Alright, let's get started with a quick word of prayer. Father thank you as we come down the home stretch as it were with this class that we are continuing to gain some insight from what we're reading by Schaefer and about Schaefer and we ask that you would give us discernment as we continue to look at these things. and help us to see how we can apply these things in other areas as well as we consider what we believe and how we communicate what we believe both to other Christians as well as to the lost. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. So, wow. Two classes to go. Wow. Yeah. In one way it seems like it's been months and another way it seems like it's just been a few days. So we are coming down the home stretch and you probably have gathered that this portion of the class is not quite as organized and put together as the first part of the class was. It feels a little bit hit and miss as we come down the stretch and look at some different kinds of critiques of Schaefer and so forth. I feel like saying that in hindsight if I had it to do over again I wouldn't use Thomas Morris' book. I didn't think that was very helpful. But it was there and we used it anyway and we'll take something from it even if it's the lesson not to use it again. So tonight what we're going to be doing is looking at a few other different bits and pieces As we continue to think about Schaefer and his apologetic method, his approach, and what people thought about his approach, part of what's coming into view is that it's hard to kind of pin him down exactly, because he was not all that precise in the way he taught. He wasn't very meticulous about how he documented his sources and those kinds of things. It really does become a little bit of a detective process and I'm kind of developing my own ideas about what is apologetic was and how to describe it. So we'll think about some of those things as we go along. To start that by the point that we've, at this point that we've reached in our study, I don't know if you've picked this up or not, but I've picked it up in some of what I've read that there's A sense that there's an uneasy tension between Schaefer and Van Til. These were two pretty big guys in their day and in their respective spheres. And as you consider what they said to each other and about each other, you get the feeling that there's maybe a little bit of a competitive spirit there. The biographer, L. G. Parkhurst, describes this dynamic in one of his biographies about Schaeffer, this little paperback, without naming Cornelius Van Til. He says it like this. From time to time, Fran and Edith became involved in theological controversy. As their faith matured, they learned how to disagree with someone else and at the same time show that person that they actually cared for them. One theological professor, whose name is not named, who for years often publicly criticized the Schaeffer's way of helping people become Christians, retired and then wrote a long critical treatment of Fran's view of the Christian faith and evangelism, which is our reading assignment for next week. Dr. Schaefer responded privately to some in LaBrie and said, I would hate to think that I might spend my retirement doing something like that. Still, he kept all of this professor's works available for study at LaBrie while withdrawing his own tapes that discussed this person's views and their disagreements. Dr. Schaefer learned that a public response to his criticisms seldom helped, and he simply did not have the time He preferred to discuss ideas rather than personalities or personal differences. And there's kind of an important clue. Parkhurst has a couple of biographies on Schaefer. They're both what I might call somewhat sanitized, very favorable. easy to read but not delving too deeply into things such as this. And you get the idea from the way that he's dealing with the controversy between Schaefer and Van Til that he doesn't really want to talk about it but feels like he has to say something. So, there it is. I suspect that this particular disagreement between these two guys had something to do, maybe a lot to do, with Schaefer's decision to make LaBrie a place of discussing ideas rather than talking about people. And then part of the clue in Parkhurst's narrative there is that it sounds like there may have been a clash of personalities that might be an important clue about the nature of their debates. So we could make some fun speculation around that, but we'll just have to work with the material that we have from those two. Questions or thoughts along those lines? I'm going to grab a drink. Leland, I've got my big jug. As long as it's not your little brown one, you need to leave that at home. So anyways, I just wanted to kind of ponder upon the credentials of the two that Van Killed. Wasn't he a bit better credentialed than Schaefer to discuss philosophical matters and logic and debate and things like that? I feel certain that that's the case. Do you happen