“I don’t think New Testament writers thought and wrote in our 21st century Evangelical, American categories”

Could you explain what you mean a bit more here?

The vast majority of those who I know read my posts are people from either my Baptist church at home or my Baptist school, so this point — and many of the others — are to be understood as being against that American Baptist mindset (and they may be even a bit hyperbolic). Specifically in that point I was driving against the extreme tendency that I see to interpret the Bible in a cultural vacuum. We tend to assume a Western, individualistic, freedom-centric mindset that I think is foreign to the original writers in most, if not all, cases.

“I don’t think non-Protestant churches are apostate and hell-bound.”

Could you elucidate a bit on this as well? What do you mean by saying that the churches aren’t hell-bound? Is that to say that every member of the church isn’t going to hell? Or is that to say that the official doctrine of the church isn’t apostate? I hope it is the latter, given Rome’s clear heresies.

It’s to say that Protestants won’t be the only ones in heaven. The EOC (Eastern Orthodox Church) and RCC (Roman Catholic Church) both hold to many wrong things, but are they really damnable doctrines? Many Protestants hold to wrong things as well. I’m sure you would agree that perfect doctrine, as though it were possible, is not necessary for salvation. Saving faith in Christ is the basis for justification, not saving faith + proper doctrine.

“I don’t think the church was apostate from AD 100 until the 1500s”

This isn’t intended to imply that one who thinks that Rome is apostate now is required to think that the church was apostate from AD 100 until the 1500s, is it? Because that really looks like what this is supposed to be implying. But of course, I don’t think the former entails the latter at all.

I don’t believe the former entails the latter either. ☺ Rather, I was trying to communicate that Christianity is something larger than American Christianity.

“I don’t think appealing to tradition is bad”

Does anyone think that appeals to tradition per se are bad? Probably not. The problem is with appeals to tradition as inherently as authoritative as Scripture, or appeals to “tradition” that contradicts Scripture.

I’m quite sure that there are people who believe appealing to tradition is bad. My point was that tradition, what the Christian church has done since it started, is very important and telling.

“I don’t think the Westminster Confession of Faith was inspired”

I’m pretty sure no one in the world believes that. This was supposed to be a joke, right?

Somewhat. ☺ Like I said, some of these were a bit hyperbolic – exaggerated to drive home the point.

“I don’t think being non-Confessional is equal to heresy”

Well, it all depends on what won’t be confessed, right?

Of course it all depends on what won’t be confessed. What bothers me is when I see people write against a certain position, or rally against something, purely because it is “non-confessional.” They must keep in mind that the WCF is nice, but not perfect. Being non-confessional does not necessarily mean one is non-orthodox.

“I do…think we should take Jesus seriously when he said his spirit would lead the Church into all truth”

OK. What exactly does that mean, then?

That true Christianity didn’t suddenly appear when Christians got their act together and became Baptists a few hundred years ago.

“I do…think Protestants can learn much from other Christian traditions”

Such as?

The EOC seems to have a better grasp on holiness and “other”-ness of God, and how Christianity is all encompassing. The RCC seems to do a better job of saying Faith – Works = Non-saving faith. (Yes, they may take it too far, but we could still learn that lesson from them).

“I do…think apostolic succession is darn cool”

False, unsubstantiated claims to tyrannical authority over the Church of Jesus Christ are cool?

Well, no… those aren’t cool. ☺ Specifically, the priest at the Episcopal church which I attend at school has a chart showing the apostolic succession from Jesus all the way to him. That’s what I think is darn cool. Claiming tyrannical authority simply because of that succession is not cool.

“I do…think tradition (“the faith once delivered unto the saints”) is very important”

What is this “tradition” of which you write, exactly?

“That which is believed everywhere, in all times, by all?”

“I do…think the bounds of orthodoxy should be generous”

How generous?

About this generous: |—————————-|

I don’t know that we can quantitatively answer that. We should be very careful to not divide Christ’s body unnecessarily. Of course you’ll wonder how we determine when it is necessary. I don’t know. But I prefer to be very careful. The three ecumenical creeds seem good.

