Well, hi there.

Let me start my music for you.

You hear that?

This is for your slow ride home while listening to Apologetics Live.

If you'll remember, a couple months ago I was hosting because Andrew wasn't here and we were having issues with the music.

It just wasn't showing up.

It just wasn't working.

Right.

This is another one of those night for apologetics.

So welcome, enjoy.

We're going to be talking about cumulative or cumulative apologetics.

We hope that it blesses you, but I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to bring in my co host for this evening, Adam Parker.

Adam, welcome.

It work if I took it off of mute, but yeah, thank you very much.

Glad to be on here.

Yeah.

So I mean, you've been on, you were on the.

Since they've been doing.

Andrew's been doing kind of the series through apologetics.

You have been.

You were on the first one talking about classical apologetics.

Were you on the precept one?

I was not.

I would have loved to have been on that one as well as the evidentialist case.

But I, you know, I'm doing ministry also, so I have a, I'm a youth pastor, so that kind of pulls away at some of my availability on Thursday nights here and there.

So I got.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would, I would have loved to have been on definitely the evidentialist episode because I myself am a pre supper along with Andrew.

You know, of course, the make it right.

But you know, I always come up with these excuses as to why I can't.

Right.

So the, during the classical episode, I was, we were having a baby, so we were in the hospital, couldn't come and then I forgot the excuses I gave for the other two.

But we're here now and we're going to be talking about cumulative apologetics.

Now I've got to be really honest.

Like I was, I was talking to Andrew the other day when he called me and I said, Andrew, I've got to confess, like I've been studying apologetics for several years.

I've never heard of the cumulative approach.

Now if I had to guess, I would say it's probably a combination of all of the methods of apologetics, but I've never heard of it.

Right.

And so, so is my assessment correct?

Like is it like this cumulative methodology approach to apologetics?

Yeah, so.

And Dr.

Williams, who is going to be making the case for it, is, is going to add more to this.

But the cumulative case for apologetics is essentially, why not have all.

And so taking Evidentialism, classical apologetics, and as well as pre sub.

And combining it all into one and using whichever one seems the most beneficial, depending on the conversation at hand.

So, okay, yeah, that's essentially what cumulative apologetics is.

One of Dr.

Williams Good friends, I guess you could say Douglas Grutheist seems to have been the one to really make this kind of a prominent thing, but he can fact check me on that when he comes in.

But yeah, so I, I'm excited for this and you know, I, I don't know if Andrew told you, but one of the reasons why he's doing this is he was on my podcast and in about an hour and a half, I tried to cram all of these conversations into one, you know, big co.

Big podcast.

So we had, you know, all of these guys that he said, except for whoever your pre supper was.

I had Andrew rep.

Yeah.

Representing the presuppositional approach for apologetics.

And so we all got on there together, wanted to have a healthy godly debate, you know, hey, which one is best?

And you know, let's have it.

Just have a discussion about it.

And so we did that, and then Andrew wanted to continue the conversation, and so that's what he's been doing here.

So, yeah, I had them on the Bold Apologia podcast and that's what we did.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, listening to that, it sounds like you would need to kind of break it up because it seems like there's just so much information.

Right.

Especially like just speaking from the precept standpoint when you start getting into the methodology.

Well, you could take a whole 1, 2, 3, 4 hours to explain that, you know, especially different situations you might find yourself in with different people.

So imagine that along, you know, classical apologetics, evidential apologetics, and then cumulative.

Right, that's.

That, that's a lot of, A lot of speaking.

So, yeah, it makes sense to split it up into different shows.

Well, you, you know, you take prep and classicalism just alone.

There's years and years and years of, of thought behind these different.

And they have their histories, and it's good to be able to go a little bit deeper.

Evidentialism is kind of a, A newer concept, but evidentialism is starting to get its own, you know, kind of history behind it as well.

And so it's good to be able to dig a little deeper.

And the goal of the podcast I did was essentially just to introduce and what I am happy to, to really be involved in, in this podcast or, or what Andrew and you guys are Doing the re.

You know, one of the reasons why I'm happy to be a part of that is essentially you guys are taking kind of what was laid out in that podcast and expanding it, getting the discussion going a little bit more.

So that's good.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

That is what we like to do here, especially anyone who knows Andrew knows Andrew loves to talk.

So whenever we can, you know, come up with a series or something where Andrew can expand and talk even more.

Yeah, that's.

That's what we do here, of course.

You know, but let's go ahead.

Let's bring in Dr.

Donald Williams to the show.

Dr.

Williams, how you doing?

I'm doing all right.

How are y'all?

Good.

Welcome to Apologetics Live.

Good to be here.

Yeah.

So we were.

We were talking backstage, and with it being Reformation Day, you.

You mentioned a book, and I want to throw it out there just because it is Reformation Day.

You wrote a book.

Tell us a little bit about that book.

It's called 95 Theses for a New Reformation.

And the premise is, what if Martin Luther were alive today, and instead of responding to the corruption of medieval Catholicism, he was responding to the corruption of contemporary evangelicalism?

What might the 95 theses be then?

And so that's.

That's how the basic thing is laid out.

I.

I deal with 19 areas in which I think the evangelical movement is just losing its grip on the.

The truth that it was bequeathed by the Reformation, and it starts with the five Reformation solas.

So I'm thinking, if Luther is going to do 95 theses for us today, a lot of them are going to be the same, because I keep running into people who say, well, sola scriptura, this doesn't work, and they don't even know what it is.

These are people who are evangelicals and solographia sola fide, solus Christus solido, Gloria.

You know, the evangelical movement used to stand for these things.

It was the form in which the theology of the Reformation came down to the present, mediated through the Puritan fathers of the 17th century and the evangelists of the first Great Awakening.

And, you know, when I.

When I was coming up in the faith, that was a thing.

And if to be an evangelical was to be committed to these things, now you can't figure out what in the world the movement stands for.

It's interesting to dip into Christianity today, you know, a decade at a time, and you'll discover that every time you do, the boundaries have gotten wider.

Until now, they've disappeared.

We're not willing to say anybody's not an evangelical anymore.

So it's 95 theses for a new Reformation.

Not new as indifferent, but new as in renewed.

Because, of course, one of the principles of the original Reformation was Semper Ray for Amanda.

The church should be always reforming.

And so that.

This is my attempt to help that little process along.

Yeah, it does sound interesting.

Yeah.

A chapter.

There's 19 chapters, each one of which has five theses.

So you start out five theses on solo scriptura, where I break each one of these things down, explain historically where it came from, why it's important, why it's biblical, etc, and why it's needed desperately today.

And there's a chapter on apologetics that, you know, we have this commandment to be always ready to give an answer to any.

To give an apologia to anyone who asks, a reason for the faith that is within us.

And somehow vast swaths of the evangelical world think it's unspiritual to obey this biblical commandment.

So in order to reform the church and to bring it back into a position of faithfulness where it can preach the gospel with integrity again, one of the things that has to be reformed is we need to be obedient to that commandment.

And I'm glad that we have this podcast of people trying to do that.

Yeah.

Doug Heiss, I don't know if he originated the cumulative case approach, but I think he popularized it.

There we go.

Certainly, it's.

It.

The.

The term is used, and the first time I encountered it was in his big tome on apologetics.

And the basic idea is, you know, it kind of is using everything, but.

But the basic idea behind it is the strongest argument we have for the truth of Christianity is that many different independent lines of reasoning converge on the same place and lead you to the same answer.

Okay, so, so yeah, I, I'm in the unusual position tonight as a defender of the cumulative case approach of being agreeable.

I mean, the, every one of the classic approaches, presuppositionalism, classical, evidential.

When they're making their positive case, I'm going, you know, yeah, you guys are right.

And then they start making their case.

Why they have the perfect right way to do it and nobody else does.

That's when they start losing me.

The strongest case for that conclusion would be the presuppositional case, because, you know, they're.

They're saying, you don't argue to God, you argue from God.

And there's, and there's.

If you act like there's common ground between you and the non Christian.

You're validating his rebellious, autonomous reason, et cetera.

And my response to that is, you don't have to do that in order to do it.

You can put this person in a position where it, you're just making it more difficult for him to maintain the pose that the non Christian, the atheist apologist, wants to take this pose that, you know, I'm an atheist because I care about reason and evidence and you guys just believe in a bunch of myths.

So you really care about evidence, do you?

Let's look at the evidence and see if you do.

And why not give him an opportunity to realize that he's in conflict not just with Christians, but with reality.

If you're in conflict with God, you're in conflict with reality.

And so, yeah, I say, why not have all the tools in your toolbox and be able to use them as needed.

So I very much value a presuppositional approach.

I think it's the framework that makes evidence meaningful and it's the framework that makes the classical arguments meaningful.

And in that framework, we show that every line of evidence, every line of reasoning that is valid and matches the world is going to take you to the same place.

It's going to take you to God as the creator and Christ as his son who was raised from the dead in history.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I'm glad you mentioned the framework.

Right.

The, the prep framework is what, when you look at the evidence.

Well, it was, it's what gives that evidence foundation.

And so what I think about, when I think about the evidentialist position is I think about someone like a William Lane Craig who is debating Lawrence Krause.

And Lawrence Kraus asks him straight up, do you know for certain God exists?

And he says, no.

Well, at that point he's given up Christianity.

Right.

But he's gone through this whole debate in order to try to prove God.

Well, if that, if, if your, your starting point is that you don't know for certain, you've already given it up.

Right?

So, so as, as a precept, I go, well, I start in the same place Greg Bonson did in his debate with Gordon Stein.

It's, I start with the God of the Bible.

This is who he says he is.

The Bible is God's word.

This is the God that I believe in.

Therefore, anything after this must conform to the God of the Bible.

Right.

Any evidences must conform to the God of the Bible as its foundation.

And so I taught a class on apologetics once and comparing kind of the two precept evidentialists.

And I used a quote from William Lane Craig where he said the preponderance of the evidence leads to the greater probability of a God.

And so I go, well, I don't serve a probable God, I serve the God.

And that comes with my starting point.

Right?

So his starting point would start with the evidence.

Now I'm not trying to lump all evidentialists in there with that, but that's where he was starting from.

Whereas I would say we need to start from here, the God of the Bible, because if we don't start here, then where are we going?

Right.

I would, I would say that you need to distinguish between the existence of God, which is not probable, it's just he exists, and the strength of a given case for that existence, which might add to our confidence in the conclusion.

Even though by itself you would say this makes God what, this, what I can conclude for this is that the God hypothesis is a really good explanation of this set of material and the atheist or skeptical or pantheistic or whatever other hypothesis doesn't explain it nearly as well that is consistent with the existence of God.

I wouldn't use the probability language.

I would simply say, I would simply say God isn't dependent on my ability to prove his existence.

But here's a case, it's a good case, it's a strong case, and when you put all these cases together, it's very strong and it justifies our believing with confidence that God exists and that he is the God of the Bible.

So yeah, you can, you can frame the argument in a way that it, it's almost.

And I, I think, I think Craig is trying to just be intellectually honest and not claim he can prove more than he actually can prove.

But I think it was probably unwise to bring probability up.

You know, you say, because if you start with God and then you say, you know, everything that we find is consistent with this, you're open to the charge of circularity.

You know, and if I were not a believer, if I were an atheist and I was arguing with the presuppositionalist, I would say, well, yeah, you look at the world and confirmation bias causes you to see stuff that is consistent with your assumption.

That doesn't make it true because there's tons of data in the world that's consistent with tons of stuff, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.

And so there's, you know, we have to, we have to show reason, we have to show why this starting place works better than all the.

Not just works better than the other ones, but actually is the only one that doesn't lead you into a blatant contradiction, either with yourself or with reality.

Yeah, you know, there's, you know, Jason Lyle.

I'm a huge fan of Jason Lyle.