to know what his graduate work was in? He had a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. He went to seminary at Princeton and then he went and got a Ph.D. at the university itself. So, yes, then he's got the academic credentials of a philosopher, whereas Schaeffer's doctorates were all honorary doctorates. He did not do any academic work beyond his MDiv at Faith Theological Seminary. So, yeah. There's your thesis about they don't like unprofessional people meddling in their area. but a little bit that I do. I just don't think that's, I think it's his philosophical foundation. He really does disagree with Method. remotely related to him. Tell us what you really think, Randy. Yeah, but Bonson still comes across very smugly. Oh, he does. That's not to say I really care for his approach or the things he said, but it was easier to digest than the previous week's article. Are you going to get to Bonson tonight at all? Because I don't want to go the next step with my words. It's in the notes. If you have a quick comment, go ahead and throw it out there. I'm just saying, the whole, he just pulls the, if you didn't look at Van Til, who was his teacher, Bonson's teacher, and his redeeming comments about the thesis, antithesis, polar opposites there, then you would think that Bonson just totally pulled the rug out of everything that Schaefer had to say and disqualified him. That's kind of the, yeah, I think that's kind of the gist of it. I've got a couple of quotes from the Bonson article that are pretty cutting along those lines. But he did it nicely. Did he? Well, he did it with some pleasantries mixed in with poison. It's pleasantries and poison. Yeah, I don't necessarily... I don't know if I'm inclined to think that... How about the Sicilian kiss? More like that. Yeah, kiss of death. So... I've organized notes around the articles that we read and the plan is to kind of step through these and have some time to think about these and fit them into the context. I think if you take a step back from the parts and the pieces that we're doing at this point in the class there probably could have been a better order of organization to them. So they may be coming a little out of order in terms of how they were put together but We'll still get some opportunities to learn something here. On Schaeffer's article, A Review of a Reviewer, there's a backstory here that helps us understand what's going on. E.J. Carnell published his book, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, earlier in 1948. And Buswell, who at that time was the editor of the Bible Today, then wrote a review of Carnell's book. And the article, in that article, he uses the term presuppositionism and gives credit to Alan McRae for having coined that term or having introduced Buswell to that term earlier in the year 1948. I mention that little historical tidbit because it gives us a clue about when this idea kind of coalesced when the term came about. So somewhere around early 1948, Schaefer then wrote the review of the review. And more back story here is that about ten years earlier, Buswell and Van Til had exchanged some words in print about their different views. So there was already kind of this competitive back and forth thing that had started years earlier between Buswell and Van Till. Then later in 1948, Buswell would publish a review of Van Till's Common Grace. And then in 1949, Buswell reviewed Warfield's Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, which seems to be what prompted Van Til to respond with a long article to the Bible Today that was published in two parts. So there's this back and forth regarding apologetics and different approaches and views to it. We kind of feel like Schaefer's article is in the form of a written mediation. He's trying to show that Buswell and Van Til maybe were not as far apart as the two of them believed from their previous exchanges. And Schaefer says that he was writing at a time when he still had vivid memories of Van Til's courses at Westminster, and that was back in the years 1935 and 1936, his first couple years. in seminary. Now in 1948, what's the historical context? Schaeffer's been doing pastoral ministry for 10 years after finishing at Faith Theological Seminary. And now in 1948, that's the year that he's beginning to transition out of pastoral ministry and make preparations to go overseas for European mission work. Are you talking about context? Yeah, just what was going on in Schaeffer's life at that time when this article was published. Was that the time he and Edith wrote the thing about the Jews? That was a little earlier. I believe that was 1943 when he published that tract on Christianity and Judaism. So then Schaeffer goes through and lays out what he sees both as points of agreement and disagreement between the two sides. He starts by saying that both sides agree on the necessity of the sovereignty of God and salvation. That simply arguments alone are not sufficient. You don't argue anyone