“I do…think ‘In essentials unity, in doubtful things liberty, but in all things charity’”

OK, what does that mean, exactly?

For example:

How charitable ought we to be with those who deny Sola Fide?
How charitable ought we to be with those who deny that homosexuality is a sin?
How charitable ought we to be with pedophiles?
How charitable ought we to be with those who deny the deity of Christ?

And, what, exactly, does “charity” mean practically with respect to how we ought to behave towards them?

If they deny that man is justified by saving faith alone, then we should be very careful of our involvement with them. Of course in saying this, you’re probably thinking of the RCC and I’m not so convinced they would say they’re not justified by saving faith alone.

They’re wrong. I don’t think they should be called heretics for it, though.

We should love them, but we shouldn’t let them run the church nursery.

We should be very careful. Do they really believe in the same Christianity as we do, or have they destroyed it? It seems to me they have destroyed it at its root in which case we should say that we don’t believe them to be a Christian church. Are there really many Christian churches that officially don’t believe in the deity of Christ?

You see, I think this is one of those slogans that might sound nice, but it doesn’t really mean anything, or at least the meaning is so elastic that it could mean anything. This is a problem because it’s easily misunderstood as a result.

Yes, but I think there is a place for leaving something open to interpretation just as there is a place for being painfully explicit. God could have given us the WCF (Westminster Confession of Faith), all systematic and spelled out and wonderful, but instead He gave us books. Some of them are history, some poems and songs, some words of wisdom, some letters to pastors, some letters to churches, etc. God didn’t see fit to give us a complete systematic theology of himself. We have incomplete, imperfect knowledge, and God didn’t see fit to give us complete, perfect knowledge. It seems to me we should act with that in mind.

I realize there is a danger in not being painfully explicit in meaning – in not spelling everything out. I think the current problems within the Episcopal Church demonstrate that well. But I don’t think that voids the usefulness of leaving some things open to interpretation, it just shows what we already know: man is sinful and prefers his own word to God’s.

Keith also made a few comments…

Furthermore, I would HIGHLY (I cannot emphasize it strongly enough) recommend that you listen to this:http://www.cmfnow.com/Download/gb1432.mp3

Though I greatly respect the late Dr. Bahnsen, he and I disagree on this. (But then he and you would disagree on a great number of things as well.) And to be honest, it seemed like most of his message was emotional pleading in saying “They condemn/ed us/Luther/Reformers! Doesn’t that make you mad!”

When Christ refers to the spirit leading the disciples into all truth, I believe He was talking about the disciples alone, meaning that everything they wrote under inspiration would be sufficient for doctrine, instruction in righteousness, etc. (2 Tim. 3:16). If the Spirit leads ALL believers into ALL truth then you have a massive task before you of explaining why so many theological chasms are present.

That’s certainly an aspect of what Jesus said, but if we were to interpret it like that, we would have to say that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to only his disciples, because the entire context is Jesus saying “I’m sending the Spirit, here’s what he will do.” The immediate audience was certainly his disciples, but the Holy Spirit and his ministry wasn’t limited to just them.

And I wouldn’t be so naïve as to say that the Spirit leads all believers into all truth, but rather that he has led the Holy Catholic church as a whole into truth. In other words, God doesn’t leave himself without a church; he won’t allow every church to fall into apostasy. I seem to recall the Reformers believing a similar thing, though I may be confused.

Second, Jude 1:3 isn’t talking about tradition—it is talking about the essentials of the Christian faith, namely the gospel. I use this verse when I talk to Mormons and others who believe that God continues to give us revelation to better our Christian walk.

At the time, though, what was the faith once delivered unto the saints? It was tradition, the essentials of the Christian faith. I think we both agree on this point, we’re just using different words.

Hopefully that clears up any confusion that last post may have caused. I don’t think I’m on the road to Rome, more like on the road to Canterbury, but I certainly appreciate the concern and feedback!