Jason Lyle would be a presuppositionalist who studied under Greg Bonson, but at the same time, He's a double PhD astrophysicist.

And then a lot of his teachings and his lectures, he uses evidences from astronomy, geology, in order to make his case.

So and, and affection, I think, effectively disprove, you know, theories like evolution.

I think, I think the issue with evidentialism in a very specific case is if you come at it from the perspective of I need to use evidence to prove that God exists as a whole.

Like, I think it is important to take the presuppositional approach to that.

I think there, there are Christians or people who say they're Christians who come from the position, you know, I can prove God exists with evidence, and I don't need preup.

I don't need to use presuppositions at all.

And I think that would be the extreme side of evidentialism.

What I appreciate about Daniel McAdams is he acknowledges that there's, There is presuppositional apologetics mixed in with his evidentialist approach.

I, I think there are a lot of apologists who identify with all three of those camps, William Lane Craig being one of them, that are essentially cumulative case guys, but they just have an emphasis in that one, one area.

Because I think, you know, classical apologetics by itself has a weakness.

That is, it might suggest that the existence of a God, of.

It might suggest that theism is a better answer to certain philosophical and scientific problems.

But we're not interested in just theism.

We're interested in a very specific God.

Evidentialism by itself runs into a problem.

What in the world does an evidentialist do with a postmodernist who rejects logic and thinks all your evidence is just.

You know, all perspectival, everything's relative?

Yeah, he's got nothing he can say to a person who doesn't care about evidence, because from evidentialism per se, by itself alone, he has no argument as to why we should care what the evidence says.

And the presuppositional approach.

I'm tempted with some presuppositionalists to say, well, that's a very interesting theory, but does it fit the facts?

And so you Know, you're going, it seems to me like you're going to have to borrow from all three approaches in order to argue with real.

In order to make a case with real people.

Yeah.

And each one of them offers something.

Okay, so if I make this really, really strong case with historicity of the resurrection, it really, the historical evidence really looks like resurrection happened.

But if you think God is inconceivable, it doesn't prove anything except that something really weird took place 2,000 years ago.

So I need the classical arguments to put me in a position where the idea of God makes sense.

You know, that this is a world that is the kind of world we would have if God created it.

It's not the kind of world we would have if he didn't.

And, and the presuppositionalists, I think, become more important with every passing day as the culture slips into post modernism.

Whatever is going to come after that, you know, Post, post modernism, Post post post modernism.

You know, you really, when you name your movement, you really should think about what you're, you're doing, you know, like, like New College Oxford.

Right.

There's 39 different colleges that make up Oxford University.

And New College really sounded like a good name at the time.

It was the New College.

It's the fourth oldest of the 39 and 600 years old, it's still called New College.

You know, like postmodernism.

It's like you never conceived of the possibility that there would be something coming.

After that post post Modernism, you know, in.

But, but anyway, so in talking about the.

The point is that that presuppositionalism gives you resources for dealing with people with that set.

But at some point you're going to have to look at the evidence, and at some point you're going to have to look at the concept of what do we mean by God?

You know, just because Genesis says God created the earth, that doesn't prove that God exists.

Unless I already believe the Bible, in which case I probably don't need you as an apologist, because I already believe in God anyway.

So I think people will emphasize one of the approaches based on their own gifts and their own inclinations and the ministry they have and the kind of people they deal with.

But it seems to me like in the, at the end of the day, we actually need all three and that, yeah, the God that we need to have to explain the existence of the universe and its intelligent design and the fact that it contains a moral law.

How do we know who he is?

Well, we need the evidence that Scripture is presenting him to us accurately.

We need, we need all three approaches, it seems to me.

Adam, is there anything you wanted to tack onto there?

Well, I think, you know, with all of this, you kind of laid it out really well.

What, what is it?

But here, here's a good question for you because you're in this conversation with a person.

What is your way of going through, like, what is the best, let's say, approach to take depending on a specific person.

What, what do you go through?

What evaluation do you use to determine which approach you're going to use in your apologetics?

Let's say you're having a conversation with an atheist or someone.

What are you going to do?

Well, I listen, okay?

I listen and I try to find out where he's coming from and what his issues are.

And I use a lot of Socratic questions.

And at first I'm just trying to figure out, okay, A, is this guy really seeking truth or does he just want to argue?

You know, I think apologists waste an awful lot of time and in fact build their apologetic to deal with people who just want to argue.

And I don't think that's doing anything for the kingdom or for the cause of Christ.

And I think it makes apologetics less useful.

So would you say those type of people are typically the kind who in turn just want to argue themselves as well?

But yeah, that's the problem.

If the guy just wants to argue, then unless there's somebody who's listening that might be influenced by him, he's.

He's the swine before whom.

I don't need to be casting my pearls.

It's just a waste of time.

Yeah.

If there's any chance he's actually open and, and wanting to know the truth and because, yeah, so many conversations with skeptics, only one person is listening in the conversation.

It's not the skeptic.

Right.

How many times have I been in a, in a, in a, a debate, maybe online or something, you know, and, and you, you make this carefully worded statement and the guy comes back, it's obvious he hasn't even bothered to read it.

He's just spiel, you know?

Yeah.

It's a complete.

So let's say this is a person, though, who is a genuine seeker.

Like, so presuppositionalists, they have their.

Where they approach things from, right.

Which would be that God has spoken.

Then there's the evidentialist.

They'll go and they'll try to pull in the evidence.

The classicalist will Try to prove theism and then bring in some kind of evidence to back it up.

I guess my question for you, or that question was more meant to be, how does a cumulative case apologist approach these things?

It seems like it's.

It's a much more complex way of going about things because you have three different schools of thought that you've got to pull from.

Well, I've got three different schools of thought that offer me resources that I can use.

Okay.

And it's.

In a way, it's more complex.

I would use the word flexible.

Okay.

Okay.

So I don't have a set spiel.

Right.

And I've got to take Everybody through steps one through 17 in that order.

Well, I suppose that was a little bit more to my question too, because as a cumulative case person, it seems like you have the option to take it in a more personalized approach, like as.

As for you, you can then it like you could take a more personalized approach.

Whereas someone who's doing precept will often follow the mold of those guys who did it before.

A classicalist will follow the mold of the guys who did it before.

Typically, you know, if they're going hardline for that case.

So you said you have flexibility.

How would you go about it?

I mean, yeah, every person is different, but I'm assuming that you would use a mix of each school of thought regardless.

So what does that look like for you?

I mean, I'm an atheist.

Explain to me why God exists.

Well, why do you exist?

That's a good question.

Let's say, I mean, let's say, let's say.

How about this?

So, so here we are.

We both apparently exist.

I mean, you might be a figment of my imagination, I might be one of yours, but let's just less, just for the sake of argument, say that we are here and we exist.

Well, just real quick, you kind of threw me off there because I have to.

You, you said, well, why do you exist?

Oh, man, now I have to think like an atheist.

So think like an atheist.

Part of me is like, how do I unscrew my head and take my brain out of my school?

I mean, why does anything exist?

Right?

Okay, so there are two major answers to that question on the table for most of us Westerners.

Okay?

Now he may be new age and, or, or Eastern or whatever, and that's a whole different conversation.

But you've, you've either got naturalistic evolution or you've got creation.

Okay, so if evolution is true, then how do you explain the fact that you have aspirations for things like goodness, truth, and beauty, you know, because, because, you know, the evolutionist keeps telling us that we're just, just another animal with extra convolution in our brain and opposable thumbs, but we're like, just one step down the road from where other intelligent animals evolved to.

Have you noticed that, that, you know, there are some monkeys who are pretty intelligent.

A bonobo will, like, break off a stick and use it as a tool to dig termites out of a.

Of a mound.

Or if he's in a room with a banana suspended from the ceiling that he can't reach, he might arrange boxes into a pile and climb up there to get the banana.

That's.

That's intelligent, that's problem solving, intelligence.

But what he will not do is arrange the sticks or the boxes into a symmetrical pattern just to sit back and contemplate it without getting any termites or bananas out of it at all.

He's a 100% pragmatist.

And you're not, because, you know, you like to tell stories and you like to play music and you like to do all this stuff.

It's like, how is explanation the.

How is evolution the explanation for us?

On the other hand, if we were made by an intelligent personal God, then, you know, things make a different kind of sense.

So why should we even be open to this idea of God?

Because the alternative doesn't have answers to the deep philosophical questions.

And if God's there, those questions now are open and we have.

We ultimately have the option of believing that truth, meaning goodness and beauty exist and have significance or they don't.

Now, if we're open to the idea that God might be there, is there any way we can know if he is?

In fact, if, you know, is this more than just a nice idea, a nice theory, and you know, then there are reasons for thinking that it is because you have the fact that he's revealed himself to us in nature.

And, you know, by the way, I see all the arguments being used in Scripture, classical arguments are there.

Psalm 19:1, the heavens declare the glory of God.

The firmament showeth his handiwork.

All the column argument does is take the testimony of nature and make it more explicit.

How does nature show the glory of God?

It does it by being intelligent.

It doesn't by existing, even though it's contingent.

It does it by being intelligently designed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So there's lots of reasons for thinking that God is not in.

First, there's.

There's a reason for us to be interested in him because he gives us answers that make our humanity actually livable.

And once we're open to that possibility, then we can look at the evidence and see if.

If in fact, he has shown us that he's actually there.

So are you saying that.

Are you saying that your first approach in a com.

Your cumulative case, is to give reasons why it's a good idea to consider, at least consider his existence?

Is that what you're saying?

Doesn't think he needs to?

Yeah.

And so, you know, can I get you to at least have an open mind on the question and to see some reason why.

Okay, we might be interested in the answer instead of just assuming we've already got it now.

It's kind of a presuppositional start there, except it's not.

It's not a pure vantilian type of start, because I'm not.

I'm not.

It's like what I'm not telling him is I've got an advantage because I've already read the answers in the back of the book, but the first thing I have to do is get you interested in them.

Give you a reason to care whether God's there or not.

And, and to think, you know, because.

Because you're just assuming God's this nasty person who's going to boss me around, and I don't want that.

So I don't want him to be there.

Well, let's rethink that.

I mean, is.

Is.

Is that the only way to look at it?

Is that the best way to look at it?

And are there problems with that approach?

You know, I have a question, and this is.

I mean, what.

I'm not.

What I'm doing.

I'm not.

What I'm not doing right now is laying out, here's the way to do this.

This is a scenario.

Sure.

With an imaginary atheist who looks like Adam.

Yeah.

And.

And of course, how he responds at each point will dictate where I go from there.

I definitely had some responses to what you were saying there, too, because you, you had mentioned, you know, what you'd brought up.

You know, apes, they, they're very pragmatic.

Whereas us, you know, we think about the deeper things.

We enjoy art.

We, you know, things like that.

And I can't help but look back to my, my days in Sunday school growing up, and the perfect answer was always, hey, they'll ask you a Sunday school type question.

And if, as long as I said Jesus, the answer was right.

And so.

But but for the atheists, they have their own.

And that being, oh well, we're, it's just because we evolved to be higher thinkers.

You know, that seems to be their Jesus answer.

If they had their Sunday school is just evolution.

You evolved better, you know, and, and you know, how would you approach a question like that as a cumulative case guy?

Because it's pretty easy to veer off into left field if, if there's not an intentioned goal in your, your steps.

Because the idea, hopefully by the end of it, is to have given them a case for, for why God exists in really getting to the gospel.

So what happens there?

Is evolution a good explanation for human beings?

And the answer is no, it's really not.

Because we're not one step further down the same road.

We're a right turn and a leap across the Grand Canyon from the other animals.

Best resource I know of on this question would be G.K.

chesterton's book, the Everlasting Man.

In that book, what Chesterton does is he takes the evolutionary premise as true for the sake of argument and pushes it until it falls apart to show that, you know, it's really not capable of explaining us.

Now there are technical ways of doing that.

