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Exodus, chapter four, beginning
in verse one. The book of Exodus, chapter four,
beginning in verse one. And Moses answered and said,
But behold, they will not believe me nor hearken unto my voice,
for they will say, the Lord has not appeared unto thee. And the
Lord said unto him, what is that in thine hand? And he said, oh,
rot. And he said, cast it on the ground
and he cast it on the ground and it became a serpent and Moses
fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses,
put forth thine hand and take it by the tail. And he put forth
his hand and caught it. And it became a rod in his hand.
But they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob hath appeared
unto thee. And the Lord said furthermore
unto him, Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his
hand into his bosom. And when he took it out, behold,
his hand was leprous as snow. And he said, put thy hand into
thy bosom again. And he put his hand into his
bosom again and plucked it out of his bosom and behold, it was
turned again as his other flesh. And it came to pass that And
it shall come to pass that they will not believe they neither
hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe
the voice of the latter sign. And it shall come to pass that
they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto
thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river and
pour it upon the dry land. And the water which thou takest
out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land. I hope that this is meaningful
coming from me, but you should know that Reformed theology is
not perfect. It never has been, it is not
now, and it will not be until we go into glory. The Reformed
actually had a doctrine concerning this. They said the only theology
that is whole Complete and perfect is the archetypal theology which
exists in the mind of God himself. Everything else, all other theologies
are ectypes, that is, copies. But whereas God's theology is
infinite and comprehensive, finite theology never can be. In that respect, it won't be
in this life or in the life to come. We do have a perfect ectype
in the scriptures, but the Reformed have always acknowledged that
we have not yet attained to that perfect ectype. We are semper
referenda, always reforming, always reforming. You'll have to judge for yourself,
but it seems to me that Reformed theology has certainly been in
better shape than what it is currently. I do think that there
was an age in which it far transcended its present incarnation. We have covered in preaching
some areas of concern, but in recent days I have had occasion
again to be concerned about what has become known as the Reformed
apologetic. As much as I have endeavored
to escape from this, it continues to come in front of me and I
don't expect that I'll get away from it in my lifetime. It just so happens that this
has come in front of my attention once again and we have a text
that deals with it with some directness. Let me give you a
little bit of my history with what has become known as The
Reformed Apologetic, otherwise known as Presuppositionalism. From the time of my own conversion,
I would say that my theology was first shaped most by R.C. Sproul and listening to his lessons. But Sproul did something for
me that in some ways was far better than anything he taught
me specifically. he set me in the direction of
some of the best authors and so very quickly I became acquainted
with Jonathan Edwards early on and not too long after Sproul
I started to read everything from Edwards that I could get
my hands on I thought probably he was the high water mark as
it turned out he wasn't Edwards stands at a period of
time the swan song of high reformed orthodoxy and its passing out
of the world in his age some of his theology shows the problems
of his age and so I dug further back and I became acquainted
with the protestant scholastics, Turretin and so on Now, while
I'm in the process of doing all of this, some of you know the
story. I had my first experience in
a Presbyterian church. It was a PCA church not too far
from the university where I was attending. And the minister there
talked to me much about the ministry. And he suggested that I come
under the care of the Presbytery with a view toward preparation
for the ministry. so I had to go it's not so much
an exam I had to go before the Presbytery for an interview and
basically they wanted they wanted to hear my profession of faith
something about my Christian experience and also a sense of
call I remember very little about the interview itself I'm sure
that it was awful but As I was departing from the Presbytery
that day, I was on my way to Westminster Theological Seminary.
I thought I was going to the Mecca of Presbyterian and Reformed
Theology. This was the school that everyone
must attend. This is the school of Machen
and Murray as they were trying to hold fast to the faithfulness
of their fathers. But as I was leaving, I was accosted
by a minister and a ruling elder, and they were very excited for
me. And they said, when you get to Westminster, you are going
to have the opportunity to learn the reformed apologetic. And right away, my ears perked
up because I had been reading a lot of reformed theology, but
I had not yet read about the reformed apologetic. They used
a word I had never heard before up to that point, presuppositionalism. And one of the things that the
ruling elder said that really caught my attention, he said,
and you'll have the ability to say to an unbeliever, you can't
even think a single thought without presupposing my God. Some of
you know my, I was just finishing up my first degree, which was
a philosophy degree. And so this caught my attention.
