DEBATE: TRENT HORN VS. JAY DYER: SHOULD CHRISTIANS ACCEPT NATURAL THEOLOGY?

0:24Suan SonnaWelcome to this episode of intellectual conservatism.

0:27Suan SonnaToday, I'm here with Trent Horn and Jay Dyer, and we are discussing the resolution,

0:32Suan SonnaChristians should reject natural theology.

0:35Suan SonnaJay Dyer is arguing in the affirmative and Trent Horn in the negative. And, obviously, you know, if you've been paying attention to YouTube at all, you're familiar with both of these gentlemen. I don't think I have to give a strong introduction to either of them because they have a reputation as defending the Christian faith. Especially, they've gone around debating various

0:53Suan Sonnaatheists and other people online

0:55Suan Sonnaspreading, of course, the truth of Christianity. And so rather than giving just a long introduction to both of them, I think I'll just go into the format for this

1:04Suan Sonnaevening's discussion.

1:06Suan SonnaSo we're gonna start off with fifteen minute opening statements

1:09Suan Sonnafollowed by seven minute rebuttals,

1:12Suan Sonnafour minute second rebuttals,

1:15Suan Sonnaeight minute cross examination periods,

1:18Suan Sonnathirty minute q and a from you, the viewers, and then we'll close with, five minute closing statements.

1:24Suan SonnaSo I think Jay is going first, and so I'll get, all that set up and ready to go. And when your time runs out, I'm just gonna kind of holler in the background. But, really, my goal in this discussion tonight is just be to be in the background and to kind of not exist. And so,

1:40Suan SonnaJerry, are you ready?

1:41Jay DyerYeah. One thing I would like to say is just from the outset, thanks to Trent for doing this. And as I was telling Trent beforehand, I've watched several of his debates, at least three of them, and I think he's a really skilled debater. And the other thing that I appreciate about Trent is that he

1:56Jay DyerI think he's a sincere person. And a lot of times in this domain, people probably aren't that sincere,

2:02Jay Dyerat least not as often as we would hope. But,

2:05Jay DyerI think that Tridentine is a sincere guy, so I'm looking forward to a free full debate today.

2:09Trent HornLikewise, Jay. Thank you.

2:10Jay DyerSure.

2:11Suan SonnaAlright.

2:13Suan SonnaWell, Jay, whenever you're ready, I'll get the timer going. Fifteen minutes.

2:17Jay DyerOne thing before you start, I would like to add too is that I mentioned to you, Suwan, before

2:22Jay Dyerthis that a lot of what we're gonna be talking about is gonna be pretty dense. So

2:27Jay DyerI will be referencing a lot of papers and and articles, scholarly essays that has agreed to later tag below. So if if I blow past something and you wanna look it up later,

2:39Jay Dyerwe do he he does plan to put the references below.

2:43Suan SonnaMhmm. Yep.

2:45Jay DyerAlright. Are you ready? Mhmm. Alright. Let me okay.

2:50Jay DyerAlright. So, you know, when it comes to this issue, there's a lot of nuance and a lot of clarity that needs to be made. So first of all, I wanna say that,

2:58Jay DyerI'm not defending a position that there's no such thing as natural law. I'm not defending a position that there's no such thing as moral law. I'm not defending a position that per se there's no such thing as natural theology

3:12Jay Dyersimplic simpliciter because it really depends on what we mean by the term natural theology.

3:17Jay DyerOne of our great theologians in the Orthodox Church, soon to be a saint,

3:22Jay Dyerfather,

3:24Jay Dyerin his famous

3:26Jay Dyerdogmatic work, Orthodox Dogmatics,

3:29Jay Dyerthat for the Orthodox Church, there is no natural theology.

3:32Jay DyerAnd this is because we follow the teaching of Saint Maximus when it comes to the Christological

3:36Jay Dyercharacter of the created order. So there's in other words, there's a fundamental Christological

3:41Jay Dyerelement to the created order that doesn't allow us to bypass that Christology or that Trinitarian,

3:47Jay Dyertheology

3:48Jay Dyerto do something like natural theology. So from the outset, San Eloy notes that when we look at the natural order and when we do what we what might call natural contemplation,

3:59Jay Dyerthe content of the natural order and natural contemplation is the same as the content of scripture.

4:05Jay DyerAnd in orthodox theology, in many places I will show,

4:09Jay Dyerthat is actually the doctrine of the logi. So although it might sound weird to those that aren't familiar with this doctrine, say,

4:15Jay DyerMaximus' doctrine, which is really a logically consistent,

4:19Jay Dyerposition of following through many centuries

4:22Jay Dyerand councils in terms of working out their Christology,

4:25Jay DyerMaximus is really the summation

4:27Jay Dyerof this doctrine of the logi, and it really is the embodiment

4:31Jay Dyerof Christ, we could say, in the created order, which really comes to fruition after the resurrection and and anticipation

4:37Jay Dyerof of the eschaton.

4:40Jay DyerOther orthodox theologians, for example, continue in this tradition to ex to point out that there's so many problems with the Hellenic idea of natural theology that really it go undergoes what we might say is a metamorphosis.

4:52Jay DyerFather Florovsky in his essay, revelation, faith, and philosophy,

4:55Jay DyerSaint Justin Popovich in his

4:58Jay Dyerchapter in orthodox faith and life in Christ,

5:00Jay Dyeron the epistemology

5:02Jay Dyerof Isaac the Assyrian notes that this is also in Isaac Saint Isaac the Syrian and epistemology

5:08Jay Dyerof

5:09Jay Dyerthe Logi.

5:10Jay DyerAnd so the fundamental issue here is that as he notes and as, Florovsky points out, there's a transformation of the terms and the words that the Hellenic philosophers use.

5:20Jay DyerThe great

5:21Jay Dyerconvert to orthodoxy, Yaroslav Pelagian,

5:24Jay Dyerwrote an act an excellent book that also touches on this topic that I recommend in more detail,

5:30Jay Dyerwhere he talks about the metamorphosis

5:32Jay Dyerof natural theology in the theo in the Cappadocians. Of And, course, the Cappadocians are gonna play a huge role in what I'm gonna try to get to today.

5:40Jay DyerSo in other words, what we call the theology of nature or theologizing reasoning about the natural world is not itself the problem. It's rather the reference of these things. It's rather the grounding of these things in an ep an epistemological

5:53Jay Dyersense.

5:53Jay DyerAnd so Saint Joseph and Papae, which goes into a great deal to explain that orthodox nociology

5:57Jay Dyeris unique. And it's unique precisely because it's a different metaphysic, a different anthropology,

6:03Jay Dyernamely centered around the doctrine of the noose. In Roman Catholic theology, to my knowledge, I don't know of any place where there's an, an explicit acknowledgment of the doctrine of the noose or the heart of man, which is the primary organ or faculty for knowing god.

6:16Jay DyerThe doctrine of the noose will then play a central role in all orthodox theologians that I'm aware of in terms of how we would exegete texts like Romans one or Psalm 19, which are typically used as texts to prove natural theology in a Thomistic sense.

6:30Jay DyerIn this in this context,

6:31Jay Dyermost orthodox writers that discuss or exegete the passage, they will actually refer to this in a Christological way or in a reference to

6:40Jay Dyerthe energies of Christ.

6:42Jay DyerSo in other words, the heavens declare the glory of god, and the glory of god is actually not a creature. In fact, it is a energy that the saints themselves perceive and participate in. The world displays, for example, according to Romans one, the divine dunamis.

6:55Jay DyerThe dunamis in the Greek, if you would look to, for example, the famous book by scholar,

7:02Jay DyerMichael Barnes,

7:04Jay DyerBarnes notes in the power of god in, quite a bit of detail that the theology of Dunamis in the Cappadocians and in particularly in Saint Gregory of Nazi Anzus is fundamentally about the potentia

7:15Jay Dyerthat god has that he doesn't always necessarily actualize. In other words, god does not have to create, for example, all the possible worlds. He only actualized this world, and he did that on the basis of the that he willed to actualize.

7:28Jay DyerThere's a great paper by Sarah from Hamilton in our Discord

7:31Jay Dyerat rule of faith that I will I will post below as well about this position and issue with regard to the actualized.

7:38Jay DyerSo in other words, Barnes notes that

7:41Jay Dyerwhat is shown

7:43Jay Dyerwhat is shown in the created order, does not exercise

7:46Jay Dyergod does not exercise every power necessarily.

7:48Jay DyerAnother example of this would be when the son becomes incarnate,

7:51Jay Dyerthere's a kenosis that occurs, right, according to, Saint Paul in the Philippians. And in this kenosis, the son becomes a baby. Right? He doesn't destroy

8:00Jay Dyerthe world at the same time, for example, as he

8:03Jay Dyerwalks on water. And what this shows us is that we can't have a strict identification

8:08Jay Dyerthesis doctrine of actus purus because it would be then impossible for Christ to undergo a kenotic state,

8:14Jay Dyerenter into a mode of being proper to one hypostasis coming into time and space

8:19Jay Dyerin a unique mode that the other two hypostasis don't do. So in other words, natural theology right away would pro propose a problem in terms of its act as purest presuppositions

8:28Jay Dyerin regard to the doctrine of the incarnation. For example, in Ed Phaser's book, five proofs, Phaser literally says in the, chapter on the neo neoplatonic proof that if this is the case and he thinks it is a good argument for god supposedly,

8:40Jay Dyerthen this god cannot enter into time and space because that would be to undergo change for that god, for that essence. Right?

8:48Jay DyerBut

8:49Jay Dyerdid

8:50Jay Dyerdoctor phaser not think about the possibility of how that might affect or negate or preclude the doctrine of the incarnation whereby one hypostasis does enter into the mode of being in time and space. For example, again, the action of creating the world for by Christ is distinct from the action of walking on water, and neither of those actions is the same as destroying the world in the conflagration.

9:11Jay DyerSo all of these things, I think, are important to keep in mind. There's an essay that I recommend, a paper by doctor Bradshaw, where doctor Bradshaw,

9:18Jay Dyergoes into quite a bit of exegesis in the old New Testament about this issue of the energeia and then being really distinct in multiple scriptural passages. So the energeia's doctrine is not grounded in the Cappadocians or in Palamas. It's actually grounded in

9:31Jay Dyerthe the the New Testament, Old Testament theology itself, particularly Paul's epistles where he talks about the energeia.