For example, you could bring up irreducible complexity or specified complexity.

And you know, all this stuff is potentially on the table depending on how the guy responds and what his objections are, etc.

But you know, my, my initial thing is, is can we get the idea of God on the table as something that we can discuss?

Because his default setting is no, that's.

There's no evidence for it.

It's already it.

Nothing but a superstition and a myth.

No reason why anybody should be interested in that.

Oh really?

You know, when I, I think there's.

I think there are lots of reasons why we should be interested in it.

And once we are, then there are lots of reasons why we should think that God is not just a theoretical answer to why there is meaning and truth and stuff that evolution doesn't give you, but his reality because he's, he's revealed himself to us.

Okay.

And then so, so from there, your, your responses to him, this fake or pretend atheist or whatever, your responses to such a person would really depend on his answers to your questions.

From my goal, My goal is to get to the point where I'm having a real conversation with him.

Okay?

There's, there's, you know, instead of, of what typically happens is you get two guys who are just giving each other their spiel and, and the first guy pauses and the other guy gives his, and then the, the first guy picks up his again and they're not really interacting, they're not really communicating.

So I, I think the first thing you want to do is get past that scenario because that's normally, that's normally where we find ourselves.

But what, I mean, I think, I think even for prep guys, evidentialists and classicalists, they find themselves in that position too, where they, they will need to get that, at least get them going in the direction of that conversation.

And so, like, they have a, they have a way that they do that as well.

And it seems like it wouldn't be too different from what a cumulative case person would.

You know what you're doing.

I guess I don't have any original ideas.

Everything I got I stole from either the presuppositionalists or the evidentialists or the classical guys, you know?

Right.

The.

It's just my perception is that your case is stronger if you have the resources that they all provide.

And I'm looking for a big picture in which they're all part of the case with a capital C.

Right.

And so I guess, I guess where I was going with the question is I was hoping to get to the point where you, you would then explain how you go about inferring which school of thought to utilize is, I guess, where I was going.

Well, if I can add on to that question or expand it a little bit, because when I'm listening the.

How you would approach it, how you, you're talking to this, you know, this atheist and trying to get this conversation going, it seems like it, depending on the setting, it might not work in certain settings.

So this would be, I, I can see this.

If we have time to sit down, coffee shop, lunch, something, and we have time to have this long conversation.

But that might not be the case for if I'm out street preaching and evangelizing and I've got seconds for the person that's passing by that makes the comment or something like that.

Right.

So in terms of, are there certain settings where the cumulative approach is better and maybe not in other settings?

I don't think there's a setting in which the cumulative approach is not better.

I think there are settings in which all you have the opportunity to do is put a pebble in the guy's shoe and that pebble is going to come from, if it's one pebble, it's going to come from one of the three, you know, So I guess in that case, if you, if, if you take a snapshot of me.

If you take three different snapshots of me doing apologetics, you could probably use them to make three different cases that I'm.

Yeah, he says he's cumulative case, but he's really a presuppositionalist or he's real.

Eventually, you know, you.

You could easily do that.

So, yeah.

I guess the c.

I guess the cumulative case thing to do.

Plant one idea, then, yeah, you, you, you.

You pick one, and you try to plan it.

In fact, I.

I think one of my most effective apologetics encounters was.

Was basically that was a lady who was in her late 70s, okay?

So statistically, nobody converts, but if they've been something else that long their whole life, hardly anybody converts at that point.

But she was the mother.

Her daughter had accepted Christ, was a member of the church I was pastoring at the time, and she wanted me to go talk to her.

She was a New Ager, okay?

And she believed in reincarnation.

She had this whole form of reincarnation that she'd made either made up or gotten from somebody.

It wasn't any of the standard Hindu or Buddhist things, but, like, there are 12 virtues.

And she had been given a life to work on each one of the 12.

And when she had perfected all 12, then she would go to Nirvana.

She'd be released from reincarnation, go to nirvana.

Except Nirvana wasn't really nirvana.

It was a lot more like heaven for people that were still persons.

It was.

It was a totally confused mess that she believed in.

And, and she would tell me these stories about what she did in one of her previous lives.

Oh, by the way, she was on her 12th reincarnation.

She'd already attained perfection in 11 out of the 12 virtues, and she was working on number 12.

And as soon as she had perfection on that, then she would have reached the goal.

By the way, virtue number 12 is humility.

She's already 11, 12 perfect.

But as soon as she becomes humble about that, then she'll go on to nirvana, slash heaven, whatever it was.

So she would tell me stories about stuff that happened in one of her earlier lives that she had apparently convinced herself she actually remembered and were true.

And I would say.

I would just say, that's really interesting.

I didn't argue with her.

I was like, no, you didn't do that.

That didn't happen because.

Because reincarnation is false.

I just said, that's really interesting.

But the Bible says it's appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment.

And there would be this awkward pause and then she would tell me another story from another incarnation.

And I would say, that's really interesting because the Bible says that it's appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment.

So this went on for about two hours and I thought I had gotten nowhere, but I had planted in her head the critical Bible verse that addressed the heart of her error and she couldn't get it out.

And it bugged her and drove her crazy.

And over a period of about six months, which involved, you know, much more philosophical and substantive discussions about the nature of reality and the soul and whether we reincarnated, etc.

But that was the key.

I planted that scripture in her head and she couldn't get it out and it drove her crazy.

And about six months later, she accepted Christ as her savior and became the most effective evangelist we had in that church.

So, yeah, even though it was a long conversation, it was like two hours.

All I actually accomplished was the one thing that needed to be accomplished, it turned out.

And it wasn't because I was brilliant or anything.

I thought I was a complete failure at the end of it.

But it turned out that was exactly what needed to happen.

You know, it's like plant the relevant scripture in their head and the Holy Spirit, if the Holy Spirit decides to use it where they can't get rid of it, let it work.

And then as it's working, you're there to deal with.

With a lot of apologetics, I think is just, is just helping to create a channel down which the person can move without getting distracted into rabbit holes as the Holy Spirit leads them to Christ.

Yeah.

And so you want to make sure that it's the Christ of scripture and of history and not some imaginary thing that they actually find and that their faith is grounded in the Word and in reality.

And you know, the particular issues that people are dealing with, it varies from case to case.

Yeah, it listening to that, I was, I was teaching on apologetics and I stole this from, I think I stole it from Doug Wilson of all people, where he said, he was talking about apologetics and he said, you know, not.

Wrong about everything, you know.

Right.

You know, but he was talking about the non believer suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

And he said, you know what that's like.

He said they're holding a beach ball underwater.

Right.

And he said all the apologist job is to come do is to poke at the elbows of that, of that beach ball, you know, until it gets that, you know, there you go.

Well, going back to your question, Drew, just, I was just thinking about this.

If you, if, if Dr.

Williams were on the, let's say, you know, the street corner preaching the gospel, and let's say, let's say, just for argument's sake, the best way to go about apologetics on the street is preup.

If, if Dr.

Williams, if you were to use preup on the side of the street, street preaching as your apologetic method, you're actually not even going against cumulative because you already agree with prep.

Is that, is that the case or.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, the whole point is that I use all three and I do it, you know, with, with benevolence or forethought.

And so, yeah, at any given moment, you could take a snapshot of me and it would look like a presuppositionalist.

So I'm, I'm, I'm, I don't mind calling myself a presuppositionalist.

Actually, I'm a Shafferian presuppositionalist, not a vantilian one.

You know, Van Til famously thought Schaeffer was an inconsistent presuppositionalist.

I think Schaeffer was a realistic presuppositionalist, you know, who wasn't focused on being doctrinaire and pure, but on actually reaching people.

And so.

Yeah, on the flip side, are, would you.

Okay, just, just to tag onto that.

So are you, are you indicating that maybe Van Til was less interested in reaching people?

You know, I wouldn't want to say that about Ventil.

I've read him.

He strikes me as, as a godly and sincere person, but I have a negative reaction.

Not to Van Til himself, but to Vantilians.

Okay.

You know, I don't know how many times I've been to the Evangelical Theological Society and there's two Westminster grads arguing with each other about which one is more vantilian than thou.

You know, and it's like, you're wasting time.

Go, do, go talk to non Christians instead of arguing about the fine points of the purity of your methodology.

Yeah.

Schaeffer and Ventil differed on the question of common ground.

Ventil is big on.

You know, if you admit any common ground with you and the unbeliever, you've already abandoned the faith or implicitly denied it.

And Schaeffer is like, not necessarily.

You know, we have common ground in that we both live in the world that God made and we both are human.

We both have the mannishness of man, the remnants of, of the image destroyed by the Fall.

And, you know, now we see those things differently, but they are things we can talk about and, and things that you can point out that, that become part of the discussion.

I, I agree with you.

I, I've run into some Van Tilian types on the Internet as well, and they can be quite combative.

Quite combative.

And, and what I gather from, from reading Ventil and talking to people who knew him, he wasn't that way at all.

No.

But somehow, somehow there's, there's something that's crept into the, to his disciples that I think is not fully healthy.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

To recap, when a presuppositionalist, a classic classicist or an evidentialist is giving their positive case for why we should believe that the God of the Bible is real and Jesus is his son, I'm saying there's something here I can use.

This is good stuff.

When they start arguing with each other about why you shouldn't use the other two methods, that's where, that's where I would disagree with them.

Right, okay.

Yeah.

So listening, you know, myself, it could just be.

I view myself more as a preacher than a, or an expositor than an apologist, first and foremost.

But, you know, when I'm, and I've always, I always tell people, whenever they ask me about apologetics, I tell them apologetics is a tool to get to the gospel.

So if your goal is not to get to the gospel, your focus in apologetics is wrong.

Right.

It's not to win arguments, it's not to bash people over the head with your theological swords, but.

Is very important and very much needed in the apologetics industrial complex today.

Right.

And so when I hear, you know, a lot, the evidentialists and using evidences, and I would agree there are great evidences that God has given us for us to use, and we use those in our discussions.

I hear the classical, which is, you know, the philosophical arguments that people use to first distinguish the existence of God.

But I think about Scripture and I think about where God says, you know, the only thing that's going to change the heart of the person is the gospel.

And so I can give them as many evidences as I want.

And, you know, just like the Roman soldiers who saw the risen Christ, it didn't change them.

I can give as many philosophical arguments as I want, but the only thing that is going to pierce the heart, that is going to change that heart of stone into a heart of flesh that will bring them into the kingdom, bring them to repentance and faith, is the gospel.

And so, you know, I'm not disagreeing that these conversations can't be beneficial, but I, I, as for me, and I know Dan is, is backstage and I'm going to bring him on, I know he would probably say the same thing, is that we absolutely need to make a focus in the conversation to get the person the gospel so that the Holy Spirit can cut them to the heart.

Yeah, I was just going to say, you're absolutely right about the gospel.

And, and there needs to be one more step, and that is to understand nobody puts their faith in Christ unless the Holy Spirit is at work in their heart.

And what the apologist job is simply to give the Holy Spirit material to work with.

Okay, so the gospel, the scriptures, and then the Holy Spirit works through means, he works through our testimony, he works through the preaching of the gospel, and he works through the case that he asked us through Peter to make.

And so you put the evidence out there, or you put the classical arguments out there, or you put the, the transcendental argument out there, praying the Holy Spirit will use it.

And, you know, we do that not because the Holy Spirit can't save people without it, but because 1st Peter 3:15 tells us that it's one of the things he wants to use.

And because we want people, I think, especially in the American context, we want people to put their faith in Christ in such a way that it's the whole person, including the mind, that is responding, not just an emotional response.

Because, I mean, the people I was raised with, they're all about, all about the heart.

But the problem is they don't have a biblical definition of the heart.

They think the heart is the center of the emotions.

Right.

And they don't realize that in biblical culture, the center of the emotions wasn't the heart, it was the bowels.

