, to argue evidentially for the resurrection of Christ is sinful. It's wrong to present evidence. You should simply present the claims of scripture and demand that people submit to the authority of God's word. And I say, well, even Jesus told Thomas, put your hands in my side and touch my wounds. If the Son of God can condescend to fallen sinners and to subject Himself to their judgment, then that is what we see the Word of God doing, where the Word of God says, I have come into the plane of human history to show you that you can test my claims and that they are true. There's a lot of evidence out there You know, for the resurrection, for the existence of Christ as a human being in the first century. I would say, why would we turn away from that evidence? Why would we ignore it? Again, to go back to the first night's lecture, or last night's lecture. as we want to argue from creation and scripture. And so in that sense, as much as I'm appreciative of Dr. Van Til's efforts to defend the faith, I find it interesting that he started teaching at Westminster in the 1930s, and he was in favor of the use of evidence. This is something that I think that Bonson gets wrong. He was in favor of the use of evidence, but as far as I know to this day, There is still no Vantillian manual on evidences. And even his own colleague said he turned away from the use of evidence. He would tell the students, if you want evidence, go down the hall to the New Testament department. I don't want to talk about evidence. He wasn't against it, but he says, yeah, go down to the New Testament department and talk about those things. You know, if people disagree and they say, no, I want to do presuppositional apologetics, I say, fine. They have power to you. The most important thing, as I say, is tell people about Jesus. Get out there and do it. Let's not waste too much time bickering over what's the best method and never get out there and go and tell people about Jesus. And I jokingly use the children's hymn, you and your small corner and I in line. You know, if I can, if I have to use presuppositional apologetics to convince somebody, okay, fine, whatever, I don't care. I'm not persuaded that that's the best way to do it. I think the best way to do it is how I've explained to you last night, but yeah, so hopefully that address and as I tell my students, now we gotta drive it like we stole it. Let's see here, because we're running out of time. Yesterday you mentioned that we may be in an unprecedented time in church history. Could you elaborate what you mean by this or what I meant by this? In history, I think history is in a sense cyclical. You can find the discussions of the same events and the same ideas repeated throughout history. What I think is unprecedented is the level of individualism that we see in our culture, at least in the West. That's one of the big qualifiers we always have to say, is at least in the West, because other parts of the world are not as individualistic. If you go to the recesses of China, they're not going to be individualistic, probably because they don't have the Internet. As a kid, I'm of Mexican descent. My mom's Mexican, my grandparents were Mexican, and I would visit them with my brother in Mexico. The Mexico that I remember visiting as a kid is not the Mexico that I remember visiting it as an adult. When I visited as a kid, there was no Walmart, there was no Burger King, there was no Pizza Hut. All of these international companies are slowly making their way into all of these places throughout the world. So it may be that Western individualism will spread, more so throughout the world. But just in terms of this, I want to live my life in my own little bubble, my own little world, my virtual world created unto myself, for myself, by myself, I think that that may be unprecedented. And it's because the technology that exists in our age that has never existed before. That being said, you could say broadly, as unprecedented as the idolatry is, it's still idolatry. In other words, the human heart hasn't changed. So that part of our existence is unchanged. Let's see, when did the bifurcation of Roman Catholic Church occur from the true church So that, I think, this one must have come in maybe later, but again, at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent was a series of meetings that met from 1543, no, 1545 until 1565. So over a period of about 20 years. And they condemned sola fide. They said anybody who doesn't agree that the Vulgate is the authoritative version of the scriptures, let it be anathema. Anyone who rejects the ability to, the intercession of the saints, anybody who rejects transubstantiation, let them be anathema. So they're very clear, and so I would say that's when the Roman Catholic Church breaks away from the church officially. And then there's a follow-up that says, in your opinion is this, is there any agreement of a time period among Reformed theologians. Yeah, the running joke is get three Reformed theologians in a room and you'll get four opinions. I think that there's a certain truth to that. However, I want to say that that's, I think, the great thing about our confessions. is that we may disagree on a host of smaller issues or issues around the periphery, but when it comes to our confessions, we agree on those. And so I think that that is a great degree of unanimity of opinion, so much so that we as Reformed Christians can band together subscription. So I think in that sense, there is great agreement among Reformed theologians across the ages on these things. It's just that, yes, disagreements come up over some of these smaller issues. And if I can note this, our confessions also help us to see how much agreement there is across all of Christendom on certain issues. Like on the doctrine of the Trinity, The doctrine of the Trinity doesn't separate Roman Catholic from Protestant or Protestant from Eastern Orthodox. It separates Christian from non-Christian. That is a doctrine that is universally professed across the board. So it's important that we see those things so that we can see the agreement that we have and then, okay, let's focus on the areas of disagreement so that maybe we can figure things out. Okay, a question here. You said yesterday that pagans and unbelievers by nature have the law of God written upon their heart. How would you respond to the rebuttal of a pagan that they have no need of religion since by nature they know that which is good? And that's why I would say that it's one thing to say by nature they know right from wrong. It's another thing to say, you know you've done wrong, what's the remedy for that wrong? That is something that nature does not reveal. In other words, the gospel is not revealed in nature. And that's why we need the scriptures to reveal unto us the gospel. you know, follow up, can you distinguish between nature, which has a law of God, and the sin nature inherited by all in Adam? And I would say there's human nature, which is, nature is what a thing is. So a rock, by nature, is hard. And it may take on various colors, but it's hard, and it's a hard substance. That's what it is by nature. A marshmallow, by contrast, is solid. That's what it is. It is by nature. So what we are by nature is we are made in the image of God, and we reflect his image in terms