All right, good morning. And I have to admit that as I was sitting in the airport last night waiting for a flight, I thought I'll text Brant and at least prepare him. And I thought he'd have something already, you know. his back pocket ready to pull out but I caused him panic and I was panicked so we had we had two two panicked people running around yesterday but fortunately made it home so that was all good. So welcome and our subject this morning is again apologetics and we're on part three so we'll just do a quick review and remembering that our key verse for apologetics is 1 Peter 3.15, that we're to have a ready defense for our faith at all times. And also Jude 3, so we're not going to spend any time looking at that this morning, but just remember that those are our key verses for our topic of apologetics. So last time we talked about culture in Christianity and the emergence of postmodernism and the effect that that has had on the church today, the emergent church movement, and many of the other more modern evangelical churches are affected strongly by postmodernism. And then, what is postmodernism? And basically, no one is wrong. because there is no truth. And we see that so much in today's society that, you know, your truth is good for you, my truth is good for me, and don't tell me that my truth is wrong because there's no such thing as right and wrong. So, it's all relative. What's good for you, may not be good for me. So again, the truth is all relative in this age that we live in of postmodernism and the impact that it's had on church. We've talked a little bit about that in the last couple of sessions. Today we're going to talk about the four positions in apologetics and what I call the four schools of apologetics. And if you are a student of economics, you know there are multiple schools of economics. There's a Chicago school. and the Austrian school and things like that, but this is apologetics. And so we have basically four schools of apologetics, and we're going to talk a little bit about each one of those today. But the four schools is classical apologetics. All right, we'll talk about that. Evidentialism, that's kind of self-explanatory. Presuppositions. Presuppositionalism. My tongue is going to get tied up this morning. I didn't have enough coffee. And then Reformed Epistemology. Those are the four basic schools of apologetics that we're going to go through. So we're going to talk about classical apologetics first. And as we go through each one of these, we'll have a starting point. What is the basis for a particular school of apologetics? What's the main emphasis of this school? And then what is the chief goal of it? And then who are the main influences for each of these different apologetic schools. So we'll start with our starting point. And our starting point for a classical apologetics is reason. And so you should be able to reason your way to faith. And so it's all based on reason. It's based on the classical theistic proofs and deduction. So we can deduce what faith is about through our reason. And so the main emphasis then on this is that sound reason will lead to the truth. What's the problem with this? Lack of sound reason in today's world, right? There is no such thing as sound reason. So as we look at these different schools, I think there's a little bit in each one of them that we can glean from and possibly use when we're dealing with people that we're approaching with the gospel. And so there may be someone who is very deductive oriented, we may be able to use some of the classical apologetics methodologies to reach a person like that. So the chief goal, though, is to establish the reasonableness of theism. And that sounds like a fairly easy thing to do. But I think, again, with the world that we deal in today, reasonableness is just what? doesn't exist, does it? And when we start talking about theism and God, so many people today don't even have a concept of who God is or anything scriptural at all. So we're dealing with a lot of what I would refer to as illiterate biblically and scripturally illiterate people. And so the society that we live in today is just not what it was 50 years ago or 100 years ago when we talk about the basis of scripture in our lives. So our chief goal when we're a classic apologetics is to establish that reasonableness. Theism, it's reasonable. So our main influences then on the classical apologetics school is Plato. We all know Plato. we all know that Plato was not a Christian. So when we have to think about who Plato is and the influence that he's had on classical apologetics, we have to start thinking that he was of the Greek school and was not necessarily coming at it from any kind of theistic position. Then we have Augustine, and as Brant's talked last week, I think it was about Augustine, he did have a huge influence on the early church. So we do have some strong Christian influence in our classical apologetics position. Anselm was another Christian guy who had a lot of influence on the early church. Aquinas, That'd be Thomas Aquinas, and he came out of the Enlightenment, and there was some issues that we have with Thomas Aquinas. So, I think when we look at who are the main influencers here, we want to focus our thoughts on the fact that Augustine and Anselm were two strong Christian leaders who did have an influence on the position of classical apologetics. So, and also rationalism. And as I was going through this, I thought to myself, you know, rationalism, what is rationalism? So I thought we better define what we're talking about. And we'll get to that in a minute. from basically criticisms from the other three schools towards classical apologetics is it's too deductively rationalistic. It's evidentialist. That's