About this sermon
A Morning Instruction class on apologetics: knowing and being. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Epistemology asks how we know; metaphysics asks what is. Philosophy has never solved the problem of the one and the many, how particular things share common natures. The Christian worldview begins with the triune God, who is eternally both one and many, and so it accounts for unity and diversity in the world as no other view can.
Sermon transcript
Heavenly Father, we ask that you would help us to defend the faith, help us to know how to do it, help us to learn how to do it according to your will, that when those who bring a charge against us and those who would try to attack you, when they would seek to do that, we ask that you would give us strength and knowledge and know-how to leave them with no excuse.
Thank you for your amazing grace that you have caused us to be in Christ, but not only that, you have allowed us to know what it is to have eternal life and to be able to know the truth. What an amazing gift this is. Help us to be knowledgeable of your grace, for it is not given to all people. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Okay, we’re going to talk about epistemology and metaphysics. Two big words, but we’ll break that down, what those are. First, we’re going to read some Bible passages. First, we’re going to read Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7. A verse that is probably, hopefully, familiar to many or all of you. It’s important for us in defending the faith.
Proverbs 1.7. I won’t read it for time. I’ve got a lot to cover today. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Let’s turn to Colossians 2.3.
And there, in Colossians 2.3, we’ll read the last word of, well, in this version, the last two words of 2.2. It says, Christ, or Christ himself in the NAS, in whom are hidden all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And then lastly, I should have gone to Proverbs. We’re gonna go back to Proverbs. I should have had this be our second reading, but that’s all right.
Proverbs 26, four and five. 26, four and five. Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will also be like him. And then the reverse. Answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he not be wise in his own eyes. This is an important verse, I’ll read it a second. Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will also be like him. Answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he may not be wise in his own eyes. Okay, some passages for our meditation. this morning. We ended last week, and we could have kept going. There were some things that we were gonna finish, but we didn’t. That’s all right. It’s okay, because we’re going to review those.
Remember, we talked about certain brothers and sisters in the faith who desire to defend the faith, and they give evidence. Sometimes they just overwhelm their opponents with evidence, right? The evidence that I talked about was the manuscript evidence. There is, you compare the New Testament with any other document of antiquity, doesn’t compare. New Testament document, the amount of documents that we have, the amount of manuscripts that we have, along with how close they are to the actual events, blows everything else out of the water. There’s nothing like it.
Then our brothers and sisters will talk about archaeology, and they’ll try to show that The Bible is true to everything that it says. Everything in archeology, it backs up what the Bible says, all right? Then prophecy. Prophecy proves that Christianity is true. No one could have fulfilled all of the prophecies that Christ did. And then they’ll also talk about statistics. Now there’s one Christian apologist who, he’s very good, he’s very skilled. Notice, this is what he does. He’s into making words so you can memorize all these, right? After all these years, I still remember that. I haven’t listened to his radio show in years and years.
It’s very helpful, but you see, they’re just giving evidence. They’re giving evidence, they’re giving evidence. Now what they’re eventually doing, of what they’re essentially doing, and then what they’re eventually doing. What they’re essentially doing is they’re going to give a whole lot of evidence.
They might start off saying, it’s more than likely that there’s a God. And there are arguments that you can give that show the likelihood of there being a God. They’ll say, look at the beauty of the world. That proves that there must be a God because there’s a creator that’s greater and more beautiful. Or if everything has a cause, then the world must have a cause. They’re gonna say that a God exists.
And then they wanna try and prove the biblical God. All right. So this is what Cornelius Van Til calls a blockhouse methodology, or it’d be better to say a blockhouse method where you Build the first floor, and then you build the second floor. That’s what the majority of Christians do when they seek to defend the faith.
Then they, they wouldn’t say this, but I said, is it faithful if we get to the last step, you know, which is Proverbs 1.7.
They start with just any old God, I wanna prove a God, and they narrow the scope to the biblical God using manuscript and archeological evidence and prophecy and statistics. And do you think it’s faithful to the Bible to say, wisdom begins with the Christian God? They haven’t begun with the biblical wisdom, right? They end there. they begin with just any God. They begin with logic and reason before that, trying to have a commonality between the believer and the non-believer.
So that’s how our brothers and sisters will very often defend the faith. But, I left you hanging. because the time ran out. The question is, how then shall we defend the faith when someone mocks us? Do we want to give evidence? Well, we want to give evidence, but it’s not evidence like just simple throwing a whole bunch of stuff out there and seeing what’s going to stick. What I want you to see is this, that the proof of the Christian God is from the impossibility of the contrary.
