this is th 701 which is apologetics an evangelism as far as the description of what we're going to be doing this is a careful biblical and Theological development of a consistent presuppositional apologetics the course provides a basis for the evaluation of various empirical systems as well as a working knowledge of presuppositional ISM for use in all aspects of practical ministry the evangelism is then studied within a presuppositional framework to present the student with a consistent position for propagating and defending the Christian faith how many have done that any kind of studies and presuppositional ism before okay does anybody ever read any of like for you guys have had what have you read of you read some of them till before or a Bahnson or I just tried to get a feel for some of the experience here of yeah okay I'm selling frame tape on some and so okay so usually when we deal with presuppositional apologetics the heavy hitters in that regard are Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnson who's now deceased and then John frame who are often looked to as kind of the leading proponents of presuppositional apologetics so when you study presuppositional apologetics it can be somewhat controversial as a matter of fact when you get into the five years on apologetics books which I think you'll I think you'll enjoy that book you'll see that sometimes there's a little bit of disdain from the other representatives of the apologetics camp and so sometimes and people study presuppositional ISM for the first time they'll see that it's a little bit different than the standard perhaps Josh McDowell books that you read not in the sense that it's contrary to the Josh McDowell sort of approach but it's a it's a little bit different the sense that it's more foundational I would say in the sense that presuppositional apologetics certainly has room for Christian evidences and the sorts of things that were traditionally used to but in my opinion I think presuppositional ism deals with apologetics more at a foundational level in other words instead of just jumping into trying to you know show somebody that you know empirically that Jesus did rise from the dead or that you know the story of you know Jonah and the great fish is true it deals more with worldview analysis and so I think that's what you'll see is you'll when you study presuppositional apologetics it's going to emphasize things like worldview analysis it's going to argue that Christianity is true in all of its affirmations and proclamations and that the other world views such as naturalism and Eastern worldviews and hedonism and existentialism and all these other worldviews don't line up with reality and need to be exposed as such I think another thing that you'll see with presuppositional ism as well which makes a deal with more foundational issues is that instead of just jumping in to trying to in a sense prove specific things like you know the account of Jonah and the fish etc is it deals more with issues like anthropology just who is this person that you're sharing the gospel with you know what does it mean what are the implications of the fact that they're made in the image of God what are the implications of sin on the unbelievers mind and so sometimes it might seem to get a little bit philosophical but it's dealing with foundational issues such as metaphysics hah Marty ology anthropology epistemology in particular is a big thing with presuppositional apologetics because they're dealing with the whole issue of how we know anything and so I'm just saying that right up front that it there's a lot of foundational issues that you that you work through and so there's some sense in which might seem a little bit theoretical at first but it all has a purpose so all right let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the objectives of the class well we want to to focus the students attention on a consistent presuppositional apologetics is developed from the biblical and Theological data so there are different approaches to apologetic like I said if you have the five use book that we'll be looking at next week you'll see that there's different methods mentioned here there's a classical method there's an evidential method there's a cumulative let's go ahead and put this up right here so there's different methods classical method evidential method cumulative case method reformed epistemological method and then the presuppositional method so the one that we're going to be promoting in this class here is is presuppositional ism point-b we're going to want to develop a consistent presuppositional methodology that the student can effectively use in presenting and defending his Christian worldview in ministry we're also going to want to provide an adequate scriptural basis for presupposition ilysm we're gonna want to introduce the student to the thinking and writings of Cornelius Van Til Greg Bahnson John frame and other presuppositional scholars and so I have you reading I mean there's a strategic plan to the different books that I do have you read because Van Til Bahnson and frame have really been the the key promoters of presuppositional ISM I'm gonna have you're reading in their books you know some of you have just mentioned that you've already read some of Van Til who really ends up being the pioneer of a presuppositional approach you'll know that he's perhaps not the easiest individual to read that'll become clear if you haven't looked at it yet but he is very profound and what he is saying is extremely important when you I think when you read Bahnson and you read frame it'll be a little more yeah easily you'd be able to grasp it a little more easily as they pretty much propound the same principles as Van Til is talking about so we'll be reading those guys who have been really important in promoting presuppositional apologetics but we also want to give the student a sufficient understanding of the nature and content of various apologetics systems including their strengths and weaknesses so we will look at the other systems of apologetics and again that's what the 5 views book will largely do is I want you to be able to read primary source materials from people who promote all the different apologetic system so that you know you can you're able to compare and contrast with you know material that's truly representing what the other sides are saying so I think the five view five use book will be important in that regard point now if we're also going to want to cultivate an affection for a biblical apologetic and it's worth in preaching counseling evangelism and other situations when the truth must be defended so I think this will have practical implications for all areas of ministry so alright let's go ahead and look at I guess what would be page three in your notes which we'll talk about let's see here the sort of page two actually the required text let's go ahead and look at that the required text that we're going to be using here you can tell there's you know quite a few books that we're going to be looking at this book is going to be or the I'm sorry this course is going to be heavily reliant on reading I mean we need to do a lot of reading to understand what's going on here so we are going to read bahnson's book always ready directions for defending the faith again this is written by you know Greg Monson who passed away I think in December of 1995 bahnson's very interesting individual he had a reputation for being the Christian apologist that the atheists feared the most and at some point in this class I'll have to see how it works out with the video or whatever normally I show a not the video but but an audio given audio where there's a debate between Bahnson and gordon Stein Stein was an atheist and you get a C or actually here I should say Bahnson debate Stein on the issue of God's existence in which Bahnson really and my estimation really thoroughly defeated Stein using a presuppositional approach so I think you'll enjoy that and then the book I think is very sometimes a little bit circular a little bit repetitive but it's very helpful when it comes to dealing with apologetic issues who also look at the book bike Cowan which is the five views on apologetics have already talked about that a little bit also John frames apologetics to the glory of God and introduction I guess if we had to say if there was a core book that in the sense almost might act as our primary textbook I think the frame book would probably fit to fit the bill there I now included on here Norman Geisler book on Christian apologetics and if you've studied apologetics at all you know that Geisler is definitely in the the classical approach toward apologetics and as oftentimes fairly negative towards presuppositional ISM but I thought it would be good to look at his book just to see the approach of one of the other camps and actually in the book this book Christian apologetics there's actually some pretty interesting information in there because he does some some really really good worldview analysis as far as apologetic methodology probably wouldn't have the exact same approaches norm Geisler would but when he he's pretty sharp when it comes to critiquing some of the the secular worldviews and so we'll take a little bit of a look at that book as well we're not going to end up reading that whole book in its entirety like some of the others but we will look at it and see also had you get the charts of apologetics and Christian evidences by Wayne house always helps when you can have a book that puts things in chart form and then Richard Pratt's every thought captive a study manual for the defense of the Christian truth what Pratt does and this is what is helpful is Pratt understands that what Van