This is very interesting. I can't wait to get there. Perhaps
I'm going to learn something new and exciting. I got to Westminster,
all full of enthusiasm, hope and expectation, only to find
myself very disappointed in a hurry on a lot of levels. But one of
those was the Reformed Apologetic, which strangely enough I'd never
been able to find in any of the older Reformed authors. It seemed
like Reformed theology had been around for many centuries before
this Reformed Apologetic had ever appeared in the world. But
if I were to boil it all down, and I've given you a statement
from Dr. Gaffin, it's as close to verbatim
as I could excise it from my memory and my notes, but it was
at the very heart of the Vantillian presuppositional apologetics,
and it was what I could never swallow. This was the basics,
this was the foundation, and I couldn't get over it. The triune
God of the scriptures is the epistemological principium. This
is the way we talk in seminaries. Of course, most of these terms
you'll know. You know the triune God and you know the scriptures.
Triune God, as he's presented in the scriptures, is the epistemological. That refers to thought and reasoning. Principium, that's a Latin word.
whenever scholars want to be but all common people they throw
in Latin phrases basically it means the beginning the first
so basically the triune God of scripture is the first principle
of thought that's what the epistemological principium is the epistemological
principium would not be proven but rather it would be the ground
of all proofs You would use that as a solid bedrock and ground
for all reasoning. So basically they were saying
the triune God of scripture is the bedrock or the ground for
all reasoning. It is the first thought in all
reasoning. This is the very heart of Vantillian
presuppositionalism. Ventelian presuppositionalists,
just like apologists in all ages, would say you can't have an infinite
regress of proof. This is the problem of, well,
how do you know that? Well, how do you know that? How
do you know that? It can't go back forever. Ultimately,
there's got to be a ground, an unproven presupposition or axiom
that grounds all of the reasoning and upon which the reasoning
is built. For the Vantillian, they say,
ultimately it will go back, every train of reasoning will reach
back to the triune God of the Bible as being the ground. God is presupposed in every word,
every assertion of truth, and every argument. As a matter of
fact, they would say, the unbeliever really can't even know anything
about a blade of grass or a cloud because he is not presupposing
the triune God of the Bible. Just so you know that I've done
my homework. Over those three years at Westminster,
I studied Vantillian Presuppositionalism for an untold number of hours. I read everything in all of the
classes that was assigned to me, and with respect to Vantillian
Presuppositionalism, that was a lot. And yet I never got over
this root assertion Now by way of critique, first of all I do
want to make you aware of something because I do believe that this
is emotionally powerful. When they talk about it as the
reformed apologetic and accuse any other form of apologetics
of Arminianism, this is emotionally powerful with reformed folks.
And it has a great tendency to prejudice the discussion because
we all want to be reformed, don't we? And it's almost like we have
competitions in our circles about who can be the most reformed
or the most Presbyterian or whatever. So when they say this is the
reformed apologetic, it really prejudices the discussion. Logicians
actually advise people in discussion not to do that sort of thing.
Because rather than dealing with arguments, now you are dealing
with profound emotional forces in the argument. Also, it sounds
very pious, doesn't it? You can't think a single thought
without my God. What's the problem? Look at the
statement again. The triune God of the scriptures is the epistemological
Principia. The problem is that the statement
is false. You've grounded your apologetic
on a statement that is clearly and I might even say self-evidently
false. What's wrong with it? Basically,
a thing can't be epistemologically prime if it requires epistemological
antecedents. It can't be first if other things
have to go before it. And other things have to go before
this statement in order for this statement to be made. So it can't
be principium. It can't be the beginning of
reasoning. It can't be first. Do you understand
that? I mean, is that plain enough?