Okay? Impossibility of the contrary. You can put this in your mind. The proof of the Christian God is the impossibility of the contrary. That is to say, it cannot but be so. It cannot not be true. Now this is a bold claim, but we’re going to look at why we would say this.
What we would want to say then is, If you do not have the Christian worldview, if you do not have the Christian God, you cannot make sense of anything. That’s a bold claim that we’re going to make. your worldview without the Lord Jesus Christ and the triune God will make no sense. It will be irrational. This is what we’re going to say. This is what we’re going to prove very soon.
We could say this, without the Christian God, Without the Christian God, you cannot predicate. That’s an old-fashioned kind of philosophical word. It’s just very simple means to speak of anything, right? If I say, David Doyle is sitting, what is the predicate of David? Is sitting, right? It’s just to speak of anything.
What we wanna say is, without the Christian God, Your worldview will be so irrational that you cannot consistently make sense of the world. That’s what we are going to claim. And we’re going to prove. We want to say that we lead with Jesus Christ. We lead with the Christian God. This is another thing that I want you to get in your mind is this. Anti-theism presupposes theism. What I want you to understand is that when any non-Christian tries to make an argument against the Christian God, he is assuming the Christian God, but he’s denying the Christian God at the same time in different ways, okay?
What we would say is he is on borrowed capital. He is, he does not, he’s not able consistently to say the things that he’s saying. Does that stop him from speaking those things? Of course not. He is trying to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. He’s trying to pretend that God is not revealing himself to him. But he very much is. Every time, what I want you to ultimately see is that every time a non-Christian opens his mouth and says anything, he’s already lost. The debate is over. He has demonstrated that the triune Christian God lives. Okay? This is bold. Go ahead. I’m gonna unpack this in a moment, so if you don’t fully understand, go with me on it. Go ahead.
Because he is a covenantal creature. Every person is a covenantal creature. Every person in this world is either covenant keeper or covenant breaker. Well, we’re all covenant breakers in Adam, but those who are in Christ are found to be, imputed to them, covenant keepers in him. But whether you’re a covenant keeper or a covenant breaker, you’re a covenantal being, you are a creature of God, and you are created in his image. You bear the image of God.
And the way that we’re going to do this, The way that we’re going to seek to prove the existence of God and the truth of the Christian God is by comparing worldviews. We’re going to indirectly prove that the Christian worldview is true. What we’ll do is, This does not stand for West Virginia. This is worldview. I’m gonna compare, we’ll just put an X for the Greek for Christ, the Christian worldview and the non-Christian worldview.
We’re just gonna compare. This is how we’re going to do it. We’re going to, answer the fool according to his folly, and we’re going to not answer him according to his folly. That’s what we’re going to do. Okay, let’s unpack this a bit. Let’s show how anti-theism presupposes theism.
We don’t want to just give blind evidence because our opponent, the person who’s attacking us, is not neutral, we’re not gonna say, hey, you be neutral, I’ll be neutral, let’s just look at the facts. We’re not gonna pretend like we’re from Missouri, the show me state. We’re not gonna pretend like we’re Agent Friday. Just the facts, man. We’re going to be faithful to what God has given to us.
Okay. I’m gonna put some words up here. And you, I just want you to put the pictures in your minds. Okay, three mice, right? We have Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and mighty mouse. They’re all three mice, right? They are. They’re mice. It’s not a trick question. I’m not trying to trap you. And somehow, a mouse that’s in your house is a mouse as well, okay? So you have particulars. You might have one in your field, you might have one in your house.
Why do we call them mice? That is to say, why is it that we think of this broad range of characteristics and attributes, but we all put them under the same word, the same title? mice. Right? Where is the standard of what, of mouseness? Where is it? I mean, let’s just think of this in terms of the particulars of experience.
You have Mickey and Minnie, they look kind of similar, but there are differences. Mighty Mouse is He’s different than the others, but the one in your field and the one in your house, they’re very different, right? And some mice are white and some are gray and some are brown and some are black. Why is it that we take all these particulars and then we put them under mouse? Does it make sense to take things that are vast and varied and put them all under the same group? We usually want to put similar things into categories of similar things. But where is the idea of categorizing anything? Is everybody with me? Where is mouseness? What’s that?
It’s biology, but what I’m saying is, trying to put our abstract philosophical hats on, there are millions and millions of differences between one mouse to the next to the next to the next. They’re very different. And yet, we put them all under the same word, under the same title, mouse. Let me show you what I mean. You have all these particulars. What unifies all of these particulars? There are those who would say, let me just back this up and show you really where I’m going. We’re going to be a little bit abstract here. Just go with me. I think you’re going to get this.
