Challenge to Unbelief (2 of 6) – The Certainty of Christianity

[00:00] We’ll get underway with our second lecture in the series, where I’d like to talk to you about the certainty of Christianity. Up to this point, I’ve tried to convince you that the encounter between the believer and the unbeliever amounts to a collision of worldviews, whether the unbeliever realizes it or not. And that for that reason, we have to understand what a Christian philosophy of life would be and how we approach it.

[00:26] We begin with the Bible as God’s revelation, we submit to it, we believe that people have to be saved, not just their souls going to heaven, but they have to be saved in every aspect of their lives, as well as their reasoning process, and if they will not submit to the Lord Jesus Christ, then they will end up being fools. In principle, their philosophy of life will be foolishness, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

[00:56] Now, the fact that the believer and the unbeliever have different presuppositions when they come to the debate, to the dispute with each other, might suggest to people that therefore there’s no way for either side to show the other side to be wrong, or for either side to definitively demonstrate that it is right. Because presuppositions govern the way that we reason. Presuppositions govern our interpretation of our experiences. Presuppositions tell us what our facts and how the facts are related to each other. Consequently, if you believe that presuppositions control everything, then no one can ever get through to anybody else in an argument because one set of presuppositions just cancel out another set of presuppositions.

[01:42] Accordingly, some people have suggested that the way we have to show that Christianity is true or the certainty of our faith is by appealing to things like the miracle of Christ’s resurrection and other things that would demonstrate the factuality of the Christian faith as it’s presented in the Bible.

[02:00] If you would, turn with me in your Bibles to Paul’s defense of the resurrection as we find it recorded in the 26th chapter of Acts, Acts 26. Here, Paul stands before Agrippa to offer the defense of the hope that is in him, and as part of that defense, he’s going to declare the fact of Christ’s resurrection. Let’s just look at a few of these verses. Verse 2, Paul says, I think myself happy, King Agrippa, that I am to make my defense before thee this day, touching all the things whereof I am accused by the Jews.

[02:37] In verse 6, and now I stand here to be judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers, unto which promise our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to attain. And continue this hope. I am accused by the Jews, okay? When Peter tells us to be prepared to defend the faith in 1 Peter 3, verse 15, it’s specifically with respect to the hope that we have as Christians. We have this hope having to do with the good news declared to us by God, and that hope calls for a defense. Obviously, then it’s not just the hope that is wishing, oh, I hope, I hope, I hope it’s so. But rather, it’s the hope of assured confidence that what I believe is true. Paul says, I stand here to defend the hope that is mine, which belongs to our fathers. And in verse 26, as part of that defense, he says, for the king knows of these things unto whom I also speak freely. He describes that none of these things is hidden from him, for this has not been done in a corner. He declares that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a public fact. It wasn’t done in secret. It wasn’t something hidden away that no one knows about. As you know very well, this is part of what we believe, and it’s the very foundation of what we believe. And so we have Paul defending the resurrection of Jesus Christ as he offers an apologetic. What’s interesting about this, if we read the Bible faithfully and fully, I want you to notice the groundwork and context which Paul provided for his appeal to the factuality of the resurrection. In verse 26, he says that these things are not hidden. They were not done in a corner. He says these are matters of public fact. Anyone can go investigate and look into this. And so many people looking at and say, well, then Paul just appeals to the facts, doesn’t he?

[04:40] Isn’t that the way we do apologetics? But if you look at the framework, you notice that Paul doesn’t believe the facts stand by themselves. The very first point that Paul endeavored to make in his defense of the faith was not an observational matter, was not something that had to do with the facts that you can encounter by looking or hearing or touching. He appealed to what we might call a philosophical issue, an underlying presuppositional issue.

[05:11] Back up to verse 8. Long before Paul declares the factuality, the public nature of Christ’s resurrection, Paul says, why is it judged incredible with you if God does raise the dead? Long before he declares the resurrection as a fact, Paul lays down and engages in the philosophical question of what is possible. Why do you think it’s impossible that God should raise the dead? Why, what argument would you have against this presuppositional philosophical commitment that we have that God can raise the dead?

[05:51] You see, God is first to be seen as the sovereign determiner of what can in what cannot happen in the world. And on the basis of that presupposition that God lies behind all possibilities, God is the source of everything that can or cannot happen. On that background, Paul proceeds to explain that the termination of hostility to the message of the resurrection will require submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Verse 9, I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and this I also did in Jerusalem, and I both shut up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests. When they were put to death, I gave my vote against them, and punishing them oftentimes in all the synagogues, I strove to make them blaspheme, and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them, even unto foreign cities.

[06:51] He then goes on to tell about the fateful journey to Damascus, whereupon as I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priest, at midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun shining round about me and them that journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying unto me, in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It’s hard for thee to kick against the goad. And I said, who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest, But arise and stand upon thy feet, for to this end have I appeared unto thee, to appoint thee a minister and a witness, both of the things wherein thou hast seen me, and of the things wherein I will appear unto thee, delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles unto whom I send thee, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in me.

[07:51] Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared both to them of Damascus first and at Jerusalem and throughout all the country of Judea and also to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God doing works worthy of repentance. You see, Paul puts his apologetic in the context that first, God is the sovereign determiner of what can happen. Secondly, he says, everything that I do, Jesus Christ has become my Lord. I now submit to him. And I realize that people have got to turn from darkness to light.

[08:26] They must repent. And it’s only after those sorts of issues are settled that Paul appeals to the public, if you will, factuality of the resurrection. You see, one must understand who the ultimate authority is and who determines what can and cannot happen before the message of the resurrection will make any sense. One must have a change of mind. One must repent from darkness to light in order to understand the message of the resurrection, to accept its factuality. One must see the resurrection in the context of God’s declaration found in the scriptures. Verse 22, having therefore obtained the help that is from God, I stand unto this day, testify small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses would say should come, how that Christ must suffer, and how that he first, by resurrection of the dead, should proclaim light both to the people and the Gentiles. You see, when Paul talks about the resurrection, he first brings it in as a scriptural fact, as something declared on the authority of God in his holy word.