…think baptism is just a sign
…think New Testament writers thought and wrote in our 21st century Evangelical, American categories
…think non-Protestant churches are apostate and hell-bound
…think the church was apostate from AD 100 until the 1500s
…think appealing to tradition is bad
…think the Westminster Confession of Faith was inspired
…think God can be described as precisely, exactly, accurately, or wholly as I wish
…think being non-Confessional is equal to heresy

I do…

…think we should take Jesus seriously when he said his spirit would lead the Church into all truth
…think Protestants can learn much from other Christian traditions
…think apostolic succession is darn cool
…think tradition (“the faith once delivered unto the saints”) is very important
…think theology progresses and “grows-up” in expression, though remains the same in essence
…think the three ecumenical creeds are important and authoritative
…think something cool and mysterious happens at the Eucharist
…think charging someone with heresy is extremely serious
…think all of us hold to at least some bit of wrong thinking about God
…think the bounds of orthodoxy should be generous
…think “In essentials unity, in doubtful things liberty, but in all things charity”
…think the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church still exists today, but is not under one single ecclesiastical authority

1. God has, from eternity past, had a chosen group of people whom he has decided to save. They are the True Church.
2. He accomplishes salvation through a visible collection of people, which we call the Visible Church.
3. Being a member of that Visible Church does not necessarily mean that one is a member of the True Church; however, in most cases, being a member of the Invisible Church means that one is a member of the Visible Church.
4. In the Old Covenant, God’s Visible Church was Israel. The sign of membership in the Visible Church, i.e., Israel, was circumcision.
5. In the New Covenant, God’s Visible Church has become the institution of the church. The sign of membership in the Visible Church, i.e., the institutional church, is baptism.
6. All those born into the Old Covenant were given the sign of covenantal membership, i.e., circumcision.
7. We have no reason to change this practice; so all those born into the New Covenant are also given the sign of covenantal membership, i.e., baptism.

Now some thoughts for just the paedobaptists, unless some credobaptists want to pretend to be cool paedobapists for a few minutes.   My understanding of the Reformed view of baptismal efficacy is still a little shaky. Let me know if this is right: baptism is the normal means of saving grace for God’s elect, but God can and does also give saving grace in the absence of baptism or at a different time than baptism. Does that sound about right? Anyone have any great thoughts on presumptive regeneration? It seems unavoidable to me, but…

Next order of business, I have a $50 Amazon giftcard burning a hole in my pocket. I’m thinking of getting the following books:

• What St. Paul Really Said by N. T. Wright
• Given For You by Keith A. Mathison
• ”Reformed” Is Not Enough by Douglas Wilson
• Paul: In Fresh Perspective by N. T. Wright

I may yet drop one of the N. T. Wright books for John Williamson Nevin’s The Mystical Presence. Other than the typical warnings about N. T. Wright (and to some, Douglas Wilson), any comments about those books?

Last but not least, a quote and some other good articles I’ve found. From ReformedCatholicism…

“Theology is the study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study us and our ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.” – Frederich Buechner

Freedom from Quiet Time Guilt

Within the Bounds of Orthodoxy: Both the FV (Federal Vision) and the NPP (New Perspective on Paul)
This is the only article I’ve found where the proponents of the Federal Vision actually agree with how the author describes what the FV teaches.

Dr. StrangeLiturgy

Toward a Catholic Calvinism

The Closing of the Calvinistic Mind
A little whiny in a few places, but the article as a whole is good.

Since I’m too distracted (or lazy) to finish any of my own articles, I’m going to post a few quotes and links.

From The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark A. Noll

[It] is evident that in almost every case where theology has provided guidance for broader intellectual work, that theology has featured insights, not from dispensationalism or other twentieth-century evangelical innovations, but from classical traditions like Anglicanism, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Anabaptism, Lutheranism, or even Eastern Orthodoxy.

Quoting Os Guinness:

Evangelicals have been deeply sinful in being anti-intellectual ever since the 1820s and 1830s. For the longest time we didn’t pay the cultural price for that because we had the numbers, the social zeal, and the spiritual passion for the gospel. But today we are beginning to pay the cultural price. And you can see that most evangelicals simply don’t think. For example, there has been no serious evangelical public philosophy in this century…. It has always been a sin not to love the Lord our God with our minds as well as our hearts and souls…. We have excused this with a degree of pietism and pretend that this is something other than what it is – that is, sin…. Evangelicals need to repent of their refusal to think Christianly and to develop the mind of Christ.