There is unity in the world, and there is diversity. Everybody with me that there is unity and diversity in the world? Interestingly, we believe that there is such a thing as mice, mouseness, but there are all these differences between them. We believe that though there are many differences among them, there’s a unified mouseness, okay? Many philosophers try and figure out how is it that with all these particulars, we can come up with a word that One word that makes sense.
There’s unity and diversity here. Now what I want you to understand is this. There are those in philosophy who would be called monists. And there are those who are atomists. Have you ever heard someone speak in a monistic sense? They would say, we are all one. We are so much one that all the particulars don’t exist. Okay. What do the Beatles say? I am you and you are me and we are all together. Okay.
What are the Beatles Assuming, they’re assuming a monist understanding of the world. All of your Eastern religions, they’re going to say, all is, and then they’ll put one word to it, all is illusion, okay? All is an illusion. You talk to a Hindu or a Buddhist, and you say, about the particulars of existence or their own existence they’re going to say these don’t exist what really exists is illusion or maya or there’s one thing that that just kind of sucks up all things into itself so that all these particulars in many Eastern religions, there’s a sense in which you are an illusion yourself, okay? And there are those who would be atomists. And an atomist is, they cannot account for the many, many varied differences of existence and of particulars. There are many, many…
Let me just say, what is it that strings all of these together? They don’t have an answer for that. There’s a man in the history of philosophy, and his name is Heraclitus. And he says, you cannot step into the same river twice. Okay? Does everybody know what he means by that?
We kind of have to put our thinking caps on and say, the river is always changing. It’s never the same river from this second, to this second, to this second, to this second, to this second. It’s constantly changing. It’s in flux. Okay? It is changing, changing, changing.
And he says, you can’t enter, you cannot step in the same river twice. I think there’s something very profound about this. Not that we’re going to agree with this ultimately, but what I want you to see is the conundrum of the non-believer, that he is either moving toward monism where all the particulars don’t even matter, don’t even exist, or all things are constantly changing in a chance universe where all of the particulars are so particular that we can’t put a label on any of them because they’re so diverse, okay? Let me give you a picture of what I’m trying to say with this.
Is there a doctor in the house? How often are we changing cells in our body? Different types, but our body’s changing. And it’s replacing cells, and replacing cells, and replacing cells. Some people, I’ve heard different estimates from different scientists. Every seven years, you have fully changed your body. All the cells have produced new ones and kicked out the old.
Okay? Some would say it’s two years. I don’t know all the ins and outs. Red blood cells only live for three months. So that’s red blood cells every three months. They’re being changed. It’s not like, okay, three months, all of you are out, but now you’re in, but it’s just constantly, your body is constantly in flux, okay?
Now, if your body is always in flux like that, and it is always changing, and let’s say it’s seven years, that your body has fully gotten rid of the old and brought in the new, then why do we keep people in jail past seven years? I’m serious on a non-Christian worldview. Why would you keep someone in jail for life? That’s not the same person who committed the crime. Right? It really is not. Unless there’s an immaterial aspect of the person that unifies the whole. Unless that person has a soul. If you’re a materialist, life in prison makes no sense. All right?
Let me put it this way. You get a picture of yourself. I saw someone quoted something recently. Someone gives you a picture of themselves and they say this was me when I was younger. It’s kind of redundant because every picture of you is a picture of you when you were younger. Okay, this is a picture of me and some people say this is a picture of me. Is that really you? This is me in high school. Yes, this is me.
Think about how much you’ve changed since then. You’ve got every single minute of every day you have your cells and your atoms everything’s just change change change change change change and and if you’re if you graduated more than seven years ago and that you’re looking at your high school picture then that’s not you what is it that strings all of the particulars of of experience together.
What I’m doing, this might be the strangest thing you’ve ever heard, some of you that aren’t philosophically minded, but what I want you to see is this is a deep day. And some people, for some days, this is a deep, heady day. We don’t normally do these kinds of things in morning instruction, but we’re talking about defending the faith and the absurdity of the non-Christian worldview. We won’t be as deep as this philosophically in coming weeks, but go ahead.