That's why I say it's almost self-evidently false, because
if you are not first, then you are not the first. If other things
must come before you, as I was sitting in my study and I was
trying to think about ways to illustrate this, my mind traveled
back to my days in public school and standing in line waiting
for the bathroom. And it's like the tenth kid in
line saying, I'm first, simply because he ignores the other
nine. And that's very much what this is. This is a statement
that claims to be first when there are other things that clearly
precede it. Things that have to already be
functioning in your mind in order for the statement even to be
intelligible. Now we won't take the whole statement.
We don't need to. But I want you to just take the
word God. G-O-D. Three letters. A word that is
constructed out of three sounds. Logicians say that there is a
law called identity, and certainly there is. The law of identity
is very simple, although you'd be surprised at how frequently
people mistake it and mess it up. But the law of identity is
basically A is A. A thing is itself. It has a corollary called the
law of non-contradiction, which is a thing can't be itself and
not itself, at the same time and in the same relationship.
So A is A and A can't be A and not A at the same time and in
the same relationship. Now in order to look at this
word and be able to identify the letters on the printed page
or the sounds as they hit your ear, the law of identity and
the law of non-contradiction already need to be functioning
in your brain. That's why I say it can't be
the epistological principium. Because the letters and the sounds
would not even be intelligible to you without a preceding assumption
of identity. G is G. G can't be G and not
G at the same time and in the same respect say the G and the
O can't be confused. Identity provides definition. And law of non-contradiction
provides separation or differentiation. So you can identify the letters
and differentiate between them by these two things. So you've
got these two great epistemological principles and truths. A thing
is itself and a thing can't be itself and not itself at the
same time and in the same relationship. they must be present and functioning
in your mind and already assumed before you can even differentiate
the letters or the sounds much less deal with the concept which
is much larger and much more sophisticated and actually takes
something of a more sophisticated cognitive apparatus so here's
the problem to me this is self-evident self-evident which makes the
statement self-evidently false. It cannot be the epistemological
ground, the ground of reasoning, when there are other things beneath
it. You see that. I noticed this almost right away
because my training was in an Aristotelian tradition. And basically,
Van Til's presuppositionalism is a revival of Platonism. in
the midst of reformed circles. So right away I could see the
old struggle between Plato and Aristotle. And I thought I can't
believe that I'm hearing this and I can't believe that I'm
hearing this in a reformed school. A reformed school such as this.
Interestingly enough, Machen and Van Til did work together.
But the writings from others that knew them, they say that
they doubted that Machen ever understood what Van Til was even
saying. because Machen was more along the classical school of
apologetics. I might even say classical reformed
apologetics as opposed to this new reformed apologetic. Since that time to this time
I do want to be clear. I have studied and I have listened. It has been 15 years and I have
not heard anything in all of the time that would blunt the
force of this critique. I have heard many words spoken.
I have read many words written and nothing that could deal with
this. I think that this is an insuperable problem and it's
not a little one because if you give this up, you give up presuppositionalism. Everything else is just window
dressing and development. But if you give this up, the
foundation is going for its distinctive system. Without Gavin's assertion,
really, there's not much left of presuppositionalism. Some
years later, I came into contact with Gordon Clark, another kind
of reformed presuppositionalism. While I was at Westminster, you
should understand that Gordon Clark was just a shadowy villain
figure that lurked in the background because he had a pretty famous
dust-up with Van Til. I didn't know anything about
it at the time. Interestingly enough, I think in his debate
with Van Til and the point they debated, Clark was right. But
Clarke's version of presuppositionalism to me is worse than Van Til's. Clarke's presuppositionalism
is structured a little bit differently. He says that all of the truths
of scripture are taken as the axioms of thought. They are the
epistemological principium. So now, whereas Van Tilian presuppositionalism
really just had the one axiom, the one, you know, the triune
God of the scriptures, it's all gathered up into one. For Van
Til, every truth that the scripture gives is taken as an axiom upon
which you can ground other thoughts, but it's the only certain ground.