[09:37] So again, when our Christian brothers and sisters say we settle our worldview differences by looking at miracles like the resurrection, and they tell us that’s what Paul did before Agrippa, we need to say, you need to read that passage more fully and faithfully. In that passage, Paul begins with a philosophical issue. Why do you think it’s impossible that God should raise the dead? Secondly, he shows that he is submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and repentance is called for. And thirdly, the resurrection comes up as a matter of the scriptures being true, rather then as a matter of your experience, your knowledge of history, will demonstrate that you can trust the Bible. People have got it turned all around. And so within the context of God’s sovereign determination, within the context of the lordship of Jesus Christ and scriptural authority, within that philosophical framework, Paul then does declare the fact of the resurrection.

[10:35] learned out about it. Let’s think for a minute what would happen if we declared the resurrection, but we didn’t do it within the framework of the Christian philosophy of life. How should the non-Christian, how should the unbeliever respond if we were in some way to convince them that the body of Jesus, which was dead, lived again, that a corpse resuscitated? How should they respond to that? Now, I know what you would like them to do, Because as Christians, this is what we’re looking for, you would like them to say, well, then Jesus must be God. He must be Lord. I must submit to him. I must repent of my sins and have faith in him. That would be wonderful. But you know, if you have a tenacious unbeliever, if somebody who understands his worldview, he doesn’t need to do that whatsoever.

[11:25] There’s two different ways an unbeliever can go when it comes to the resuscitation of the corpse of Jesus of Nazareth. I keep putting it that way. I would rather call it resurrection because of all the theological connotations. Just understand, the unbeliever doesn’t buy those theological connotations. And then the unbeliever’s worldview, which you have here as a dead body, started living again.

[11:47] Now, if the unbeliever to whom I’m speaking happens to be a naturalist, and he’s going to be philosophically consistent with his naturalism, then he’s going to say, okay, Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, and someday we’re going to be able to understand how that happens. Someday we’ll discover those principles in the natural world by which that natural event took place. You’re going to say, no, no, no, it’s a miracle. This is no, wait a minute, I’m a naturalist. And as a naturalist, there are no miracles. And so something very unusual happened here, there’s no doubt about that. I mean, I have to accept your argument. Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead.

[12:27] but i don’t have to say that it was done by god or that this shows that he’s god because there is no god so obviously there is some natural principle or set of principles that will account for this and someday we’ll be able to explain it when there was a day when they couldn’t understand or explain electricity and we did and there was a day when we couldn’t do heart surgery and now we can and the day’s coming when we’ll explain why dead bodies sometimes come back to life. Given his worldview, he could hold on just as a nation. There’s another way the unbeliever could go. Maybe not as sophisticated as this, but it still works. The unbeliever could say, well, that’s really a bizarre thing. I guess strange things happen in this world.

[13:15] By a former, he used to put it, Dr. Van Til, he’d say, send it to Ripley’s Believe It or Not. You know, we have all these strange things that we read about, you know, baby born with two heads. Oh, body rises from the dead. I mean, from an, I know that sounds disrespectful, and from a Christian perspective, it is. But the unbeliever doesn’t have any reason not to just take that as one of the freaky things that happens in a strange world in which a body rose from the dead.

[13:46] There isn’t anything religious about that. There isn’t any connotation that this is the Son of God, much less that he died for our justification, much less that he was raised to the glory of God, that he ascended to the right hand of God and the seeds were the saints. There’s nothing of theological or religious import to this bizarre resuscitation of a corpse from the non-Christian standpoint.

[14:08] And therefore, if we do not, as Paul, if we do not look at the question of worldview, underlying philosophy, if we do not challenge the philosophical outlook of the unbeliever, the declaration of the resurrection of Christ and even showing its historicity will not do any good apologetically or theologically. How then are we to demonstrate the truth of Christianity?

[14:36] at the heart of every theory of knowledge is the search for infallible truth. It isn’t popular to put it that way. Unbelievers who write textbooks on the theory of knowledge don’t like to talk about infallible truth and so forth. But you understand that every theory of knowledge, every theory of knowledge, is ultimately motivated by a desire to find certainty at the foundation of one’s thinking. theories of knowledge arise because of the challenge of skepticism. Theories of knowledge arise because of the challenge of skepticism.

[15:13] Let me step back just for a moment and say something about philosophy in general. All philosophical questions arise because of some challenge. I sometimes get the impression from people that they think philosophers are bizarre human beings that sit around in their armchairs just dreaming up questions to answer. Why is there error? things like that. Philosophy did not arise because people didn’t have anything else to do, so they made up abstract intellectual questions to start pursuing, or at least not usually.

[15:48] Philosophical questions arise because people get confused when they deal with day-to-day questions and ask themselves what human life is about, and we start debating with one another. I’ll show you how a philosophical question arises. Sometimes we think of human beings as having bodies that are controlled by the laws of physics, biology, and whatever. We know that if a human being jumps off of the Empire State Building, all the freedom in the world is not going to stop that human body from following the laws of physics and being destroyed upon impact. And so we think to ourselves, well, I guess human life is just part of the physical world, and it’s subject to the laws of science, biology, physics, what have you. And so human beings are not really free. They appear to be free, but they’re not really free. They don’t make up their own minds, because what they’re thinking and what seems to be a choice is just the result of electrical chemical stimulus in the brain.