coming from the evidentialist school of thought. They're saying that this classical apologetics relies too much on deductive rationalism. And so as we get into evidentialism, you'll see why they think that it's too deductively rationalistic. And the presuppositional apologist is saying that it's too naive about the sinfulness of man and it sacrifices God's sovereignty by trying to preserve enlightenment autonomy. And when we think about Thomas Aquinas coming out of the Enlightenment and that this school of thought is trying to preserve that autonomy, the ability of man to think for himself, basically. So that came out of the Enlightenment, was what? That man is basically a god unto himself. And so we had a lot of church influence that occurred as a result of that period of time that we call the Enlightenment, that came after the Dark Ages. And then the reformed epistemologist is saying that it's too committed to foundationalism. And so I thought, well, let's define the terms that we're talking about. And if we don't have a definition, we don't know really how to get a foundation on that. So I thought, let's answer the question, what is theism? So, Christian theism is a worldview. We've talked a lot about worldviews last time, but it includes beliefs about reality, humanity, ethics, history, knowledge, salvation, and the world. It's based on the belief in a single transcendent God known as God who is the supreme being responsible for all things in existence. So when we think about theism, we're thinking about this is a one God theistic position and he's supremely responsible for creation and everything that's in existence. So we want to be theists, don't we? We want to believe in one God and that he's in responsible for everything. So the belief is called monotheism, which is different. Mono meaning one, theism meaning God. So we're monotheistic in our beliefs, which is different from pantheism. When we think about pantheism is God is everywhere, everything is God. A classical pantheist would think the tree out in the woods is God, the grass growing under our feet is God. Everything is God, and God exists in everything. And then polytheism, which is many gods. We think of the Greeks primarily when we think of polytheists, but there's a lot of polytheists today that believe in many gods. And we're dealing with a lot of people who are actually pantheists as well. When we think of Mother Earth or Mother Nature, a lot of people that are strongly in the environmental way of thinking are really pantheists and they think of the earth as God. And so and then obviously the other position that we deal with is atheism, no belief in God. And there's other people that fall halfway in between, you know, when we think of agnostic and We think, well, they're not atheists, but they're definitely not monotheists either. So we have got a lot of different people and a lot of different ways of thinking that exist in the world today. But that's what theism is, is basically it's our Christian worldview. And so we're wanting to be theists. But we want to be what? Monotheists, not polytheists or pantheists, all right? Rationalism. And rationalism is basically something that I believe came out of the Enlightenment, that man is a rational being, he can think. So it's the philosophy that knowledge comes from logic. Where does logic exist in today's world? Again, it really doesn't, because logic is a lost art. But it comes from logic and a certain kind of intuition. So, when we immediately know something to be true without deductions, such as, I'm conscious, You may argue with that about me this morning, but I'm conscious. And so they hold this, that the best way to arrive at a certain knowledge is using our mind's rational abilities. And so the opposite of rationalism then is empiricism. And empiricism is the view Knowledge comes from observing the outside world. When we think of something that is empirical, what do we have? We have solid proof. And I talk in work about empirical data versus anecdotal data. Empirical data is something that you have a hard and fast rule on, or it's provable. And so that's your empiricism. opposed to anecdotal evidence which is just kind of whatever you hear from from the world around you. So but knowledge comes from observing the outside world however in practice almost all philosophers and scientists use a combination of both empiricism and rationalism. So we're looking back rationalism is that comes from logic and intuition and And then empiricism, that knowledge comes from observation of the outside world. So when we think about that and the impact on apologetics, and when we think about classical apologetics, it's based on what? Rationalism, right? So that it comes from logic, that we can intuitively think about and reach a position of belief. And so using our own intuition and logic. Alright, so then we move into evidentialism and evidential apologetics is again that style of defense that stresses the miracles found in the Bible, particularly Christ's resurrection, as evidence for the existence of God and the validity of Christ and his words. So when we think about evidential, we're looking at evidence, that there is evidence for the being of the being, and the fact that Christ's resurrection did occur uses historical evidence to support the truth of biblical accounts. So again, it's looking at that historical evidence. What actually happened? And we have proof of that, so it's evident. So it's very similar in this case to classical apologetics, which stresses reason, but its focus on evidence is where classical apologists focuses on reason. So we have a evidentialism, they're basing their thought and their support for their position based on evidence as opposed to reason. And