9:38Jay DyerTransposition,

9:39Jay Dyeras I've heard it outlined in multiple debates, including with Ben Watkins, is what I would classify, not with the intention of miss mischaracterizing

9:46Jay Dyerhim. He can he can freely correct me at any point if he thinks I misread him.

9:50Jay DyerIt's something akin to a classical foundationalist approach. In the classical foundationalist approach,

9:55Jay Dyerespecially the Matt Dillahoney debate, we've seen a basic empiricist narrative that the classic Aristotelian type arguments for change,

10:03Jay Dyeract, potency.

10:04Jay DyerThe problem here is that these all contain tremendous metaphysical

10:08Jay Dyerbaggage.

10:09Jay DyerGod just is unlimited being himself, he says. God is not compo composed. God is not in time and space.

10:17Jay DyerThe observations of the world around us through just observing since data, Glenn, can lead us to this supposed conclusions about this deity.

10:26Jay DyerHe even says this is a first actualizer with no potential, etcetera. This has, of course, been subject to many, many, many examples of critique in the academic literature, particularly regarding

10:37Jay Dyerthe not just modal collapse, but also what's called the identity thesis. Radagowitz's

10:41Jay Dyerfamous PhD thesis on this goes into great detail to show that, in fact, the Roman Catholic doctrine of identity thesis is really part and parcel, especially in Aquinas, with what we see in Unamius.

10:52Jay DyerAnd in fact, Bezos arguments against Unamius are quite the contrary to what we might expect. Right? Basil does not accept or neoplatonic definition of simplicity, which underlies

11:02Jay Dyerthe very doctrine that

11:05Jay DyerI've heard Trident outline. Now the eternal actualizer point is actually ridicule ridiculed by Saint Basil in hexameron two, where Basil said that if it's if it's case that god is an eternal actualizer, then it stands to reason, like Aristotle thought, that there's also an eternal world that he actualizes.

11:19Jay DyerFor him to have any meaning as eternal actualizer requires an eternal other than himself for him to perpetually move and actualize. This, in fact, is why phaser himself has given up the the project of using this line of causal chains or

11:33Jay Dyerreasoning back to a first cause as if you could prove or demonstrate

11:37Jay Dyercreation as a specific action.

11:39Jay DyerIn fact, phaser just submits and says, we can't do that. It doesn't work. In fact, the problem at root here really isn't about that. It's about the meaning of the term and usage of the classical theistic attributes.

11:51Jay DyerThe problem is outlined in the paper that, I would recommend,

11:55Jay Dyerdoctor Gariepy's paper,

11:57Jay Dyerwhich goes into great detail in demonstrating logically and formally the actual fallacies involved in theistic,

12:04Jay Dyerexcuse me, in the idea of a generic theism. The idea that natural theology can actually arise to on the basis of theory neutral

12:12Jay Dyerpredicates, theory neutral attributes,

12:14Jay Dyerthe omniscience on the presence, eternality,

12:17Jay Dyerfreedom,

12:18Jay Dyergoodness, creator status,

12:20Jay Dyersustaining status, and personal status of this deity as well as according to, for example, as an as a a

12:27Jay Dyera typical Thomist,

12:29Jay Dyerthat this deity is also deserves

12:31Jay Dyerreverence and worship. This deity also

12:34Jay Dyeris the same in all the monotheistic religions because they have similar predicates. This is, of course, a fallacy. The fact that these different religious systems have similar predicates for the deity, it does not follow logically that they are referring to the same deity. But this is, in fact, what underlies all

12:49Jay Dyernatural theological argumentation about the Abrahamic monotheistic faiths. And in fact, I've heard Trident argue many times that the Abrahamic or Abrahamic or monotheistic religion is a common core generic type of theism that we see in these authors.

13:04Jay DyerFor example, it doesn't work to say that all the predicates are referring to the same referent merely because they have different

13:11Jay Dyeragain, because they have different systems because I can give you multiple examples such as the quantifier shift fallacy where, for example, if we were looking at the fact that because monotheistic religions all claim to believe in one god, it does not follow logically that they believe in or refer to the same god. Again, that is the quantifier shift fallacy. We can think of examples like every girl loves one boy, therefore, girl loves the same boy. Or every person is born of a woman, therefore, every person is born of the same woman. It's an obvious fallacy and doesn't logically follow. This also relates to the what in log linguistic philosophy or logic is called the non substitutivity

13:44Jay Dyerof identicals in, linguistic intentional context. Right? So in other words, we can't just substitute words

13:50Jay Dyeras if they mean the same thing because they even nest even if they might refer to the same thing. So for example, we could think of an example where

13:58Jay DyerI list to you I'm thinking of a man who is a famous Greek, a famous

14:04Jay Dyerlover and promoter of philosophy,

14:06Jay Dyera very wealthy patrician,

14:07Jay Dyerand his name is Aristotle.

14:09Jay DyerNow we might both intend to have the same referent, but in fact, we aren't thinking of the same thing because I might be thinking of Aristotle the philosopher

14:17Jay Dyerin the ancient world. You might be thinking of Aristotle, Onassis, the famous billionaire of recent memory. These are good examples as well as something like the the we can give another example such as the one true god is the trinity. Aristotle believed in one god. Therefore, Aristotle believed in the trinity. Well, obviously, that's not true. No one would accept that. What that shows is that you can't substitute the identity

14:38Jay Dyerof identical words,

14:40Jay Dyerwithout looking at the intentional epistemic context.

14:44Jay DyerAnd this is, again, just another problem that that plagues

14:47Jay Dyerthe theistic or excuse me, the the assumptions of,

14:51Jay Dyerbasic generic theism. The other problem, of course, is that it ought to lead to perennialism. If there's a common core religion, which is actually the presupposition of natural theology in terms of its monotheistic

15:02Jay Dyerpredicates,

15:03Jay Dyerthen we are bypassing the trinity, and we're actually arguing for something other than the content of the the the systems of Judaism, Christianity,

15:11Jay Dyerand Islam. So in other words, it would be a fourth core position that is the real position distinct from the other three. And in fact, as as we saw in the Swinburne example, the attributes, one of those attributes he list is that we should obey god. Well, the obedience required to god is mutually exclusive in these different systems. So in his a Muslim doesn't allow that that you can obey the same god in the same way in Christianity

15:35Jay Dyereven though they might say or believe falsely that we have the same god. In fact, I could just simply refer to Jesus' explication of the of this notion in the New Testament when from John five to John nine, this very question comes up where Jesus says that even if you think or reference the father, you don't have any access to the father apart from me.

15:56Jay DyerAnd, ultimately, what is the goal of apologetics? Just to mentally convince people of a position? No. It's actually to convince them logically that there are good reasons or only good reasons or that Christianity is the only position that should be accepted. We in other words, we aren't intending to create the not more philosophers

16:11Jay Dyerin a Hellenic pagan sense. We're actually intending to convert people to Christ. Now when I hear Trent's approach, really, what I don't wanna drill down to is that this the the Trent's approach is based on a presupposition about how, epistemology works, and Trent basically follows the ancient and medieval world's approach that

16:30Jay Dyermetaphysics is prior to epistemology. Of course, after human con, the whole modern world questions this

16:36Jay Dyerand actually just ask for a justification for assuming that you can do your metaphysical before you do the legwork

16:42Jay Dyerof your epistemology. In other words, you have now a gigantic epistemic bootstrapping

16:46Jay Dyeragenda that you have to get through if you want to demonstrate any of your first principles or arguments that you would make on the basis of those first principles. So because he follows the parapatetic axiom of Aquinas, Aquinas accepts in de veritate the parapatetic axiom, at least as far as I can tell, Trent accepts it. I don't I haven't heard anything that makes me think he doesn't. Then the parapatetic axiom literally states that anything that is there's nothing in the intellect that's not first in the senses. And, of course, the devastating critique of this that many modern epistemologists have pointed out is that that proposition itself is not evident in sense experience. So in other words, now Trent is in the horns of a dilemma because if he wants to argue on the assumption of Aristotelian

17:27Jay Dyeranthropology and epistemology,

17:29Jay Dyerthen he's stuck in the the position of affirming what Aristotle says

17:33Jay Dyerin posterior analytics,

17:34Jay Dyerprior analytics,

17:36Jay Dyerphysics, and I'll reference these later, that there's two ways that we go about knowing things. One is that which is better known in itself and that which is better known by us. Right? That which is better known by us

17:49Jay Dyerrefers to the empirical evidence that we have referring back to the first cause.

17:55Jay DyerAnd Alright, Jake.

17:56Suan SonnaTry to wrap up your your opening statement.

17:59Jay DyerHow much time do I have?

18:00Suan SonnaTechnically, the time's run out, but I don't wanna cut you off, like, from whatever your final thought was.

18:06Jay DyerOkay. So, essentially, this results in, I'll I'll get to this later perhaps, but, this is just a a way to restate the point that the parapatetic axiom itself,

18:15Jay Dyeris not self justifying

18:17Jay Dyeror self referential.

18:18Jay DyerAnd so this would mean that really none of Trent's arguments or claims from natural theology would've got would get off the ground until he deals with the multiple well known problems. This is my closing statement here of this. In modern epistemology,

18:31Jay Dyersuch as the myth of the given, the under determination of data,

18:34Jay Dyerthe inability to justify the parapathetic axiom itself,

18:38Jay Dyerthat there are probably basic beliefs,

18:41Jay Dyerthe that,

18:44Jay Dyeryeah, that there's an external world, that the external world causally impresses itself upon our senses.

18:49Jay DyerSo that's that's where I'll end it there.

18:52Suan SonnaAlright. Thank you, Jay. And I think in the future, what I'll do is if we have ten seconds left, I'll just kinda make the screen look like this, and you can see, like, okay, ten seconds left.

19:01Suan SonnaBut, yeah, thank you, Jay. Trent, are you ready to go?

19:05Trent HornI'm

19:06Trent HornI'm ready.

19:06Suan SonnaAlright.

19:07Suan SonnaWhenever you start talking, I'll start the timer.

19:10Trent HornAlright. Well, I like to thank Swan for hosting the debate. I'm really glad Jay's participating in it. For the purpose of the debate, we can define natural theology using a definition from the First Vatican Council.

19:21Trent HornGod, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things by the natural power of human reason.

19:29Trent HornEastern Orthodox philosopher Richard Swinburne describes natural theology as the task of reasoning about reasoning about god, quote, from propositions which theists and atheists alike can recognize as obviously true.