Quoting Charles Malik:

The greatest danger besetting American Evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind as to its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough…. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is abdicated and vacated to the enemy. Who among the evangelicals can stand up to the great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship and research? Who among the evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics?

[Editor aside: only two Evangelicals come to mind: philosopher Alvin Plantinga and scientist Kurt Wise]

From Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis:

I said not long before that work and weakness are comforters. But sweat is the kindest creature of the three – far better than philosophy, as a cure for ill thoughts.

It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book, as a women is with child.

17 Marks of a Sound Christian by Thomas Hooker

What God created on the eight day

First, I finally started reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I’m only a few chapters in, but two things strike me. First, he has a very interesting, though good, writing style. It’s very conversational and easy. Second, he speaks of how we sometimes don’t like things until we are shown how to like them. I’m inclined to agree with him.

Second, it’s become tradition in my family that, when one of us graduates from high school, we are given an album with letters of encouragement and advice from family members and close friends. In mine, one of the things that was said was something to the effect of, “Never let your learning [about theology] fill your head and cause you to forget God’s love.” I’ve been thinking on that since I read it. Then, while I was working on some homework, I came across 2 Peter 1:5-11:

5For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Peter seems to be saying the same thing. He says that knowledge should lead to self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. If we do not practice these things we have forgotten God’s grace. We are nearsighted and cannot see the bigger picture of Christ’s love. I suppose that makes sense.

Third, one good thing which has come from my denominational wanderings is a greater appreciation of the Eucharist. A Zwinglian view of the Eucharist really robs it of any meaning. Indeed, it is a remembrance of Christ’s work but it is also so much more. It is something powerful enough that God judges those who participate in it unworthily (1 Corinthians 11). Just think of how seriously God must take his Communion, then. It is not something to be done flippantly, but with rightful respect. The exact nature of the Eucharist may well be outside our understanding, full of mystery, but we do know it is something which God takes very seriously. It seems wise that we do the same.

From the Book of Common Prayer, to be used at the Eucharist:
We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

I don’t often share with people what I am currently learning from God — to my own discredit — but tonight I don’t feel like being novel or pseudo-intellectual, and so that is precisely what I will do.

Since last year, God has been convicting me of my own lack of love towards other people. I tend to be overly judgmental and critical, self-righteous, and proud. I often think the worst of people and their intentions, all the while ignoring my own ulterior motives and self-glorifying activities. I do not love the unsaved as Christ does, and, perhaps worse, I do not love the Bride of Christ as he does. If the world is supposed to know us by our love, then I have failed miserably to identify myself as a Christian.

That is the area in which I am working the hardest, yet I still fail so much! I understand more what Paul meant when he said he wants to do good, yet still he does not do it.

I consider going on to speak of why the ecumenism of the Anglican Church is so attractive to me, but that may be driving me too far off topic. Suffice it to say that love is an area which not only I, but the Christian Church as a whole seems to neglect. May God have mercy upon us for wrongly dividing his Bride.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

—————————————–

Interesting points, with a few rebuttals from your less Covenant minded friend. You have not completely taken into account the portions of the law that refer to practices which the NT clearly says we need not follow, i.e. circumcision, animal sacrifices, etc.

Yep, I purposefully skipped over those because the post was already a little long. Theonomists would say that the sacrifices and separation laws do not continue in the new covenant for two reasons. First, as you say, the sacrifices did not themselves save, but rather they looked forward to the perfect sacrifice. Now that the perfect sacrifice has come, there is no need for any more sacrifices. Second, while the previous covenants had been with the people of Israel, this new covenant is with all people (Paul talks of no distinction between Jew or Gentile). There is no longer a separation by people group so no separation laws.

Or if it helps, view this not as an issue of OT -> NT continuity, but rather what the standard for human behavior is. The standard should be God’s law.

So if those sacraments are done away with, where does the rest of the law go? Can we pick and choose which parts of the law are still applicable and still hold power? I think not.