Til has promoted is written at a pretty high level is very profound but Van Til isn't necessarily the most easy guy to read so what Pratt does is he pretty much takes the principles that have been promoted by Van Til and really puts them on the lower shelf for the rest of us and so he explicitly states in this book that this is a manual that even you know even a Christian in high school would be able to understand so the purpose of the prat book is to help take a lot of this theoretical stuff and show how it can be you know very practical so I think you'll enjoy that and then Cornelius Pam tells book the defense of the faith is important because that's one of the again foundational works again not the easiest book to read but it's very profound and really sets forth a biblical basis for a presuppositional apologetics the first really half of what we cover is more foundational and we'll talk about what is apologetics apologetics in church history and then when we get to September 3rd we're going to talk about the introduction to apologetics systems that's where we get into the 5 use books or 5 you book and then we'll get more specifically narrowed into what is presuppositional apologetics so we have a series of lectures on that as the far as far as what that's involved and then you start to get into some of the bigger specific issues the whole issue of the existence of God will devote a couple of lessons to that and I said at some point around there I'll bring in the the Bahnson audio debate with Gordon Stein which is pretty helpful and then the whole issue of the problem of evil from the standpoint of the unbeliever the whole issue of the problem of evil is often viewed as the number one argument against Christianity and usually the argument goes you know if God is all good and all-powerful why is there evil and suffering in the world and so sometimes unbelieving philosophers will say you can't have all three of those things true at the same time God's all good and all-powerful and there shouldn't be evil and so perhaps God's not all-powerful maybe he's all good but not all-powerful and that's why there's evil I think Harold Kushner took that approach with the book that was pretty famous or you could some people would say perhaps God's not all good he's all powerful but not all good and that's why there's evil but supposedly that's a problem think what you'll see is pre the presuppositional approach will argue that the the whole issue of the concept of evil and suffering only makes sense if there is a Christian God and so we'll see how that gets argued so presuppositionalist will argue that that the whole our whole concept and understanding that there is real evil and suffering only makes sense within a Christian worldview so that'll be an interesting discussion then we'll talk about Van Til and then when we get to the latter part of the course we're going to do introduction the worldviews and like I said presuppositional ism is really heavily involved with the whole issue of presenting the entire Christian worldview against the other worldviews that exist so we'll want to do a point-by-point comparison of the different worldviews and you know show it Christianity how it stacks up against those and how Christianity is the only true worldview so presuppositional ism is going to be arguing that it's not like these other worldviews are mostly true with a few problems here you know as a system the worldview breaks down and so we'll be looking at that ok let's go ahead and talk about a I guess when I give you a glossary here obviously I'm not going to read everything in a glossary but starting on page six I talk about key terms and concepts there's no doubt when you study full study apologetics that you get into some philosophical issues and that should be expected can mean his Christianity it is a worldview I mean you know it is a philosophy sometimes it might be a little bit scared of that word because oftentimes philosophy is linked with unbiblical thinking but Christ is the source of true wisdom and so you know whenever you're dealing with philosophy you're dealing with the whole issue of the pursuit of wisdoms so but I guess what I'm getting at here is that as you deal with these issues you do have to deal with with concepts that are often viewed to be somewhat a philosophical and I think one of the misperceptions about presuppositional ISM is that it's fede istic that it's anti rational and it's saying you know believe just to believe when it actually you know presuppositionalist have done very in-depth and good analyses of the various philosophies and worldviews and and like I said if that's your perception of presuppositional ism I think you'll see that that's not not the case so some of the terms here again I'm not going to read through all of these here but will clearly you know be talking about uh you know when you have the whole issue of the AH posterior Ori and our priority lling the whole issue of knowledge you know and is there uh ideas that we have in our minds before experience or does not all knowledge come from experience so we'll be getting into those issues it gets into rationalism and empiricism and various things like that agnosticism and atheism clearly a lot of people will claim that there is no God or that we can't know cosmological argument I mean that'll be dealing with the whole issue that's one of the traditional arguments for God's existence based on causation if you look at the world and say this couldn't just happen there has to be a cause for something like this and that ultimate first cause must be god that's a cosmological argument and then the other things we'll get to eventually so just understand that you have this here as a source for you if you run across some terms that may be a little bit more unfamiliar to you so like I said these first couple days here are going to be pretty introductory so let's just talk through what is apologetics in our modern English language the biblical concept of apologetics can easily be misunderstood it may bring to mind the concept of being sorry for something we apologize when we admit that we have done something wrong this however is not how we will use the term so when we're talking about apologetics we're not talking about being sorry for something when you look at the usage you know back in the you know the ancient world in the ancient Greek world the word apologetics is derived from the term apologia which means defense and so you know you even see that term the New Testament as well so here's when we're talking about apology we're talking about making a defense of something Kelly James Clark who in his book he entered one key terms in philosophy and their importance for theology who's also one of the contributors to the reformed epistemological method section in the five years book defines apologetics as the art of defending a claim against objections the term apologia was used in pagan and Christian literature and the New Testament itself so you have the apology of Socrates Justin Martyr etc what is Christian apologetics and so I guess the thing here is we see this term used in various situations but we come to the issue of what is Christian apologetics maybe at this point I'll just throw out a question here I'm not necessarily looking for a gotcha moment or anything like that but you know when you hear about you know Christian apologetics what do you normally think of you know if somebody comes up to you and ask you for a definition how would you explain apologetics belief and I think that really hits at the core of what it's talking about the defense of the Christian faith well look at some verses here pretty shortly that talk about that how Paul talked about the proclamation and defense so good yeah okay yeah y'all can think of evidences in other words you know people are asking for a reason and your evidence is often coming to play in that okay right so when we talk about Christian apologetics it's interesting the first according to doctors emic who often teaches here the first use of a use of apologetics for a specific Christian discipline did not arise until 1834 that doesn't mean the concept of a apologetics began in 1834 it's far from the case but as far as looking at the discipline of it it starts a little bit more it's more recent as far as definitions that just give you some definitions here according to Geisler apologetics is the discipline that deals with a rational defense of Christian faith next page page 12 according to Cowan in the five used book apologetics is concerned with the defence of the Christian faith against charges of falsehood inconsistency or credulity he also states as it concerns the Christian faith then apologetics has to do with defending or making a case for the truth of the Christian faith so one passage that's often used I think rightfully so would be 1st Peter 3:15 I guess I have it written there so I don't have to turn there in the scripture but this is a very important text in regard to apologetics 1st Peter 3:15 says but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts always being ready to make a defence and that's where we and that's apologia there that's not so that's referring to making the defense or brother here who you referred to it as being a defense is totally right being ready to make an apologia defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you yet with gentleness and reverence now this is just one verse here but this is a pretty power packed verse dealing with apologetics here because it does talk about a defense and in other words when people ask you're all you're always I mean the things that are present here there's just so many things here so we're talking about making a defense to