19:42Trent HornNow let me be clear that people can come to know god apart from natural theology,

19:47Trent Hornlike through religious experience,

19:49Trent Hornand human reason cannot cause us to desire god's offer of salvation.

19:54Trent HornThe catechism of the Catholic church puts it this way.

19:57Trent HornMan's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal god.

20:03Trent HornBut for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, god willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.

20:14Trent HornThe proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

20:22Trent HornIn the rebuttal period, I'll address why the case that Jay gave doesn't refute natural theology.

20:27Trent HornBut for now, I'm gonna offer five reasons why Christians

20:30Trent Hornshould not reject natural theology.

20:33Trent HornNumber one, the bible teaches that we have freedom in Christ. Saint Paul writes, for freedom, Christ has set us free. First Corinthians 10, Paul says Christians could eat meat offered to idols. Romans 14, they can celebrate Jewish feast days. Christians could also not do these do these things if it made them uncomfortable,

20:49Trent Hornbut they couldn't demand other Christians do the same. This means believers are free to pursue any kind of theology

20:55Trent Hornas long as it doesn't violate the teachings of the church.

20:58Trent HornSo if my opponent says Christians have a moral duty to abandon natural theology, he'd have to show where the church has taught this. And I don't think he's made that claim tonight.

21:07Trent HornIt's the default position that we can pursue it unless we have a good reason not to. But if Jay says we have a prudential duty, like, it's just not a good idea,

21:15Trent Hornthen he needs to show why the greatest thinkers in church history, like Aquinas, Augustine, Gregory the theologian, John Damascus, Athanasius, the apostles,

21:24Trent Hornand our lord Jesus Christ,

21:26Trent Hornwhy they were wrong in using this method to demonstrate truths about god.

21:30Trent HornReason number two, the church has infallibly taught the validity of natural theology.

21:36Trent HornNo ecumenical council has ever condemned natural theology, and the first Vatican council infallibly declared,

21:42Trent Hornif anyone says that the one true god, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made by the natural light of human reason, let him be anathema.

21:52Trent HornSo especially if you're Catholic, you cannot accept my opponent's position tonight.

21:57Trent HornNumber three, natural theology has a long history in the Christian tradition,

22:01Trent Hornboth in the Western and Eastern church.

22:04Trent HornSaint Paul declared in Romans one twenty, ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. My opponent agrees. Paul is drawing from the deuterocanonical

22:17Trent Hornbook of wisdom,

22:19Trent Hornwhich says in chapter 13,

22:21Trent Hornfrom the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding

22:25Trent Hornperception of their creator.

22:27Trent HornEven critics of natural theology like Andrew Moore say,

22:31Trent Hornit is unquestionable

22:32Trent Hornthat knowledge of god is here ascribed to man in the cosmos.

22:36Trent HornPaul also told the Greeks who wanted to worship him in Acts 14 to turn to the true God who, quote, did not leave himself without witness,

22:44Trent Hornfor he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons.

22:47Trent HornIn these verses, we have the beginnings of teleological

22:50Trent Hornor design arguments for god.

22:53Trent HornSaint Maximus, the confessor, said, the saints learned of the creator's existence from the things created by him. Design arguments can be found in Clement of Alexandria, Theophilus of Antioch, Augustine,

23:05Trent Hornand other church fathers, though with different illustrations.

23:08Trent HornSaint John Chrism says that just as a ship won't last a mile without a crew, the universe could not be ordered without a supreme intelligence guiding it. Saint Basil the Great said, quote, the world is a work of art displayed for the observation

23:23Trent Hornof all people

23:25Trent Hornto make them know him who created it. Gregory the theologian gives an argument similar to the modern fine tuning argument, which says the laws of nature are not the product of chance or necessity,

23:36Trent Hornso they must have been designed.

23:38Trent HornGregory writes of the world, do these belong to chance or to something else? Surely not to chance.

23:44Trent HornAnd what can this something else be but god?

23:47Trent HornThus reason that proceeds from god leads us up to god through visible things, which is the task of natural theology.

23:56Trent HornSaint Gregory Of Nicaea said,

23:58Trent Hornshould he say there is no god, then from the consideration of the skillful and wise economy of the universe,

24:04Trent Hornhe will be brought to acknowledge that there is a certain overmastering

24:08Trent Hornpower manifested

24:10Trent Hornthrough these channels. So Saint Gregory talks about dealing with an atheist.

24:14Trent HornMy opponent has previously said natural theology can't prove there's only one god. That's not what Gregory Of Nicaea thought. He continued, if on the other hand, he should have no doubt as to the existence of deity,

24:24Trent Hornbut should be inclined to entertain the presumption of a plurality

24:28Trent Hornof gods, then we will adopt against him some such train of reasoning as this, and that includes arguments from monotheism.

24:36Trent HornPaul said in Acts 17,

24:38Trent Hornmen of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

24:42Trent HornFor as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship,

24:45Trent HornI found also an altar with this inscription,

24:48Trent Hornto an unknown god.

24:50Trent HornWhat therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. So in this incident, Paul acknowledged that the Greeks used reason

24:57Trent Hornto correctly arrive at the truth that god exists, but they were ignorant about god's saving nature. In order to find further common ground with them, Paul quoted Greek poets who said, he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.

25:12Trent HornFrom this, we see the seeds of the cosmological argument, specifically the argument from motion.

25:17Trent HornFor example, in the ambiguous, Saint Maximus the confessor says, nothing moves without a cause.

25:23Trent HornThen no being is unmoved except the prime mover.

25:27Trent HornSaint John of Damascus said, for everything that is moved is moved by another thing. And who again is it that moves that? And so on to infinity till we at length arrive at something motionless.

25:38Trent HornFor the first mover is motionless,

25:40Trent Hornand that is the deity. It's about seven hundred years before the time of Aquinas. And according to theologian Thomas Torrance, quote, it was in fact on the foundations laid by John of Damascus

25:50Trent Hornthat Western thinkers like Saint Thomas based their natural theology.

25:55Trent HornYou can also find the beginning of a moral argument for God's existence in Romans chapter two fourteen through 15, where Paul says Gentiles who don't have the law, Mosaic law, quote, show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness.

26:12Trent HornSaint Athanasius argues in a similar way saying of idolaters,

26:15Trent Hornfor neither was the law for the Jews alone.

26:18Trent HornThey the law, they were for all the world, a holy school of the knowledge of God.

26:24Trent HornAthanasius even said in the same passage that the holiness of the saints

26:27Trent Horncould be sufficient evidence that god exists.

26:30Trent HornFinally, let's consider the history of the argument from miracles.

26:34Trent HornThe Old Testament prophet Elijah demonstrated the superiority of Yahweh by challenging the prophets of Baal to a miracle contest.

26:41Trent HornOur Lord told his critics in John 10, if I am not doing the works of my father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the father is in me, and I am in the father.

26:56Trent HornJesus is saying that even if you don't believe his words, his miraculous deeds should be enough evidence to show he is the messiah.

27:03Trent HornIn first Corinthians 15 verses three through eight, Paul presents a list of witnesses of Christ's resurrection to answer doubts people had about the general resurrection.

27:11Trent HornHe also noted some of these witnesses were still alive,

27:15Trent Hornpresumably so people could investigate them.

27:17Trent HornSaint John of Damascus said arguments for god are necessary for people who did not witness miracles firsthand

27:23Trent Hornand their converting power.

27:25Trent HornHe wrote, but since the wickedness of the evil one has prevailed so mightily against man's nature as even to drive some into denying

27:34Trent Hornthe existence of God,

27:35Trent Hornso the disciples of the Lord and his apostles made wise by the Holy Spirit and working wonders in his power and grace

27:43Trent Horntook them captive in the net of miracles

27:46Trent Hornand drew them up out of the depths of ignorance to the light of the knowledge of God.

27:51Trent HornFinally, the first Vatican Council infallibly declared, if anyone says that miracles can never be known with certainty nor can the divine origin of the Christian religion be proved from them, let him be anathema.

28:02Trent HornSo we see in the West and the Eastern Church, going back two thousand years, a constant uniform belief that the natural power of human reason can lead people to understand basic truths about God, his existence, and nature.

28:16Trent HornNumber four,

28:18Trent Hornnatural theology is superior to its alternatives.

28:22Trent HornMy opponent advocates for a kind of presuppositionalism

28:25Trent Hornthat claims it is impossible to justify belief in logic, knowledge,

28:29Trent Hornor morality without presupposing

28:32Trent Hornthe god of what he calls orthodox Christian faith exists.

28:36Trent HornBut my opponent's case for presuppositionalism

28:39Trent Hornis refuted by the following dilemma.

28:41Trent HornEither Jay is arguing from created things to god, and so he's doing natural theology,

28:47Trent Hornor he's arguing from the assumption God exists to created things in order to prove God exists,

28:54Trent Hornwhich is the logical fallacy of circular reasoning.

28:57Trent HornConsider the first option in the dilemma.

28:59Trent HornWilliam Lane Craig's moral argument for God goes like this.

29:03Trent HornIf God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

29:08Trent HornObjective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists.

29:12Trent HornIt sounds like, if you read my opponent's argument one way, he's just taken out moral values and duties and replaced it with logic, knowledge, and morality. If god does not exist, these things don't exist. They do exist, so god exists.

29:24Trent HornBut if that's the case, he's doing natural theology. He has to prove logic, morality, and knowledge exist,

29:29Trent Hornand they have no natural explanations for these things.

29:32Trent HornBut maybe Jay is saying that, actually, no. Our ability to even have knowledge of these things or any knowledge whatsoever

29:39Trent Hornpresupposes the god of orthodox Christian faith. And so that needs to be the first premise of our argument.

29:45Trent HornSo instead of starting with created things and reasoning to the creator, we get the other horn of the dilemma.

29:50Trent HornJay starts with the creator and uses that to show knowledge is possible

29:55Trent Hornso we can know the creator exists.

29:58Trent HornBut as the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig says, presuppositionalism

30:02Trent Hornis guilty of a logical howler.

30:04Trent HornIt commits the informal fallacy of patizio principi or begging the question, for it advocates presupposing the truth of Christian theism in order to prove Christian theism.

30:14Trent HornWe know this is the case because we could ask, Jay, well, why couldn't we start with another presupposition,

30:19Trent Hornlike atheistic nihilism that says we're mistaken and we live in an illogical,

30:24Trent Hornamoral, unintelligible

30:25Trent Hornuniverse?