[16:52] and so we have people who will argue that there’s no such thing as freedom and if there’s no such thing as freedom then there’s no responsibility for what we do and we’re getting a lot of that kind of trash talk down in los angeles these days trying to justify what’s going on in rioting looting and so forth all these theories of human nature no one has a philosophy and they start asking about things like that and then it’s just as philosophical as can be but then on the other hand, you love people who say, hey, we’re free, you know? We’re human beings. We have dignity. We make up our own minds. The school of thought known as existentialism that puts that at the very center of philosophy is that human reality chooses its own essence, chooses what it will be. Whether you’re an existentialist or not, you know, that your unbelieving neighbor, he’ll insist that, you know, human beings have free will. And that’s why it’s wrong for the government to interfere and do things and to impose things on us, you know, because we’re all free human beings. We all have our own dignity and so forth. Now, that’s okay, I guess, as far as it goes. You can argue about human beings being free in one situation and then human beings just being subject to the laws of physics in another. But, you know, at some point, some of you are going to say, hey, these don’t go together. The way I argue over here in the poli-psi class is not the way I argue over here in the psych class. In psychology, man’s a white rat. In political science, he’s a free human being.

[18:25] Which is it? And that’s when philosophers step up, or that’s when people become philosophical. It’s when there’s a conflict in our underlying assumption, when there’s some kind of intellectual dissonance about our understanding of knowledge or reality or human conduct that people get quote-unquote philosophical. Philosophy deals with the underlying muddle and presupposition any field of thought, put it very simply. And so philosophical questions arise not out of abstract speculation, they arise out of day-to-day questions and conflicts that people want to look into further and try to resolve. And then they start getting abstract. Then they start backing up and looking at underlying assumptions. Then they get philosophical.

[19:15] Now, why do we have theories of knowledge? Back to the point of my lecture. Why does anyone develop a theory of knowledge? It’s because a challenge is out there, a practical problem that has to be dealt with. And that particular problem, that particular challenge is the threat of skepticism. Everyone thinks a theory of knowledge that can account for certainty over against the threat of skepticism. A skeptic says no one knows anything.

[19:45] There is no knowledge. No one can know for sure. Well, if no one can know for sure, what kind of consequences can follow from that? The name skepticism comes from the ancient school of Greek philosophy known as skepticism, what were the Greeks concerned about? What would happen if the skeptics were believed by people? Skeptics said things like, there’s no world to know. Or if there is, no one can know it for sure. Or if there is and you can know it for sure, you can’t communicate it to anybody else. So there are different varieties but they all ended up saying, no one knows. But if no one knows, then of course you can live anywhere you want, right? You can’t challenge my choices. You can’t challenge my beliefs. You can’t challenge my lifestyle if you don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t know what I’m talking about. All of life is a crapshoot, after all, and it’s anybody’s guess. And so people don’t like skepticism. Well, I shouldn’t say it quite so categorically. People don’t like skepticism until they get into a bind and they can’t justify what they believe or are doing, And then skepticism looks real nice, because then it’s like a Mexican standoff.

[21:00] No one can touch anybody. And so then they’ll start pulling into this game of skepticism. Well, you don’t know, and I don’t know, so leave me alone. You don’t know, I don’t know, so everyone chooses for themselves. But ordinarily, people don’t want to be left in the position of skepticism. And that’s where theories of knowledge come from. Everyone has an answer, whether it’s explicit or implicit.

[21:24] it, everyone has an answer to the skeptic which guides his evaluations, what he believes, what convictions he has, and his behavior. Everyone, in some way, decides what they can believe or what they cannot believe. Everyone needs a defense against skepticism. What’s the Christian’s defense against skepticism? Well, the defense against skepticism can’t be that we can verify the things that we believe by using our senses or the facts of history or the laws of science. A verificationist approach to answering the skeptic is not going to work for what reason? The skeptic is going to turn around, he’s going to challenge that you do know the facts of history, that you do know the laws of science, that you can even trust your own sensations or observations. Moreover, what a person takes to be factual and how the person interprets what he thinks to be factual is governed by his system of thought, his philosophy of life. What we end up accepting as human beings are not individual beliefs.

[22:32] We always accept interrelated systems of belief, which are woven together ultimately into a web, as I’ve said, into a way of life or a world. Now, if that’s true, if we accept interrelated systems and not individual isolated beliefs, then inevitably any argument that is a verificationist argument will be certain. Every argument will assume the truth of the system, which it’s trying to prove by appealing to the verifying fact or law of science or what have you. Every system will ultimately be a circular kind of system. Let me explain what I mean by the fact we don’t accept beliefs in isolation. Let’s assume for illustration that I live in the world and I believe that Apollo was a god. I believe that Apollo was a god, but then I have a report made to me, or maybe a historical observation, that Apollo dies in battle. Now you might think, since you believe that Apollo was a god, and the gods are immortal, and you now believe that Apollo died in battle, battle, therefore you have to give up the deity of Apollo. It might seem just that simple. If we accept or reject beliefs in an isolated way, then one simple observational experience, Apollo dies in battle, would be enough to refute the idea that he’s God. But as it turns out, we don’t just accept that Apollo is a god in isolation, we also accept that the gods are immortal.

[24:13] Now, if Apollo is a god, and the gods are immortal, and Apollo dies, then I’ve got to give up one of my other beliefs. But you know what? There’s nothing about the event itself, or the report of Apollo dying, that tells me which of those beliefs I have to give up. I have another alternative. I can say, no, Apollo is a god, but the gods are not immortal, I guess. Every individual belief we have is sustained by at least two other beliefs. It’s really more than that. But every belief we have, in order to be understood, has got to be within the framework of at least a couple of more beliefs. Therefore, when something seems to challenge the truthfulness of that belief, we always can choose to give up one of our other beliefs rather than to give up the one that seems to be challenged.