everyone and we're talking about here you know a defense of the Christian faith to give an account for the hope that is in you so it's implied there that there's you know you're gonna have to be ready at all times to be able to give a defence of the Christian faith and talk about the gospel in the hope that is within you one of the things that's very important in the whole apologetics debate and this is a huge huge issue point of debate is the whole issue of do you have to lay aside your Christian convictions to try to prove Christianity kind of the traditional really what would be the approach of the really the normal classical or evidential approach of which will define later is that in order to be intellectually honest you have to lay aside your commitment to Christianity and try to in a neutral way try to argue that Christianity is true from facts of nature etc and so that's been pretty much the common approach is that even Christians will say it's intellectually dishonest to have your presupposition be the Christian faith as you tried to you know defend Christianity because and usually one of the charges that gets thrown at you is that that's circular reasoning and believe me we're gonna deal a lot with the whole issue of the the charge of circular reasoning that's even Christian apologist in this book will often just dismiss the presuppositional approach is being circular in that regard but is in it is interesting here that in this context where it's talking about the apologia and the defense of the faith there's no such thing as laying aside your your Christianity I mean it talks about here but sanctify Christ is Lord in your hearts so we we don't lay aside our commitment to Christ and as we're giving a defense of the faith so you sanctified Christ as Lord in your hearts always being ready to make a defense so we're to be ready at all times it's to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you and notice the manner in which is talked about here yet with gentleness and reverence and so that's an important part of apologetics is is the the approach that we use the the attitude the humility that we have one of the temptations and apologetics is to perhaps become prideful or just totally want to stomp on the unbeliever in an intellectual sense here but we have to keep in mind that were to do it with gentleness and reverence in our ultimate hope is that that person would come to saving faith so very important here very important verse as d headsman Hebert states out of their enthronement of Christ as Lord should flow a personal readiness to explain opponents the nature of the hope that dominates the lives of committed believers second Corinthians 10:5 talks about that we are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ so it's pretty strong language they're destroying speculations everything that is raised up against true knowledge of the knowledge of God we're taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ so very strong apologetic verse there of course we know from various other scriptures too that false doctrines need to be addressed it does matter what people think and so there's many scriptures that talk about addressing false doctrine of course you have examples in scripture where you get into a little bit issue as far as sign gifts and those sorts of things but where you have some sort of proofs or demas from the demonstrable evidence for the truth claims of the God of the Bible I'm not going to read all those there but you know you see various miracles used obviously with the exodus account and in the Old Testament when you get to the book of Acts particularly you know Acts chapter 14 in Acts chapter 17 those end up being really important texts particularly acts 14 and acts 17 16 to 34 because you have Paul's address before the Philosopher's on Mars Hill there in Athens which is we'll look at that passage later but it's very very very where I mean all the Scriptures relevant of course but it's so relevant to our situation today because since we live in a you know an off people often referred as a postmodern post Christian Western world United States you know we probably in the last couple of decades or have become as far as competing worldviews have become more like the situation was of the early church the situation in the early church face was very pluralistic so you got American Christianity started just this little little belief system pretty much on an island and you had all these you know other competing thoughts and religions and worldviews and everything from just straight naturalism and atheism of like an Epicurus to the various you know the religions and myths and all that kind of stuff so what's interesting about Acts chapter 17 is that Paul goes before people who have no knowledge at all of any special revelation and it's interesting to see how he argues he'll actually argue from creation and he talks about the coming judgement and it might be really presents kind of a full orbed Christian worldview there so anyway as far as the purpose of Christian apologetics moving on to Roman numeral four as an intellectual discipline apologetics can serve two purposes to bolster the faith of Christian believers and to aid in the task of evangelism so I do think there is a close connection between apologetics and evangelism I also do to think that studying apologetics can also help the faith of Christians as well one of the things that I think the reformed epistemological people will rightly point out is that you can be very rational in your Christianity without necessarily having to work through all the proofs and evidences and all the philosophies and I think that's probably the case I mean if I'm not gonna do a show of hands here but I think what most people come to faith in Christ it's not necessarily because they did a philosophical study of all the different worldviews but you being made in the image of God and because of the Spirit of God and the Word of God working in your life you realize that you needed about your need before the creator and so it's not the case where you have to necessarily go through a whole philosophical world the analysis for every single person but there's no doubt sometimes studying these things can help bolster bolster your faith and be familiar with I've been noticed I've been watching a lot of the political coverage lately and I saw was it Bill Maher he was on Larry King Live and he was talking to he's just really going on this rant against anybody who believes in a god and so you know he just he's just making you know fun of people yeah of course it's mostly directed at Christians but it's just he's just pretty much mocking anybody who has belief in God and he starts you know but what's funny is he starts talking about he was mocking the question that was asked to Obama and McCain about the whole issue of evil and so what's interesting is he starts running off about what he considered to be evil you know it's not the things that the Christians think are but it's poverty and all these other kinds of things but it's interesting is he has a standard of right and wrong he has a standard of what's evil and these sorts of things but the thing that he needs to deal with is if he's an atheist how can he claim that anything is true or false or good or bad or evil or anything like that and so you know as and the thing is they often usually don't think through it like that that'll be one thing you see in the Bahnson stein debate is that you know Stein will throw out a lot of those sorts of things and Bahnson will just say hey you know you've claimed that there's something that's right and wrong you admit that what Hitler did is wrong what's the basis within an atheistic worldview for declaring anything to be wrong or for anything to be evil and so those are kinds of things we'll be talking about so we're dealing with apologetics we talk about negative or defensive or positive or offensive apologetics there's no doubt that the unbeliever will throw out things against Christianity and say AHA Christianity can't be true because of this you know what do you do with the problem of evil about the whole issue of miracles doesn't you know we know that everything according to the you know naturalist just works according to their normal order so you know how can there be miracles Trinity deity of Jesus those sorts of things where people will claim that they can't be true so we can give answers to that and then there's also positive or offensive apologetics which is offering positive reasons for the Christian faith are offering arguments for the existence of God arguments for the resurrection of Jesus arguments for me chuckles all those things are in the positive side as far as an apologetic methodology and apologetic method is a strategy for defending the faith it is a way of putting together a case for the Christian faith using either positive or negative apologetics or combination of the two although apologists agree on the basic definition and goals of apologetics they can differ significantly on the proper methodology of apologetics that is they disagree about how the apologist goes about this task about the kinds of arguments that can and should be employed and about the way the apologist should engage the unbeliever in apologetic discourse and you know I should do I should have put that statement in bold because that is so true like I said when you get to this book on the five use with the classical evidential accumulative presuppositional and reformed you're pretty much going to have people who are you know equally committed to the Lord arguing that we need to take a you know this certain approach towards the unbeliever so that's what I'm I think presuppositional ism will be so