into saving faith. that both sides agree that fallen man cannot reason from nature to salvation without faith. In other words, knowledge alone does not save. That they both agree there's a warrant to speak and preach to the fallen man, and that apologetics can be part of the means that the spirit uses to bring someone to saving faith. Van Til's approach was to show that the worldview of the fallen man leads to irrationality. And Schaefer says that Buzwell makes an improvement to Aquinas by showing the fallen man that God of the Bible is the most probable eternal being. And there again, we start running into that language of probability. And of course, that's not the kind of thing that Van Til would abide. because Van Til would start with the existence of God and say we can't reason at all if we don't start there. He says that both sides urge a comparison between the outcome of the Christian and non-Christian position, with the Christian view being shown as the correct one, and the problem is therefore whether inductive evidence can be used as a starting point. Schaefer proceeds to his answer at this point. He starts by saying that unsaved man is seldom consistent. Later on he would revise that statement and say, I realize that unsaved man is never consistent. Next, that consistent unsaved man would be an atheist in religion and a rationalist in philosophy and amoral in his ethics. And that most men are not consistent in any of those three areas. They hold part of a worldview that belongs to Christianity. And Schaeffer is attributing the inconsistency here to the common grace that God shows to all men. So therefore, the average man has two parts to his worldview. If he's logical in his unbelief, his system is hopeless, so he's nothing more than a skeptic. But since few have come to that state, at least at that time, the rest rely on ideas from Christianity. The expression that I've heard, which I think is Bonson referring to Van Til, saying that the unbeliever relies on borrowed capital from Christianity in order to argue. Schaefer says that those who cheat the most have the most that belongs to Christianity. that men illogically hold some parts of Christian belief, and that becomes a basis for how we can appeal to them and speak to them. The Lord also uses this inconsistency to show men their bankruptcy. And Schaeffer says that this doesn't take place apart from the Spirit or from the sovereignty of God, but that election includes both the means and the ends. So, part of what's interesting at this point in 1948 when he's saying these things, he's saying some things that we would say are very Calvinistic in terms of election, predestination, and sovereignty, the necessity of the regenerating work of the spirit, and so forth. Parts of the message that almost seem to have been lost in his later work. Next he says, to the extent that the individual is illogical, we have a point of contact. And that can be used in preaching and in apologetics. The specific approach depends upon the individual. And here he lists a number of different ways that he might try to have a conversation with the individual. And so this leads me to suggest a cheeky term like situational apologetics. Since Schaefer spoke to so many people in so many different ways. Or if you like, another one I came to mind is we could call him an improvisational presuppositionalist. While he was a presuppositionalist, he was often improvising around the theme, so to speak. I'll talk about that a little more in a minute as I'm trying to put together what I think in some graphic form is an understanding of how Schaeffer goes about his apologetical process. The solution recognizes that the Christian system has no common ground with the non-Christian system and that there is a point of contact to talk to the unsaved man. Schaeffer also finishes this article by talking about the inconsistency of the Christian and saying that not even the best Christian is consistent. And he quotes Machen at this point and says, no one knows how little a man has to know to be saved. And as well, none of us can be completely consistent in this life. So it's simply a way of perhaps applying a little bit of humility to the equation, recognizing that it's not just the unbeliever who's inconsistent, but as Christians we are inconsistent in many ways throughout the course of our lives. Questions or thoughts on a review of a review? How does this give us some insight into Schaeffer's approach to apologetics? He's eclectic. I like that word. We might say a little bit of a play on that is that he's a collector. Or if you like, I like to use the word scavenger referring to myself. I'm a scavenger when it comes not only to things but to ideas. I don't necessarily care where the idea comes from. If it looks like it's useful, I'll put it in my toolbox and maybe it'll come in handy later. Just don't use the word hoarder because that gives me nightmares. Well, I'll try to avoid that one. I hope I'm not a hoarder. I