evidential apologetics stresses evidence such as the miracles and fulfilled prophecies and then uses reason to support them. So it's taking historical evidence that's occurred in scripture and using that as the basis for our belief. So, and again, we've got a starting point, and the starting point for evidentialism then is empirical data. We think about the difference between what? The rationalist and the empiricist. And here, our evidential apologetics person is going to be looking at that empirical data. And the resurrection, especially that the resurrection forms the basis of our evidential apologetics. It's history. It's occurred. So they're looking at that historical evidence to make their arguments. And their main emphasis then is what? That sound investigation will lead to the truth. So as we investigate history, as we investigate what has occurred, the miracles that occurred in scripture, that's going to lead us to our faith. And so we are looking for someone who is, you know, looking to investigate all the miracles, all the historical evidences that exist. So the chief goal then is to establish the reasonableness of Christianity through the evidence that exists. And then when we look at our main influencers, that whole term influencers kind of, you know, these aren't social media influencers, these are, you know, historical influencers. I don't think any of these guys had social media to work with. So we look at Aristotle, and again, much like Plato, we have what? Influenced heavily by the Greeks. So not necessarily coming at all from a Christian viewpoint. Bacon and Locke were following the Enlightenment and they were a product of the Enlightenment so we've got to kind of take them, they don't necessarily have a real strong scriptural position for their arguments. Butler And B.B. Warfield, we've all heard the name B.B. Warfield, and he was a strong Christian person and a leader in the early church. And then Scottish common sense realism. I saw that and thought, what is Scottish common sense realism? And why do the Scots get all the credit? But when you think of the Scots, we think of what? Pretty common sense people, right? For the most part. But that comes out of more of the Presbyterian thinking and the common sense approach to it. And then, again, we go back to empiricism, which we have already talked about. So criticisms, then, from the other schools. It's too optimistic about the power of our senses. And so they're saying that we can We think we can do a lot more than we really can. We're too optimistic about what we observe and see. So observation is never neutral. And the presuppositions which select, organize, and judge relevant data are never suspended so that one could appeal to a zero point. In other words, a starting ground, a basis of unbiased reflection. and can only provide probabilistic arguments while faith requires certainty. So they're talking about more probabilistic and less certainty, and then, again, relying heavily upon our senses. And so in the evidential school of apologetics, that's where a lot of that lies, is within our senses, and that we can see evidence, we look at the history, and we can deduce faith from that. Probably one of the most common forms of Christian apologetics that we're familiar with today is a presuppositional apologetics position. I struggle with the presuppositional viewpoint, because what? When we think of the word presuppositional, what are we thinking? Somebody presupposes something. So we're kind of looking at it from the fact that we presuppose that people already know about God, and they already know about Christ, and so we have that presuppositional position. So basically, as it says here, a presupposition is an assumption that is taken for granted. And a presuppositionalist presupposes God's existence and argues from that perspective to show the validity of Christian theism. So they're coming from this position that everybody really does presuppose that God exists. And when we look at today's world, is this a good solid approach because we're dealing with a lot of people who no longer have any idea that God exists. So the presuppositional position is a little bit weaker. So, from the scriptures, we see the unbeliever is sinful in his mind, when we look at Romans 1, 18-32, and unable to understand spiritual things. So, when we look at that, they presuppose that truth of the scriptures and relies on the validity and the power of the scriptures to change lives. And again, we're presupposing that, so that's that presuppositional position. Basically, it means that no matter how convincing the evidence or good the logic, an unbeliever cannot come to faith because his fallen nature will distort how he perceives the truth. We see that a lot, don't we? People's fallen nature is going to affect their ability to perceive the truth. And so, the only thing that can ultimately change them is regeneration. Obviously, we believe in that. And that, you know, only through Christ working in the Holy Spirit, working in a person's life, can they be regenerated. So, to this end, the presuppositionalist seeks to change a person's presuppositions to conform with biblical revelation. So we're trying to change people's presuppositional position through this thought process and trying to lead them to a position where they can come to the realization that there is a God and we presuppose that. So our starting point then is that it has a negative starting point in that it's through the inconsistency of alternatives. And then positively, it's based on the scriptures being necessary for even an unbeliever's rationality. So it's very scripturally oriented. And I think that that's one of the attractive parts of the presuppositionalist is that it is very