of our knowledge of his law, in terms of our rational faculties, in terms of our ability to create, for example. And so we would say that in our creation, by nature, God writes his law upon our hearts. But then when we're talking about the sin nature, that is the corruption that we receive as a result of the fall. So that by nature, we are now all fallen. And so most Reformed theologians would put it this way, that the fact that we all possess a sin nature means that the image of God has been marred, it's been broken, but not completely eradicated, not utterly destroyed. As Calvin would say, there are still glimmers of truth there. You know, the way that I would, you know, I live in Mississippi, And I've never had this issue before in 49 years of living. Before that, I've been in Mississippi now for four years, just about. And I've had so many chips in my windshield, I can't tell you. It's like they don't require you to tarp loads in Mississippi. I wish they did. And so I've replaced one windshield, and I must have had five or six patches of the various cars that we have patching the chips in the windshield. I'm wound so tight that if I know there's a chip in the windshield, it's ruined. I want to replace it. And the wife, pocket wife, says, well, it's just a small chip. Let's just patch it because it's probably going to be chipped again. I'm like, no, I want to replace it. It's like a mirror. None of you kids do this, what I'm about to say, but kids, if you shot a BB gun at a mirror, one of your mom and dad's mirrors, you'd say, it's just a small crack. You'd say the whole mirror is ruined. Okay, yeah, it's ruined. But you can still see images in it. It's still usable in some sense. So that's what we would say about the human image of God in the fall, is that there's a sense in which it's ruined. that it's utterly eradicated. So even as fallen human beings, we still know the difference between right and wrong in most cases. I will say, however, that a human being can become so sinful that they sear their consciences, as Paul says, and then for them there is no difference between wrong and right. They are just, they virtually are utterly lost in that sense. Though not beyond salvation, let's put it that way. or weaknesses. You mentioned the need to better understand that we share in common with, in addition to our doctrinal differences with Rome. Can you extrapolate on this? Yeah, I think if you read Calvin's letter to Sataletto, or if you read his other treatise on the necessity of reforming the church, he says that the three chief areas of conflict were justification, so we would say salvation, worship, because they have all sorts of worship practices, use of images, transubstantiation, and so forth, so worship, and then church government. We don't agree with the pope being the head of the church. He said those are the three chief areas of conflict. He doesn't mention anything else. So that would mean is that Rome and the Reformation agreed For the most part, there may be small areas of disagreement, but for the most part, we agree on the doctrine of prolegomena, which is the presuppositions for theology. We agree on the doctrine of God. We agree on the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. We agree on the doctrine of creation. We agree with qualifications. on the doctrine of human beings or anthropology, not on salvation, not on the doctrine of the church, but on the doctrine of last things, eschatology. So those are probably the big areas that we agree on. That's not to minimize our areas of disagreement. They are significant. And in fact, I would say the only way that Rome and the Reformation will ever be able to get back together again is if the Roman Catholic Church ceases to exist as an institution. They would have to fold up and go home. They would have to join us. We can't join them. And because they believe in the infallibility of the Pope, the infallibility of church councils, so that Trent, according to them, is inerrant and infallible. Well, if they say that Trent erred, that's like popping the balloon and letting all the air out. It's like, well, their doctrine of the Church is gone. If they say no more Pope, pop to the balloon, no more Roman Catholic Church. So, yeah, so there are great areas of agreement, but yes, there are, of course, significant areas Is there a need for a new confession in light of the world's positions on gender, sex, etc.? Tough question. I'll give a definitive answer. Maybe. If we read our own doctrinal standards carefully, then we'll see there's no room for transgenderism. and especially, or homosexuality, or the whole raft of other issues that we would associate with that, and especially when we acknowledge that the teaching of scripture is our primary authority, and 1 Corinthians 6, 9, some of you were homosexual, some of you were sexually immoral, and that's what some of you were. that you were watched, you were sanctified, you were redeemed by Jesus Christ, is what Paul says there in 1 Corinthians 6, 9 and following. So I think with those things there, it's possible. My concern is that we would be forever listing sins or problems. And don't get me wrong, everything that we're watching unfold with transgenderism and all that other stuff is wrong. But what about alcoholism? What about adultery? What about pornography? What about... I don't like to say racism because technically it's not racism, it's just pride. It's sinful pride. Because race assumes Darwin's categories that there are a bunch of different races out there. We'd say, no, there's not a bunch of different races. There's only humans out there. So we're all human beings. We're all made in the image of God. It's just that some of us find sinful reasons to think that we're better than others. So there's that. All of a sudden we get very specific with certain sins, whereas if we keep them as they're drawn presently, I feel like, dare I say, it's a boot that fits everybody's different foot. It's a shoe that fits everyone. And it gives us the flexibility to address from the Scripture Now, that's where I say maybe, maybe I would be persuaded that it's time to, you know, write a new confession. But I'll close on these words. J. Gresham Machen said that we do not live in a creed-making age. Corporately, corporately, I don't know that the church at this point has the necessary theological competence to write a creed or a confession. We need to study hard. And if we were to set our minds to it, maybe in a generation we'd be ready. Because, you know, there's so much intricacy involved in the creeds and the confessions that we have, and there's so many present-day debates over some of the statements in those creeds that we need to iron out first. That's why I want to say, I want to stand on the shoulders of giants and say these theologians really knew what they were doing. Let's learn from them. And maybe in a generation or two we'd be ready to do it. Let me say this. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for coming out and for your attentiveness and for your engagement. I really appreciate it very much. Pray the Lord's blessings upon you. And I hope that whether in defending the faith or using our creeds and the confessions that to you and that you would tell people about Christ and introduce them to the Lord.