don't have enough room in my mind to hoard too many ideas. You have to have some animals to be a real hoarder. We've also heard from his biography, I think, that Schaefer was really troubled by divisions. I get a sense sometimes that he's trying to take on the role of a peacemaker, trying to bring different sides together, which is not a bad goal. Because of that inconsistency, it's not just that we're inconsistent, but that we really like our inconsistencies and those end up becoming the points of division that make it harder for us sometimes even have a conversation. But yeah, it's interesting, because we're seeing kind of a mediatorial side of Schaefer in this little article, where he sees what Buswell's saying, sees what Bantill is saying, and sees the interchange between those two, and kind of steps into the middle and says, you know, let me referee this a little bit and show you guys that you have maybe a lot more in common in your apologetics than you realize. Because what? When we get engaged in an argument, what do we usually put our attention on? winning, yeah, that. But when we're picking on each other, we're not picking on each other on the basis of what we agree on, we're usually picking on each other on the basis of what we disagree on. So, Schaefer seems to be trying to say, you know, you've got some common ground to work with here, that idea again, common ground, and there's a way to see how each of you are describing apologetics and how you do apologetics. There's more depth to Schaefer than some of his critics, even perhaps Van Chelm, who I think would be a heavyweight critic. But the things that he describes, it's not as if he's just either defending himself, well this review wasn't Buswell was saying, the things that Buswell was saying, and how they applied, or how they meshed at times with others. Some of the criticism, I keep going back to Cheltenham North. That one sticks with you, doesn't it? And it's craw. Yeah, totally. That all they did was He's deeper than you might see in his books even. You look at lasting effects, you look at Van Dyl. You don't want to accuse him of being ivory-powered because I heard a lot of times that he would go out on the street and just share the gospel with people. He was an evangelist at heart. But the fruit of the ministry I know Van Til influenced a lot of men to go preach the gospel, but there's something to say for Schaeffer's lasting fruit of liberty, how it just continues to minister to people in a practical way. I'm going to take an opportunity to tell a little anecdote on Kate's son, Daryl. with whom I was having a conversation just this afternoon. Nice guy. He works here in the seminary. I know. He's kind of our office manager, I guess you'd say. Helps us stay in line. But he has an ambition to purchase some property and to build a kind of labrie up in Montana. kind of a self-sustaining community where people can come, they can spend time, they can do physical labor, they can engage in Bible studies and devotional things. So even in that regard, and he's a big Schaeffer fan as well, so... Yeah, he's trying to get me to go with him. Yeah, he said he's gonna look for guest speakers. I said, I'll come in the summer. But yeah, that points out that there is this lasting kind of legacy there. And even though LaBrie has changed drastically over the years, from the time it was started in 1955, we remember that part of What was built into it from the beginning is the idea that they're simply going to allow God to guide them in the direction that he wants them to go. It wasn't that they started out with this long-term plan that they were going to build a ministry that was going to last for 75 years. But here we are. And so that legacy goes on. And I think that's a good way to put it. Frame picks up on that as well in the article of his that we read. Any other thoughts about a review of a review? It's a little different side of Schaeffer. And part of what I've tried to do during this course in reading various things that he's written and taking time to look at his life and his ministry is to give us a fuller understanding of who he was as a person so that we're not simply Finding a few things to pick on and and missing the bigger picture Okay, so next is frames article some thoughts on Schaefer's apologetics Frame says that he wasn't well acquainted with Schaefer personally, but that he did have an opportunity to visit Swiss Labrie in 1960, so had an idea from first-hand experience as well as from what others would say about Labrie and Schaefer's work, about what Schaefer was up to. And he wrote a review of a review while attending Westminster back in the early sixties. It led Frame to believe that Van Til might have been closer to a traditional apologetic than he realized. Now, you might argue that, but I think Van Til is a pretty long way from what we might call a theistic kind of argument. Schaeffer's evangelism was particularly impressive to Frame. And he knew many