scripturally oriented. So we're trying to appeal to that unbeliever's rationality through scripture, through the truth. and changing them. But again, it presupposes a belief. And so we have to be able to present it in such a way that we can change a person's a priori assumptions. In other words, their presuppositions. And so main emphasis then is that acceptance of the authority of scripture will lead to the truth. Where do we see a weakness in today's world with that thought and that acceptance of the authority of scriptures? So many people today don't have any idea of scripture, let alone accepting the authority of scripture. And so once a person gets to that point, then the presuppositionalist, I think, has a strong position. And so the chief goal, again, is to establish the sovereignty of God over human autonomy. And so the goal we have here is to help people realize the sovereignty of God. And so I have a lot of positive things about the presuppositionalist. I think the biggest negative in the school of presuppositionalism is just the thought that we presuppose that people know there's a God. And in today's world, that's a really difficult position to be able to reach people with. So again, our main influences are Hegel, And Bradley, the British absolute idealist thought. In other words, that we're all idealistic, absolute idealism. And Kuiper, who was a Dutch apologist. And Van Til, and it's based on idealism. So Cornelius Van Til is probably one of the better known presuppositionalist apologists. And I've read his book, and a couple times trying to get it figured out and one of the things that came about with this was my thinking and I read this and somebody else supported me on the position that it's circular logic. You're just kind of going around and around in a circle when you have something you're dealing with a person's presuppositions that until they have the same presuppositions you're just going around and dealing with them in kind of a circular logic type of way. So typical criticisms then from the other schools, too pessimistic about the efficacy of common grace in providing convictions about rationality. So it relies a lot on common grace, and when we think of common grace, we're thinking what? That evidences for God exist in the world. And as we look out and we see creation, and how can you not realize that there is a God when you look at his creation. And so again, as we deal with society today, we're dealing with what? People who have been taught contrary to the fact that God created the heavens and the earth. So we look at that and we're fighting an uphill battle, so to speak, when we start thinking about people actually understanding the whole concept of common grace and the evidences that exist. So another criticism that it's a sense experience. In other words, we can sense God's existence. We can sense that he is here and really is, I guess, becomes more sensory when we talk about that experience of knowing God. And this is one that I think that we've talked a little bit earlier on about the difference between apologetics and evangelism. And the presuppositionalist position does have some, I guess, mix, creating some confusion between the apologetics position that we have with evangelism. And as we talked before, there is a difference, isn't there, between apologetics and evangelism. And apologetics is what? Defense of the faith, right? It takes a more defensive position, whereas evangelism, if anybody remembers, is what? The more plain offense, right? And I always hesitate to use the word offensive because, and we know the word of God is offensive to many people, but I try and think of offense and defense when I'm talking about the difference between apologetics and evangelism. And then presuppositional intends to deny the value of arguments and is founded here on circular reason. So it's that circular logic that kind of exists with a presuppositional position. So it talked about British absolute idealists and the influence of idealism. So I thought, well, we better define what idealism is. And so basically, idealism is a philosophy that emphasizes mind over matter. And how many times have we heard that in our lives? It's mind over matter. And it states that the material world has no real existence, and everything is mind. which to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's what idealism is. And when you think of somebody that's truly idealistic, they really don't have a lot of common sense. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And so idealism was a philosophy that reality does not exist in the physical realm but in the mind. And behind all reality is a divine mind moving the world toward good. And we have an argument with that, that the world is not moving toward good. And if we believe our Bibles, the world is not moving toward good, it's continuing to suffer from the fall and the influence of sin. Idealism is a philosophy of the mind, but how can it be tested or validated that idealism is true? It must be presupposed. When that is done, the presupposition cannot be grounded. It fails as a philosophical approach to understanding our world. the basis of idealism as a foundation for our apologetics, again, has some problems with it. And the fact that we're dealing with this whole issue of mind over matter. And so that, I think, is one of the strongest issues or problems that I have with presuppositional apologetics. Number one, it presupposes that everybody knows and believes there is a God, or has some form of rational belief, and then it's this idealism that it's mind over matter. And we know that our minds are what? corrupt, aren't they? So if we have a corrupt mind to start with, we have to have something that will change that and