If a biblical writer wanted to use a body part to symbolize the emotions, he wouldn't pick the heart, he would pick the guts.

Right.

The N word.

King James actually translates it literally, bowels of compassion, which means nothing to modern people, but the heart.

See, this is why I tell people, read the dead guys, right?

Yeah.

The heart is that central core of your personality where intellect, emotion, and will find their unity.

Okay, so we want, we want the whole person, including the mind, to embrace Christ as the way, the truth and the life.

And so apologetics is part of our presentation of the Gospel for that reason.

But if you ever forget that none of it's worth anything unless the Holy Spirit is at work in that person's life, then you quickly become one of those people that gives apologetics a bad name.

Well, and I think it's important to also bear in mind that, you know, with regard to apologetics, the sole purpose of apologetics is not necessarily just evangelism.

It has an effect when it comes to evangelism.

But, you know, when.

When Scripture says to always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you, that could be just as much dealing with a new believer who needs an answer to a question, you know, that could be just as much.

Yeah.

Or an old believer who does.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

When I say new believer, I mean someone who's like, just fresh off the press versus, you know.

Well, let me go ahead and bring Dan in.

He's been waiting patiently backstage.

I know he might have some questions.

We have the seven foot apologist, Dan Kraft.

Good evening, everybody.

Sorry I was late, but I had family engagements to take care of, so.

That's okay.

Andrew didn't even tell me you were coming.

Not the least of those being dinner.

But welcome.

I know you.

You were on the show for the precept position, which would be the position that I know Andrew holds to.

I hold to, so.

And I know that Dr.

Don here, he would.

He would absolutely agree with the precept position as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The one thing I've.

I've been kind of listening.

I listened for a little bit, you know, while I was backstage.

And the one thing that I feel like is not being taken into consideration when you guys are quoting 1st Peter 3:15, I feel like it's being somewhat taken out of context.

Right.

So this is.

This is kind of, if you have to pardon me, this is a pet peeve of mine of.

Of modern day.

I think I know where you're gonna go.

Yeah.

And I.

I wanna hold on because some.

I think somebody beat you.

I think Jesse beat you to it.

What did he say?

Set Christ apart, Lord.

So that.

That's.

That's part of it, Right.

Jesse, you got the nail on the head.

Like the imperative in that verse is indeed to sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

The imperative is not to offer defense.

Of course, you know, being a subordinate clause, it's.

It.

Or whatever you call it, whatever the grammar, grammatical, term is the whole, you know, be.

Be ready to give an answer is.

One of the things.

Kind of how that looks like it's.

One of the things that the lordship of Christ in your heart produces.

And one of the things it looks like.

Right.

But what I'm.

What I'm speaking of is the larger context.

So.

Right.

The problem I see with the way first Peter 3:15 is normally quoted is we just go, sometimes we skip over the Sanctify Christ as Lord, and we just focus in like a laser beam on the whole, on the whole, you know, giving an answer.

And that leads one to believe that you have to have an answer for, you know, for all these varied questions.

But when you.

I kind of went over this in my, during my two hours, you know, a couple weeks ago.

But, you know, when you look at this verse in the context of the entire epistle that Peter wrote, I mean, he's writing his epistle to a church that is being, that is, scattered abroad around Asia Minor, that is, or scattered around the, the Middle east.

And they're, they're undergoing persecution.

And the whole theme of the book is, right, living in the face of persecution.

And so as I demonstrated and you know, during my session, I said, you know, when you look at First Peter, First Peter, the entire Epistle, he's not talking about, you know, going head to head with skeptics, unbelievers, even answering questions of new believers.

I mean, what he's really talking about there is like, look, when you're being persecuted for your faith, and Paul reminds us that all who desire to live godly will be persecuted.

Like, when you are persecuted, you should be living your life in such a way that the whole the world looks at you and goes, what's your problem?

And that is the question that we're always called to have an answer to.

It's not, you know, how do you know that there's a God or any of this other stuff?

It's, you know, what makes you so different?

I noticed something different about your life.

What is it about you that gives you such joy and peace in the midst of suffering and persecution?

And that, that question is what we're always prepared, supposed to be prepared to have an answer to.

And that is, I'm glad you asked.

Let me tell you about the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It's, it's a straightforward invitation to share your testimony.

And it's a, it's a demonstration of what Christ has done in you.

Right?

So I, I, the whole, you know, always prepared to have an answer.

You know, this is, this is, like I said, this one of my pet peeves.

And, you know, the more I, I study the Word and the more I read, the more I've come to the conclusion that, like, apologetics is not really a thing.

Biblically speaking, apologetics is something that we have constructed out of, out of one verse of the Bible, largely taken out of context.

What it really is telling you to do is say, hey, you know, you need to be prepared to share your testimony and tell people how, how Christ saved you.

Well, I, I think that the context is important because, you know, we run into people.

Well, people don't walk up onto the street and ask you a reason for the hope that is within you, because in fact, the context is persecution and suffering.

And it's the fact that we don't return evil for.

We don't return evil for evil, but we return good for evil.

That's what is motivating them to ask the question.

But apologetics isn't just made up out of that one verse, because in the first place, it contains the word apologia, which is normally used in Koine Greek as the summation that a lawyer gives in a trial.

So it's more than just giving your testimony.

And then it's really useful.

Just read through the Book of Acts sometimes and highlight every time.

You get words like persuaded or argued or evidenced.

I mean, they're on every page.

And so you've got the apostolic precept, which is to be ready to give an apologia.

You've got the apostolic precedent, which is the practice of the apostles who are constantly appealing to evidence and testimony, etc.

Rather than just giving their personal testimony of what Jesus means to them.

And then you've got the apostolic principle, which is that the Gospel is for the whole man, including the mind.

And so a healthy apologetics, I think, is made out of all three of those steps of the tripod.

I agree with you that we do ignore the two things you mentioned.

The.

The imperative verb is sanctified, Christ is Lord of your heart.

And the context of.

I think the context of suffering doesn't lessen the emphasis on a rational response.

I think it simply situates it locates it in reality and, and gives us a view of the kind of relationships we need to be building with people and the kind of life we need to be living so that the questions actually do get asked.

I deal with this, right?

And I just want to jump in on.

I want to jump in on that too, because I, I get it, I get what you're.

You're saying, Dan, that the context of, you know, that verse in, what was it?

First Peter or something like that.

First Peter, 3, 15.

Yeah, I, I understand the context behind it, and I understand that that verse has been the catch all for, you know, our Base, you know, the basis for the existence of apologetics in the mainstream of it all.

But I, I definitely disagree that apologetics with the point that apologetics really isn't a thing.

Jesus was constantly defending his authority in the New Testament.

I'd say that's apologetics.

Paul on Mars Hill, I'd say he used apologetics there.

Peter sermon Paul and on Mars Hill used Scripture.

Right.

Well, he was preaching directly.

He was giving a defense.

He was giving an.

He was, he was giving them the answer for that unknown God.

Peter's sermon at Pentecost.

He was giving a defense.

Stephen's speech before the sanhedrin in Act 7 call, his defense before Agrippa, Peter's call for to preparedness, which would be yes, first Peter 3:15.

We need to be prepared.

We have Jude's exhortation to contend for the faith.

Jesus's post resurrection appearances being constantly mentioned throughout the New Testament.

That's apologetics.

Apologetics is absolutely a thing and it's been a thing for a very long time.

And I, I don't think that it has to be built on First Peter 3:15, although it does tend to be the catch all for that's my, that's.

My primary gripe about it.

Right.

Is that everybody wants to hone in on first Peter 3:15.

What really what they're doing is was it second Corinthians 10, 4 and 5, we destroy arguments and everything that raises itself up against the knowledge of God.

That's really what we're doing.

Yeah.

The whole apologetics thing, when you actually go through the book of Acts like I did, you know, during my session, if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to go back and watch it.

But I go through all those passages you meant that you mentioned.

I go through Acts chapter seven.

I talk about Stephen stoning and I talk about Paul's sermon on Mars Hill.

And I go through Acts 22, 23, 24, 25.

And I said, you know, Paul commanded, Paul says follow me as I follow Christ.

So what did his apologetic look like?

And invariably, I mean he would, he would always include the resurrection.

It was in there.

The resurrection was in there.

He didn't try to prove that the Bible was true.

He didn't try to prove that God exists.

He went straight for the jugular almost every single time.

It at least mentioned the resurrection.

And what I fair to bring up though that Paul was trying to answer different questions Today.

Today there's much we have different questions that we're trying to answer, so to speak, in different groups like atheists, you know, around, you know, I don't know, probably a little bit after about Paul, but they thought that Christians were the atheists because we didn't believe in as much gods as they did.

And so I think, I think apologetics as we see it today is in some sense a product of the time that we live in.

But Paul was trying to answer different, you know, not different questions, but questions with a different focus.

I think that's a fair point to bring up.

I mean, I mean, in that historical context, I think that's a very important thing to take note of.

Well, I mean, the, one of the things that just stuck out to me in the, in this kind of back and forth was, you know, Adam, you mentioned, you know, going through the book of Acts.

Right?

Well, and Dr.

Williams did.

But.

Right, he, he came up with that.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, yeah, he just, but, but, and then to Dan's point, you know, just looking through all of those instances in Acts, right, when we look at Peter's sermon at Pentecost, he's, he's giving the gospel, but he's also relying.

He's, he's given his defense based on scripture.

Right.

He's pulling out Joel.

He's saying, these men are not drunk as you suppose.

But then he lists out Joel and then he elaborates on that through the giving.

But why did he use Joel?

Who, who, who was.

He used?

Like what was his apologetic defense too?

Right?

It was, it was to.

Unbelievable.

It was to Jews who didn't.

Yeah, the non believers.

Right.

Yeah, but, but, but who believed in the scriptures.

Yeah, but when Paul was on, on Mars Hill, he was in the marketplace talking daily with him.

And the reason why people were scoffing at him is because he was preaching the resurrection and he was, he had an audience that would range from Jews to proselytes to your garden variety pagans who just anybody who happened to be in the marketplace that.

Right.

And interestingly enough, he quoted a pagan poem.

Yeah, but interestingly enough, he also quotes about 14 passages of scripture.

Absolutely right.

It wasn't like he was trying to start where they were and work there and argue their way to God.

He's saying, remember, Paul was the same guy who wrote Romans, chapter one.

It says everybody knows God exists.

And not just a God, the God.

Right?

Everybody knows that God exists because there is only one.

And so this guy sees this and he knows that everybody knows that God exists.

And he looks out and he sees the altar to an unknown God and he says, look, isn't it interesting that you guys have all these, these gods and you still recognize that you've got one missing now what you worship in ignorance?

I now proclaim to you.

Right?

So he was using a touch point of what they had in their culture to make contact with him.

He wasn't arguing, but he wasn't arguing from their, their, their, their false belief to the scriptures.

Right.

He just went ahead and quoted scripture.

So what I, but what I see today is too often we're too concerned with trying to prove to the atheist via rational argumentation that, that God exists.

And this is, you know, my, my estimation, it's utter foolishness and it's unbiblical because God, you know, God himself says everybody knows that I exist.

I've written, I've written my existence on your, Everybody.

We know about his divine attributes and, etc from Romans chapter one.

And your conscience testifies against you that you have.

Everybody has a basic sense of right and wrong given to them by God.

But men suppress that truth and unrighteousness.

So that, that's pretty much, that's, that's really what I'm recoiling against is when, you know, we're taking scripture out of context where I think we've, we've twisted apologetics into something that's leads up to evangelism.

But no, when I look at Paul's apologias all throughout the letter, the latter section of the Book of Acts, all I see is him presenting the gospel as his apologia.

But I would say all truth is God's truth.

So what do I mean by that?

So let's say the atheist like I don't think God exists.

Okay, well God hasn't got, I don't think God exists because of this, this, this and this.