We’re not so much picking and choosing which parts still apply, but rather we assume it all still applies unless we have a good reason to disregard it. It would be fallacious to say that the civil law gets thrown out because the ceremonial law is now obsolete; they are two different categories.

The point here is that because of the salvation we have experienced and the love that God has chosen to show us, we obey his law – not Levitical, for the Levitical law only pointed forward to Christ and Christ has already come – but instead we follow the law He laid upon our hearts as well as the civil law of whatever nation we happen to reside in.

But the Levitical law is God’s law. I agree that we should obey the law which he inscribes on our hearts, but why would that law be any different than his revealed law? Furthermore, what if what two Christians believe to be the law as inscribed on their hearts is different? How do we determine who is right? Holding to individual, revealed law could quickly devolve into subjectivism.

I agree as well that we should follow the civil law of our respective nations, but we return to the question of “by what standard?” When we determine law, what standard do we use? The theonomist would answer: “God’s perfect Law.”

However when God was there what did he do? When the Christ was there he instead forgave her because of the shame and repentance in her heart. That’s justice from a Christ-One for the post OT era, and that’s how we should view the Law.

That instance cannot be viewed as normative, because if it is then we can disregard all law and punishment.

I decided to check out a few different perspectives on the continuity/applicability of the Law in our current time, and came upon a familiar name: Greg Bahnsen, and again I find myself agreeing with his stance on the topic.

Growing up in an Evangelical Baptist home and church, I had always assumed that, while the OT Law was good for the Israelites, it was somehow no longer applicable for today’s Christians. Upon reading some articles by Bahnsen and a few other theologians, however, I cannot see how anything but the opposite could be the case.

Bahnsen et al teach a position called “theonomy;” theos meaning “God” and nomy meaning “law” so that it is literally “God’s law.” The question which Rushdoony, a theonomist, famously asked — “by what standard should governmental law be determined?” — is answered by the theonomist by saying that the “general equity” of the civil Law should be legislated.

What is meant by the “general equity” of the Law, then? Quite simply it means that the principles of justice outlined in the civil law of the OT should be legislated by government. A classic example is the case of the OT requiring railings around roofs of houses. The principle which theonomists would advocate is that accidental injury and death should be properly avoided. The current day application would then be things such as fencing swimming pools, building codes, etc.

A few initial objections may be made. First, if we look to the punishments for crimes outlined in the OT civil law, we may be tempted to think that they are overly harsh. The simple response is to remind ourselves of the creator of the law: God. We can be assured that the punishment which he commands is perfectly just.

Second, we may object by pointing to Luke where we are told that the Gospel fulfills the Law. The answer is again quite simple: fulfill does not mean abrogate. Fulfillment of the Law means that those incapable of themselves fulfilling it (i.e., everyone) can find fulfillment in Christ. It does not remove the law. An argument ad absurdum could also be used here to say that if fulfilled means abrogated then Christians are not bound to any law.

Third, we may initially wonder if theonomists advocate the overthrow of government to be able to legislate these laws. As far as I know, no theonomist does advocate civil war, but they do say that we should try to work through government to make these laws a reality.

Fourth, we may object by saying that the OT law was given only to the Israelites or Christians; it is unfair to hold non-Christians or Gentiles to that law. This, however, is not the example given in the OT. God, numerous times, judges people or nations outside of the theocracy of Israel for not obeying his commandments. This is seen in the judgment of Sodom and Gommorrah (Gen. 18:20), and when God destroys the Canaanites for their lawlessness (Lev. 18:24-27).

I’ll close by asking that same question which Rushdoony asked: “by what standard?” If we do not establish laws by God’s perfect standard, then by what standard do we establish them? We must base our laws upon the general equity of OT civil law. I cannot see any other position to take biblically or logically.

First I will start with the idea of a transcendental argument. Transcendental arguments were first used by Immanuel Kant to prove the existence of outside minds. He, to over-simply it, stated that, while we are free to not believe in the existence of outside minds, doing so reduces us to insanity and irrationalism. Outside minds must exist because the idea of them not existing is not conceivable; they exist because of the impossibility of the contrary. That is the idea behind a transcendental argument.