30:26Trent HornAtheistic Platonism, which says logic, knowledge, and morality are just abstract concepts or brute facts. Polytheism,

30:33Trent Hornnon Christian monotheism,

30:35Trent Hornor many forms of Christian theism my opponent rejects,

30:40Trent Hornlike Van Tilian,

30:41Trent HornCalvinist presuppositionalism,

30:43Trent Hornor just presupposing the god of Catholicism who's absolutely simple exists. And once again, the dilemma raises its ugly head.

30:51Trent HornIf Jay offers arguments

30:53Trent Hornwhich say these other presuppositions

30:55Trent Horndon't work and only his theology explains the world, then he's doing natural theology, but in a kind of strange backward sort of way. But if he just asserts that his brand of theism just has to be our starting point because it's true because it's true, well, he's making an invalid argument we don't have to take seriously because it's assuming the very thing it's trying to prove.

31:15Trent HornFinally, number five,

31:17Trent Hornthe objections to natural theology

31:19Trent Hornare not sound. I'll address more of Jay's objections in my rebuttal,

31:24Trent Hornbut I do have some common ones here that I have noticed him bring up before.

31:28Trent HornOne is on the issue of natural contemplation

31:31Trent Hornthat I agree that natural theology is not like natural contemplation in East Eastern Orthodoxy.

31:37Trent HornThat is the second stage of contemplating god after you've practiced the virtues and the act of life. But Dionysios Scleris from the University of Athens, he says, quote, while natural revelation is distinct from an argument from design in natural theology, natural revelation is nevertheless in the vicinity of natural theology

31:56Trent Hornas it may include a short informal inference

32:00Trent Hornfrom perceived features of the world to the existence of God. Even father Stanaloy, an orthodox dogmatic theology says, quote, the rationality

32:08Trent Hornof the cosmos

32:09Trent Hornattests to the fact that the cosmos is the product of a rational being. So it's there for rational people to perceive. We just might be having a semantic difference about who is able to perceive it and who isn't.

32:23Trent HornAnother

32:24Trent Hornissue that comes with,

32:26Trent Hornnatural theology

32:27Trent Hornthat Jay has brought up is,

32:30Trent Hornwell, he's brought up before

32:32Trent Hornthe issue of,

32:34Trent Hornempiricism that you have to start with the peripatetic axiom.

32:38Trent HornEverything is in the senses,

32:40Trent Hornand that can be disproven.

32:41Trent HornThe problem with that is that he's conflating Thomism

32:44Trent Hornwith strict empiricism.

32:45Trent HornThomas doesn't do that. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, quote, we should not attribute to medieval writers the kind of genetic or blank slate empiricism

32:56Trent Hornlater found in the work of John Locke. Aquinas said our knowledge arises in de veritatis, quote, partly from within and partly from without, and that there is some truth in the idea that, quote, we already know that which we learn. So Aquinas' epistemology is not subject to the self contradictions of strict empiricism

33:14Trent Hornbecause that's not what he's doing.

33:16Trent HornThen that means that we can infer and apply concepts,

33:20Trent Hornwhen we see isolated things from a triangle to triangularity,

33:24Trent Horna effect to causation,

33:26Trent Hornand then we can reason,

33:28Trent Hornfrom that up.

33:31Trent HornYeah. And,

33:32Trent Hornotherwise,

33:35Trent Hornyeah, I think I've covered

33:37Trent Hornall that. I'll I'll I'll save, some of the other rebuttals here when I when I come back. But otherwise, I think I've shown remember, Jay has the burden of proof. He's gotta give us the good reasons

33:48Trent Hornto think we ought to get rid of natural theology, all natural theology. You could even disagree

33:53Trent Hornwith Thomism

33:55Trent Hornand pick another natural theology. This debate is not about Catholic natural theology. It's about natural theology in general and why we should give up something that first Peter three fifteen says can always help us be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness

34:12Trent Hornand reverence.

34:13Suan SonnaAlright. Thank you, Trent.

34:15Suan SonnaYeah. And so that's that completes the fifteen minutes opening statements, and now we're going to our seven minute rebuttals.

34:21Suan SonnaJerry, you ready to

34:22Jay Dyergo? Yep.

34:23Suan SonnaAlright. And once again, I felt kinda bad, you know, stopping you at the end. And so when you have ten seconds left, I'm gonna expand the screen like this.

34:31Suan SonnaAlright. Whenever you start talking, I'll start the timer.

34:34Jay DyerRight. Well, I'm glad that Trent affirmed, Richard Swinburne because it was exactly the referent in my,

34:39Jay Dyerthe Gariepy paper that, is critiqued. And the first thing that comes up, of course, is that Trent says that theists and atheists alike agree that these things are true. That's the very thing that I'm calling into question.

34:50Jay DyerNot the whether people think that they have things in common, but whether they can justify the things that they believe are in common. Trident goes on to say that he believes that this, demonstration shows a personal god. There is no generic conception of personhood that is not theory laden.

35:06Jay DyerI'm surprised that Trent thinks that there is because it's not very hard to see in the history of the debates of the church

35:12Jay Dyerinto how they went into noting that the notion of person in Christian theism is actually a revealed category.

35:19Jay DyerIt's not something that's real revealed or known via natural theology. And even in in his theology,

35:24Jay Dyerhe thinks he could bypass the Trinitarian,

35:27Jay Dyerrelationships

35:28Jay Dyerto get to some sort of personhood that doesn't specifically reference or pick out the trinity. The problem here is that in most of Trent's references, he didn't actually address the issue that I'm bringing up, which is about rigid and flaccid designators.

35:41Jay DyerTrent just assumes that all the references in these various quotes that he quote mine actually prove his position when the very thing that I'm asking is about reference themselves.

35:51Jay DyerNatural theology is premised on the presupposition that

35:54Jay Dyerthe word god is itself or the word monotheism

35:57Jay Dyeris itself a rigid

35:59Jay Dyerdesignator. It's not. It is not a pronoun. It does not pick out a specific reference. Within scripture itself,

36:05Jay Dyerwe have many examples of the word god being used in this flaccid way. For example, god can pick out demons. God can pick out the, persons or the essence or the attributes of the one true god. God can pick out human beings who are gods to pharaoh, for example, in the case of Moses. I have said you are all gods. So the word god is just a bait and switch in the premise of all of the natural theistic and especially the monotheistic

36:31Jay Dyerargumentation.

36:32Jay DyerNow

36:33Jay DyerTrent is apparently unaware of the fact that the Cappadocians and nobody before the time of the sixteen hundreds, namely in at least in English, the character of Henry Moore in the sixteen hundreds as doctor Branson has shown throughout his work, used the word monotheism.

36:45Jay DyerHe just presupposed that when the Cappadocians

36:48Jay Dyerused the word mono or archae that they're talking about monotheism.

36:52Jay DyerNow I'm not disagreeing with the meaning of a single god.

36:56Jay DyerBut in the theology of the Cappadocians,

36:58Jay Dyerthe reference of the one god or the monarchae

37:02Jay Dyeris the person of the father.

37:04Jay DyerIt is always picked out as the person of the father. In fact, the Nicene or Constantinopolitan Creed says, I believe in one god, the father almighty.

37:12Jay DyerSo we have the permanence of personhood.

37:15Jay DyerAnd in any Trinitarian theology,

37:17Jay Dyerwe pick out the person of the father, and that's the only way in which the mode of person exists. There's no such thing as a generic mode of person. For Trent's arguments to work at all for for him to say that there's a generic conception of personhood or that god has a generic personhood that permeates the universe that he knows apart from father, son, and spirit, which is what his position necessitates,

37:39Jay Dyeris literally impossible.

37:41Jay DyerThere is no such thing. And, the fallacies that are listed in the Gariepy paper show in multiple ways and in multiple examples how the word god is simply not a rigid designator. It's flaccid.

37:52Jay DyerSo it doesn't tell you what it's picking out without the context of the rest of the beliefs, and I gave examples from contrasting it with Islam or we could contrast it with something even even absurd like a cult. Right? There's plenty of cults that say, well, I believe in Jesus. You believe in Jesus. Does that mean the referent is the same because it's the same word? No. It's begging the question. And Trent is acting like these are not real philosophical questions that you can't demonstrate this in a in a formal logical way, which the Gariepy paper does and which I gave multiple examples showing it. Now, again, as we move on, the the Greek word, of polytheia

38:28Jay Dyeris usually contrasted,

38:30Jay Dyerright, by the by the Cappadocians and the early church fathers to the monoarchae.

38:35Jay DyerMonoarchae is not the same thing as monotheia.

38:37Jay DyerMonotheia,

38:38Jay Dyerwhich, again, there's nothing inherently wrong with it, it really depends on the context

38:42Jay Dyerand the embedded meaning that it has in the theory in which it's embedded.

38:47Jay DyerAnd so this is how words and language work. And so Trident is acting like there's no been no development or no no questions that are relevant that have been asked since the ancient and medieval world. But the ancient medieval world didn't typically ask theory laden presuppositional

39:00Jay Dyerparadigm level questions that human can't do ask.

39:04Jay DyerSo it's fine if Trident doesn't want to address the types of things that human can't bring up in regard to linguistics and somebody like Vico and later linguistic philosophers bring up in regard to referent questions,

39:16Jay Dyerbut that's precisely the type of question that I'm asking. That's what the Gariepy paper critique critiques

39:21Jay Dyerin the fallacy that underlies the assumption of general theism. There is no general general theism unless Trent can show how somehow or

39:28Jay Dyersomehow from the created order, he has a generic conception of personhood

39:32Jay Dyerthat at the same time matches up to the Muslim conception of personhood,

39:37Jay Dyerbut also somehow matches up to personhood

39:39Jay Dyerin Christian Trinitarian theology.

39:42Jay DyerBut guess what? It doesn't. If you ask a Muslim, any Muslim, into the Muslim system about what the personhood of god is, it does not mean what the Cappadocians

39:49Jay Dyerand Saint Cyril and the church fathers who is wrote tons of pages explicating

39:55Jay Dyerwhat prosuppos and hypostasis means.