Let's say, well, the Big Bang theory or whatever, the truth of the matter that they're bringing up is absolutely God's truth.

And I don't think that that is full.

It's not foolishness to examine that.

It's not foolishness to have that conversation.

And I do think there's great hope to then be able to have sort of a gospel conversation.

I would say it's utter foolishness as much as it could be more so argued that it is man.

It's taken the long way around.

I think that would be a better way of putting it.

I don't, I don't think it's foolishness to have an argument for God's existence.

I, I think, but, but you know, like this, this thing, apologetics, I Think it's so much more than, than just trying to prove God's existence.

I mean, we're, you know, you're dealing with Muslims.

Muslims already believe God exists.

They just believe in the Quran.

So, so what does an apologist do?

Well, they point out the issues with the Quran or, or find ways to, to refute Muslims.

But, but even with the early church, what did apologetics look like then?

Well, it looked like defending the Trinity against, you know, these, these, these heretics, you know, and, and pointing to the true Jesus.

And I guess the point I'm trying to make is, well, I go back to what I said, Apollo.

The way apologetics looks today is in many cases a product of its time.

But what you do see continuously from Paul's time to Justin Martyr to even Aquinas in now is, is that, you know, I, I like the way Daniel goes about it, you, Daniel McAdams, is that you do have some sense of presuppositionalism where God is indeed, he's got to be the starting point for us to come in with some of these arguments that we're making.

And, and so anyway, I guess, I guess that's my point is that apologetics doesn't look the same, exactly the same.

It has its pillars, that's absolutely true.

But it doesn't look the same through history or church history whatsoever because we're dealing with different groups.

Paul, Paul didn't have an issue with proving the, Well, I mean, I won't go too far with that.

He didn't have to deal with Aryans, you know, so to speak.

He didn't have to deal with that specific group of people.

And, and I don't think he ran into too many agnostics or atheists in his time either.

So maybe that's why we don't see so many so much.

Hey, this is why God exists in scripture, who knows?

But either way, I mean, it's happening and there are good, there are good arguments that can be very faith building specifically for Christians.

Well, that's, that's a different, that's a different argument.

Right?

So having an argument for a Christian to, to bolster those who are weak in their faith, that's one thing.

But when you're talking to a non believer and you're inviting him to, you know, to these, you know, I believe it was either Bonson or Ventil, you know, said when you, when you try to argue from the evidences, you basically put the non believer, you put God in the dock, basically, right?

And you tell the judge the Non believer to be the judge and you determine whether, whether God is God or whether he exists or not.

Right.

And that's, that seems to be utterly.

Backwards and well, that's a Ventilian spin on the use of evidence, but you don't have to present it that way.

You know, it's, it's true whether I believe it or not.

Whether you believe it or not.

And here, here's a case for why we should think it's true.

And it, the case doesn't depend on whether you agree with me.

It doesn't depend on me.

It doesn't depend on your agreement.

It depends on what's true and it depends on these facts.

And I'm presenting them to you not so that you can judge their truth or falsehood, but so that you can be confronted with the fact that every fact in the universe is there because God put it there and it all testifies to him.

So yeah, you've suppressed, I might not use this language, but essentially you've suppressed the truth and unrighteousness and you've covered it over with this whole layer of rationalizations.

And it's just not going to be as easy as it used to be for you to keep doing that if you're willing to listen.

Yeah, it's.

So the evidence, the evidence speaks and.

No, evidence doesn't speak.

Right.

People speak and evidence has to be interpreted and it's always interpreted in light of that which we already know.

Right.

So you're, if you, unless you, unless you would address the root.

Interpretation.

Interpretation.

I'm sorry, I mean, facts don't fit any interpretation.

Equally, the facts are the facts.

And yeah, you can, you can rationalize them, you can twist them, you can evade them and you can suppress them, but if you deal with them, they're going to point you to Christ.

You see, that's, that's where I don't, I don't, I don't see that happening in, in, in, in the real world, even.

Right.

It's because you can, you can present, you can present all the evidence you want.

But like you said earlier, like, unless the Holy Spirit is working on that person's heart, they're not going to believe.

Nobody believes the Bible because of a, of a stack of evidences weighed on them so heavily that they had to.

Because, because it's a spiritual battle and.

Right.

It's not a purely intellectual thing.

However, we do have intellects and the intellect is part of what has to respond.

And so we want to make sure it's responding to reality.

And not to something else.

Right.

And I think it's fair to bring up just this.

It's just the simple fact that, you know, Paul himself did refer to evidence.

We see that in Scripture.

We see that in First Corinthians 15, 3 8, Acts 17 31.

You know, there, there is, there is evidence that's brought up specifically, I would say, whenever Paul is referring to the resurrection.

And hey, we've got 500 people.

That's eyewitnesses.

Eyewitnesses.

You know, that's a strong evidence that, hey, there.

That with 500 people who say they saw the resurrected Christ, that's some pretty good evidence that the resurrection did indeed happen.

Sure.

Down in a corner.

Yeah.

And Most of those 500 people aren't part of scripture.

I mean, the, the New Testament that was written at the time that statement was made.

Yeah.

He's not saying Christ rose from the dead because the Bible says he did.

It's because we got 500 witnesses, most of whom are still alive.

Right, but who was Paul speaking to in 1st Corinthians 15.

Right.

Who was he speaking to?

Believers.

Believers.

Thank you.

Right, yeah.

Paul wasn't trying to use evidences on non believers that you couldn't quote the.

New Testament about the resurrection when it wasn't written yet.

Well, we were talking to the eyewitnesses, including himself.

Right.

You know, as evidence.

And, and, and that is not yet scripture in the earliest period.

But Dr.

Williams specifically talking about First Corinthians, chapter 15, verse one.

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you.

He's preaching to those who already believe.

And in that situation, I think it's biblically justifiable.

Use all the evidence you want because you're, you're, you're, you're talking with people who have already been spirit.

You know, presuppositionalists start from scripture, so.

Or the gospel was being preached for 20 years before there was any New Testament that you could appeal to.

All right, so are you, are you okay, Dan?

Are you postulating here that the, the disciples would have never referred to any sort of evidence that the resurrection happened in their, in their evangelism to these Jews who didn't believe in Jesus yet, they would have never said, hey, there's an empty tomb.

Jesus isn't there.

They wouldn't have brought any of that up.

They would have simply said, jesus died for your sins.

Here's the gospel.

And just laid it out there in a perfect presuppositional way.

No, of course not.

Because that's not what Paul did in Acts 23, 22 through the end of the book.

Right.

Every single time he mentioned the resurrection, okay?

The resurrection was always front and center.

So that's, that's, that's not the issue.

Right.

He's preaching the gospel.

He's not, he's not making an argument leading up to the gospel.

He's preaching the gospel every single time.

Right.

Except that's a prescriptive passage.

It's not a prescriptive circ.

It's not prescriptive whatsoever.

That's a, That's a description of what he did.

Okay, so why do we have.

Why do we have history books?

Why do we have history books in the, in the Bible?

Nobody denies that people were preaching the gospel when they preached the gospel.

The question is, in their preaching of the gospel, did they make a case that the resurrection actually happened and that God actually did it, or did they simply ask you to take their word for it?

And I don't think the second scenario will be borne out.

No, they didn't, and that's not what I'm arguing.

But you asked the question, why are there history books in the Bible?

Why would you say they're history books?

No, no, I asked.

I asked the question, why are they.

Why are there history books in the Bible?

Because they're.

The history books are helpful for many reasons.

One.

One being that it gives the context for which the, the prophetic books were laid out.

There's truth in them.

There's actually.

There's scriptural truth in them related to just different, different doctrines.

There's.

There's the simple fact that the Holy Spirit saw fit that it be included.

Yeah, their history.

There's a whole narrative from Genesis to Revelation in those history books at important context, and we can, we can gain great insight from those history books.

Anyway.

There's.

Okay, now give me a biblical answer.

There are history books in the Bible because Christianity, is the uniquely historical religion of all the religions on the Earth.

Every other religion is about what you must do to reach God.

Christianity is about what God did in history to come and get us.

And so there's no Christianity if there's no history.

That's why probably the biggest bulk of the Bible is.

Is history.

Well, in the history books, they're.

They show God's faithfulness, you know, in sovereignty over time, and they, they reveal his redemptive plan.

So give me a biblical answer, though.

Give me a biblical answer to the question, why are there history books and the Bible?

Well, what do you think Is the.

Biblical answer First Corinthians, chapter 10, starting in verse 11.

Now, these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.

So the one who thinks he is standing firm should be careful not to fall.

So there, there's another passage.

Let's see the.

I think, I'm thinking of different passage.

These things happened as examples to us and they were written down for our instruction.

So they were given us examples for things that we should do and not do.

And they were also given as warnings and as examples for us to follow.

Right.

So that'd be the biblical definition, the biblical reason why we have history books in the Bible.

The only history book we have in the book of, in the New Testament is the Book of Acts.

So we go to that to say, when Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ, we go to the Book of Acts and we say, okay, how did Paul do this thing that we're calling apologetics today?

And that's what I'm trying to do is get us to go back to the Book of Acts, go Back to Acts 22 through the end of the book and say, okay, how did Paul do it?

And is what we do match up with that?

And my argument would be that by a lot, mostly we do not match up with Paul.

Well, if I could break in here for a second, because what it seems like is, Dan, you're putting out a specific way we should pursue this, per following Paul's example in the Book of Acts.

But then before that, Adam, it seemed like you were saying we should look at the Book of Acts to see how Paul and Peter used evidences and arguments in order to justify our apologetic.

Right.

So it seems like we, even though it's.

You're.

You use.

It seems like you're using the same descriptive text to try to make your case as a prescriptive text what you were trying to say towards Dan.

And that's a fair point.

I, I would just say say this.

What's different on my end is I'm not using it as a basis, rejecting other forms of, of interacting with non believers.

But if it's not the form that we've been given, then why shouldn't we reject it?

Okay, so at least shy away from it, at the very least.

Right?

So presuppositional apologetics is not mentioned in Scripture, what whatsoever we see it used.

Right?

We see it used.

The classicalists would say that we see classicalism a basis for classicalism from Romans 1, just as well, the evidentialists would say that you can do the same thing with evidentialism from Romans 1.

Just as well.

I'm not.

The difference between my approach, Dan, and your approach is you're using the Book of Acts as a, you know, the basis of that description, prescriptive element in Acts to prescript the idea or the, the notion that we shouldn't be doing these other forms of apologetics and that we're doing it wrong versus, you know, my side of it is, is I can see how, as I, as I'm saying, it's, it's, it's an explanation of how it's okay to use all forms, if that makes sense.

And so I, I'm not pigeon.

I'm not.

I'm basically, I'm not.

It's a good way.

I'm not building a doctrine off of it.

And I believe that Dan is.

But when he says that, and I.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

The only way to do it is to do it your way.

I know it's not my way.

I think the only way to do it is the way that we've been given, We've been given the example by the Apostle Paul.

Right.

And, and I think that the other forms of apologetics have a basis for why they use that form and they, they find it in Scripture as well.

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm merely saying I'm not building a doctrine off of it.

Not building a doctrine off it.

I'm not saying you can't do it that way because it's not in the Scriptures.

I'm saying, okay, I see it in the scriptures, and I'm not barring you from doing so.

I'm not barring anybody from doing anything, brother.

Well, when you say it, when you say it, but when you say it's utter foolishness.

That's pretty strong language.

Yeah, I think it is.

The Bible has a lot to say.

God, when you try to argue for his existence, when he says, look, everybody knows that I exist, so why are you trying to prove to them something that I, that I've already said they already know, but they suppress that truth and unrighteousness.

I get what you're saying, and I think that, you know, who was it?

Greg Kokel?

And I believe Dr.

Williams brought this up, is sometimes these blind people need a, need a pebble in their shoe, or the way I like to put it is, is they need to be coaxed out of their delusion.