I think you’ve got it. How can you be? They’re arguing for this. You talk to anyone from Eastern religions, all is illusion. Because you can’t live realistically that way See, you’re such a presuppositional apologist and you’re so Vantillian, this is perfect, you can’t live that way, right? You’re not answering the fool according to his folly You’re saying, being foolish, I’m not even going to answer you But I’m saying, I guess what I’m saying is, I mean, I don’t know very many Eastern people meditate all day, so Well the ones that don’t, they go to work, but they don’t believe They believe when they go to work, the paper that they’re physically writing on isn’t there. Is that what you mean? I’m trying to understand this. They’re in the matrix.
OK. OK. Got me? OK. OK. Neo. Pre-gasified stores, they don’t even exist themselves. That’s how absurd it is. In a sense, yeah. I don’t know anybody like that. We’re in a Western country. We don’t have very many. We certainly have an intrusion of people who are monistic in a sense. There are Western philosophers who argued for different types of monism.
All is mind. And so all these things are just illusion. All is mined up there. So just get rid of the particulars. Thank you. I’m glad you asked. So there are people who argue for monism. There are people who are arguing for diversity, for atomism. As Doris said, and she is absolutely right, you can’t live that way. You can’t. But these are the choices for the non-Christian. All is mind, or all is illusion. All is water. Not joking, there’s more. All is water. All is one. And then all is not one, it’s just diverse.
Okay. I understand now why you say, as soon as they open their mouth, they’re consulted. I understand. Yep. Now, these are the two. Doris. She was asking me. Go ahead. Suddenly, my mind was flashing. Now, this was a British author. It was a history of medicine book I brought. And this was written by this British doctor. And in it, he is not, he’s an atheist. And here is his excuse for not, you know, And people don’t like to face the fact they’re going to die.
So they invented this business of religious belief, you know, that we can have life everlasting and all that. It’s no more real than Mickey Mouse. You know, that’s his attitude. Now, Brad, would you say that somebody who’s believing in a certain thing, he believes we’re all a bunch of electable charges. multiple electrical charges?
It sounds like you could push him to atomism, to demonstrating that the whole world is in flux. Well, he’s talking now about human beings and their bodies. Well, what I’m saying is you want to just look at what the person’s worldview is. You want to understand their worldview fully, and then you’re going to compare yours with theirs. Yours with theirs. And there, he’s in flux. He’s not trying to organize all the particulars under one thing. He’s going to embrace the diversity. But you’re going to push him to say, you’re not the same person you were two minutes ago.
Okay? I mean, in a sense, if you can’t step in the same river twice, everybody look at this sentence, God doesn’t exist. Christian says this, or a non-Christian says this. Okay, everybody close your eyes. Gotta open them, look at this again. That’s not the same sentence. You can’t read the same sentence twice. Okay? You are a different person now, now, now, now, now. What is it that unifies all these particulars? Non-Christian worldview, there’s nothing. You just, this is a different sentence. In a chance universe.
So what we’re going to say is, Non-Christian says this, God doesn’t exist. If he’s a monist, guess what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna be pushing him to say that his sentence doesn’t even make sense. I’m gonna say, in your worldview, what you just said doesn’t make sense at all, it’s irrational.
Okay, because it’s a particular sentence in a world where sentences don’t exist, they’re all illusion. Okay, if I’m discussing with someone who is atomistic, which is, this would be more often your Western-minded people, how do I push them to the fact that ultimately if you’re right, then there’s no such thing as you. You don’t exist.
Because, I mean, where is it? I’m gonna push it again. I’m gonna say, you’re a different sense, you’re a different person now, now, now, now, now. What is it that threads all of those particulars together? There’s nothing, there’s nothing in his worldview that threads all the particulars together to make sense of them, okay? That’s how I’m going to push them. Now, this is extremely abstract, and this obviously would not be my first place that I’d go, right? But notice, this person is predicating something of God. Ultimately, we wouldn’t say it’s false. He’s saying God doesn’t exist, but he’s predicating.
Okay? What’s my email? Somebody knows it in here. What is it? Predication happens. Hmm. Am I just borrowing from a bumper sticker? No. You see, my email address is an inside Vantillian joke. Predication happens. Cornelius Van Tilt rightly says that you cannot predicate without the Christian God, the Christian triune God. So what I’m saying, I’m not just stealing a bumper sticker and it’s a dirty joke, I’m not. I’m saying, predication happens.
Therefore, God exists. We can say, therefore, God exists. Because it would be irrational to predicate. It would be irrational to speak of anything unless the triune God exists. Because it makes perfect sense in this world view. It makes perfect sense why we would have discussion and debate and logic. There’s nothing inconsistent here. Everything about discussion is irrational. It makes no sense in here.