helpful because I think it ends up being the most well thought-out approach in the sense that now again I'm just kind of giving you my impression as I you know deal with the different approaches but it seems to me that when you're dealing more with the classical or the evidential approach which is more of the you know the josh mcdowell sort of approach but there's often kind of a just jumping to specific evidences and again there's nothing wrong with what the a lot of the evidences that are being discussed there but as far as your approach as far as your methodology I think before we start out with trying to prove XY and Z to the unbeliever we have to understand the nature of the unbeliever in other words the nature of his thinking what did you know where are the implications of him being made in the image of God so the whole thing is concerning anthropology huh Marty ology the role of the supernatural and the spirit and the Word of God those are the sorts of things that the presupposition laws will say you know let's take let's take a step back and address the very nature of this unbeliever because and I think it's been you know it's been said I think it's true that you know unless the Spirit of God is working in the heart of an unbeliever I mean you can throw out evidences all day long but you know you may put out one fire and they start to more and the thing is is I think it's correct to say as others have pointed out that when it comes to the primary problem of the unbeliever yeah it's not so much intellectual as it is moral and spiritual and we don't want to totally divorce the intellectual element all because we're holistic beings and it's all part of the process but it seems to me from Scripture that the primary problem of the unbeliever is more of rebellion and an evil heart more so than intellectual evidence so that's where I think presuppositionalist are going to do a good job of dealing with those things now on the other side presuppositionalist have emphasized those things so much that oftentimes the accusation against them is that when it comes to how you actually use evidence as they oftentimes aren't very specific on that and there is actually some validity to that usually when you study people like Bahnson frame and Van Til they will often make statements that there is a proper way to use evidences of you know but it has to be done from the right foundation how they've explained how the proper use of those evidences might look like sometimes it falls a little bit short so I think there's some more progress and thinking that we can do on those particular issues but presuppositionalist are not against the use of evidences but what they are calling for is that it be done you know from a proper standpoint pretty much here what I have the three aspects of apologetics it pretty much just kind of repeats the the other two as far as you know proving Christianity to be true apologetics is defense I think you know you see this word defense again if you look at Philippians 1 I'll just read through this here Philippians 1:7 Paul talked about for it is only right for me to feel this way about you all because I have you in my heart since both of my imprisonment and in the defence and come nation of the gospel you all are partakers of grace with me so he mentions the defence there and then in verse 16 he says the latter do it out of love knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel also apologetics as offense one of the things that you will see emphasized in this class as we talk about presuppositional apologetics is not just giving a reasonable basis for Christianity and defending Christianity from claims such as how can you be a Christian if evil exists and that sort of thing but talk about going at the whole issue of attacking the foolishness of the unbeliever you know I mean the Bible talks about in Psalms it talks about that the you know the fool is said in his heart there is no God I mean the Bible is actually going to call unbelief foolishness there's a sense in which if you're not a Christian you're acting you are acting irrationally and so because Christianity is true truth there is a God who has created the world and operates according to his rules of standards his laws and when you're not acknowledging that or operating the way that you should as a creature made in the image of God there's a sense in which that is foolishness so I have a quote here from frame where he states the stump age 14 apologetics goes beyond the defense of the faith God calls his people not only to answer the objections of unbelievers but also to go on the attack against falsehood non-christian thinking is foolishness according to Scripture and one function of apologetics is to expose that foolishness for what it is according to frame these three aspects are perspectively related each is a way of looking at the whole apologetic enterprise so they work together one of the things if you're familiar with Francis Schaeffer is he was you know obviously very famous for dealing with the common person when it came to apologetics so with his LaBrie Institute and all that sort of thing he dealt with a lot of non-believers personally and Schafer's approach as he would do evangelism and apologetics with with these people was to actually let them talk probably 3/4 of the time and so what he would often do is he would talk to people and as he was doing so he would gather their worldview he would ask a lot of questions and just let the people talk and then when he was done he would spent about 1/4 of the conversation discussing how the worldview that they have doesn't line up with reality it doesn't not you know doesn't mind if it's scripture doesn't line up with what was really true and so he often referred to that in the sense is taking the roof off of the unbelievers house to let the rain and the wind come in so in other words these people would share their worldview and then he would show how their worldview was internally inconsistent and did not line up with reality and then he said they could either become a Christian at that point or if not they oftentimes would be left off worse off than they were before because if you have your worldview exposed and you choose not to come to the truth then there's a sense in which you know that you're living with an internal inconsistency and that can be very depressing so apologetics will involve addressing unbiblical thinking and showing the foolishness of non-christian thought apologetics has been an important part of the Christian Church's proclamation of the gospel if you go way back to the early church it was extremely important as a matter of fact if you look at things that were particularly important to the church throughout church history now sometimes you see those clarifications of which doctrines were studied at which points in history if you look at the early church of the 1st 2nd century in particular really all up until the time of the of Constantine and the Edict of Milan in the early 4th century apologetics was it was a huge part of the early church one of the things we often think about as a whole issue of the person of Christ we know that was a huge issue in the early church the whole issue of tradition was important but it may have been you know if you're talking about the Church of the first hundred 50 years or so you probably could make a case that apologetics was the most important thing for the church and if you think about it you know it makes sense I mean you have you know you come to Acts to you know you have the First Church of Jerusalem which at that time was that was the church so we're dealing with a pretty small group of people and of course they begin to spread and have success because of the grace that the Lord is pouring out but if you just look at all the objections that there were I mean we know that there was persecution it was you know sometimes spattered and sometimes more intense than others but we know up until you know 8313 the church was persecuted many were put to death we know that the Romans and the were making a case against the Christians and claiming certain things that they were cannibal list and all the sorts all these sorts of things we know that there were even just from the New Testament self a lot of antagonism from unbelieving Jews and so the early church has to deal with Jewish opposition Roman opposition on a philosophical level there was a big challenge because Greek philosophy and playtonic thinking were very influential at the time of the early church and so a lot of people viewed Christianity as being anti intellectual and anti platonic thinking and so you had a lot of the early fathers trying to argue that you know Christianity is a valid viable worldview so apologetics was a real big thing I just mentioned some of the opponents here you know you have the Jewish opposition to Christianity a lot of the unbelieving Jews were claiming that Christianity is blasphemous because it worshipped a man as God it's not can you say that Jesus is a man and yet he's God and so you would have you know explanations coming from Christians the Romans would say that Christians worship Jesus is king thus they were revolutionaries who did not give Rome in the Emperor the proper Allegiance Greek philosophy objected by saying that physical matter is inferior to the spirit thus the idea of resurrection is absurd and so Christians would have to argue you know matter is not evil they would affirm the resurrection and so much much apologetics had to go on early and then you would also have those who would try to claim to be Christian but still had you know we're unbelievers of a different worldview you know you've perhaps studied the Gnostics but their influence from Platonism