And all truth is God's truth, which therefore evidence and Reason in logic can be applied in that way.

I don't see a problem with that.

I don't see a problem with that.

Biblically, should you start from a presuppositional standpoint?

Yes.

I'm not going to go to an atheist and say hey, let's take a solely evidential approach.

I know Christians who try to do that and, and honestly they don't even sound like Christians when they do that.

Where they take, try to take a sole evidentialist perspective.

I have an issue with that.

I, I would be on your side with that, Dan, but to say that you can't use evidence or you can't use, you know.

Well, I didn't log in, I didn't say that.

This is, this is a common refrain against, against the presuppositional approaches, the presupposition.

Particularly the hard line vantillions.

But, but, but yeah, I don't even.

Think the Ventilians would say you can't use evidence.

I've known some, it depends.

They, they probably have not read.

I mean just because you call yourself, you know, a cheeseburger doesn't mean you are one.

Right?

I could call myself a five foot two Chinese woman.

Doesn't make it so.

That wouldn't work at all.

Because you're a seven foot white.

Even though I live right next to Seattle.

Right.

It doesn't matter how close I get.

So the problem is not the use of evidence is, it's how we use them.

Right?

It's do we, are we trying to take evidences and use them to convince the non believer that God exists, that the Bible is true?

That I would argue is unbiblical.

Are we using it to bolster the faith of those who already believe?

Are we using to tear down bad arguments?

So here's a, here's my, my, my, my, my.

The common example I use, if you want to talk about the evidences thing, when somebody throws out the old, the old, the old line, you know, you can't possibly believe the Bible because it's been translated and retranslated so many times that what we, what was originally written can't possibly be, you know, what we have today, right?

And that's when you can, I think it's perfectly acceptable to reach into your back pocket, pull out your, your textual evidence card and say well actually I think you're greatly mistaken about how we got the Bible.

Let me talk to you a little bit about the manuscript evidence that we have and you know, the consistency over time and all that stuff that, that's perfectly fine for knocking down arguments, but what I'm not trying to do is prove the truth of the Bible by the number, counting the number of manuscripts and, and fragments that we have.

Right.

Which I've, which I myself have done and I've seen it done by others.

So that's why I think I'm particularly sensitive to this, right, Because I used to participate in this and now I look back on it and go, oh my goodness, what was I doing?

Right?

So the use of evidence is not a problem.

We have a reality based faith that is firmly based on reality.

And so therefore we should expect to see evidence as.

But we don't use those little bits and pieces of physical evidence or rational argumentation to try to prove to the non believer that God exists or that the Bible is true.

Okay, So I think that this notion of trying to prove the existence of God is a very new thing.

It's pretty new.

I'm not saying that there weren't people in Paul's day that believed there were no gods whatsoever, but I think we'd be hard pressed to find that they believed in all kinds of gods.

And the, the existence of God has, has been God or gods has been an accepted general fact for quite some time.

And so this, this thing that we're dealing with with atheists, especially in the proportion, particularly with the proportion with which we're dealing with it today is fairly new.

And would I agree with you that we should start from the notion that God exists?

Yes, for myself I have, I, if I were to rank these forms of apologetics, I would probably go pre, sub classical evidentialists.

I'm trying to start from a pre sub perspective and I would start from a precept perspective.

I would say hey, you know, God exists, this is the Gospel, but then open it up for questions and, and answering and, and, but when an atheist is out there saying God doesn't exist and here's why he doesn't exist and they're saying things that are just flatly false.

I should be able to use evidence and reasoned and sound philosophical arguments without the fear that I'm, you know, going against scripture.

And I, I don't think that that would be a problem as long as.

We'Re getting back to Scripture.

Scripture tells us in Romans a couple of things, that people have a natural knowledge of God that was implanted in them and that they suppress it.

So do you think it is possible that people have suppressed it to the point where they're no longer aware of it?

It's called Being reprobate.

And, and is it possible that that reasons could be tools that we use to pry it back up where they have to deal with it again?

So like prying the fingers back of the hands that are holding the beach bowl under the water, to use Bonson's analogy.

Yeah.

So I mean the idea that all I'm going to do is just preach the gospel at this guy and not deal with the fallacies that are influencing his thinking and preventing him from listening to it or taking it seriously just seems preposterous to me.

Yeah, so.

So one of the things that I would say to that is there, there is no evidences, there's no arguments I can make against an, towards a non believer that will save that non believer.

I can give all the, the greatest evidences in the world.

I can give all the greatest philosophical arguments in the world.

None of them are good enough to save them.

Them.

Right.

The Holy Spirit has to effectually.

Right.

Nobody is claiming that you can.

Right.

So the Holy Spirit could work through it though, couldn't he?

But so, so my, so I rely on what Scripture tells me.

Right.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

So I'm not one, I'm not smart enough for all the classical philosophical arguments.

I'm definitely not smart enough to remember all the evidences that are out there.

The only thing I know that I'm smart enough to do that God has equipped me to do is to relay the gospel to a non believer.

And I trust the Holy Spirit in that will be effective.

And if not me, then the next person that comes along who waters that seed that I planted for that person.

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that.

The thing that I see happening all too often in various apologetics conversations, and many of them that I've participated in myself personally, is that we spend so much time trying to deal with the snowball of arguments that the atheist brings against us that we never really get around to talking about sin and judgment.

That's a fair point.

The judgment to come and all that.

Right?

That's a fair point.

What I see, I'm willing to entertain some, I'm always willing to entertain honest questions.

Right.

But there's comes a point, and I'm sure you've met, you've men have seen this too, where you realize that you're just dealing with somebody who's just out for a sword fight and he just wants to argue.

And at that point that's when I just say, okay, look, it's clear to me that you are not interested in actual, you know, an actual dialogue.

You're not interested in hearing what I, what I truly, what the Bible actually teaches.

So, you know, you need to know.

Dr.

Williams was mentioning that earlier.

Those guys earlier.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we're definitely on the same page there.

This, like, you know, I'm not interested.

I don't want, I don't want, you know, a conversation that God might use to put a stone in somebody's shoe when I should be given, when I, you know, when I could just be giving him the gospel.

Because like, I like what Siden Brugenkate says, you know, when, when the atheist lays his head on the pillow at night.

I don't want him thinking about, you know, the complexity of the eye or how beautiful butterfly wings are.

I want him to think about his position before a holy God and how he's destined for hell.

That's what I want him to think about.

And when the Holy Spirit does prick his conscience, who's he going to go to?

Is he going to go to the guy, right?

Or, you know, say, hey, you know, you need to, you need to repent and believe the gospel?

Or is he going to go back to the guy who says, hey, remember all those philosophical arguments you gave me for God?

Yeah, let's talk about that again.

Right?

I think he's going to go to the guy who gave him the gospel.

I think, I think one of the issues that you, that then pop up is.

So let's take like Elise Strobel for example.

His journey to faith was through searching.

You know, he, he would say, and like I searched the evidence and it was too compelling.

I had to believe.

So what would your response to something like that be?

I mean, I, I would still say it was the Holy Spirit who worked in his heart, but by all means, his journey searching through that evidence was indeed a pebble in his shoe.

It was coaxing him out of his delusion.

Yeah, yeah, they have somebody like, like, oh, what's the guy's name?

Frank Morrison.

Who wrote, who moved the Stone Atheist lawyer who decided he would refute the resurrection by cross examining the, the four gospel witnesses and discovered that if he actually applied the rules of evidence to their testimony fairly, he should be required to accept it.

And he ended up becoming a Christian and writing instead of the book refuting the historicity of the resurrection, he wrote the classical defense of it, applying those canons of evidence.

So what was he studying that convinced him that it was true?

Was.

I don't see the point of your question.

What was what was that?

What was the man in the Gospels?

But he was studying the Gospel.

You haven't given an answer to the least.

He was asking.

He was dealing with them as historical evidence for the occurrence of this event.

And it was asking, based on the canons of historical evidence, based on the canons of legal evidence that I have to use in courtroom when I examine these testimonies, doggone it, I have to accept them.

So, so listen.

So listen.

It was applying canons of evidence to the Gospels that caused him to have to change his thinking.

Yeah.

So.

So listen to that.

And then, Adam, your question about Lee Strobel.

I don't know that I necessarily have an.

An answer to your question about Lee Strobel, but I have another question that just kind of pops into my mind about it is listening to these men who follow evidence, right?

They're.

They're set out to disprove something and they end up following evidences.

My.

My initial question, and I'm not questioning their salvation right now by any means, but their initial coming to the Lord is.

My question is, is that merely just.

Well, I can't refute the evidence, therefore I acknowledge the existence of this God, but it's not necessarily a heart change towards this God.

You know what I'm saying?

Right.

My heart hasn't necessarily been changed to where now I submit to him as Lord, even though I may acknowledge that he does exist.

Yeah.

At the same time, we can't.

We can't.

We can't say through hearing someone who's come to Christ through a presuppositional approach that they actually had a heart change.

We got to look at their.

The fruit.

We have to look at their.

What they have, what they profess.

Did they profess that Jesus Christ is Lord?

Do they believe that he was born of a virgin rose from the dead, he died for our sin?

You know, go down the list.

What, whatever.

That's the best that we've got.

You know, if I were to look at least Strobel's life and what he professes, I wouldn't be able to say myself that he's not a Christian.

He definitely seems to be a brother, but that's.

That's the best we can do.

But nobody.

His testimony is that he searched the evidence and the evidence spoke loud and clear to him.

And, and you know what?

I think it is also important to bear in mind this, that in this process, I guarantee he ran into the Gospel.

Well, that was going to be my next thing is I was going to say, well, and I've never what apologist trouble.

But has he, at what point in his writings does he deal with the Gospel itself?

Like, what was his first interaction with the gospel?

Did someone give it to him?

Did.

Was he discipled in these things?

I, I think the way he describes it in his book is that, you know, he, he took the gospels and then he wanted to put.

To bear, put the gospels on trial or, or whatever it was that he said.

And so I think that was in view the whole time.

And I would just, I want to echo, Dan, what you've been saying.

The, the Gospel is paramount if it, here's the deal.

This is an evangelism issue, not necessarily an apologetics issue, because apologetics, as I've, as I've said, it covers more than just evangelism.

It, it has a massive discipleship element where a lot of these questions about evidences and all of that, they tend to come.

As a youth pastor, I get a lot of questions about the evidences for script scripture, the, you know, how do I know the Bible is reliable?

And I can go into that, that sort of evidence?

And I'm sure that's pro, you know, fair point, bringing up that Paul was talking to believers in, in 1st Corinthians 15.

That's a fair point.

Maybe that's what Paul was doing.

In that case, who, who knows?

But what we do know is that Apollo, at least my perspective, apologetics isn't solely in evangelistic tool.

How do I bring that back around to what I was saying initially?

There are cases in which you need to use apologetics in evangelism.

And if, and so if you're merely just going out to argue for the existence of God, you're not doing evangelism.

That's not what it is.

And you, and you very well could be wasting your time.

All that said, you know, why do people like a William Lane Craig go to, you know, colleges and debate certain field, you know, philosophical issues?

Well, there's more than one reason to do that.

And he's got a, he's got to work that out with, with the Lord himself.

But, but if we're going to effectively use apologetics in an evangelistic way, whether you're evidentialist, whether you're presuppositional, whether you're in the classical apologetics, the gospel has to be there.

And at the end of the day, it's the gospel that does the work.

And it could very well be that the presuppositionalist conversation or the evidentialists conversation, or even looking at the Classical arguments, those are vehicles through which we continue the discussion and keep them pondering the Gospel.

All the while the Holy Spirit is doing his work in the mysterious way that he works.

Nobody claims that evidence by itself can change the heart.

It can't, but can change the mind.