[25:03] You know the story about the man who thought he was dead. He goes to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, no, you’re alive. He gives him all these rational proofs and so forth that he’s alive, and the man’s not convinced. He goes, no, I’m dead. I know that I’m dead. So the psychologist asks him. He says, well, do dead men bleed? No. So he pricks his finger with a pen, and he starts to bleed. Psychologist thinks, there, I’ve pruned it. And the guy goes, what do you know? Dead men bleed. You see, you can always choose to give up one of the supporting beliefs or some related belief rather than the one that you might have assumed was directly challenged by the observational experience.

[25:45] People do not accept and reject beliefs in isolation. They are always in tandem. They’re always connected to other things in the web of their beliefs. and therefore a verificationist approach to answering skepticism is not going to be successful because in the end every verificationist approach presupposes the web in terms of which the verification takes place. It cannot verify the web because it requires the web to be meaningful and so someone a skeptic can say okay so you got one web of belief here one web of belief there and they can’t touch each other. We’re back to skepticism. Nobody knows for sure. Everybody’s just arbitrary. How about the objectivity of truth? Can anyone be certain that his presuppositions are true to reality? Can anyone escape the charge of arbitrariness and subjectivity or just ultimately prejudice? Can conflicts and disputes between systems of thought ever be settled?

[26:51] Can we ever get beyond skepticism and gain certainty? Well, if we’re going to, it’s going to require a self-attesting authority. It’s going to require a foundational set of presuppositions which themselves authorize those presuppositions. That is to say, ultimately, in philosophical disputes, in a theory of knowledge, you have to get to a place where you have presuppositions that are their own authority. They are not authorized or believed because something else outside of them verifies them or authorizes them, but they themselves must be their own authorization. Now, I realize if I would have started with that, a lot of people would tell me, well, that’s just circular reasoning, Dr. Bahnsen, and that’s just back to arbitrariness.

[27:45] But I hope what I’ve shown in these few moments here is that no one can escape that kind of circularity. Everyone must, if they’re going to escape this challenge, or answer it, is going to have to have self-attesting presuppositions. I think you could probably figure this out if you just thought in a kind of graphic way, if I believe A, and the basis for my believing A is B, then the skeptic is going to say, why do you believe B? Then I’m going to say, well, I believe B because of C. Then the skeptic is going to say, why do you believe C? And then I believe C because of D. And then he’s going to say, why do you believe D?

[28:29] Are you catching on? Go ahead, go on. Eventually, we get to the end of the alphabet. The skeptic is still going. He hasn’t lost any esteem at all. Why do you believe that? Why do you believe that? Why do you believe that? Why do you believe that? And you can’t continue that forever. Eventually, you’ve got to get to something that you consider rock bottom. You don’t go beyond this. You don’t ask anymore, why do you believe that? Because this is the foundation for believing anything else. Everyone has got to get to the bottom of things. Everyone’s got to get to the center of the web of belief, if you will. And at the center, your beliefs are self-authenticated.

[29:10] Now, this is probably the toughest part of the afternoon’s lecture, so everyone wake up for just two minutes here. The crucial question is, can any belief be self-authenticating? If it can, if everybody can get, you see, down to the bottom of their belief system or the center of the web, whichever image you want to use, and say, okay, I’m right because my beliefs are self-authenticating. then, of course, it’s just a crapshoot again. But it’s back to relativism and everyone choosing whatever they want to call self-authenticating. Does just any belief authorize itself? They say Christians have an answer to the problem, and non-Christians don’t. And the Christian answer very simply is, God’s Word is self-authenticating in the nature of it.

[30:03] god’s word is self-authenticating in the nature of the case let’s open our bibles for a few minutes take a look at this matthew 7 verse 29 i think it’s probably a good illustration of what i’m trying to get at here matthew 7 29 at the end of the sermon on the mount i want you to notice what the people say about jesus teaching verse 28 says when jesus finished these words, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as their scribe. This is amazing. When Jesus teaches, he doesn’t do what the scribes do. The scribal method of teaching was to set out a thesis and say, Rabbi so-and-so has taught, and then go beyond that, and Rabbi so-and-so before him has said, and Rabbi so-and-so before him, before him, before him, as they said, was always based on the authority of the elders.

[31:02] The epistemology was always a personal matter working down through the tradition of the elders. The people say, listen, Jesus, he’s astonishing. He doesn’t teach like the scribes, because he teaches as though he has authority. Jesus said, you’ve heard it said by them of all, but I say to you. Jesus didn’t appeal to anybody else for authority. And why not? Well, of course, if you’re a Christian, you can figure that out. To whom would Jesus appeal? He would have greater authority than Jesus himself. You know, the lesser appeals to the greater. And if Jesus is the greater, he doesn’t appeal to the lesser. Dr. Van Til used to say, the sun doesn’t look to the flashlight to verify its existence. Without the sun, there would be no batteries and no flashlight. Jesus doesn’t look to the scribes and the elders to verify his authority.

[32:01] You see, when God speaks, God’s speaking is self-authenticating. It authorizes itself because there’s none greater than God who can verify the word of God. Remember in the book of Hebrews where the author of Hebrews talks about the covenant God made with Abraham. Actually, God made a promise with Abraham. And because he could swear by none greater, the author of Hebrews says, he swore by himself.

[32:29] An oath made in those days was of a self-maledictory. If I don’t perform what I promised to perform, may the following evil come upon me. And then you see that was verified by appealing to some authority that could enforce it. Sometimes to God in pagan situations. Or among the Jews, it would be an oath made in the name of Jehovah. God would back up the promise and bring the sanction against the person who breaks the covenant. But now what does God do when he wants to take an oath? How long does God appeal to back up his own word? He appeals to himself. God’s word in the nature of the case is self-authenticating because there is none greater than God.