would argue that matter is evil or would object that Christ could only appear to have been human they'd have the objection that the God of the Old Testament is not the God of the new and that the resurrection is merely spiritual so Christians had to answer those issues come to the next page apologetics during the patristic period Justin Martyr was important he was he's oftentimes referred to as one of the apologist of the early church and rightfully so he refuted those who denied that God could raise the dead he argued that Jesus's resurrection was physical not just spiritual and so if you look at number four and his dialogue with try foe Justin tried to persuade the Jews that Jesus is the Messiah and that Christianity supersedes Judaism and so particularly at that dialogue with try Fuzzy's Justin's dealing with an unbelieving Jew he tries to show from the Old Testament that what's being said about Jesus is consistent they're just an argue that there is some good in secular philosophy but Christ is far superior to all philosophers so that was if you've been in historical theology one you know that that was a really big issue there is there was this assumption a lot of the time of the Greek platonic philosophy and how does Christianity fit into that and so a lot of discussion IRA næss in his against heresies defended true Christianity from the errors of the Gnostics so he was arguing for the physicality in the humanists of Christ Tertullian he was involved with apologetics too he was not as sympathetic to the integration of Greek philosophy with Christianity as some of the other Eastern Fathers were but he dealt with the whole issue of pagan religions clement of alexandria he argued that truths found in secular philosophy were a result of general revelation our reliance upon the Old Testament Scriptures but he defended the superiority of Christian revelation one of the things you see with the early fathers is particularly the ones for more of the the eastern side not so much those like Tertullian but a lot of them tried to show that Christianity was not anti intellectual it was if there were truths from secular philosophy they may particular points agree with special revelation but special revelation was superior Augustine most influential of the Church Fathers if you look at him from a philosophical standpoint even if you just study secular philosophy books Agustin is often treated as a philosopher just in his own right and so oftentimes you know his City of God is often viewed again even from a secular level as the first true philosophy of history it's kind of interesting because he tries to show that there is a linear view of history it's interesting is if you look at the world as a whole in particular if you bring in the you know religions from the East a lot of people in the world operate under the assumption that time and everything is circular or cyclical and Agustin was arguing for a linear view of time based on his understanding of Scripture which is true we know that with the Christian worldview that there's a beginning a middle and then an end not in the sense of an end as far as everything being destroyed but a culmination and a golden age that is to come Agustin argued with people at that time for the biblical view that the world was created out of nothing this point for talks about what's interesting is if you look at Plato and Aristotle who were influential at that time they did have some sort of creator so it's interesting is some of the traditional arguments for a Creator God actually have some similarities with some of the things that Plato and Aristotle talked about but for them they believed that there was some sort of creator who was using pre-existing material but Agustin argued that the God of the Bible created out of nothing the ex nihilo which is true now he also promoted the teleological argument for God's existence in which the apparent design of the universe shows that there is a creator god so you see a specific discussion if you read a Gustin on teleological we'll talk a lot about the teleological but that's you know the argument that the appearance of design and complexity argues for a designer and so Agustin was big on that argument number six is important because it's an epistemological statement and we're dealing with the epistemology we're dealing with the doctor how we know anything so we're dealing with knowledge which is a huge issue when you're dealing philosophically it's hard to get around epistemology how can we know anything and Agustin made a statement that I believe later would be in a sense reworded and also promoted by Anselm in the Middle Ages but he made the statement I believe in order that I may understand and that's a statement that I that I would affirm as well I think that's the proper perspective true Christianity is not fede istic it's not asking us to believe in spite of any kind of rationality but at the same time because this is God's world and he made it we have to believe in order to understand so sometimes that analogy is or you see an analogy of cracked glasses versus glasses that work right and in a sense we say that the unbeliever is looking through the world because of because of the fall and not being regenerated he sees the world through cracked glasses I think even sometimes Van Til refers to them as cement-covered glasses but in order to see things correctly you have to put on the spectacles of God's perspective from Scripture and so when Agustin says I believe in order that it may understand that's a statement affirm that that reason and rationality are important not rationalism rationalism says I'm going to use my own human reason as the starting point for understanding things so Christianity does not teach rationalism but it does talk about being rational and being reasonable there's a difference and so as being made in the image of God is as those who are creatures we do have a rationality and a reason that we're supposed to use for the glory of God but we don't set our reason above God and say that I'm going to put God on the table and decide whether I'm going to believe or not so a good statement there I believe in order that it may understand augusten promoted a freewill theodicy in which the problem of evil can be attributed to human beings who choose to bring sin and death into the world so whenever you get into theodicies usually you see Theotis when you see that term it's a term talking about the you know the defense of God usually in the light of the problem of evil so again the problem of evil if God's all good and all-powerful why is there evil and suffering there have been various theodicies attempts to defend the existence of God in light of these issues so one of them is the free will for Agusta and evil is lack of privation of the good evil does not exist in itself but it exists as a corruption of good things Agustin offered one of the first Christian theistic epistemologies although under the influence of Plato apologetics during the medieval period the two individuals from a philosophical and theological and I guess we could even say apologetic level are important here and they would be Anselm of Canterbury and then Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas in particular will be extremely important and actually Anselm is too it seems to me that when you get to the Middle Ages you start to see the development of more of what we usually think of them we think of apologetics that clearly was apologetics going on in the early church clearly but the kind of apologetics that we're most more used to thinking of it starts to come into shape here in the Middle Ages and actually I would say it Gustin when he started really given detailed explanations of the teleological argument that was a he started to see more of that kind of thinking so Anselm of Canterbury I also adopted a gustin's motto of I believe in order that I may understand he suggested that faith precedes reason in divine matters he's also famous for promoting the ontological argument for God's existence and you know usually when you work through the common traditional arguments for God's existence you think of when we'll explain these but cosmological teleological moral argument for God's existence usually the fourth one that's put in there as well as what's called the ontological argument the ontological argument is one of these arguments where you may read it 20 times over and still not quite get the way that it's going so sometimes you have to kind of put it in a Reader's Digest form but just kind of I mean we're gonna we'll talk more about the specific arguments for the existence of God later but for right now we're just pointing out that Anselm historically promoted this argument in his work the Proust Logan Anselm asserted and that the idea of God is proof that God exists and this is and this is his famous statement of the ontological argument he stated we believe that you referring to God are a being than which nothing greater can be conceived he also said hence there is no doubt that there exists a being in which nothing greater can be conceived and it exists both in the understanding and in reality and so pretty much the reader's digest concept of that is the concept of God itself is proof for God and Psalms ontological argument is unique in that it is an a priori argument an argument of the mind and not of experience so this is an important concept that we introduce at this point is that when it comes to proving God's existence there are arguments that are based on experience in other words like the cosmological argument which would be the world exists this world needs a cause there had to be a cause that caused it therefore that causes you know is God or a God so