39:58Jay DyerDoesn't mean that at all. Totally different. Totally different. The fact that there's overlap does not prove a common core religion anymore than two card games that are played because they have cards and because they have rules in common, share therefore a common core card game. There's nothing in common between crazy eights and poker simply because there's cards and rules. This is the fallacy that his whole position rests on is that there is that thing. Now he went on to cite Augustine, Aquinas, Athanasius,

40:26Jay Dyeras

40:27Jay Dyerif they teach the same thing, and they don't. That's a presupposition, which multiple writers, doctor Bradshaw,

40:32Jay Dyerthe thesis

40:33Jay Dyershows that they do not, in fact, teach the same thing. He mentioned that god's eternal power is seen.

40:38Jay DyerAccording to text that I quoted, god's eternal power, I don't even think in your view, is created.

40:43Jay DyerDo you think that creatures can see the eternal power in this life? I don't think he thinks that because he believes in, you know, the beatific vision. You don't have a direct perception of god in this life, especially not in the analogia entus doctrine of Aquinas. Now he tried to cite Maximus as if it as if Maximus' text about natural law or natural contemplation proved natural theology in his system.

41:05Jay DyerBut in fact, Maximus, according to Sashinsky,

41:07Jay Dyera Roman Catholic,

41:08Jay Dyernow orthodox scholar of the filioque and the Middle Ages says,

41:12Jay Dyerto utilize the language of later theology, Maximus' program

41:18Jay Dyerthere can be is that there can be no analogia intis without the analogia fide. So if I were to give you a a a chart to show how this works in Maximus' system,

41:28Jay Dyerit's actually directed this way. We perceive creatures which direct us to the principles, which direct us to the logos, which direct us to the logos. The logos is a rigid designator. It means the second person of a godhead. It does not mean something like the logos of the meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

41:45Jay DyerAnd so that logos is another good example of the fact that the fact that the word you were omniscience

41:50Jay Dyeror eternal

41:51Jay Dyeror one god is used is irrelevant to actually demonstrating what the reference is. Is that my time? Or

41:57Suan SonnaYeah. That's your time, Jay. But thank you. Alright.

42:00Suan SonnaTrent, are you ready to go?

42:03Trent HornI am.

42:03Suan SonnaAlright. Seven minute rebuttal starting whenever, Trent begins speaking.

42:08Trent HornAlright. So remember, Jay has the burden to show us that we we cannot use reason to show basic facts about God. I'm not saying that reason can prove

42:19Trent Horneverything about god. I I don't really know any theists that believe that. I know some theists that go pretty far and think you can use reason to prove the trinity or prove almost everything in theology.

42:29Trent HornI'm not prepared to affirm that most aren't.

42:32Trent HornBut so I'm not saying reason can prove everything about god. But man, through natural human reason,

42:38Trent Horncan come to affirm shared propositions.

42:41Trent HornSo let me try to get through some of these arguments that Jay brought up.

42:45Trent HornEssentially,

42:46Trent Hornhis primary argument seems to be natural theology

42:50Trent Hornrests on the idea that there is a generic theism that can be defended

42:54Trent Hornbecause we all disagree about God's properties, his attributes, his intentions.

42:59Trent HornThere is no such thing as this generic theism.

43:02Trent HornTherefore, there can't be natural theology.

43:05Trent HornBut that falls apart when you start to think about it. To say that God is this rigid designator and it always has to refer to the Trinity,

43:13Trent Hornthat's false. Did Abraham believe in God? Did Moses believe in God? Yeah. Did they believe in the trinity during their earthly lifetime?

43:21Trent HornThey maybe they had an implicit knowledge of it. I don't know. But they certainly did not have the theological knowledge of the trinity that Jay has or I have. So they did not believe in the trinity like we do, yet we could say they believed in God.

43:34Trent HornAnd I think the problem here is that we have to understand that terms can differ in sense

43:40Trent Hornand referent. Okay? So when I say that

43:46Trent Hornwhen I say that Cal l and Clark Kent are well, that's the same person. When I say the morning star is the evening star,

43:54Trent Hornyou know, Hesperus is Phosphorus, I'm talking about the same planet, Venus. We just give it two different names based on how it appears in the in the sky. And we can do something similar with God, understanding that people can make arguments and affirm truths about God. And the God they're talking about, they're talking about the same referent, but it differs in sense.

44:13Trent HornI'll give you a parallel argument.

44:15Trent HornI believe water exists,

44:17Trent Hornand Aristotle

44:18Trent Hornbelieved

44:19Trent Hornwater exists.

44:20Trent HornBut I believe also that water is h two o. Aristotle didn't do that. Aristotle and I have very dramatically different views about what water is, but we can still both affirm that water exists. Water is wet. Water quenches thirst. Even though we don't agree on all the propositions related to water and its existence, we agree on the most important

44:41Trent Horncore ones. And the paper that Dyer is referring to, I I think it's from some atheist professor in the University of Budapest. I remember reading it a while ago. He misses this when saying that, yeah, just because someone shares something in common doesn't mean it's the core, but it's an essential property. You take it away, it loses its essence and its identity.

45:00Trent HornSo even though natural theologians disagree

45:04Trent Hornamongst each other, they can still affirm

45:07Trent Hornthe same propositions

45:08Trent Hornabout that referent. They can affirm there is one god. There is that polytheism

45:13Trent Hornis false,

45:14Trent Hornthat god created the world, that god is immaterial,

45:19Trent Hornthat god is beyond time, that god is all powerful, worthy of worship. And we do see this in natural theology.

45:25Trent HornAmong the classical theologians,

45:27Trent HornAvicenna,

45:28Trent HornAristotle,

45:29Trent HornAquinas,

45:30Trent HornAnselm for two thousand years, they affirm even more divine immutability,

45:34Trent Hornsimplicity,

45:35Trent Hornother things like that. Now you might reject some of that natural theology like divine simplicity.

45:40Trent HornThat's okay. We're not debating particular natural theologies.

45:44Trent HornWe're debating the concept itself.

45:46Trent HornSo I think Jay's

45:48Trent Hornmain concern here is, okay.

45:52Trent HornYou know, you can you can use this. You know, you're saying he said earlier, well, you've got a bunch of metaphysical baggage in, you know, trying to affirm Catholic theology. And orthodoxy doesn't have metaphysical baggage, uncreated energies No. Energy essence distinction.

46:06Trent HornI'm not saying those things are false. I'm just saying that Jay will have to do the same kinds of natural theology explanations

46:12Trent Hornthat I would for the attributes that I believe in. He just calls it by another name, this presuppositionalism.

46:18Trent HornNo. I'm not the fact that all monotheists

46:21Trent Hornbelieve in one god, and we can say that they're worshiping the same god does not commit the quantifier shift fallacy.

46:27Trent HornBecause I could say every astronomer

46:29Trent Hornbelieves there is one star in our solar system,

46:32Trent HornAnd it follows from that basic truth, every astronomer studies the same star in our solar system because they're they're all committed to the view our solar system has only one star. We can say the same for the fathers of the church, for even other world religions. If someone's committed, there is one ultimate infinite creator,

46:51Trent Hornthen they're giving worship to this being, but they disagree about it. They disagree about the propositions that are involved.

46:58Trent HornAnd as I said before,

47:01Trent HornJay's presuppositionalism

47:02Trent Hornjust well, we'll just presuppose

47:04Trent Hornthe god of orthodox Christian theism. That doesn't get us out of the lurch because you could easily presuppose

47:10Trent Hornany of these other competitors.

47:12Trent HornHe hasn't given us an independent reason to see otherwise. Instead, what he's given us is something that practices circular reasoning,

47:20Trent Hornto say, well, we have to that's because I he hasn't defended as much since today. But I mean, my question to him, if we don't use natural theology,

47:27Trent Hornhow would we demonstrate to people that god exists? And the view he's endorsed previously

47:33Trent Hornis just, well, we can we know

47:36Trent Hornthat the foundational

47:37Trent Horntruth that Jay says we can't believe in foundational truths, but he hasn't given an argument, by the way, to say that we can't believe in foundational truths like foundational,

47:47Trent HornI mean, self evident, by the way, that we don't need other reasons to believe in these truths. Otherwise, you'd have an infinite regress. He has not given us a reason to think there aren't self evident truths that are immediately available to us from which we can reason about reality and then to reality's origin. Self evident truths like I exist.

48:07Trent HornI experience mental

48:09Trent Hornchange.

48:10Trent HornI am having perceptions. Perceptions may not be accurate, but I'm having perceptions of some kind.

48:15Trent HornAnd then building from these self evident truths to say, well, I'm limited. I'm contingent. I'm changing.

48:21Trent HornThat there has to be some kind of explanation given other things that we perceive.

48:25Trent HornJay said that, you know, Hume showed that we can't have these basic truths about causality.

48:30Trent HornHume's just wrong about that, frankly. We can get into that more into my next rebuttal.

48:34Trent HornBut,

48:35Trent Hornyeah, ultimately,

48:36Trent Hornif the arguments Jay is making against natural theology would also apply to presuppositionalism.

48:41Trent HornThe only way he can get out of it is to say, well, no. Presuppositionalism

48:44Trent Hornjust is true. It just is our starting founding point, and we know that because it's the true revelation,

48:50Trent Hornwhich, of course, is circular reasoning. It's like saying the bible

48:54Trent Hornit's like saying the bible's the word of god. The bible says god exists. Therefore, god exists. Circular arguments are invalid. Instead, natural theology provides us the valid way to show that god does exist.

49:07Suan SonnaAlright. Thank you, Trent. We're now getting into our four minute rebuttal section.

49:11Suan SonnaSo this is now Jay's four minute rebuttal. Jay, whenever you're ready, just go right ahead.

49:16Jay DyerYeah. I'm glad that Trent referenced something as, easily philosophically,

49:21Jay Dyerjust just too devastating

49:23Jay Dyerto his positions like like the

49:26Jay DyerCartesian position that I can have a self evident

49:30Jay Dyerknowledge of my own existence. I mean, this has been, you know, savagely

49:34Jay Dyerrefuted by both Kant and, Bertrand Russell in numerous ways to demonstrate that there is no self evident, positions. And the epistemic bootstrapping thing that Trent's system is committed to is impossible for him to do. In other words, he affirmed a position which which is known there as a kind of strong foundationalism.

49:51Jay DyerThe problem with strong foundationalism is that for something like Descartes' position to make the statement to be meaningful that I exist assumes a host of things that he's not justified.

50:00Jay DyerAnd the whole point with his position is that you shouldn't affirm things that you can't justify

50:04Jay Dyerin terms of starting points. So Trident is misunderstanding that I'm critiquing the starting points of his position. I'm not saying that I don't have to do legwork and then that orthodoxy doesn't have metaphysics.