people over the years who had been converted at Labrie or had been ministered to at Labrie, studied at Labrie, and was impressed with the results that he saw in their lives, with their maturity and so forth. And he said that Labrie influenced his own ministry from a distance. He goes on to say that Van Thiel referred to Buswell as having an unsound apologetic. So that gives us a little bit of an idea of the dispute that was taking place between Buswell and Van Til back in the 30s and 40s. That Christianity is not one hypothesis among many, and the use of evidences gives too much credit to the natural, the unsaved man. Frame agrees with Schaefer regarding the fruitfulness of unsaved man's inconsistencies as a point of apologetics, which inconsistency Van Til resisted as a point of contact. Frame is going to describe Schaefer as a modified presuppositionalist. What was the term that we saw from Lewis on Schaefer's, how did he describe Schaefer? inconsistent verificationist? An inconsistent presuppositionalist, I think. So, yeah, you have, it's like everybody who evaluates is apologetic. We're seeing differences just in how they see him or how they try to classify him. Just don't call me late for dinner. You know, if he had only been more specific about how he did things. But the funny thing is, and I find myself feeling a kinship with Schaefer at this point, I really get the sense that he did not like being labeled. He didn't like being compartmentalized. And if he was gonna be labeled, you could label him an evangelist and he would probably like that better than labeling him as an apologist. but you kind of get the feeling he resists either being labeled or being placed into a compartment. I have a kinship with that feeling. There can be some value to that at times, but the problem with that is that it can also end up being very prejudicial. He seems a little dodgy from that standpoint. But Frame calls him a modified presuppositionalist and says that he's an evangelist who's seeking to give answers and to demonstrate God in daily life. He says that Schaeffer talks like Van Til, that we must begin with Christian presuppositions. And here's a big but, that presuppositions are then tested for their accuracy in relation to the real world. And that's a pretty big but because that's a huge departure from what Van Til would understand by presuppositions. He says that Schaeffer sees skepticism, modern skepticism as being downstream from Hegel, that men as a consequence must first be taught to think in terms of antithesis. And here he's inclined to appeal to the Greeks like Plato and Aristotle. Frame's evaluation is that Schaeffer has accomplished a great deal of good, that his emphasis on presupposition and verification, that should say may, may be an advance over Van Til, living your presuppositions to the point that's often ignored, but then Schaeffer ignores natural man's rejection of standards for verification. Now by calling us back to the Greeks, Schaeffer fails to see that the Greeks were just as bad. that they were naturalistic, just in a different kind. He seems to rely on a neutral notion of truth that does not rely on scripture. He maintains that antithesis must precede the gospel. So that's again, that idea of pre-evangelism, that there's work that we have to do in terms of agreeing on a kind of objectivity before we can proceed to the gospel. We also see an outline of frames epistemology in this article and some of the errors that can go along with that. The three parts are first to propose a norm or a standard. where you can get those wrong. The second is to apply those standards to the evidence and you can go wrong at this step by interpreting the evidence incorrectly. The third step being to adopt the best conclusion and of course you can draw the wrong conclusion from even the best evidence. Van Til would not have included verification of the presuppositions. And this way, the proof of Christian theism is circular. And Frame describes his own approach as being circular in a broad sense. Frame thinks that Van Til would have agreed with his definition of verification. And then Schaeffer's appeal to coherence should be taken as advocating kind of circular argument that depends upon biblical presuppositions. And as we're going along, I am finding my typos. I did proofread this, believe it or not, but once is usually not enough. In 1997, Libri issued a qualification regarding their beliefs, saying that we are not arguing from a kind of Thomistic natural theology. that epistemology has to be rooted in scripture. And Frame's view is that Schaeffer didn't think very clearly about epistemology during his lifetime, that the Labrie statement represents a turn in the direction of Van Til. Van Til is more accurate than Schaeffer in the history of philosophy. For Van Til, the ancients were just as irrationalistic as the moderns. The Greeks therefore did not have a laudable possession of objectivity. Their rationalism was still grounded