[33:15] Now I realize we’re dealing with someone who doesn’t accept that what we’re presenting to them is the word of God. I haven’t forgotten that. Our third lecture will be real evident to you, that I haven’t forgotten that. But you see, if we’re going to argue with the unbeliever, the unbeliever has got the system for what it is, and not for, you know, the reformulation of it that he might want to make. And so we have to explain to the unbeliever that if the Bible is what it claims to be, if it is, I’m not telling you you have to accept that yet, but you have to understand that where we’re coming from, that if the Bible is the Word of God, there can’t be anything higher than the Bible or more secure than the Bible or more certain than the Bible by which the Word of God is verified.

[34:00] If God has spoken, in the nature of the case, he’s spoken in a self-attesting, self-authorizing way. Because he can’t swear by anyone higher. Jesus couldn’t look to any other teacher to authorize his teaching. That’s the way it is in the case of the Bible. But what if somebody had questions about that? Well, wait a minute.

[34:23] I think we can decide which book is the real revelation of God or whether God is speaking in a book or not by finding out if, what should we make up here? If 80% of the scientists at the local university say that it’s credible, okay, the Bible will be authorized by 80% of the professors at San Francisco State. Now, if someone were to propose that, even if you weren’t a Christian, don’t you think you would find that bogus? You know, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Why 80% of the professors at San Francisco State? Why not 90%? Okay, so let’s get rid of all those words. It’d be 100%. If 100% of the professors at the local university say that the Bible is credible, then we’ll say it’s the Word of God. But you know what? You try that.

[35:16] Somebody in California down south is going to say, wait a minute, it’s got to be 100% of the professors at UCLA, not San Francisco State. You’ve got the wrong school. What’s the problem here? Well, I mean, everyone’s choosing their own philosophy, in a sense. They’re saying, for me, the final authority is UCLA professors. Someone else says, for me, the final authority is San Francisco State professors. Oh, but then somebody says, oh, I’ve got a split answer for that. It’s 100% of all the professors anywhere. Ha, ha, that. Now we don’t have any school rivalries. So, yeah, what about the people who say, you know what, this world’s in a lot of trouble because of those professors. If they say it’s the word of God, then I know it isn’t. God would never appeal to these kind of idiots.

[36:01] And now who’s right and who’s wrong? The anti-intellectual or anti-university intellectual or the pro-university intellectual? Well, okay, it’s not going to have anything to do with the university professors. it’s everybody in the state of California. If everybody in the state of California says it’s the word of God, then it is. Ah, but then of course the problem is the people in Utah are going to say, no, no, no, no, no. It’s everybody in the state of Utah. Okay, I got a slick answer for all that. Forget this state rivalry. It’s everybody in the United States. If they say it, then it’s the word of God. Oh, finally, we’ve got an authority that can authorize the Bible, right? Nah, because you see people in Muslim lands, they’re going to say, no, no, no, no, it’s the people in our country that have to decide what is the Word of God.

[36:54] Okay, let’s assume for argument’s sake that no one has any disagreements. And everybody in the world says the Bible is the Word of God. There’s only one guy left out. Only one. Everybody in the world says this is the Word of God. You know what that one guy is going to be able to say? And be philosophically philosophically, on very sound footing when he does so, he’s going to say, where does God say that your opinion counts?

[37:22] Want me to repeat that again? That devastating refutation may have, you know, gone over too fast. He says, where does God say that everybody counts? You see, if God didn’t say that your opinion is relevant, why should I believe that you’re believing it’s the Word of God? He says anything to show that it’s the Word of God. He might even say, you know what? If that were the word of God, it wouldn’t depend upon your agreement to become the word of God. But what kind of word of God is that, where God has to look to 100% of the human race to be verified?

[37:58] In the nature of the case, God has to tell you how to find his word. Now, if God said, this is really the heretical hypothetical, medical, if God said 100% of the professors at San Francisco State will settle it, and you say, okay, then we’ll go find out if 100% of them say it, so forth. And if they do, then we’ll say, God told us to trust those people. But what’s the next question from the skeptic going to be? How do you know God said that? How do you know God said trust the professors at San Francisco State?

[38:30] Anytime you try to get something that is a pointer to the Bible, that it’s the Word of God, the next question is going to be, how do you know the pointer is right? And you know what? You’ll never philosophically be able to answer that by saying, well, I’ve got another pointer. I’ve got a pointer at the pointer that points to the Bible. Because then it’s going to require a pointer to the pointer to the pointer to the Bible. And we’re right back to that infinite regress that we tried to get out of a little while ago. God’s Word can only be identified by God. And you know what? When God identifies His Word, He uses the Word to do it. And therefore, God’s Word authorizes God’s Word, and that’s inescapable.

[39:09] There’s no way around that. Now, I know there’ll be some people who say, okay, well, if that’s what it requires, if we have to accept God’s authority on the authority of God speaking, then I want nothing to do with it. At that place, you have to say, you mean you won’t accept any self-authorizing authority in your philosophy? Absolutely not. Okay, well, there goes your philosophy. Let’s try a few other authorities.

[39:33] How about the authority of human reason, whatever that may mean. I love it when people appeal to human reason and not study philosophy. That could mean any of 50 different things, but okay. Human reason, whatever that is. And I say, okay, now, why do you accept human reason as the ultimate authority? Because human reason proves it. Now, I don’t think human reason did prove it to be, but for argument’s sake, I’ll play this game. So human reason proves human reason to be the ultimate authority. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, right. Well, then you’ve got a self-authorizing authority, right? The same way that God’s word proves God’s word to be the ultimate authority, so human reason proves human reason to be the ultimate authority.