50:15Jay DyerIt's an issue of accounting for the metaphysics. It's not an issue of do I believe in metaphysics? Do we share metaphysical notions in common like teleology or causation? It's a question of justifying,

50:26Jay Dyergiving an account for, and grounding those principles,

50:29Jay DyerJTB,

50:30Jay Dyerand, of course, the fourth position if we look at the Getty A problem. Now he continues to say that reason can say some things about god. And, again, this response just presupposes

50:40Jay Dyerthat god is a rigid designator. He attributed to me the position that god must be a rigid designator. If it's going to pick out something that's common to the religions, then yes. I mean, is Trent arguing for a generic god that isn't picked out somehow? No. Of course. And the fact that he goes into

50:58Jay Dyerattributes like person or personal

51:00Jay Dyershows that this, again, doesn't work because there's no generic theory neutral concept of person

51:07Jay Dyerapart from, in the Christian paradigm, the trinity.

51:10Jay DyerTrent doesn't have a basic understanding of what the presuppositional argument is. It's not a circular argument that just says it's true because, therefore, it's true, and I cite it, and therefore, it's true. It's nothing like that. It's a comparison of paradigms because it's a metalogical

51:24Jay Dyerquestion. So Trent keeps collapsing every question into logical questions when the very question I'm raising to him is metallurgical.

51:32Jay DyerI'm asking prior questions to metaphysics about the epistemology

51:37Jay Dyerthat goes that's behind doing the metaphysics,

51:39Jay DyerAnd that's what the the modern philosophers ask. I'm not saying that David Hume is right in his skepticism. I'm merely asking his questions. That doesn't mean I'm committed to humanism or Kantianism.

51:49Jay DyerI'm asking the questions that they ask to foundationalist

51:53Jay Dyersystems, especially strong foundational systems, which Trent just affirmed in the I exist.

51:59Jay DyerWell, are you not aware that I exist presupposes that language has meaning? It presupposes that there's an I or a self. It presupposes that there's time determination

52:07Jay Dyerexisting as occurring.

52:09Jay DyerThose are heavy metaphysical claims and baggage that are not demonstrable on Descartes' foundational cogito.

52:16Jay DyerThey're assumed.

52:17Jay DyerAnd the business of philosophy is to question assumptions, and that's precisely what I've been doing in this debate. And Tridentine just says, well, they're just self self evident things.

52:24Jay DyerThat doesn't get you out of the circularity problem that you say you're here to avoid.

52:29Jay DyerFoundationalism

52:30Jay Dyeris circular, and that's why we say that there's two different orders of things in this question of paradigms. Right? There's the day to day or mundane type of argumentation that I would do about logic or this or that proposition or fact. But metological questions cannot be resolved in that same way. Look at something like, Gerdell's incompleteness theorems, which show that you can't solve those types of problems in a monosingular

52:53Jay Dyerway because they reference them they reference outside the set.

52:57Jay DyerSo he's literally trying to repeat something like Bertrand Russell would say to Gerdell, and I'm just simply saying that set theory shows you as an example, as an analogy, that you can't just refer

53:07Jay Dyerto the set itself to justify the set. It extends outside of itself, and the fact that you appeal to foundationalism shows that you're just self referencing and doing the very thing that your position says is impossible.

53:19Suan SonnaAlright. Thank you, Jay. Right on time.

53:21Suan SonnaAlright. Trent, your four minute rebuttals starts whenever you start talking.

53:27Trent HornAlright. Well, I showed why Jay's arguments against natural theology

53:31Trent Horndon't work. What about the arguments that I gave,

53:35Trent Hornin defense of natural theology?

53:38Trent HornWhat does he said about them? I gave five arguments.

53:41Trent HornWe have freedom in Christ, so natural theology is the default.

53:44Trent HornWe're free to do it unless we have an overwhelming reason to think that we shouldn't. Jay hasn't really given he hasn't attacked that reasoning, and he hasn't given us any overwhelming reason. I mean, I think he's trying to say we shouldn't do natural theology because it doesn't work, and he's he's come nowhere close to establishing that principle.

54:01Trent HornNumber two is the church infallibly defends natural theology. I know Jay isn't Catholic, but I'm just saying it because it's true. And but it hasn't come up, and that's it hasn't been challenged at all.

54:11Trent HornAs to my citation of scripture and the fathers,

54:14Trent HornJay just kinda said, well, he's quote mining them,

54:17Trent Hornand he hasn't discussed he hasn't refuted in any way the arguments I brought up showing that natural theology using reason to show god exists and go back and relisten

54:27Trent Hornto what I said from the fathers, especially the fathers from the East, they're not talking about natural contemplation. They're talking about ways

54:34Trent Hornof showing nonbelievers.

54:37Trent HornGregory Amnesty is talking about this. And he and I in the section from Gregory Amnesty's great catechism, I shared an excerpt where he talks about showing atheists god exists and showing polytheists

54:48Trent Hornthat there is only one god. So you can read it for yourself. I'll upload a document with my citations after this debate if you wanna read that. My fourth argument was that presuppositionalism

54:58Trent Horndoesn't work. And we've started to talk about that a little bit. But here's the thing with justifying knowledge. This is called Agrippa's Trelema.

55:05Trent HornThere's only three ways to justify

55:07Trent Hornproposition

55:09Trent Hornx is true. You either have an infinite number of other propositions that support it, an infinite regress. If that's the case, you have no knowledge whatsoever.

55:18Trent HornKnowledge disappears under infinite regress.

55:20Trent HornYou could have a circular argument,

55:22Trent Hornbut circular arguments are invalid. We agree that it's invalid. Jay himself even said that in logic,

55:29Trent Horncircular arguments are invalid. But he claims, ah, yes. But if it's metalogic,

55:33Trent Horna metalogical question,

55:35Trent Hornthen we can use circular reasoning.

55:38Trent HornBut here's the problem. Circular reasoning doesn't stop the invalidity.

55:42Trent HornThe fallaciousness

55:43Trent Hornof circular reasoning

55:44Trent Horndoesn't stop just because the circle gets bigger. If Jay says, well, yeah, circular reasoning doesn't work in any of this stuff except for me proving the whole system that it comes from the god of orthodox Christian faith,

55:55Trent Hornthen he's now just special pleading. He's saying, yes. Circular reasoning is bad except for the one thing that I need it for here. And once, you know, the whole rigid designator thing,

56:05Trent HornI would ask these questions. Was Mohammed correct when he said there is one god? No. He he was he didn't fully understand god.

56:13Trent HornBut was Moses correct when he said there is one god? Or Abraham? They didn't fully understand the trinity or god either, yet they understood these propositions. We can look at a series of propositions

56:24Trent Hornand see their truth value and the evidence that is behind them.

56:28Trent HornSo,

56:29Trent HornJay also claimed that so foundationalism,

56:32Trent Hornself evident truths,

56:33Trent Hornthat they're actually not true or that they're circular, but he gave us no evidence to

56:39Trent Hornbelieve that or why we should believe that, then I can use, elimination.

56:43Trent HornWe know you can't have an infinite regress. We know circular reasoning is invalid no matter how big the circle gets, so we have to start with things that are self evident. And ultimately, Jay's position, his alternative with presuppositionalism,

56:55Trent Hornyou'll see the shocking circularity ask him, why presuppose

56:59Trent Hornthe god of or Eastern Orthodox Christian faith? Why is that our presupposition

57:04Trent Horninstead of all the other presuppositions I gave? The answer Jay will have to give is because it's true. And that, my friends, is circular reasoning.

57:12Trent HornInstead,

57:13Trent Hornwe should not use fallacious reasoning in our theology for God. We should use valid reasoning, and that's why Christians should not reject natural theology.

57:23Suan SonnaAlright. Thank you, Trent Horn.

57:25Suan SonnaNow at this point then, we're gonna get into our eight minute cross examination periods.

57:30Suan SonnaJay is gonna lead the first eight minute session,

57:33Suan Sonnaand then, Trent will lead the next eight minutes. And so what I'll do is when we when you have ten seconds left, I'm gonna disappear from the chat or disappear from the stream. When you have ten seconds left, I'll reappear. So I'll just use kind of visual cues instead. So,

57:47Suan Sonnayeah, Jay, whenever you start talking, I'll start the timer.

57:51Jay DyerAgain,

57:52Jay Dyerthe question here is about presuppositions

57:54Jay Dyerfor sure. And I've listed many things and many problems for the foundational approach that you're advocating.

58:01Trent HornMhmm.

58:01Jay DyerYou replied with something to the effect that, well, we there's a trilemma that we could refer to, and there's really not many other options here. Well, the fact that you don't think there's many other options actually doesn't count as a justification for the starting point. In other words, you started with properly basic beliefs.

58:16Jay DyerAnd all I have to ask you is that do you think that the notion of properly basic beliefs themselves

58:20Jay Dyeris self evident?

58:22Trent HornDo you mean the idea,

58:24Trent Hornproperly basic belief?

58:26Jay DyerWell, if I said only beliefs that are self evident or incorrigible

58:31Jay Dyeror, evident to the senses are properly basic. The problem is that you're in an infinite circular regress because the proposition itself in terms of its of you knowing it is not part of your sense data nor can you show that it's properly basic without assuming it.

58:46Trent HornWell, I would agree that the idea of a properly basic belief may itself not be properly basic, but one could just have

58:53Jay DyerNo. Self That's not what I asked.

58:54Trent HornOkay. What did you ask?

58:55Jay DyerThe proposition itself

58:57Jay Dyerabout

58:58Jay Dyerproperly basic belief, is it properly basic?

59:02Trent HornThe proposition there are properly basic beliefs?

59:05Jay DyerThe proposition only beliefs that are self evident or incorrigible or evident to the senses are properly basic.

59:14Trent HornWell, I would just I would say that it's true. You're saying how do I know what properly basic beliefs are?

59:19Jay DyerThat's true. I'm asking, is that notion itself properly basic?

59:23Trent HornSo you're okay. So you're saying that if it is properly basic, it creates some kind of circularity if I say that?

59:29Jay DyerYes.

59:30Trent HornOkay. Well, I as I said before, I don't know if the

59:35Trent Horndescription of an idea might be properly basic, but the experience itself is.

59:40Trent HornAnd then we then we have

59:42Trent Hornterms to describe what the experience is.