So, for example, Clark did not believe that you could construct
mathematics unless you did it from the scripture and the material
that scriptures provided or physics or chemistry all of it had to
be derived deductively from the scriptures or it would be considered
uncertain as you can see he denies natural revelation for the most
part, or at least the ability for a human being to pick up
on any of it with any sort of certainty. And he says that you
can't even trust your senses, which would be the overthrow
of natural theology, wouldn't it? The common critique for this,
again, which I think to be insuperable. I've listened, I've listened,
I've listened. But the critique was, well, if you can't trust
your senses, how do you hear preaching or read your Bible? And the analogy that he used,
which is why what started off as Clarkian rationalism ultimately
degenerates into mysticism, he said, your encounters with the
word of God read or preached are not certain things, but that
all of the truths of scripture are already written upon your
mind, you hear the Platonism, but when you come into contact
with that external word, it becomes an occasion for them to appear,
like the appearing of invisible ink when you put heat to it you
know it just suddenly appears in the mind that's mysticism
you have in part a very strange combination of rationalism everything
needs to be deduced and mysticism we've got invisible ink in the
brain and so on but also in addition to this Clark has all of the
same problems that Van Til does. How are you going to read the
Bible without preceding axioms? Identity, non-contradiction,
causality, the reliability of the senses. All of these things
need to be presupposed in an epistemology before you could
even read and understand the Bible. What brings all of this
up? Our text is actually quite problematic
for presuppositionalism. I would say this, and I'm not
trying to be irreverent or glib, but I don't think that the Bible
teaches us that the Bible ought to be taken presuppositionally
or axiomatically. That there are other things that
are known first that give us access to these things, or confidence
in them, or the certainty that they come from God. And we'll
talk about that and we'll talk about the relationship with this
text. Remember where we are. We are
still at the burning bush. We have been for many weeks in
the evening. We took another visit to the burning bush this
morning in our sermon on Revelation. But Moses has received his commission
for the deliverance of Israel. But even after he has received
assurance from God that the Israelites will listen, he expresses concern
in verse one. Behold, they will not believe
me nor hearken unto my voice, for they will say the Lord hath
not appeared unto thee. God then gives him three confirming
miracles. But I want you to notice in particular,
verse five, after the gift of the serpentine rod, that they
may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob hath appeared
unto thee." I want you to notice that little word, that. Litma'an
in Hebrew, it indicates purpose. In order that, or for the purpose
that, now, this is what's called an ellipsis. Something has been
omitted that you need to supply mentally. And it's basically
something like, I have given you the sign something along
those lines, something equivalent. And now the purpose for the giving
of the sign so that they may believe that the Lord God of
their fathers have appeared unto thee. So this is the sign is
given so that they might believe. Interestingly enough, the sign
is going to intervene so that they'll know that this man speaks
for God. Last week, we looked at the leper's
hand. And now we come to verses 8 and 9, which has to do with
the function of these signs, what they were intended to do.
And it shall come to pass if they will not believe, they neither
hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe
the voice of the latter sign. So here a situation is contemplated. If they don't believe the miracle
of the rod turning into the serpent and the serpent turning into
the rod, nor are they willing to listen to his voice. And if
they won't believe the voice of the second sign, the leprous
hand, then I'm sorry, I get ahead of myself. If they won't listen
to the voice of the first sign, then they will believe the second
sign, the sign of the leprous hand. Just a quick note. Remember, the miracles are significant. They are not mere acts of power. but they convey a message. We
did this doctrine earlier. I want you just to notice here
that the signs are portrayed as having a voice, as if they
speak and deliver a message. This is part of that doctrine,
that the miracles in the scripture are not just naked acts of power,
but they carry a message with them. The first sign is portrayed
as having a voice, and they will believe the voice of the latter
sign. Isn't that very interesting?