It's hard to deny that it sometimes has been part of the process that the Holy Spirit uses to bring people to that place.

It may be part of the process.

Again, argument is not that you can't use evidences, it's a matter, it's just the question of how do you use them.

Right.

I'm, I love to go to.

You seem to object to anybody doing it until somebody is already a Christian.

If you're trying to use evidences to argue for the, the truth of scripture, to try to prove that the scriptures are true, to try to prove God exists, then, then yeah, I mean look at the disciples themselves, the eleven who were chosen.

Nobody saw more of what Jesus said or did than the, than the twelve disciples.

Right.

But when you get to Matthew 28:17, it says when they saw him, Jesus, they worshiped him.

But some doubted so clearly.

You know, if a lot of I've, I've seen people try to argue in such a way that they say, you know, the evidence is, is, you know, the silver bullet.

And it's not right.

It's, it's not the way that scripture, that scripture presents the case, the script, the case is that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword.

Not all these, all the supporting evidences.

So Dan, let's say cart before the horse.

Well, let's say that that's a, in, let's say an agnostic is coming to you saying, hey, I hear what you're saying about the Gospels.

I just find, I just find that I just, I can't believe what you're saying because I've heard so much against Scripture.

It just doesn't seem believable that the Bible is giving you an accurate representation of what actually took place.

What are you going to say?

Are you going to say, well you know, God exists anyway and, or how would you respond to that?

This is a sincere question.

Well, I would say, I would say pick a specific thing.

Let's, let's pick, take a specific thing, let's talk about it and let's see where it goes.

And would you, would you find out.

Pretty quickly if it's an honest question or if it's just a snowball job?

Well, no, we're saying this is an Honest question.

Okay, right.

Would you go that, that evidentialist route?

Would you give them the evidence for the validity of scripture and its accuracy and its manuscripts?

Would you go through that?

If his question was, how do we know that what was originally written is what we have today, then I think I can make a pretty good case for that.

Okay, but is that, am I going to try to use that to say, so therefore the Bible is true?

No, that's, that's, that's a, that's a big leap.

The evidence won't get you from accurate, from accurate transmission or faithful transmission over time to it being God's word.

Right.

I think, I think I'm tracking with what you're saying.

I think, yes, Scripture is true, whether or not these, these people think that they have the plausible evidence for it.

But this goes back to what we've been saying here, that the ultimate truth is that Scripture is true.

How do we coax them out of the delusion that they're in that it isn't?

I think by.

And one of those ways is with using the evidence that God has supplied his church with.

Hey, the, the, God has supplied whatever.

If it is true, it is God's truth, regardless.

And so if I can take evidence and that evidence is legitimate evidence, and I were to make a compelling argument to it.

Let, like I said, in this particular case, a genuine person who's interested, wants to know and is like, hey, I'm just struggling with this.

I can make a genuine truthful argument backed up with evidence.

All that truth is God's truth.

And I think that, you know, there's no problem with that.

And that is, and in that way, Dan, whether you like it or not, you are meeting him where they're at.

Yeah, I guess in a sense you are.

But I'm not arguing from the evidence to scripture.

Right.

I'm, I'm not gonna.

Again, I'm not going to say here's all the evidence.

And this is why, this is why I believe the Bible is true, because it's not.

It's not the reason why any of us believe.

You believe the Bible's true because God said so.

Okay.

Because God has given me eyes to see and ears to hear, and he's replaced by heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

Right?

Absolutely.

Yes.

But God has spoken.

Right.

And, and so.

And what did he speak through?

He spoke through his Word.

And so, so, yeah, I think it's still relevant to say yes, because I believe the Bible is true because God said so.

All that said, you Are meeting them where.

Where they're at.

Okay.

I, I already believe scripture because God laid it out there for me.

The God has spoken and he's spoken through his word.

But I see where you're at.

I'm going to present some evidences for you to consider.

And may the Holy Spirit coax you out.

Maybe.

May this be a pebble that you can't.

You can't quite get out of your shoe or so to speak.

I, I like what I say better than the pebble argument.

I, I think that evidence or even sound philosophy can be used to coax someone out of the delusion that they're in.

I, I prefer using it that way better in that particular case.

That's what, that is what you're doing.

You're meeting where they're at.

Back in the 1970s, when the Hare Krishnas were running around in their yellow sheets, I, as a young man ran into one in the airport and we met, each one of us bound and determined to evangelize the other.

And I quoted scripture.

He quoted the Bhagavad Gita.

I treated scripture as self evidently true.

He treated the Bhagavad Gita as self evidently true.

I told him all the stories about wonderful things Jesus had done in my life.

He told me equally wonderful stories about what Krishna had done in his life.

And at a certain point, it hit me.

One of us is.

At least one of us is deluded.

And I had at that point no way of deciding or determining which it was.

And if I preach the gospel the way you want me to, I'm still stuck right at that place talking to this guy because he's, he's got equally subjective confidence that Krishna has revealed to him the truth of his Hindu scriptures.

You know, it's like it's.

Dr.

Williams, you yourself said only the Holy Spirit can convict the person.

Right.

So, I mean, it's not our job to convince, convict, or convert anybody.

It's.

Right.

I would say that when your conversation.

Devolves on some basis.

Which one of us was totally deluded?

Well, I mean, the, the difference and.

My subjective confidence that I claim was given to me, me by the Holy Spirit doesn't answer that question.

Yeah, but when.

If I'm talking to that guy and he.

And he's matching me category for category.

Right.

The, the thing about it is I can tell him, yeah, but Krishna did not die for your sins.

And so at that point, I can go into giving him the gospel, and then I can trust that the Holy Spirit will work in him, because even though he's matching me, he's matching me experience, experience, Krishna.

And he, he sacrificially gave up his own place in Nirvana in order to help his followers achieve enlightenment.

So, I mean, he's got something roughly parallel.

And so here's, here's the difference.

All the stuff he claims that Krishna did didn't happen in history.

There's no dates to it.

There's no when Corinius was governor of Syria.

There's no Pontius Pilate under Pontius Pilate, there's none of that.

And Jesus died for my sins in history.

But to, to establish the difference, I've got to start.

I've got to start dealing with history and with evidence.

There's evidence for one, there's no evidence for the other.

It's of the very nature.

There can't be evidence for it because nobody even knows when this avatar of Vishnu walked on earth.

Jesus is the.

As Dorothy O.

Sayer said, Jesus is the only guy with a date in history.

And so, yeah, I've got to.

I've got to have something other than the subjective confidence that I claim God gave me in order to establish the Christianity got a real good chance of being true.

The other one doesn't.

Yeah, I mean, the, I think the other difference is I don't have a subjective confidence.

I have an, an objective faith that, that God is true and that comes from His Word.

But you're already assuming it's truth.

Yeah, because.

Because you haven't given me any reason to believe in it.

Yeah, so.

So here's the thing, is that no matter who you're talking to, they have certain presuppositions that they already believe are true.

So they already come to the discussion with a particular worldview.

Right.

And so I, what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to assume their worldview true in order to try to coax them out of it.

I'm going to establish my worldview as true, my presuppositions and say, this is the God of the universe, this is whom has spoken.

And.

No, but how do you know that he is.

How do I know that God is.

You're not the one that's deluded.

Yeah, because God's word.

Right.

I don't feel it.

It's because he has spoken and he has said it.

Right.

And it's.

And because he has given.

That's the very thing we're trying to determine, is whether or not he has.

Whether or not he did.

Yeah.

So you're Assuming the thing that we have to establish.

Yeah.

It's because my pre.

Belief, My presupposition is what I believe before I believe anything else.

So I can't believe anything else to be true unless I first believe God of the universe has spoken and he has spoken through his word.

If I do not rely upon his word and what he has said, it doesn't matter what I say after, afterwards, I have no basis to say anything else.

My.

What makes my evidences, if I pull out evidence, is what makes them evidences at all.

Okay, Drew, but, but you're the, the issue that you guys are running into here is you use evidence regardless the, the basis of your argument, as presuppositional apologetics or as presuppositional apologists is that your goal is to convince the unbeliever that they borrow from a Christian worldview using evidence that they borrow from a Christian worldview.

That's what presuppositionalists.

My goal is not to convince anyone of anything.

My goal.

That's what you find yourself doing in those arguments.

You're presenting evidence that they're borrowing from a Christian worldview.

No.

So that's convincing.

So one thing.

So I align with the presuppositional position.

But one thing that I've already established about myself is I'm not smart enough for the classical arguments.

I'm not smart enough to remember all the evidential arguments or all the evidences to use.

And so all I have to go on.

Right.

I'm not trying to convince them of anything.

It's not my job.

It's the Holy Spirit's job.

Uses convincing tactics is what I'm trying to say.

You are.

You were.

You were revealing to the, the person across from you that, well, you're actually, you're actually.

And I'm sorry.

Maybe.

Maybe this is if.

Let's take, let's take James White when he's, when he's debating an atheist, he uses the presuppositional apologetic methodology when he debates those atheists.

And so what does James White do?

He tr.

What he does is he.

He's like, hey, you're.

You're actually borrowing from a Christian worldview for the basis of some of the things that you even believe.

And, and so he are.

Yes, the pre.

Supper argues from.

Basically from the foundation of Scripture.

That's true.

I will give that to them.

They're saying a truth when they say that.

But to say that they don't use evidence, that's not true because what they do in Their debates, James White, Jeff Durbin, you name it, is that they use evidence based on the testimony of the person that they're debating with that they are borrowing from a Christian worldview.

That's what preceptors do.

So regardless, you are using evidence.

It may not be the same kind of evidence that an evidentialist would use to try to convince an atheist physicist that, that the Bible's true or whatever, but you are using evidence that is not escapable for the pre Supper, for the cumulative case guy, the classicalist, or obviously the evidence none of us can escape that evidence would be used.

So, so let's say when James White, Jeff Durbin, they're in a debate, their opponent is making truth claims, and James White, Jeff Durbin, they say, okay, by what standard do you measure or say anything is true?

You're saying that's an evidential.

You're saying that's an evidential argument?

That's a question.

Right.

Draw out what they're saying in order to reveal that their worldview is faulty.

Right.

That they're actually borrowing from the Christian worldview.

Right, Yep.

So, but, so, so the, so what the pre Supper does is he uses their opponent's response as evidence against their.

Position, but that's to show the inconsistency of his worldview.

It's not.

It'S still evidence.

I'm not, brother, I'm not sure how many times I could say it.

Evidence is not the issue.

It's, it's how you use the, the evidence.

Fair point.

That is a fair point.

Right, but, but, but Scripture is.

Earlier, earlier we were saying that it's not our job to do any kind of convincing.

And that's the basis of what I'm trying to say here is that we do convince.

And in fact, Paul constantly was convincing the Jews that.

Or, or in doing the work of convincing, he would, he would do that in the synagogues, as was customary.

Right.

He was trying to persuade them.

But the ultimate conviction has to come from.

Well, and I, I don't know, an evidentialist, classicalist or pre supper, you name it that.

Who is sincere that would say otherwise?

Of course, it's the Holy Spirit who does the final work, does that finishing work, does that effectual work.

But that doesn't change the fact that we do the work of convincing otherwise.

Paul's not doing things biblically.

But yes, but again, what are the tools we use to con?

Are we using Scripture to convince?

Are we using man's philosophy to convince, or are we using Scripture to convince?

I, I would just, I would, I would say that you don't have to only use scripture to convince.

You're just handcuffing yourself at that point.

Yes.

Sorts that we have hang on patiently.

Waiting to say something.

He looks like he's getting ready to explode.

Nobody just quotes scripture and throws it at the person like a, a set of bricks.

You.

Well, depending upon how much time I have, I might just do that.

You have to reason from the scripture.

You have to reason about the scripture to show that the interpretation is correct and not taken out of context.

You have to reason to show its relevance to the question.

You don't just throw scripture at people.