59:44Jay DyerIt doesn't matter how you redefine it because the point is that there's no self evident origin or incorrigible,

59:50Jay Dyerpropositions

59:51Jay Dyerlike that found in sense data.

59:54Trent HornMhmm.

59:54Jay DyerSo what's the justification for that?

59:57Trent HornThe justification is that there are some there are some propositions

1:00:01Trent Hornthat we encounter,

1:00:03Trent Hornand upon entertaining the proposition,

1:00:05Trent Hornthe justification

1:00:06Trent Hornis also immediately apparent. And so it

1:00:09Jay Dyeris That's circularity. That's that's the problem of properly based beliefs.

1:00:13Trent HornNo. It's not

1:00:14Jay Dyercircularity. You just said it's immediately apparent. That's circularity.

1:00:17Trent HornNo. Because Negging the question.

1:00:19Trent HornOkay. It's it's not that. Because if I say, for example,

1:00:23Trent HornI am having an experience right now. I am just reporting something that is happening to prop

1:00:30Jay Dyerall you're doing. No. I gave you multiple examples, which you said I didn't do in critiquing the cogito.

1:00:35Trent HornLike what?

1:00:37Jay DyerOf all of the metaphysical things that are assumed in the sentence.

1:00:40Trent HornOkay. But even if I don't understand all of the concepts that are involved, we can also

1:00:44Jay DyerIt doesn't matter. This is about justifying the beliefs.

1:00:47Trent HornOkay. So what you're so it sounds like you're saying to me

1:00:51Trent Hornnatural theology is false because there are no self evident truths.

1:00:56Jay DyerI'm creating your position of a strong foundationalism.

1:00:59Trent HornOkay. But even if someone picked a weaker form of foundationalism,

1:01:04Trent HornI think a lot

1:01:04Jay Dyerwhat you picked.

1:01:05Trent HornSo Well, okay. What I would what

1:01:06Suan SonnaI would say

1:01:07Jay DyerThat's not the position you defended five minutes ago.

1:01:10Trent HornOkay. But even the position that I have, I would just say a lot of people,

1:01:14Trent Horneven people who are nonbelievers or atheists,

1:01:17Trent Hornwould agree there are just basic facts about existence that we have agreement on.

1:01:21Jay DyerOkay. So you're And

1:01:21Trent Hornfrom there, we can build

1:01:22Jay Dyerour So you're gonna appeal to the masses. It's actually a fallacy. It's not a justification.

1:01:26Trent HornNo. I'm I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it's

1:01:28Jay Dyerit's still justification.

1:01:30Jay DyerSo what's the justification

1:01:31Jay Dyerfor

1:01:31Trent Hornthe matter? Is, Jay, I gave you a justification, but your system just won't allow it because there are big notifications.

1:01:36Trent HornThose are fallacies.

1:01:38Trent HornNo. I told you that some propositions that we immediate that we encounter

1:01:43Jay DyerThat's better.

1:01:43Trent HornTruth is immediate, and we do not have to infer them.

1:01:46Jay DyerI'm asking for the justification for you're just saying that it's immediate.

1:01:50Jay DyerBut that rest on

1:01:52Jay Dyerthe assumption that the external world is properly caused to impress upon your sense of

1:01:56Trent Hornwhat you're would say the the justification

1:01:59Trent Hornthat the self evident truths,

1:02:01Trent Hornin my epistemology are true would be the same as whatever justification

1:02:07Trent Hornled you know, leads you to believe that the god of Christian orthodox

1:02:11Jay Dyeris the ultimate foundation. I'm not subject to that problem. I don't make the strong foundation's claim that you just did, so I don't have that problem. I admit circularity at this level.

1:02:20Trent HornOkay. But but only at that level?

1:02:24Jay DyerRight. Because it's a metallurgical question where circularity is unavoidable.

1:02:28Jay DyerThat's the point with set theory and the, incompleteness theorem.

1:02:31Trent HornOkay. Are are there any other

1:02:34Trent Horncircular

1:02:35Trent Hornso circular reasoning with God being the ultimate foundation of reality,

1:02:39Trent Hornthat is not invalid.

1:02:42Trent HornAre there any other kinds

1:02:43Jay Dyerof avoidable by the nature of the system itself.

1:02:45Trent HornOkay. So it's not invalid. Are there any other kinds of circular reasoning

1:02:49Trent Hornapart from god that have nothing to do with god that are also not invalid?

1:02:53Jay DyerYes. So categories themselves have to be presupposed for the possibility of knowledge. So in other words, the way I make the argument is just simply that knowledge presupposes the categories. The categories themselves are grounded in god.

1:03:04Trent HornOkay. So the categories themselves, their foundation is not circular. Their foundation is in God.

1:03:09Jay DyerWell, they're circular when we're considering whether we can justify them at the human level. They're

1:03:14Trent Horncircular. So we can't say that logic is true because the laws of logic themselves

1:03:19Trent Hornshow that they're true. It sounds like you're saying

1:03:21Jay DyerThat's circular.

1:03:22Trent HornYeah. It sounds like you're saying circular reasoning is invalid

1:03:26Trent Hornexcept when we're talking about god being the foundation of the universe.

1:03:30Jay DyerI'm saying that every system at root is circular, and that's what I'm demonstrating to you in your strong foundationalism.

1:03:35Jay DyerAnd I'm showing that that's not gonna be then how we justify or explain the different systems themselves. We it's a comparison of systems and not a comparison of evidences.

1:03:44Trent HornMhmm. But then I I think, well,

1:03:48Trent HornI don't wanna actually, I feel unfair. I shouldn't ask you questions. This is your time. We can do whatever you want.

1:03:53Jay DyerWell, let me move on to another issue, which was in the

1:03:57Trent Hornbecause I have a lot of questions on my own, but it's yours. Fine.

1:04:02Jay DyerIn the so you did ask me to go through different points that I haven't addressed it, not just because of time. It wasn't because I was trying to avoid any of points that you made. But,

1:04:10Jay Dyeragain, I think that a lot of what you said

1:04:13Jay Dyeragain, I understand that you're attempting to say that. Well, we can say that God's personal,

1:04:18Jay Dyerbut what I wanna know is do you think there's a generic conception of person that doesn't reference the father, the son, and the holy spirit?

1:04:25Trent HornI think that one can believe well, there there here's the problem. There are a lot of different natural theologies. I don't believe God is a person because I'm a classical theist.

1:04:33Trent HornThere are others who hold that view. But I think that we can talk about God in being and something that is shared among the three persons of the Trinity, that God is not a person, but he has personal qualities. God is intellect.

1:04:46Trent HornGod has will.

1:04:48Trent HornAnd so that is something shared by the three members of the Trinity, and that's something we can know intellect,

1:04:52Trent Hornwill, moral goodness. We can get that from natural theological arguments.

1:04:56Jay DyerSo it doesn't so it's not an appeal to a person. It's not an appeal to father.

1:05:01Trent HornIt's not an appeal to the father himself, the one that's particular member

1:05:04Jay Dyerof the Trinity? Is that in the Trinitarian theology developed in the councils, there's no such thing as personhood apart from father, son, and spirit.

1:05:11Trent HornWell, whatever I say that is true of god,

1:05:14Trent Hornat least true of the divine nature, is also going to be true of the persons,

1:05:19Trent Hornminus special revelation.

1:05:21Trent HornSo if I say God is eternal, the father, son, and holy spirit are all eternal. The other attributes will follow Yeah.

1:05:26Jay DyerBut I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the specific development of the notion of person and hypostasis

1:05:31Jay Dyerand how unique it is to the early church and her revelation. It's not a doctrine that comes out of paganism.

1:05:37Trent HornRight. But person,

1:05:39Trent Hornthe term person like apostases

1:05:41Trent Hornand prosuppos,

1:05:43Trent Horntheir meaning changes

1:05:45Trent Hornover the centuries, how they're used among different philosophers.

1:05:47Jay DyerExactly.

1:05:48Trent HornSo, like, Aquinas, when he talks you know, when we talk about the Trinity being three persons,

1:05:53Trent Hornwe don't believe that God is a person like you or me, that it's an analogical term that best describes these relations that exist within the godhead.

1:06:01Jay DyerYeah. I'm just making the

1:06:02Trent HornI'm just making persons like us.

1:06:04Jay DyerI didn't say that they were. I'm just making the point that the development of the notion of person in the definitions of the trinity in terms of who god is. I mean, the creed says, I believe in one god, the father. So it actually identifies the unity, the oneness of god with the hypostasis of the father and, by extension, the nature that he communicates to the son and to the spirit.

1:06:22Trent HornBut then we'd also say the son and the holy spirit are equally divine, though.

1:06:25Jay DyerYeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna have

1:06:26Suan Sonnato step in right here because the time is up. But, I'll let, Trent Horn do the eight eight minutes of cross examination now. And for those of you who are watching online,

1:06:36Suan Sonnathis would be the time to start sending in your questions that you'd want to ask either Jay or Trent. And so please include who you're addressing your question to, whether it's Trent, Jay, or both of them. And so once again, during this eight minute session, this is the time to start sending in your questions in the chat.

1:06:52Suan SonnaWith that,

1:06:53Suan SonnaI'll step out. And, Trent, as soon as you start talking, I'll start my time.

1:06:56Jay DyerI have one question for you, Yeah.

1:06:59Suan SonnaSure. Yeah.

1:07:00Jay DyerWhat is is the

1:07:02Jay Dyerq and a then

1:07:04Jay Dyerclosing statements, or how does what's the order?

1:07:06Suan SonnaYeah. Sure. So we're gonna do thirty minute q and a with the audience, and so I'll I'll be fielding the questions. And then after that, we'll close with five minute closing statements.

1:07:14Jay DyerOkay.

1:07:15Suan SonnaAlright. Trent, whenever you start talking, I'll start my timer.

1:07:19Trent HornAlrighty.

1:07:20Trent HornAlright. So a few questions for you, Jay.

1:07:23Trent HornHas any ecumenical council ever condemned natural theology?

1:07:28Jay DyerIf by natural theology,

1:07:29Jay Dyerwhat you mean in the Thomistic scheme, yes. If you if

1:07:33Trent HornI'm just talking about the proposition of

1:07:36Trent Hornman, by human reason, can come to know God exists.

1:07:39Jay DyerYeah. But, again, I didn't agree that there was a generic notion of those things or that there's an obvious clear example of what natural theology is. In fact, the my whole point was to debate the nuances of it and point out that I affirm natural revelation.