way of expressing this truth and part of their message and
what's primarily intended here. What is the what is the speech
of the signs that Moses has been sent sent by God? They will believe
that you have that God has sent you. Verse nine. And it shall come to pass that
they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto
thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river and
pour it upon the dry land. And the water which thou takest
out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land. So another
scenario is contemplated here. If they won't believe the two
signs, nor Moses's words, then this third miracle is to be added. Moses is to take water from the
river. The river is the Nile. is to
pour it in front of the Israelite elders upon the dry land and
then this water is going to become blood. Now again, notice the
miracle. There's nothing in the nature
of the water nor of Egyptian sand that would transmute the
water into blood. So this is indeed a miracle. This is a work beyond nature. What is the significance of this?
I think that this is probably easier than all of the others.
This bodes ill for Egypt. This is a prefiguring of the
cursing and polluting of the source of all Egyptian life.
And there is some evidence that in the Egyptian cosmology, this
would be the polluting of the source of all life. They thought
the rains that fell in other land was the Nile running in
the sky. and that Egypt was unique in
that it came up from the ground but they attributed all of the
waters of the earth ultimately to the Nile so here you've got
in the Egyptian mind a cursing and a polluting of the source
of life and I do think that there would be something about this
that would be a more evident token of judgment for the Egyptians
you remember the Egyptians had made the Nile bloody in the murder
of the Hebrew boys. And now God is going to judge
them in kind. You will make your waters bloody,
and bloody they shall be indeed. Just a quick note, the turning
of the waters into blood is the first great plague of Egypt in
Exodus chapter 7. This miracle in this text is
actually different The form of the miracle is the same, but
this first miracle was performed in front of the Hebrew elders
to convince them. The cursing of the waters of
Egypt was the first judgment upon the Egyptians. So this is
a slightly different thing that is being discussed here. It does
not appear, unlike the serpentine rod in the leper's hand, it doesn't
appear that the miracle was done here. But he was to wait until
he got into Egypt and draw the water from the Nile. And then
it would be turned into blood. In the other miracle, in the
first judgment, the bloody water turns back into water. There's
no mention of that here. It just appears that this little
bit of water would turn into blood and then sink down into
the ground and disappear. So what does all of this have
to do with presuppositional apologetics? Actually, quite a lot, because
it shows a very different way of thinking about these things.
Now it is true that the Israelites already believe in God, and Moses
doesn't seem to think that he's going to have to go down into
Egypt and try to prove that there is a God, or that the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the true God. But the question is, is this
because they take the triune God of the Bible presuppositionally? And the answer is no. This God
was known by revelation, first and foremost by all men through
the things that he has made. Turn with me in the epistle to
the Romans, chapter one, verse 20. Romans, chapter one, beginning
in verse 20. For the invisible things of him
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, even his eternal power in Godhead,
so that they are without excuse." I want you to notice here, you
have the invisible things of God contemplated as being clearly
seen. This is oxymoronic in its statement. It's intended to carry a rhetorical
punch. How is it that invisible things
exactly will be clearly seen? The invisible things in view
are then defined for us God's eternal power and Godhead. And
of course, God is a spirit. There's nothing in the divine
nature to see. and his eternal power is not something that you
could see or look upon you could view its effects in the creation
but the power itself you can't see so these are the invisible
things but he says that from the time of the creation of the
world they have been clearly seen being understood by the
things that are made I want you to notice the difference here
between this and presuppositionalism. With presuppositionalism, the
idea of God has to already be in the mind. It's an idea to
which you must have immediate access. In other words, nothing
intervening, no medium intervening, and immediate
access to the idea so that you have it from which to do all
of your other reasoning so God is not taken presuppositionally
or as the innate idea the first thing that you have access to
in the sequence of reasoning is the things that have been
made and you view the things that have been made and you draw
conclusions concerning God his existence his deity, the divine
nature and his eternal power but you see the difference here
we don't view God immediately nor take Him presuppositionally,
but we view God through the medium of revelation. And isn't this
just basic Reformed doctrine? Not that we have immediate access
to God, but that we have access to God through what He has revealed. But the first cognitive step
is the viewing of the things that have been revealed, or the
things that have been made, and then the reasoning about what
they reveal about the God that made them. There are steps. Presuppositionalists will frequently
take great offense at this. They say, you put God at the
end of an argument. I'm not afraid. So does Paul
here. And I think that every human
being that is born into the world does this if they come to such
an age where they begin to use these slightly more sophisticated
reasoning faculties because they start to reason in this way.