we rely on what? The Holy Spirit to move in people's lives to get them changed. All right, the last argument is Reformed Epistemology. And this position answers the question, how do you know what you know is true about God? With the claim that belief in God can be warranted by experience of the divine, apart from arguments or evidence accessible to others. So we have a starting point with this, that belief in God, like other beliefs, is properly basic. So it's a basic belief. One is warranted in believing in God because the sense of God is common to everyone. And based on that general revelation that we can look out and we can see that, you know, the existence of God in creation and, you know, just the fact that when we look at the beauty of the world, obviously I'm amazed every day at what God created. I just look out in my yard and you see flowers and you see trees and you look at all of the beauty of the animals and everything else and you know that that had to have a creator. And that's the foundation that basically we're looking at is that God created it and so it's common to everyone and it's based on that position of general revelation. main emphasis is that one sense of God will lead to the truth. So as we look about in our general revelation and we look at the world, we get a sense of God that will ultimately eventually lead us to the truth. Our chief goal of Reformed epistemology is to expose the captivity of demands for evidence to unwitting capitulation to modernity. And so that's a mouthful. But basically what we're looking at is, again, exposing the captivity of demands for evidence, all right, so people are demanding evidence, and to unwitting capitulation to modernity. And that's that, as society digresses and we become more postmodern. And we talked about modernity and postmodernism a couple sessions ago. So basically, you know, we are trying to expose this unwitting capitulation to modernity through a reformed epistemology position in our apologetics. So our chief influencers, again, we see Anselm was we saw him back with, got to go back, but two positions ago Anselm was an influencer in that as well as reformed epistemology, Kelvin was a strong reformed epistemology person, Kuiper again, Bavink more Contemporarily, Plantinga and Wolterstorff and Olsen. I should have looked up these people, but I didn't have time to really dig into them to see who they were and what their positions are, but you may want to take a look at that. And post-foundationalism. And so typical criticisms from other schools is that the sense of the divine is not sufficient as it is neither an argument for Christianity, which comes from the evidentialist, or for the scriptures, which comes from the presuppositionalist. So as we look at this, we've got these four different schools. of thought on apologetics. And like I said before, I think we have to understand each of those positions, and we may be a little bit of each one as we look at who we're trying to reach for the gospel, because someone may require evidence, and that would come from a more evidentialist position. But I think we have a harder time in today's world with the presuppositional position because we're we're presupposing that someone has a belief already. I remember trying to talk to a cousin of mine one time, an atheist, just absolute dyed-in-the-wool atheist, and I told him, I said, it requires more faith for you to be an atheist than it does for me to believe in Christ. And he didn't see any reason for that. And so, I mean, it was a futile attempt. But again, you have to be able to start arguing with, have an argumentative position for dealing with people from different schools of thought. So again, neither this, the Reformed epistemology says, the argument is that the sense of the divine, in other words, knowing that there is a God, and being able to see the evidence of God is not sufficient, and that scriptures are also not sufficient. So to close out today, is there any agreement in these four positions? And there are some common points of agreement. And one is that arguments are useful, but are not themselves salvific. So in other words, arguments are not going to lead anybody to salvation. It still requires what? the work of the Holy Spirit and regeneration. We can present an argument effectively, but again, that's not going to lead somebody to salvation just from the argument. It still requires the work of God. There is some common ground between believers and unbelievers, but not neutral ground. In other words, believers and unbelievers have some common ground at some points, but there's no neutral between a believer and an unbeliever. If you think of neutral in your car, you're just coasting along, you're not going anywhere. So when we look at the unbeliever and a believer, there is some common ground, but again, it's not neutral. And then we would all agree that sin has so darkened the mind and heart that we all by nature suppress the truth, and that is just mankind in general, and that we have dark minds, and sin has darkened our minds and hearts, and there's a place for reason, evidences, and scriptures, and apologetics. So each of the four positions do have some agreement that it requires some reason, require some evidences and most of all foundational understanding of scriptures. And then only by the proclamation of Christ in the gospel does one actually come to faith. And that I think is the foundation of all of the agreements between the four schools of apologetics is that only by proclaiming Christ in the Gospels that anybody can actually come to faith in Christ. So that wraps up session three, and we'll see where session four goes, but I'm thinking we're going to dig a little deeper into how to be an apologist.