you look at the world and you say boy when I look at this world it couldn't just exist there must have been somebody who created it or if you look at the teleological argument you say oh the world shows incredible design and complexity so therefore there must be a designer so you but you're looking or you're dealing with things from an experiential standpoint you're dealing with the physical and a priori argument is an argument that's prior to experience and so it's more of an argument of the mind Anselm is known for his arguments for the necessity of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ in his why God became man he argued that Jesus is life and death for logical necessities they also promoted the satisfaction theory of the atonement which I'm not gonna read the rest of their you get that definitely in historical theology and the lg3 of his view of the atonement when you get to thomas acquaintance well let me back up here to Anselm's ontological argument which is pretty much the idea of God itself as proof that God exists what's interesting is that particular argument has been debated throughout history some people love it some people hate it Bertrand Russell the famous atheist argued that this has finally been an argument that philosophy has shown to be wrong but it's at a resurgence and the last couple of decades so it's a kind of an interesting thing to think through Thomas Aquinas who now when you get to Aquinas you're really dealing with somebody here who becomes really the becomes the anchor for a lot of the the classical and evidential arguments that are made more of the the traditional arguments that you read in a traditional josh mcdowell type of book where there's you know lots of evidences and that sort of thing so Aquinas is going to be very influential as a matter of fact norm Geisler pretty much sees himself as being in the line apologetically back to Aquinas so let me just I'll tell you a little bit about Aquinas here he was the most important theologian philosopher of the Middle Ages his ideas dominated Roman Catholic thinking until the Vatican - Council of the 1960s Aquinas is famous because he merged Christian theology with the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle so and he's very upfront about that - when you get to the time of a quietness shortly before Aquinas kind of the philosopher if there was a philosopher that was kind of looked to in a favorable way in the Christian Church it was often Plato there was a rediscovery of Aristotle shortly before Aquinas and the century before him and Aquinas tried to show that Christian truth could be compatible with Aristotle's and so really there's a sense in which you could say that Aquinas kind of merged Christianity with Aristotle Aquinas offered 0.3 here this is where we get real more specifically in apologetics but Aquinas offered five proofs for God's existence so these are the famous five proofs and if you do any kind of study on the history of philosophy you're no doubt going to run into this so there's a sense in which you could say Aquinas doesn't invent Christian apologetics but there's also a sense in which Aquinas is kind of the the pioneer of traditional Christian apologetics so usually if you're doing it at a historical level you may mention a Gustin and some of the things just a martyr did but acquaintance is usually where the focus often is from a historical perspective so he promotes five proofs for God's existence which upon review really can be distilled into two which would be the cosmological and the teleological the cosmological argument asserts that all existing and contingent things like the earth rely upon some uncaused being for their existence for Aquinas the earth came into existence by the Christian God who himself does not have a cause Aquinas is cosmological argument parallels Aristotle's concept of the mover that started all things in motion so again so the earth is a contingent thing mmm contingent things must have a cause and that cause ends up being God in a nutshell I think what you'll see here with William Lane Craig in this book is he'll argue he'll talk about the Kalam cosmological argument as being his primary starting point for trying to prove the existence of God and again Craig's arguing from the classical method in here so Aquinas is very relevant to the current discussion you also have the teleological argument mentioned there in point three the teleological argument which Aquinas also used asserts that the incredible complexity in the universe points to an intelligent being that created it thus the universe is not the result of blind chance Aquinas argued that there was a close connection between faith and reason for most of its history the church viewed faith as superior to reason and saw no need to justify the truths of Christianity by the use of human reason Aquinas though viewed faith and reason is working closely together in fact he believed reason could be used to justify many elements of the Christian faith unlike some theologians before and after him Aquinas felt that Christianity did not need to fear reason when used correctly to firm some of what God had revealed in the Bible so he did say that there were some things like the Trinity and some of the more specific areas of Christian doctrine that you couldn't prove from general revelation but if you're looking at things he would he would be the epitome of optimism when it comes to understanding things from general revelation I think he stopped short of saying you could actually become a Christian just through general revelation but he was very very high on the human minds ability apart from special revelation that come to the truth so so that's an important thing to keep in mind is he his it ends up not being a total either-or sort of thing but he was definitely very positive about the human minds ability apart from the spirit working in their life to be able to come to know true spiritual truth and so I think it's from him that you start you really start to get more of this emphasis on trying to be neutral when you're dealing with the unbeliever and so but that's a huge that's a huge an epistemological anthropological hamartia logical you know issue is is when you when you're dealing with an unbeliever is is he is he a truth seeker is this a person who's just looking for the facts or as Ephesians 4:17 18 3:18 talk about where these are people with dark and mines and romans one talks about truth suppressors and what exactly are you dealing with here so Aquinas would be more in the realm of the neutrality camp which goes back to the common Roman Catholic understanding of the fall which is that the fall do not have as big of an impact on the intellectual rational capabilities of humans of which you know Calvinists would say that there was much more of an impact Reformation in the modern periods when you get to Calvin Calvin comes along and really to me pushes things forward in a positive way at least on some things here by emphasizing the concept of the sense of beauty Calvin emphasizes that within every person because they're created in the image of God there's a sense of deity thus knowledge of God is possessed by everyone and so which to me as it being very biblical you know because we are creatures made by the Creator there is an imprint there's the nib there's the image of God there's an innate knowledge of this God that we can't escape it gets suppressed but it's still real and so that brings up very interesting apologetic implications because if it's true that everybody's made in the image of God and they inherently know that there's a God and not only inherently from being made in the image of God but they know it from the testimony of the creation like Romans 1 talks about how does that affect your apologetic there's a sense in which we know people understand that the God of the Bible is already there how does that influence whether you know how you go about witnessing to them Calvin does point out though that depravity obscures the natural revelation of God if the unbeliever is to be converted God must work through both special revelation of the Bible and the testimony of the Holy Spirit Calvin believed I think this is important here in the in the comprehensiveness of revelation as frame states now listen to this closely Calvin's view if I can say this right Calvin's view of divine sovereignty enables him for the first time declare Lee first time clearly to declare all things holy revelational of God since God's plan alone determines nature history and individual life God is clearly revealed in all of these areas the scalp this is really important here thus Calvin opens the full range of created reality to apologetics all facts are evidence for God not merely the facts of causality and and teleology so in other words if this is truly all God's world that means that every single thing in this world points to him so a rock points to God the laws of logic point to God mathematics point to God how people act and think and all those sorts of things point to God so in a sense if this is God's world and its operating according to his rules and principles and laws and all that sort of thing that opens up the apologetic playbook to use anything to point back to him so which is quite interesting so you don't just have to deal with causality and and design but everything which i think is pretty profound and I think you know presuppositionalist will point that out go ahead yes so the question is is that point - does that include special revelation we can also say that that would not say that No yeah so no yeah so now the question is Calvin's not saying that those are selves diffict ematic sand lovely no yeah so you have he would make the