Why not?

You have to.

Well, you don't.

When you present the gospel, it's not a hundred percent quotation from the King James Bible.

No, because I don't use the King James.

You like, whatever.

The thing is, when I am presenting the gospel, I try to minimize my words and I try to maximize God's words.

I try to use as few of my words as possible because I, I do believe what the Bible says.

The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword.

My words are sporks.

So I try to use as few of my words and as many of his as I possibly can.

And how do we know that you're presenting them in context and interpreting them correctly?

Well, that would be a study for a Bible study.

But when I'm having a discussion with a non believer, we're not going to be discussing hermeneutics.

Right?

We're talking about sin and judgment.

If you're trying to convince me that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And I got some Roman Catholicism in my background and I quote James and I think I've got good reasons why you're taking Paul out of context and you're just going to just quote those verses at me and leave it there.

That's all you're going to do.

Okay, then we'll, then we'll have, we'll have that discussion, right?

We'll have lots of discussions.

I mean, then we'll have that discussion.

I don't see any reason why we have to limit it in the way that you're trying to do.

What I'm saying is the closer you stay to scripture, I think the most, the more effective you're going to be, the more God honoring you're going to be.

It's when we get off into the weeds and we want to discuss everything but the scriptures that we get ourselves into trouble and we wind up wasting time with the non believer instead of getting to the core issue, which is what are you going to do with Jesus?

And what I, what I keep, what I hear, what I hear you say, sir, with, with all due respect.

And what I hear you saying, you know, earlier, is that, you know, we, we have to, we have to argue this way.

We have to argue this way.

Like, wait a minute, we don't have to argue anyway.

That's, that's the.

No, we have to prove the case.

We have to prove the case.

You know, what about talking about the Hari Krishna, you know?

Well, I mean, Paul was, was.

I needed, Paul was in the business of convincing, just as, as I needed a reason.

I needed a reason to believe that I was not the one deluded, other than my subjective confidence in the scripture being the word of God because this guy had subjective confidence in the Bhagavad Gita.

One of us, at least one of us was deluded.

Well, if, if that was, if that was honestly your thought when you're talking with him, then I would just say that that was just a sign of a wavering faith on your, on your part.

Right.

And I've been there.

Like, I've, I've seen, I've, I've listened to some arguments that made me go, oh, man, what if everything that I believe about this is false?

Is that not a legitimate question?

Not, not a few.

So I find it really interesting that we go to church on Sunday, we preach about, you know, or we sing about, you know, how, how God saves us and we have confidence that he saved us and that He's God, that He loves us, et cetera, et cetera.

But when we get into a discussion with a non believer, suddenly everything, you know, it's on the table for discussion.

We're willing to negotiate this.

Like, we're willing to consider that God, that God has not spoken and that his, that is the Bible, is not his word.

I'm really inconsistent.

I'm really getting overwhelmed by the number of false dilemmas that are floating around here.

It's like we either preach the gospel or we do apologetics.

And, and, you know, we either use the, we either use evidence in a very, very limited way or we don't, or, or we're trusting the evidence to change people's hearts.

It's like, I don't think these false dilemmas have anything to do with the real world or with the way apologetics.

Should be done or really happens.

I mean, to, if you use apologetics at all, then you're, you're not trusting in the Holy Spirit and you're.

And you're putting the falsity of Scripture on the table.

No, it's, it's, it's not like that at all.

You know, it's.

It's the presuppositionless propaganda that, that presents straw men of the other methods of apologists and makes them look horribly unspiritual when the best ones in all of those other fields don't operate that way at all.

And I would also just throw out there that I.

Dan, I.

I'm gonna be honest.

I think you're a brother.

I agree with a lot of what you've got to say.

Scripture is important.

We want to get to the gospel.

But whenever you, whenever you paint it this way, that, that it's utter foolishness to entertain some of these questions from an evidentialist perspective or a classical perspective or using philosophy.

No, hang on, hang on.

You're painting with a broad brush.

I think when I said it's utter foolishness, I was speaking specifically about what Paul addresses in Romans, chapter one.

Right.

Does God exist?

I think it's foolishness to engage in that argument.

Does God exist?

Because it's explicitly laid out that everybody knows that he exists.

Right.

But.

So, but let's not penny with too broad that.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I don't want to.

Don't want to do that to you either.

But to say that going into that discussion is foolishness, I just, I just, I don't see that.

I think that, you know, when you give something the charge of foolishness, that's pretty serious because there's a whole book in Scripture that warns against foolishness.

I think that foolishness is sin.

And so here's the deal.

The argument does God exist?

Is an incredible conversation starter evangelistically.

And being able to entertain that argument and, and jump into that argument is not sinful.

And whenever you say that jumping into the argument or in having that argument with a person is foolishness, I, I think you're bordering on adding a doctrine to scripture that isn't even there.

And you're calling something sin that isn't that.

That is just.

Let's just be honest, isn't sin.

You know, and so that's why it's important to, to really think, Think through this.

Yeah, we want to have the most biblical position.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the person that you're arguing with, they don't care how biblical your position is or what you, what you really, you know, like, hey, now I might care.

I, I like well thought out, biblically laid out arguments.

I think they're great.

But when it, what you're dealing with is you're dealing with people.

This isn't input information and, and get an output.

You're, you're dealing with people.

And going back to the question I had asked before, there are people with genuine questions.

You know, okay, I'm struggling with the idea that God exists.

Well, why is that?

Well, because of all of the suffering I went through.

And according to you guys, God loves everybody.

I'm struggling with that because of all of the suffering, because I went through this abuse or that abuse.

To be able to give not just a compassionate response, but also an evidence back response to that can be so effective in not just with apologetics, let's just put that to the side, but evangelistically.

And to say, and to, to say that that sort of.

And I, again, I know I'm making it very particular because I'm throwing in other elements, but what I'm gathering is you would say that conversation is foolishness.

No.

Okay, then, then at what point, then, Dan, does the conversation of God exists?

God's existence not become foolishness?

Because that is the overarching theme of such a conversation.

Well, so let's go back to your, to your scenario there.

When you have a scenario like that, I mean, they're, they're, when you're dealing with the problem of evil, obviously there are two different angles.

You come at this from the person who's talking to you could just be, you know, trying to, you know, again, trying to foist a, you know, philosophical conundrum on you, in which case you handle it one way.

But we're going to take your situation where you have somebody who's got, you know, serious trauma in their life and you, you mourn with those who mourn, you cry with those who cry, and you laugh with those who laugh.

Right?

You empathize with them.

You know, I understand that.

But let me, let me show you from Scripture why things are the way they are.

And see, so the problem is not that you don't believe in God.

It says you can't justify that.

You can't justify the existence of a God given all the pain that you're, that you're experiencing or that you have experienced.

Let me take you back to the beginning, take you back to Genesis, show you how God laid everything out perfect.

But man, sin, he fell.

The entire, you know, all of creation was corrupted because of Adam's sin, et CETERA et cetera.

Then you can walk them through that.

I mean, and then it becomes just a matter of biblical counseling, I think, and laying out the gospel.

I said, but, you know, you know, ultimately, you know, you, you do know that God exists.

You do.

And the truth of the matter is that you're going to have to stand before him one day and you're going to have to answer for it, and you're not going to be able to stand in front of God and say, well, I had no idea you existed, because you do.

I think I g.

I think I did you a great service in answering that question because be.

Be in asking the question in the way that I did, because the, the Bible does offer amazing answers to the problem of suffering.

And perhaps the only, and I don't even want to give credence to, to the idea that an atheist could have a good argument.

Perhaps their strongest argument because of the emotional appeal is the problem of suffering, you know, and, and, but the problem of suffering is, is also a very philosophical one.

And, and the Bible offers a very, very good theological, philosophical answer to that.

You know, but I think on the flip side also, if, if it's a person who doesn't have a trauma and says, man, there's this evolution stuff, and, you know, it's just, I, I think that evolution is too convincing.

And, and if the Bible says it a certain way, I just don't see how, how one of they can both be true.

And I, and if I were to, to, to choose one, I would choose evolution.

You know, you can get into a conversation about that.

How would you respond to a question.

Like, sure, I would say, hey, tell me about your reasons.

Tell me about your reasons for wanting to believe the Bible, you know, for, for believing evolution is true.

Why, why do you, why do you.

Feel, why do you feel like you cannot believe what the Bible says?

Right.

And you'll find out that they have, you know, their God is too small.

You know, that their conception of God is too small, or any, any one of a number of things.

I mean, it's kind of hard to talk in broad, you know, hypotheticals like that, but I mean, it's essentially, it is hard.

It's, you know, as apologetics is not so much about, you know, giving speeches as it is about listening and asking good questions.

That's a good point, too.

Right.

So that's one thing that I, I've had to learn the hard way.

Yeah, well, you'll find that much of ministry is just listening and asking good questions.

Yeah, well, I think, I think we have found a statement by Dan that we can all agree with.

Gotta be at least there's got to be one.

There, there's several, there are several.

But.

And you know, we're not going to solve all of these methodological issues tonight because we've been working on that for at least the last 60 or 80 years and we keep coming around.

Bottom line is only the Holy Spirit converts people.

He uses the proclamation of the gospel, he uses prayer.

He uses your personal testimony.

Convincing.

And, and when those conversations take place, I think he uses reasons and evidence.

Certainly there are people for whom it looks like it worked that way.

And the way we pre.

Present the evidence, I, I think indeed lots of people do it in such a way as if they, they give the impression, they think if they make the perfect argument, they're going to convert the guy.

And that's certainly false.

That's certainly not going to happen.

I, I like to, I like, I look at it this way, maybe this is, is a good way to end the conversation.

When I was a little boy, I'm five or six years old, my dad was a, actually an airplane mechanic, but he also did a lot of the work on our cars.

And so he would, he would ask me to come out in the yard with him to help him fix the car.

And so I would hand him the tools out of his toolbox.

And you know, half the time I'd get the wrong wrench or whatever, three or four times before I finally got the right one.

My dad could have fixed that car way more efficiently without my help.

But he asked me to come and he involved me in that job because he was my father and he loved me.

So the most powerful preacher and the most brilliant apologist on the planet is a little boy helping his dad fix the car.

And that is the most we can claim.

But the fact that God lets us participate in his work is one of the most profound expressions of his grace that I think we'll ever experience.

And so I hope that that will be our experience going forward and that the, and that God will use us in spite of our foolishness and our sinfulness and our stupidity and our weaknesses to accomplish his work like he did with the apostle Paul who was the chief of sinners.

Amen.

Amen.

Good word, sir.

I want to thank everyone for tuning in.

I want to thank our guests Dr.

Donald Williams for coming on engaging in lively discussion as well as Dan Kraft, the seven foot apologist and Adam Parker for being my co host this evening.

So you really have seven feet.

I mean, most of us only have two.

I mean, yeah, it's, it's.

It's really hard to buy shoes.

Because one's always got to be left off.

Yeah, always that one left over.

Maybe you can get them custom, but.

We want to thank you for tuning into Apologetics Live.

Be sure that you get Logos Bible software, you get your MyPillow, and whenever you gotta rise up early in the morning off of your mypillow, go grab your cup of Squirrely Joe's coffee.

I think I covered all of the sponsors right there.

So we will see you.

I think Andrew has a show planned next week.

I don't know.

We'll find out when he gets back from the Fight Laugh Feast conference.

No.

Oh, well, I don't know.

We'll find out.

I just kind of show up.

There was I just kind of show.

Up when he says there's one Thursday this month where he wasn't here, but I think it was last Thursday.

Yeah, last Thursday.

That was last week.

Yeah.

He asked me if I wanted to do one and I was like, nah, but pay attention.

Next week might be a show.

I don't know.

You'll just have to tune in and find out.

Till then, we'll see you next time.

God bless you, brothers.

Yeah, you too.

Live long and prosper.