[40:16] And the person who’s embarrassed and says, oh, in a way, I don’t want to get caught in that. No, no, no. Human reason is the final authority because, and then you fill in the blank, X proves human reason to be the final authority. And you say, and the authority of X is based upon what? Well, if it’s human reason, then you’re back to circularity. And if it’s not human reason, then human reason is not your ultimate authority, is it? Then the X, whatever it was, universal agreement, common sense, whatever, the X becomes your final authority.

[40:51] Now, what am I laboring to get at here on this warm afternoon? I’m trying to get across to you that you cannot escape circularity when it comes to your ultimate authority and philosophy. You cannot escape a self-authorizing starting point for your thinking. Everybody must have one. And now the next step is to realize not everyone’s self-authorizing authority can truly be self-authorizing. Some people are going to claim that their authority is self-authorizing and we’re going to have to demolish that claim.

[41:23] In our next lecture, that’s what I’m going to try to do to give you some ways of doing that. But for the remainder of our time, before we open it up to questions, what would we as Christians offer as the basis or the certainty of our Christian faith?

[41:41] I’d like to quote something that Dr. Van Til said a number of years ago that I think will lead us to the proper answer to that question. Dr. Van Til said, and I quote, Christianity can be shown to be not just as good as or even better than the non-Christian position, but the only position that does not make nonsense of human experience. That is to say, in the Word of God, we find an indubitable and infallible set of truths, which everyone in the history of philosophy has been seeking in order to answer skepticism. In a revelation from God, which in the nature of the case is self-authorizing, the philosopher can find that knowledge which is so certain that no reasonable man should doubt it. What did Colossians 2-3 tell us? Last hour we saw that in Christ are deposited all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Christ and instruction.

[42:48] That’s why in 1 Timothy 6 verse 20, if you want to look at that real briefly, Paul can describe that which opposes the Christian faith with these words. He says, O Timothy, guard that which is committed unto thee, turning aside from the profane babblings and opposition of knowledge falsely so called. Paul says that which stands over against the Christian faith is the pseudonym of knowledge, falsely so-called knowledge. Outside of Christ, in principle, no knowledge is possible. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Therefore, in God’s revelation, we can find that which carries authority, that is self-authorizing, and is the foundation of all other thinking.

[43:42] A philosopher who’s done quite a bit of work in the area of epistemology once wrote, the claim that a basis for doubt is inconceivable is justified whenever a denial of the claim would violate the conditions or presuppositions of rational inquiry. Let me go over that again. A claim that a basis for doubt is inconceivable is justified whenever something else happens. A claim that a basis for doubt is inconceivable. Ultimately, the unbeliever’s got to say, I’ve got presuppositions, and you cannot doubt them. They’re indubitable. They’re claiming that a basis for doubt is inconceivable. A Christian says, we’ve got presuppositions, and they’re indubitable. They’re revealed from God.

[44:35] whose word is self-authorizing. This philosopher said, the claim that a basis for doubt is inconceivable is justified whenever a denial of the claim would violate the conditions or presuppositions of rational inquiry. That is, I’ve got certain presuppositions and I’m sending them out to the world as indubitable. And that claim is justified. I am right to say that if the person who denies the claim has thereby undermined the presuppositions of rationality. And the reason I’ve used this quote to try to make my point is, this is what in the history of philosophy is called transcendental reasoning. Transcendental reasoning. Transcendental reasoning means arguing from the impossibility of the contrary. This position is true, it is inescapable, Because if you deny this position, rationality becomes impossible.

[45:39] And now the question is, whose worldview provides the preconditions of intelligibility? Whose worldview provides those presuppositions on the basis of which rationality makes sense? It’s cogent. And when we ask that question, we can see, first of all, why unbelieving systems cannot give a self-authenticating worldview. We’ll see that in the next hour. And, ending this hour’s lecture, we can see why Christianity does provide that.

[46:14] For, you see, if the Christian worldview is correct, if God is, the triune God is, the creator on earth, and God is the spirit but he’s made the physical world and made man in it as his image and if God controls every event of history and God has made the mind of man which is in his own image so that he can understand the world and work in this world and control this world to his glory and if God is a holy God and has made man in his image so that man is to live to reflect God’s righteousness given just that elementary outline of the Christian view of the world and there’s more that can be said, then I can understand why human beings are to use their minds and they are to be logical. Because if they aren’t logical, then they’re going contrary to the very character of God who does not deny himself and does not lie. Then I can understand why human beings are supposed to live their lives in such a way as to reflect righteousness and holiness because they have the image of God. I can understand why that is possible. I can understand why science is possible because God controls this world so that there is uniformity.

[47:30] To put it very simply, given my worldview, I can account for rationality. I can account for science. I can account for ethics. I can account for human dignity. I can account for human freedom. But if you deny this worldview, then my claim is you destroy all of that. You can give up Christianity, but in so doing, you give up rationality, science, and ethics as well.

[48:01] And so in the end, the certainty of Christianity is proven indirectly. Indirectly. An indirect proof proves something from the denial of what you’re holding. You show that if you deny this position, then it creates absurdity. It undermines rationality. A direct proof would be more like this. We have a dispute over the price of eggs today at the market, and we’re going to directly prove who’s right and who’s wrong, because we’re going to go to the market and we’re going to use our eyes and look right there and see what the price is. That’s a direct proof.

[48:41] Christianity, and in fact any worldview, cannot be proven directly. There is no way to prove it directly because that would call for something outside the worldview or more ultimate than your presupposition to give authority to your worldview and your presupposition. The certainty of Christianity is seen in the impossibility of the contrary. the Christian says, I can account for this debate, our attempt to be logical, our attempt to be scientific, to be ethical. I can account for the rationality and the dignity and the freedom of man, but your worldview cannot. Your worldview undermines rationality. Your worldview is self-contradictory. Your worldview is arbitrary. And so in the choice of worldviews, it is not a matter of just choosing what hat you would like to wear.