in human autonomy. So for Van Til there was not going to be a drastic shift in philosophy at the point of Hegel as there was for Schaeffer. Van Til had a profound influence on Schaeffer and many others by extension. Schaeffer saw himself as a bridge between traditional and presuppositional apologetics. So Van Til wrote a critique of Schaeffer that was similar to the critiques he had written for Butler and for Carnell in the following ways, that he used a traditional method, that he presented Christianity as a supplement to knowledge, that he used evidences without grounding them in scripture, and that he viewed the Greeks too favorably. And by this time, I think having seen several critiques along those same lines, we start to see a pattern, and part of that pattern is probably a very valid critique of how Schaefer viewed the Greeks too optimistically. Go ahead. in the critique with Ben Till, and Till seemed to say that because Schaefer allowed for a point of contact, that he inadvertently and default-wise slipped into a form of natural theology. Yeah, and I think in what I'll share with you in a little bit, probably after the break, I have in my mind an idea of what Schaeffer is doing. That in one sense, how is it that he can seem to be presuppositional in one sense, but then he falls into rationalistic and natural theology kind of arguments five minutes later. I think, and you guys can tell me what you think, and I'm going to share it with you this week, so you've got a few days to think about it before the class is over, if you have some additional thoughts. But it seems like what Schaeffer's doing is he's gonna start and end with presuppositional apologetics. He's gonna start and end with the existence of the biblical God. But then he starts down that path and then instead of staying on the presuppositional path, as Van Til would, he jumps to the path of a more naturalistic, humanistic kind of approach to argumentation. and then uses that as a way of trying to disprove atheism in order to get to a point of saying that Christian theism is the answer. And you'll remember that part of the critique from Morris is that he jumps to conclusions of the conclusion of Christian theism without thinking about all the other theistic possibilities. So, I have an idea of how we might be able to put that together and understand what he's up to, and I'll be curious to see what you think about that. So, let's finish our thoughts here on Frame's article. Frame states that Schaeffer was unclear on important matters like the biblical concept of truth. Well, that's a pretty important matter to be clear on. Schaeffer's closer to Van Til than traditional apologists. He uses the Trinity to solve the one and the many problem. He's transcendental in the sense of the alternative only being time, chance, matter, and motion. And I think what he's referring to is the idea that the transcendental argument is the impossibility of the contrary. The God of the Bible must exist because if he doesn't, then we don't know anything. His influence has continued through the work of his family members and close associates. As we were describing a little while ago, the continued work through Labrie, but of course, many of their published works, seminars, work as professors and scholars and so forth. Though their work is not explicitly Vantilian, they have benefited evangelical apologetics in many ways. If it's the case that we have a better understanding of apologetics at all, because of the work of Schaeffer and his associates, then that's probably a positive thing. Because apologetics is not the kind of thing that you bump into in the typical evangelical church. Schaeffer used the ad hominem arguments as a way of compelling the believer to look at himself. that idea that no one can live consistently with his beliefs. He uses John Cage as the example of somebody who, in the realm of music, wanted to express disorder and chaos and randomness. And yet, when he started to take an interest in the science of mushrooms, realized that he was going to have to apply some objectivity or he wasn't going to live very long. And this kind of argument, Frame says, has force, even though it doesn't disprove the notion of disorder. Perhaps the most persuasive element of Schaeffer's apologetic, according to Frame, is the inability of a rationalist to live consistently with their beliefs. So that becomes a place where we can have conversation. Then there are a couple of little tidbits in what was kind of a piecemeal article Regarding atheism, Schaeffer vividly presents the dangers of atheistic relativism. And then regarding idolatry, Schaeffer sees man more in terms of his rationalism, but seems to miss the idolatry of his rationalistic dogmatism. And in case we think idolatry is not still a problem in the church, it certainly is. Materialism and autonomy are not just dominant in society but in the church as well. Also the idea that inquirers are to be treated as people. We treat