distinction between the special revelation and the general revelation so you need the special revelation for the salvific but still general revelation does reveal does reveal God and and points to him so there's a perfect harmony working between the two but yeah he definitely he wouldn't say you could get saved from general revelation I'm not even sure Aquinas said that but Aquinas pushed it a little bit push the line there so I guess what that comes down to practically is there are a lot of things that can end up being starting points for a gospel presentation and so again you have to share the gospel for somebody gets saved the spirit has to move and work in their heart but since everything points to God you know the the playbook and the starting points are big abroad pascal 1623 to 1660 to he's mostly known for Pascal's wager perhaps you've heard of that before which is it's not Pascal's wager is not so much an argument for the existence of God as it is a reason why you should believe in God so usually if you're looking at it from a philosophical perspective you kind of have the top-tier arguments cosmological teleological ontological moral and then a second-tier argument is often referred to as the you see Pascal's wager in there so let's talk about it a little bit Pascal who develop who had developed the mathematics of probability in relation to gambling activities such as dice apply the idea of a wager to belief in the existence of God according to Pascal it was better for a person to wager in favor of God's existence than to bet on the opposite idea that God did not exist why the answer is related to the consequences of each option so here you what you do here is you run down the options and use and what he's gonna end up seeing is it's better to risk believing in God so here's the deal here's how you go if a person wagers or bets on God's existence and it ends up being true that God does indeed exist then that person will have eternal life if the end result is that God does not exist though then the believer loses little so in other words if you believe in God ends up being that God doesn't exist you know you wasted a few prayers whatever but no no big you know I don't want to say no big deal but it won't be as big of a deals if you're wrong on the other side on the other hand if a person chooses to not believe in God and God does exist then that person will suffer the horrible consequences of eternal punishment in hell for Pascal then the choice was clear if you are undecided as to whether to believe in God or not the smart wager is to bet on God's existence so in other words if you choose to be a believer and you're wrong and that's not good but if you choose not to believe in God and he exists then the consequences of that are so so much more horrific that the smart thing to do is to wager on God's existence so what do you think of that what just what do you think of that argument it's right off him John fast sugar flying God's not selfish it contradicts all statement that price t not righteously dead we of all men are most to be pitied right so just believe right yeah you John brings up a good point yeah I mean because you have to Clark or doesn't mean you just I mean can you just literally just say well I don't really believe in God but since I'm worried did these consequences all say god I mean we would know that's not sufficient yeah that is a good point about Paul talking about that if Christ has meant we're a were actually men to be pitied somebody else gonna say something maybe it's not everything but it is it isn't interesting I mean it clearly this is the way it's stated here it's definitely insufficient but as far as something to think about I mean I think there's some validity to that yeah this worldview in place you know a lot of churches they're like you know I'll just accept Jesus and there's no fire feelings exactly it's just that in principle you know yeah I mean I've talked to people who have you know I've said stuff like that I just accepted Jesus you know because yeah you may have a good point there because we know that true belief is not just mental acceptance of a existence of a being it's a relationship it's a commitment there's a lordship issue yeah and let's go back here and then we'll come here okay okay great point so friend brought up here the whole the whole issue of you have to take into account the whole issue of the various religions of which in the stein Bahnson debate that'll be one of the things that the Atheist Stein will say is you know what if I choose I can't member exactly what he said but something like what if I choose to believe in the God of Islam and oops it ended up being Christianity and so yeah so clearly when you get into the specifics of it there's some problems being say some here in their bodies more of yeah in other words what's their motivation are there they scripturally boundaries are another reason I think in the Middle Ages maybe not so much with Pascal but definitely the Middle Ages apologist I think there was a the motivation was to show because even though it's still a crow Christian worldview you I mean you still have a thesis Tov and we're at the rise of Islam you have I think the motivation was the show that Christianity apart from the Bible still makes sense intellectually so I think that was their main motivation and and so of course I think you know there would be I think there's some the hope to me the hope of the presupposition we'll say the whole concept of trying to lay aside Christian beliefs to show Christian there's some problems with that but yeah I think their motivation was to show that Christianity is so intellectually acceptable that even if we put one hand behind our back which is special revelation we can still show it okay moving on page 21 Joseph Butler his analogy of religion defended Christianity against deism but one of the things that you have when you get to the late 1600s into the seventeen hundred's is the the rise of deism as a compete as a competitor to biblical christianity and so what you'll have here with Butler his Butler is going to write it a defense of Christianity what you're going to have what D ISM and if you were in historical theology we talked about this but with deism coming you know dealing in this time period of the Enlightenment was this belief and philosophical assumption that human reason is primary in other words we don't just accept special revelation or listen to the church or the Bible what we start with our human reason and so what happened is is that the deist end up saying we're just going to accept what we believe to be rational and reasonable to us and for them a lot of the specifics of Christianity weren't reasonable but the one thing they did see is reasonable was the teleological argument the deist affirmed that you couldn't have a world with complexity without a designer but that designer didn't didn't push them to the Christian God it just pushed them to us with someone called the absentee landlord or the watchmaker who makes the watch and go away and so that ended up being very popular is that there was belief in a creator small see a God small G but not not the God of the Bible and so that's one thing you do I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here but you do have to ask yourself is is if you are going to start with cosmological and teleological argument apart from Christian presuppositions and the Bible if you work the cosmological and teleological argument argument out logically does that get you to the God of the Bible the answer's no it gets you to something powerful they get you to something smart but it doesn't necessarily get you to the God of the Bible because if you're gonna say you know there has to be a designer there has to be a creator that doesn't necessarily get you to the Christian God and that's what a lot of the Dia's said anybody familiar with the whole situation in recent years with Antony flew you guys know anybody familiar with flu the flu is one of the atheist of the you know 50 60 70 s I mean you know writing I can't I think he was over in Europe but he he wrote some of the classic refined arguments against God's existence so he was he was he was a promoter of atheism but what's interesting is a few years ago because of recent discoveries in science concerning complexity in the world he actually rejected his atheism and believes in quote something and so it was kind of interesting he rejected in other words the tealy the teleological argument drew him out of atheism but when he was asked did you become a Christian he's like no I don't become a Christian well why not he goes because I don't I don't believe in the afterlife I don't you know I don't see this and that because he did say that was kind of funny he said now he was I'm not a Christian and I'm not becoming a Christian but if I had to make a choice between Christianity and Islam I'd be a Christian because when I look at Islam I don't want any part I'm not saying that's a right view or whatever but but anyway but would what's interesting is he again I'm not getting into an evaluation of it so much at this point but in the philosophy of Christie the the counterpart to Jet's you know the philosophical journal the event you know of the evangelical philosophical society had a big deal I think hammer mass who's the evidential guy in this book interviewed flew and it was super interesting I mean it was it was so interesting because you have this 88 promoter of atheism a leading promoter reject atheism but he didn't become a Christian either and so that was quite interesting I didn't have her mess at the end kind of the interview tries to you know I don't want to give the impression to have her master's just happy