[49:39] It’s not just a matter of subjective preference. The Christian says it’s all or nothing. If you will not accept the Christian worldview, in principle, you can know nothing. And that’s the certainty of Christianity, is that without it, without Christianity, you couldn’t prove anything. And that’s what I think the presuppositionalists, that’s what someone like Dr. Van Til has contributed to the theory of knowledge, is an acute awareness that a reasonable basis for doubt is inconceivable with respect to God’s revelation. because apart from the revelation of God, apart from his word, the preconditions of rationality, science, human dignity, and ethics are all destroyed.

[50:32] Well, I put it to you in a rather philosophical way. Let me end by telling the same story to you in Jesus’ way. Turn again to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7. Jesus said the same thing for an audience of people that wouldn’t be interested necessarily in the philosophical jargon.

[50:53] When he told this story, he said, Everyone that hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house upon the rock. Notice that, the wise man. The beginning of wisdom and knowledge is the fear of the Lord. The man who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who builds his house upon the rock.

[51:14] The rain descends, the floods come, the winds blow and beat upon it, but it doesn’t fall because it’s founded upon the rock. But everyone that hears these words of mine and does them not is like a fool who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and smote upon that house and it fell and was the fall thereof. The certainty of Christianity is that it’s the only rock on which any house can be built, even the house of intellect, philosophy, or life.

[51:53] And fools try to build elsewhere. And when they do, the rains come and destroy it. In the next lecture, I’m going to try to give enough rain to show you just how easy it is to destroy any of you other than Christianity. But before we take our break, I promise time for questions, and we can take a few now, and we’ll take some more at the end of the next hour as well.

[52:17] Would anyone like to ask about this lecture or the previous one? Well, let me remind you what we’ve said, and then maybe you’ll have questions. I’ve said, first of all, that the dispute between the Christian and the non-Christian is a collision of worldviews, ultimately complete philosophies of life. Secondly, I’ve taught you in this hour that worldviews can only be argued indirectly, not directly. That you’ve got to look for a worldview that provides a self-authenticating authority at its foundation, that does not undermine the conditions of rationality, science, human dignity, ethics, freedom, what have you. And that’s why Christianity is known to be certain, because if you don’t build on it, and it’s like building on sand and the house finally is destroyed. Now, would you like to ask about that? Yes, sir.

[53:09] Now, what I’ve said here, I’m glad for this question so I can review this, I’ve said every philosophy must claim a self-authenticating authority, but that the claim to being self-authenticating does not establish it. And what we are going to do in the next hour is show that any other philosophy other than Christianity undermines rationality, that it cannot make a credible claim to self-authentication. So, yes, they will claim it, but that’s going to be the final defect. They cannot carry through with that claim.

[53:42] For the sake of those who might be listening by tape, I’ll try to restate this. It’s a question about, to the effect that don’t all worldviews have a point of faith at which they begin? And how does self-authentication relate to that, that even Christians begin with faith?

[54:00] Well, I think it’s important for us to understand the Christian notion of faith. And I know this is not going to fit into what the world wants to present, and it’s not even going to fit into what a good number of Christian theologians will tell you. But I think it’s true. Faith is not contrary to reason. Faith is not what fills in the gap where reason leaves off. Faith is the foundation for reasoning.

[54:26] without christian faith there would be in principle no human reasoning at all reasoning would not be cogent apart from the foundation of faith so rather than saying reason takes us back so far either to a god or to the gases as it were and then your faith isn’t the gases and my faith isn’t god i would rather say that if you do not begin with the personal god that has revealed himself in the scriptures, you will undermine human reason. And therefore, what you are calling faith at the beginning of my worldview is self-authenticating. And it is the most rational thing for a person, because without it, rationality is destroyed. I try not to give commercials when I go out and do these things, but it happens every once in a while. You may want to pick up my tape of a radio dialogue with George Smith, who’s one of the best known atheist propagandists in the country today.

[55:28] William has written a book, The Case, Atheism, The Case Against God, and things like that. And in this dialogue, what he presented was this idea, well, Christianity is based on faith. You know, everyone is supposed to follow reason, but when reason leads off, then you Christians take off with faith. And I said, George, that’s not the Christian conception of faith. Our conception of faith is that it’s the foundation for all human reasoning. So without God, everything else becomes impossible. And he would never guess. He didn’t know what to do with that.

[55:59] It was kind of like, well, but obviously unbelievers do reason. I said, yes, they do. And what that shows is that in their heart of hearts, they do have faith in God, in terms of which you can make sense of their reasoning, and without which you cannot make sense of their reasoning. And therefore, God holds you accountable for suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. So, back to your question, I would say it isn’t ultimately faith if you mean faith as belief beyond what we give us. I would say it’s ultimately faith because faith is the foundation for all reasons.

[56:33] Do you have a question here from an unbelieving perspective? Well, I think that would be more appropriate after the next hour, because that’s where I’m going to take up what would the unbeliever say and what problems does he have, and I’d be happy to answer that right here. Okay. Actually, the different approaches to apologetics among Christians parallel exactly the different approaches to epistemology in secular schools of philosophy as well. Because there’s only so many ways you can move in answer to the challenge of skepticism. In schools of epistemology, you have theories of knowledge which are called foundationalist, theories of knowledge which are pragmatist, theories of knowledge which are feteous, and theories of knowledge which are transcendental.