Daddy, where do you come from? I come from my mommy and daddy.
Where do they come from? I come from their mommy and daddy.
Where do they come from? And eventually you get all the
way back and you have to say God. There can't be an infinite
regress. When you have finite divisible
units, me, my dad, his dad, his dad, his dad, It can't go back
infinitely. That's a contradiction. Number
and infinity are contraries. Infinity is actually numberlessness. You can't put a lot of a number
together and suddenly have infinity. Or here's a challenge. How big
does the number have to get and still be finite? And when does
it click over to infinite? And if it is finite, then it
has a beginning. Time works in the same way. It
has to have a beginning. Children do this. I remember
doing this as a child. The answer had already been given
to me, because I started to ask these questions and then my mom
said, of course, God is going to be the ultimate answer to
this. But this is the way that people
really do it, and discover the God of nature by looking at nature
and thinking about it. Another way of saying this, so
that the presuppositionalist doesn't have to be so nervous.
Your brain, as constructed by God, even though that's not the
first thing you know, but your brain has an identity, it has
a way it processes information. Your brain, operating on this
world with its identity, draws invariable conclusions. It's
built into the nature of your mind in this creation, that there
is a God, that he is present and that he is powerful. Every
human being draws these conclusions. So no, Moses doesn't need to
try to prove the existence of God. And God had already revealed
himself to the Israelites in time past. He doesn't have to
prove that Jehovah is the true God. So he doesn't have to do
that. He can take that as presupposed
in this argument, not that it's at the very ground of epistemology,
but he knows it and they know it. And he can start with that. And interestingly enough, you'd
say Moses doesn't need to prove it to them because God already
has. If you look at Romans 1.19, "...because that which may be
known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them."
And he's done it effectually. This is one of the reasons, forget
about our culture, our culture is a blip on the historical radar
screen. and it is cancerous and diseased
but when you look at the history of the world and men's minds
operating upon this creation whether they be primitives or
advanced societies they all draw the conclusion that there is
a God and they know some things about him that is powerful and
so on, basic things about God this is what Paul seems to be
talking about in Romans chapter 1 What Moses is concerned about
is that his own mission is liable to their doubt. And in some ways,
this is reasonable. Anyone can come and say, I speak
for God. And then say, and I have I have
a sort of a strange idea. We're getting up out of this
place. And they and their bondage are going to say, this is hard
to believe. This is a this is a tough pill to swallow. We have
to put a lot of confidence in you, my friend, to undertake
something like this. Anybody can say that they speak
for God. Now, this raises a question for Gordon Clark. He says that
the truths of scripture are to be taken presuppositionally.
Now, at this point, there is no Bible. There is no written
word, but I doubt that Dr. Clark would have denied that
people knew anything at this period. Things were revealed,
and this had been revealed to Moses. So Dr. Clark would say,
and if you were to take his argument and advance his form of argument,
they ought to take what Moses is saying just presuppositionally.
They can't do any reasoning or thinking about the situation
without it. But that's not the method that God takes with his
people. Moses is concerned they're going
to doubt my mission. And God's method with the people
is different than what the presuppositionalist would lead you to think. God
sends Moses with the message, but anybody can make that claim.