There is a bit of a controversy over the proper, formal symbolic definition of a transcendental argument, but below is what I believe to be the best formulation. “M” is the possibility operator.

1) P
2) ~M(P & ~Q)
3) Q

Read aloud, that would be said: “P is the case; it is not possible that P is the case and Q is not the case; therefore, Q is the case.” It should be clear that it could again be said that Q is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. If P is true, it is not possible that Q is not also true. The power of transcendental arguments should also be somewhat clear; the greatest struggle, though, comes in showing that P necessitates Q and only Q. If R could also be the case instead of Q, then Q is not shown by P.

Kant’s usage of this in proving outside minds was quite a bit more complicated in that he had to show that no outside minds led to irrationalism, but the basic concept remains the same.

Since I have hopefully established, in the last post, the premise that there are no truly neutral philosophical positions, then we know that arguments, and any ideas at all, are, at base, question-begging. This means that by making any argument against a philosophical position, we are open to the charge of begging the question. Presumably, then, the only way to argue against another position is by reductio ad absurdum — taking the philosophical position’s statements and showing that the logical conclusion of the position’s own beliefs do not make sense or lead to contradiction.

A reductio ad absurdum argument is where the argument’s own premises are taken to their logical conclusion to show that the argument is not valid (absurd), e.g., “That is the case when pigs fly!” The person proposing the argument is free to accept the absurd conclusion rather than give up their argument.

By arguing reductio ad absurdum we are able to avoid the charge of begging the question because we are not using our own position’s beliefs, but rather the opposing position’s self acknowledgements.

Using these two things, a transcendental argument and an argument ad absurdum, we can make a powerful argument for the truth of Christianity. The argument is known as the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG) and defending using a systematic apologetic know as presuppositional apologetics (PA). The basic TAG is formed like this:

1) The world is intelligible, and uniform.
2) It is not possible that there can be a world in which the world is intelligible and the Christian God does not exist.
3) Therefore, the Christian God exists.

Hopefully it is obvious how this fits the form of a transcendental argument. It should also be obvious that most people do not readily accept the middle part of the argument: that only the Christian God can lead to a world of intelligibility; but this is where an argument ad absurdum and presuppositional apologetics come in. The presuppositional apologist shows that the other philosophical position, whatever it may be, does not allow for a world of intelligibility, or is self-contradicting. In my next post I hope to show that this is not such an outlandish idea as it may seem.

The ability to be neutral is supposed in many different places in life; however, it is seen most clearly and most ironically in questions regarding religion. Atheists believe that children should not be taught any specific religion, but rather left up to their own devices. Of course, this is hardly neutrality unless the atheists are willing to beg the question by assuming their own, unargued truth.

This pretended neutrality is present in the debate about religion in school. Secular lawmakers would have us think that by not speaking of religion in school, we are not endorsing any religion; they are simply helping to create open-mindedness. However, open-mindedness is acceptable only in the “religion” of atheism (and, I suppose, some transcendental religions). They endorse inclusive religion, all the while pretending to be religiously silent.

Finally, pretended neutrality is painfully evident in secular science, especially in regards to the origin of man and the universe. Unlike the other two examples, secular science actually states from the beginning that the supernatural will not be allowed; all things must have a natural explanation. From the outset, they disallow God. Any thoughts that science is neutral, then, must be dismissed – secular science is anything but neutral!

This myth of neutrality is, I believe, a problem that is not talked about nearly enough in Christianity. Christians seem to be willing to admit to non-Christians that there is a neutral position and Christianity is not it. They do not realize that there is no neutral position, philosophically or biblically. This pretended neutral ground advantage that atheists believe they have does not exist, and so neither does the advantage.

So then, since arguments ultimately hinge upon their presuppositions, it is the presuppositions that must eventually be called into question. The most effective way to challenge a presupposition is through reductio ad absurdum through a transcendental argument. I’ll discuss the concept of a transcendental argument in part three, which will hopefully take less than 4 months.