Now what the non-Christian is doing is he’s borrowing from your worldview. He’s borrowing from Christianity because he knows that he can’t predicate, he can’t discuss anything because either, particularly, and talking about things doesn’t make sense, or his worldview is so atomistic, it’s so particularized, that it, again, doesn’t make sense because you can’t read the same sentence twice. Okay? So… He’s borrowing from the Christian worldview because he can’t stand on his own worldview. He can’t stand on his own assumptions and presuppositions.
What we want to do is we want to push them to that so that they would see this to be the case. And so I think we’re vindicated. Are we gonna try and begin with seeking to prove some God? I wanna prove a God, and then after that I wanna seek to give arguments that might prove that it’s more than likely that the Christian God exists, no. Our worldview is at its base, at its foundation, at its root, one that brings together unity and diversity because we begin with God. And God is, in the Christian worldview, an eternal unity and diversity. He is the triune God. He is three in unity, right? You see how beautiful this is?
You can push him, if he’s a monist, you can push him into the diversity and show him that diversity and the particulars don’t really make any sense, but they sure make sense in my worldview. I don’t have the problems that you have. I don’t have problems in my worldview. My worldview is perfectly consistent. In my worldview, I have a God who is one in three. He is unity and diversity. You don’t have that, that’s why your worldviews are rational. Because predicating, discussing, it does not make sense in your worldview. Predication happens, therefore God exists. Predication happens at Gmail. Therefore, and it does happen in my email box, okay? So what is Proverbs 1-7 now?
Let’s read this in the light of the fact that the God’s triunity, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. We begin with God, and we’re gonna just compare our worldview with His. In our worldview, all things cohere. All things make sense. It doesn’t say that we know everything, we don’t have the answers to everything. We don’t know how God did things, but we know that He did do these things. And the non-believer, does not have that ability. He can’t bring these things together. Okay?
I think this is much more faithful to God’s Word than what we’ve uh… encountered with other christians other christians god bless them those who are not presuppositionalists and vantillians that don’t take into account the fact that i have presuppositions in my world view and so has the non-believer well i’m just going to give you evidence evidence evidence i’m going to challenge his presuppositions i want to challenge his His assumptions, his unguarded assumptions, the things that he has come to believe without good merit, all the things that he assumes beforehand, his pre, before suppositions, I want to just challenge those.
Challenge those and challenge those. What I want you to see is that if we are presuppositional in our apologetic method, we’re challenging their presumptions and we’re honest about ours, then we can use anything, anything at all to defend the faith. We can talk about the weather, we can talk about the news, we can talk about fishing, everything. we can use to talk about God. And we can push the non-believer and show him that it makes no sense in his worldview. That’s what we’re doing. Presuming the Christian God first, and we’re answering a fool according to his folly and not answering a fool according to his folly.
We’re saying, in your worldview, predication is impossible because Which, you know, pick your poison. In my worldview, makes perfect sense. In your worldview, in mine. And we just kind of, the pendulum swings back and forth in a Proverbs 26, four and five sort of way. My worldview, your worldview. Your irrationality, the rationality of my worldview. Back and forth. Much more faithful to God’s word. Okay, I know this was a bit abstract and might have been a bit difficult. But if it was, you never know. You might wake up at midnight and go, where is duckness? Where is mouseness? You never know.
All the non-Christian worldviews don’t make sense. They’re irrational. We’re done. So maybe ask me later. Is that okay? Is it quick? Okay. Thank you for that. Let’s talk after, sorry, we should be faithful to the time. Can they point to us and say that our worldview in some sense, in a very true sense, is illogical and irrational?
Are you predicating? That doesn’t make sense in your worldview. I’m talking about our definition of God. Is the definition of God illogical? That’s a whole other can of worms. What I would say to that person is I would not answer them according to their following. I would say, you’re predicating that doesn’t make sense in your worldview. It only makes sense in my worldview. Therefore, you’re presupposing my worldview to make your case. And I’d shut them down that way. Hold. Yes. Okay. Okay. Yes, but it’s revealed. Let’s pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your amazing grace that biblical wisdom is this deep and that you give us all the answers that we need. for truly your word supplies us with all that we need. We do not need to go look at the arguments of the philosophers in favor of you. We do not need to go look at archaeology or statistics. Though these things are helpful to us, though these things can be helpful to the believer, we would not offer just simple evidence to the non-believer.
We ask, O Father, that you would help us to challenge the presumptions and the presuppositions of those who would challenge us. We ask, O Father, that you would help us, guide us, and encourage us in the faith that we have the true faith and there is no God like our God. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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