So God further testifies to Moses mission by miracles of divine
power. This presupposes the sense experience
of the miracles, and God is relying upon the sense experience of
the people, and that they're going to be able to identify
water, and that they're going to be able to identify sand,
and that they understand something of the properties of both of
these, and when you bring them together, the normal causal relationship
and product, which would be mud, But this time it produces blood. So this assumes identity, non-contradiction,
causality, sense experience, and so on. God says they'll look at these
things and they'll draw the conclusion that you speak for me. And the
multiplying of them is almost like a superabundance of evidence. In case they were wondering,
wait a minute, is that a trick? And then they see all of these
wonderful and mighty works. And then God gives the purpose.
Not that they ought to take his mission presuppositionally, because
God had declared it, but rather, they'll see these things, and
I give these things, that they may believe that the Lord God
of their fathers hath appeared unto thee. Do you see the difference? And the difference in method?
And if I could make just one other claim, isn't this much
more in keeping with the common sense
of mankind? You end up in presuppositionalism
with these very frustrating conversations, not so much about
the existence of God, they know it and you know it, but they
say, well how do I know that this Bible comes from God? Both Van Til
and Clark would just look back at him and say, oh, you know.
This is when an apologetic becomes no apologetic at all. Oh, you
know. Yeah, dude. until there was some sort of
demonstration given? Did the Israelites know? Could
they know for sure? Given what was at stake? Was
it unreasonable for them to want to see some sort of demonstration
of the divine power so that they could be sure before they undertook
something that if it didn't work would be the destruction of the
nation? I mean, this is not a small thing.
Facing Don Ferro is not a small thing. They're under his military
dominion. So if you've understood my meaning,
presuppositionalism fails. I deliver this with something
of a long face because when I get responses to sermons, it's usually
about these, and I start getting hostile letters from Vantillians
and Plarkians, where this is their chief joy. their favorite hobby or something
like this, but ultimately presuppositionalism fails for the simple reason that
these things are not on the ground floor of epistemology. They are
not. There are things that come before,
so they cannot be prime, primary, principium, beginning. They can't
be any of these things. And you notice here that in the
Bible, identity, non-contradiction, causality, sense experience,
the witnessing of the miracle, the drawing of conclusions, is
what we have sketched out for us here. Now as far as myself,
I don't have anything new to sell in this. I think that there
was a perfectly serviceable apologetic from ancient times before there
was even anything called a reformed church when the reformed church
picked up the apologetics of ancient times they just picked
up the apologetics of ancient times they really didn't change
it because the old arguments had already persuaded everybody
but now in this present day the presuppositionalist wrings his
hands because America doesn't seem to be very much persuaded
And even that is not what it appears to be. You see these
surveys. You'll see something like 85 or 90% of Americans will
say that they believe in God. That doesn't make them Christians
or anything like that. It's the people that control
the media with the loudest voice that make it seem like Americans
don't know that there's a God or something like that. The university
professors who control the schools and the teaching and all of these
sorts of things. For the most part, America is
still doing Romans 1 20. They know that there's a God
by the things that have been made. Now, as I said, that doesn't
make them Christians, but they do know that there is a God.
If we haven't done anything else tonight, there is a certain value
in negative knowledge. I haven't sketched out a positive
apologetic, but we have looked at a way not to go. a way that
does not work a way, I read a book actually a big textbook on apologetics
written from a broadly evangelical perspective about a thousand
pages on my trip to Scotland it was in some ways a light read
because it was written in contemporary times but I just read through
it and to tell you the truth I was a bit embarrassed that
he talked about the reformed philosophy and epistemology and
he identified it as this and I thought this is less than a
hundred years old there were reformed people for a long time
doing apologetics before this ever came around the bend so
I don't have anything new to propose to you just that good
old way like Jeremiah I would point you back to the old paths
which are the certain paths I want to point you to the footsteps
of the flock that have gone before us, before this aberrant development
in our theology. I hope I don't get letters. I
thought we might conclude with Psalm 19.
That They May Believe
Series Exodus
| Sermon ID | 724131748196 |
| Duration | 46:02 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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