people with respect, we treat them without contempt, we're engaging them not for the purpose of manipulation, we're not treating them as a statistic, but treating them as real people with real value. And then again, that the books and articles by Schaefer and his associates are profitable for understanding the current cultural environment. About the only thing that we can say at this point is, as far as Schaefer is concerned, he didn't go quite far enough in the implications of what he was saying. He was right in what he was saying, and we're seeing the consequences of it three generations later. Questions or comments on frame? And maybe Eli would like to talk a little bit about his observations about what Frame said about Van Til that maybe wasn't properly representing Van Til's views. to engaging with the inconsistencies in people's thinking. And I think Frank was really talking about a more subtle point. It's just the way he stated it so simply, it made it sound like Mantel was kind of opposed to this interaction with young believers. wrong impression to have, that Van Dyl did want to engage with the unbeliever. It was just, there was a particular way that he wanted to go about doing that. As you were talking, I mean, I don't know if this is actually witty or not, but it just occurred to me that there's a bit of an irony in that Schaeffer said that the foundation of his apologetics was the idea of antithesis. So I guess if you were using Schaeffer's method on himself, you would say, so Schaeffer, is this an inconsistency that you can live with? It's a valid thing to say. And part of it points out, it's kind of funny because of what Schaeffer says in a review of a review, that even as Christians, none of us are perfectly consistent. So there's certainly I think of value in pointing out the inconsistencies that we see in other people's, even what they claim to be saying and doing. So, sure, I think that's part of how iron sharpens iron, that we help hold each other accountable for those kinds of things, being true to ourselves or true to what we're preaching and teaching. You said in your email this week that Vantil's issue is how to use the inconsistencies properly so that the apologetic effort doesn't inadvertently undermine the truth revealed in Scripture. And maybe part of the pattern we're seeing is that for Vantil everything has to come back to the touchstone of Scripture. That we start with Scripture and that we end with Scripture and that we can't develop our ideas apart from scripture, we can't develop our concept of truth apart from scripture, we can't develop standards apart from scripture, and so forth. Question. Do you think that Van Til is correct in the extremity to which he states that the unbeliever cannot know anything? The first question is, is that exactly what he means? Well the way we know, his epistemology Well, I think the way that we have to understand that it's not that the unbeliever can't know anything because unbelievers, if they didn't know anything, then they couldn't tie their shoes in the morning. They couldn't cross the street. They couldn't drive a car. They couldn't drink a glass of water. And that's kind of where Schaefer would say that everybody, even though he's inconsistent, has contact with reality. And that becomes a place for us to have a conversation. Like John Cage is not going to act like It doesn't matter which mushrooms he eats. But he acts like it doesn't matter which notes he puts on the page when he's writing music. And of course, as somebody who's a musician, you think of the irony of that. Why would you write notes on a page? Because that's kind of an objective thing to do, isn't it? Like writing words on a page. So there's There's never going to be a case where if somebody were completely consistent, as Schaefer said, with their rationality, they'd be in a padded room somewhere. They wouldn't be able to live. Well, I can see how John Cage could get there because he thought that somehow that his music was the Ouija board for the zeitgeist of the world or something. He actually used that terminology, the Ouija board, So, but the question of whether the unregenerate man can know what is true, I think we have to say that whatever the unregenerate man knows as true is on the basis of some borrowed capital of Christianity, because Christianity is the only basis for having true knowledge. I'm pretty sure that's how Van Til would argue it, because you couldn't say that unregenerate man knows nothing. unregenerate man has been able to accomplish remarkable things in terms of invention and technology and art and all of those things so there's some knowledge of truth but the problem is that it's not a consistent knowledge of truth because it's not grounded in scripture let's take our first break let's uh... can we make it like seven minutes Can I squeeze you a little bit so that we're not late getting Mark's class started? So let's get started again about 6.32. How's that? Sure. Okay.