[57:21] Real quickly, a foundationalist epistemology says we verify what things are known to be true according to certain foundational certainties like the laws of logic or our sense experience, observation of the world, or something of that nature. The pragmatist who is very good at at undermining people who think the laws of logic or the eyeball experiences of the world are foundational certitudes. The pragmatist says, ultimately, you know what is true on the basis of what solves problems, what works, to put it in a crude American way. If it works, if it solves the problem, if it sustains the race, then it’s true. Thetia say, in the end, everyone has got to make choice. And within that faith beginning point, then they can defend their worldview, but worldviews can’t talk to each other. You have a faith commitment, a personal or voluntaristic commitment at the beginning of your philosophy. And then finally, the transcendental approach would be similar to what Immanuel Kant said. He’s not the only one who argued that we have certain preconditions of intelligibility which give us the foundation or the certitude with which all philosophy begins, because without those preconditions of intelligibility, you couldn’t understand anything. Now let me go over to Christian apologetics. Interestingly, those are the schools of Christian apologetics. The foundationalist we call evidentialism. The evidentialist says we try to prove God’s existence according to the proofs given by Thomas Aquinas than others, and then we show that this God is the Christian God by proving from history that Jesus rose from the dead and the Bible is reliable.

[59:08] That’s the evidential approach to apologetics. The pragmatist, the counterpart in pragmatist, is the experiential apologetic that says, you know that peace will come to your heart, try Jesus, and you’ll experience that, it will work for you, it’s worked for others, therefore it is true.

[59:27] the thediest when it comes to epistemology is seen in apologetics in the approach that says everyone has faith my faith happens to be in the triune god of scripture your faith is in someone else and we can each defend our worldview internally but we can’t talk to each other we can’t settle anything because it’s ultimately a matter of commitment it’s a leap if you will a leap of faith. And finally, the transcendentalist in epistemology is what we call presuppositionalism in apologetics. The presuppositionalist says everybody rests upon ultimate assumptions that are the basis for all of their thinking and conduct and their interpretation of the world, and those presuppositions must be verified in terms of the impossibility of the contrary. They must be shown to be necessary as preconditionality. And so, four different approaches to apologetics. At the two extremes, you have evidentialism and presuppositionalism, and in between you have a variety of subjectivism and experientialism, essentially.

[60:36] Now, does that help put what I’ve been saying in context? What have I been arguing for this afternoon, then? Is this an evidentialist approach? Good. That makes me feel good. that she has, is this a presuppositional approach? Presuppositional, because it says ultimately it comes down to an issue of worldviews, and worldviews can only be argued presuppositionally in terms of which provides the preconditions of rationality, morality, and all the rest.

[61:04] By the way, I might say in passing, it’s on that point that Francis Schaeffer was a presupposition. He understood that much of what Schaeffer did was an attempt to go between two schools of thought, evidentialism and presuppositionalism, was right at many points when what he said is you cannot account for what he called the mannishness of man on anything but the Christian worldview. If you step outside of Christianity, then everything else gets destroyed. And so he’d say things like, under the line of despair in the 20th century, it’s not just God who died, but man died as well, meaning that all that we took traditionally to be part of the dignity of man and his freedom and so forth is destroyed when the Christian worldview is given up.

[61:53] And in that sense, C.S. Lewis, at points, was a presuppositionalist in his apologetics, and of course he tried to be an evidentialist as well and kind of got things mucked up. But Lewis argued, and I’m going to bring this up next hour, maybe I should just go right into that lecture, which he keeps referring to it. But Lewis argued, for instance, that, you know, if you’re a naturalist, then your view of the human brain is such that you have no reason to trust the result of your brain processes. And so if you’re a naturalist, you have no reason to be a naturalist.

[62:29] So you try to do an internal critique of the non-Christian worldview to show that it destroys itself. That’s presuppositional in character. You compare worldviews, and then, as I’ll show you next hour, you try to demonstrate the inconsistency, the arbitrariness of the non-Christian worldview, or that it does not provide the preconditions of rationality, morality, science, human freedom, and dignity. I’m not sure that ended up where you wanted it to go, but that’s my answer to your question. Yeah, and again, I’m saying it again, next hour is going to color it in, but let me give you a quick example. You got a next-door neighbor, he’s an atheist, okay? And he has a woman living with him, and they’re not married. And so you’re witnessing to him one day while both of you are trimming your lawn or something, and you get around to this, and you finally say, you know, Bill, the God who created you says that you’re not supposed to live with a woman out of wedlock this way, and that’s one of the reasons why you’re not going to stand right before him on the day of judgment, and out of my love and concern for you, I want to call you to turn away from that and trust in Christ for your salvation and so forth.

[63:37] And he says, wait a minute. There’s no God, and since there’s no God, I don’t have to worry about my sexual habits. It’s different strokes for different thoughts. I can do anything I want. So then you go back to trimming your lawn, right? And after a while, he starts talking, you know. He says, I just can’t stand it, the way these black people are burning down Los Angeles right now. I just think it’s horrible. They loot and they do these things and they feed up people and so forth.

[64:09] And you’re going to say to him, Mr. Christian, well, you know, Bill, I think it’s horrible too. But I can make sense of why I think it’s horrible, but I don’t think you can. Because you don’t have the precondition of intelligibility from moral absolutes. Given your worldview, you don’t have any basis to condemn it at all.

[64:28] In fact, you remember a few minutes ago, didn’t you tell me it’s different strokes for different folks? Well, apparently those folks get their strokes by burning things down and looting and so forth. And on your worldview, you cannot make sense of your moral judgment. On my worldview, you can’t. So what you’re saying is your worldview does not, this is a technical expression, your worldview does not provide the preconditions of intelligibility. You cannot, let me just put it easily, you can’t make sense of judging that to be wrong or you can’t make sense of the procedures of science you can’t make sense of the laws of logic on your world but I certainly think we should have the laws of logic and follow the procedures of science and have moral absolutes it’s just that if you don’t build your house on the rock the word of Jesus Christ it’s going to be blown away with the storms because you’re built on the sand Thank you.