he rejected atheism and acted like nothing else needed to be done for flu but anyway there is a Kappa member how many years ago as a few years ago and the full of Sophia Christie of that interview but I'm just making the point here is that the deist of which were a big deal at this time believed in a God but not the God of the Bible they when it came to miracles and all that other kind of stuff they just they didn't believe it I think Thomas Jefferson is the one that had a Bible where he cut out the miracles literally and so because they weren't reasonable to him so which brings that will that eventually will bring up an interesting epistemological issue is what is your starting point for knowledge the one thing that the Enlightenment tried to tell everybody and it still has an impact today is that your reason is the starting point and if there's things that don't seem reasonable to you you can throw them out that's what can we get the Jefferson Bible with the miracles cut out and that sort of thing we're gonna argue in this class that you can't put human reason as the starting point human reason is important it's a part of who we are is being made in the image of God but that's not your starting point in any apologetic that grants that to the unbeliever is doing something that's not biblical you can't just say okay you know we're gonna start with your reason we're gonna start with what you think is true and I hope I can satisfy you that's not what the Bible calls for William Paley 1743 to 1805 addressed the two central areas of traditional apologetics the existence of God the truth of Christianity Paley offered what has become the classic formulation of the teleological argument and in doing so he offered the famous analogy of the watch just as a watch evidences signs of a designer the universe which is much more complex than a watch also shows evidence of a designer namely God and so he's the one that promoted that he also contributed to the cosmological argument by claiming that an infinite regress of causes is impossible in other words the series of causes that brought our world into existence cannot be infinite there must be by necessity and uncaused cause that started the chain reaction of causes in the universe and this uncaused cause is God so part of the cosmological argument is not just if something is a if something is finite and contingent that there must be something that caused it that's part of it but the other side of it too is that is the concept that you can't have an infinite regress which means is that if there is causation in the universe you can't have an int you can't have the causes go back into eternity there has to be something that starts the Domino's there's got to be something that starts causation so people who will argue for the cosmological argument will say that biological necessity there must be a first cause because our house because it can't just keep going back forever and I think I think William Lane Craig wall argued that in the in his section on the classical method so anyway uh Paley was big on promoting that according to Geisler on my point number five here Paley's argument for God and for Christianity still provide the backbone for much of contemporary apologetics Smurf Act I think his work was even used up until even into the 1900s as kind of a standard apologetics textbook Thomas Reid was the founder of Common Sense philosophy which was primarily a reaction to the skeptical philosophy of David Hume that's a whole philosophical issue here but when you when you had the Enlightenment and you had David Hume David Hume had he started out as an empiricist but he really became a real hardcore skeptic according to David Hume you could not know with certainty that anything causes anything to happen any else anything else to happen so he what he did is he challenged the whole concept of causation and he would use billiards as an example so you take a pool table you just run through in your mind well how that would look like you know somebody gets a stick they hit a ball hits another ball goes into the pocket you know most people would argue oh look at the causation they're human being stick ball pocket you know we know that but certain Hume argued that you couldn't know that there was a causation there because he said that was just impossible to prove causation from anything we may think that there's causation but that's just how it appears to us but we don't know that for sure and so now when you hear that at first may just think that's kind of weird it's kind of in it I I mean I think it's wrong but as people started to think through the implications of that that has devastating consequences if you're gonna deny causation I mean that everything starts to break down science induction as a matter of fact one of the reasons why Immanuel Kant's philosophy ended up being so significant was is because Immanuel Kant said that if we accept what Hume says we can't even have science we can't even you know do anything and and even Hume had to admit that he accepted causation because he had to put his shoes and his pants on in the morning and expect that his roof wasn't going to collapse on him at night and so what's funny in his honest moments he even had to admit that though he had that theory he had to live as if there were causation and so why am I saying all this I'm saying this because Reid came along and argued for a common sense philosophy in which there is a you know we may not know things all these causations with absolute certainty but they are still very real and we can have understand the very high probability that there is causation and one of the things that Hume has been criticized for usually when you're dealing with the philosophy or a worldview one of the things you want to ask is is this view liveable because if it's not livable it's probably not true and again Hume had to admit that if you you know that he couldn't even be truly consistent with that philosophy because he had to act as if causation existed so Kierkegaard comes along we often you know we're probably pretty familiar with Kierkegaard you know as the father of existentialism what you get with Kierkegaard is very important because this when you get to Kierkegaard this is really where you have true fede ism introduced into Christianity I want to say it hadn't existed before this some people would claim Pascal was of phidias but I don't think that's really true but when you get to Kierkegaard Kierkegaard is really going to argue the subjectivity of truth and he's going to argue for the concept of the leap of faith and so what you're going to see with Kierkegaard is that you can't know anything for certain or even with the high view of probability but you still have to commit yourself to something to make life meaningful so what you get with existentialism with Kierkegaard is a passionate commitment to something with no reason for believing it we're not even just talking about whether you can have certainty or not but according to Kierkegaard you couldn't ever even really have any kind any kind of rational probability that what you believe in is true so that's what come you have a leap of faith you have to throw yourself into something hoping that it's true so on top of the roof and you know the smokes all around and you're jumping hoping that you know that you land into the net below kind of thing and so for him he chose to believe in the Christian God but there would be other existentialist like Sartre who would come along who'd say you know I choose to believe in communism and atheism and so that was very damaging the concept that Christianity has no link at all to any kind of reason and that's not true one of the interesting myths about presuppositional ISM is that it's fede istic I think even Geisler calls presupposition those in fede istic and that's that's totally not the case Gordon now when we move on here we get to Gordon Clarke who is a presuppositionalist Clarke's really going to argue for you know the the rationality or the internal consistency of the Christian worldview is gonna be one of the first to really start really pushing the idea that only Christianity is free from internal contradictions and what it affirms which I believe is true and so there's just a few things here as point number 7 points out according to Clarke Christianity is true because it alone is free from internal contradictions all opposing religions and worldviews of contradictory beliefs that disqualify them Clark rejected traditional arguments for the existence of God like the cosmological he believed that common ground could be found with unbelievers this common ground includes the laws of logic and a few divine truths that unbelievers know because of the image of God within them reason thus is a point of common ground between the believer and the unbeliever so and that's bringing us a little bit closer now to talking about Van Til in particular and Schaffer any thoughts on the history cited that we're getting pretty close to break in here any thoughts on history anything notable or something that surprised you I guess the main thing to get from this section is to see that apologetics has been an important part of Christian history early on it was to defend the faith against the unbelieving Jews and Romans in Greek philosophy once you got to the Middle Ages there was a real attempt to try to show that you can prove Christianity with one hand behind your back take the Bible out of it and just show it from general revelation Calvin comes along and starts to emphasize the sense of deity that's within each person and then you have the Enlightenment come along and so you have a lot more of a evidential is kind of approach to proving Christianity