1:07:51Jay DyerI just Well, it's different I mean different things by the terms.

1:07:54Trent HornSure. Then whatever the term means, even if it's a different meaning of the term, is there an ecumenical council that's condemned natural

1:08:01Trent Horntheology?

1:08:02Jay DyerI would say that if you get to the seventh ecumenical council, the implications

1:08:07Jay Dyerof their iconographic

1:08:08Jay Dyerteaching of reality, which basically identifies

1:08:11Jay Dyerthe notion of the logi in terms of the the world being a book or an icon of Christ.

1:08:17Jay DyerI would say it's implied there, but it's not explicitly gonna say in an anachronistic way that I we condemn the Thomist doctrine of ethnology.

1:08:23Trent HornOkay.

1:08:24Trent HornDoes the bible ever condemn using reason to know God exists?

1:08:28Jay DyerNo. And in fact, don't believe that there's any dearth of evidence. I think that reason itself is can be used as a transcendental argument to prove God.

1:08:37Trent HornOkay.

1:08:38Trent HornI wanna talk about the presuppositions a bit because,

1:08:43Trent Hornbecause I think that you and I both agree it's important to demonstrate to people that God exists. Because, I mean, there are people do you believe there are people who don't believe in obviously, you don't believe in Christianity. Right?

1:08:53Jay DyerOh, yeah. Sure.

1:08:54Trent HornOkay. And it's important for us to present evidences to them to demonstrate to them the truth of Christianity.

1:08:59Jay DyerAbsolutely.

1:09:01Trent HornOkay. Then I'm really, really super curious

1:09:04Trent Hornhow you would do that, that if you can't start with self evident truths and reason up from the created order to the creator,

1:09:12Trent Horntease out attributes from arguments, but you have to use a big circular argument,

1:09:17Trent Hornwhy presuppose the god of orthodox Christian faith instead of any of the other numerous examples I gave in my opening statement?

1:09:25Jay DyerWell, because I think that ultimately philosophy shows us that what's at work here in the dispute between an atheist or a Christian or unbeliever is paradigms and not pieces of evidence because evidences are interpreted according to, in my view, worldviews and paradigms.

1:09:39Jay DyerAnd this comes to the fore

1:09:41Jay Dyerin modern debates following,

1:09:43Jay DyerKant and Hume. So we wouldn't see this in the ancient, writers per se because it's not a question that's raised in the ancient writers. I mean, there's many examples of things that I could say weren't raised in the first to six centuries that are raised in the seventh to ninth centuries.

1:09:58Jay DyerWe wouldn't conclude that because they weren't raised, they were false, so they weren't the case, so they weren't, you know, they weren't true at that time. They just weren't raised as questions.

1:10:05Jay DyerBut there are indicators of presuppositional

1:10:08Jay Dyertypes of argumentation,

1:10:10Jay Dyerincluding Saint John Damascus,

1:10:12Jay Dyerfound the knowledge book one where he uses a transcendental type of argument

1:10:15Jay Dyerto refute sophists, which he gets from a Marisotto book.

1:10:18Trent HornRight. Well, Jay, I'm actually not necessarily opposed to using logic, knowledge, or morality to to show God exists, or even these even a kind of transdental argument.

1:10:28Trent HornMy concern

1:10:29Trent Hornis

1:10:30Trent Hornthe the specificity

1:10:32Trent Hornof the presupposition

1:10:33Trent Hornbecause your case seemed to be very negative to natural theology, its inability

1:10:38Trent Hornto prove a rigid designator,

1:10:41Trent Hornthe the triune god of Christianity.

1:10:43Jay DyerNo. I I do alright. I agree.

1:10:45Trent HornI agree. So my

1:10:47Trent Hornquestion for you is,

1:10:48Trent Hornwhat would prevent why couldn't I take your exact same presuppositionalism

1:10:53Jay DyerRight.

1:10:53Trent HornSwap out the god of orthodox Christian faith, put in the Catholic divine simplicity god,

1:10:58Trent Hornor William or Cornelius Van Til taking his protestant view of god using the same argument?

1:11:04Trent HornWhat,

1:11:04Trent Hornbreaks the symmetry to pick your presupposition over the others?

1:11:08Jay DyerBecause in this case, what I'm the way I would make the argument is that the trinity is actually the ground, not just of epistemology

1:11:16Jay Dyeror logic or things like that, but actually the entire paradigm. Other In words, it's an argument for the entirety of the Christian paradigm, not merely an argument for this or that piece of it. So the trinity comes with in terms of orthodox theology, as I understand it, Saint Maximus'

1:11:29Jay Dyergrand metaphysic. It actually comes with a holistic

1:11:33Jay Dyerepistemology and metaphysic

1:11:35Jay Dyerthat is the grounding of the natural world itself. So it's not just an argument for an abstract concept or some logical thing.

1:11:43Jay DyerIt's the entire Christian paradigm and the metaphysics

1:11:46Jay Dyerof the Trinitarian theology that we have as orthodox, which is unique to us. And this is why one last point. This is why in, for example, questions and doubts, Saint Maximus goes to great lengths to show that there are natural proofs for the trinity. He actually thinks the existence of the world, the modal existence of the world itself is triadic and is a proof, not an adoration or a trace, but an actual proof of the trinity.

1:12:11Trent HornOkay. But why? I didn't hear a reason.

1:12:15Trent HornWhy are why is our presupposition

1:12:18Trent Horngoing to be

1:12:20Trent Horna trinity versus a unity, a unitarian god?

1:12:23Jay DyerOh, I see. Why?

1:12:23Trent HornThat's

1:12:25Trent Hornpoint one. And point two,

1:12:27Trent Hornwhy your concept of the trinity as opposed to a Catholic or Protestant concept? Why?

1:12:33Jay DyerWell, because first of all, the

1:12:35Jay Dyerthe the the triune god is not just posited. I'm actually saying that god and the Christian world, know, Christian orthodox paradigm gives an account for

1:12:46Jay Dyerthe metaphysical

1:12:47Jay Dyerproblems for the the one and the many, for the universals, for the for the, you know, logical

1:12:53Jay Dyercategories,

1:12:54Jay Dyerthe the Aristotelian categories that, you know, maximus basically squishes into natural contemplation. I'm saying that the structure of the world

1:13:01Jay Dyeras well as ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, all of that is justified,

1:13:06Jay Dyergiven an account for and grounded in a specific triune god and the specific revelation of what he says

1:13:13Jay Dyerabout how the world's constructed. So it's a revelatory theism and a justification via revelation

1:13:19Jay Dyeras opposed to autonomous,

1:13:23Jay Dyeryou know, the the unaided reasoning approach that you're defending.

1:13:27Trent HornSo you're saying that we should presuppose the god of Eastern Orthodox Christian theism

1:13:32Jay DyerCorrect.

1:13:32Trent HornBecause the god of Eastern Orthodox Christian theism has revealed we ought to presuppose him?

1:13:37Jay DyerNo. I'm saying that we should presuppose him precisely because

1:13:41Jay Dyerthe self revelatory declaration gives an account for

1:13:46Jay Dyerthe, problems of ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology that I keep raising.

1:13:50Trent HornIs it Christian

1:13:51Jay Dyerworldview solves those problems.

1:13:52Trent HornWhy does only orthodox

1:13:55Trent Hornso

1:13:56Trent Hornso I guess what am I I'm trying

1:13:57Jay Dyerto figure here. Revelatory character of the trinity in orthodox Christianity.

1:14:01Trent HornRight. But Protestants and Catholics also believe in the trinity.

1:14:04Jay DyerYeah. But you don't have it because you have heterodox versions of it. Not I'm not I'm personally attacking you, but I'm saying that

1:14:09Trent HornThat's that's fine. But so okay. So we would pre we would say your conception of theism

1:14:15Trent Hornis the only one that explains reality

1:14:18Trent Hornbecause we would deploy

1:14:20Trent Hornarguments of reason to show that the competitors are false or don't succeed.

1:14:25Jay DyerCorrect. But that's a category error, but because I'm not just because I'm using arguments from reason doesn't mean that they have logical or or epistemic or ontological priority. That's a category error that Thomas con that Thomist constantly make. That because I'm using an argument that it therefore has Mhmm. A epistemic or ontological priority or that I use it first in a chain.

1:14:43Trent HornOkay.

1:14:43Jay DyerAnd that's what I'm sorry. It doesn't

1:14:44Trent HornWould this also include

1:14:46Trent Hornwe only got a few seconds here.

1:14:49Trent HornMy question earlier, did did

1:14:52Trent Horna did Abraham believe god do you think Abraham had an explicit knowledge of the trinity?

1:14:56Jay DyerYes. And Saint Maximus says he did.

1:14:58Trent HornOkay. So he knew the father, son, and holy spirit. Alright.

1:15:02Trent HornLast one here. Do you think it's helpful

1:15:06Trent Hornto offer evidence for specific historical doctrines

1:15:09Trent Hornlike the resurrection?

1:15:11Jay DyerLike Absolutely. There is definitely a place for evidences,

1:15:14Jay Dyerand that's that's part of the the task of apologetics. I'm not in fact, I believe there's nothing but evidence for Christianity.

1:15:20Trent HornOkay. And then it can be helpful to offer,

1:15:23Trent Hornmaybe an argument. So we could show God exists maybe from a a miracle that's occurred?

1:15:29Jay DyerWell, I would

1:15:29Trent Hornsay maybe the miracle of fire,

1:15:32Trent Hornfor Eastern Orthodoxy?

1:15:33Jay DyerSo I believe that miracles are kinda test to, the position. I don't think that they quote prove it.

1:15:39Jay DyerAnd Thank you. And I would say as proof of that, when Jesus is responding to the,

1:15:44Jay Dyerguy in in the torments,

1:15:46Jay DyerHe says, let me come back and warn my brothers. Jesus says, even though one rise from the dead, they will not believe because they have Moses and the prophets. So, yeah, I mean, I I utilize,

1:15:55Jay Dyeryou know, prop messianic prophecies all the time to to as part of the apologetic. Sure.

1:16:01Suan SonnaAlright. Thank you, gentlemen. I'm gonna get started now with the thirty minutes of just audience q and a. And so let me get my timer ready.

1:16:09Suan SonnaSo let's begin with, Luke Meister. He says,

1:16:12Suan Sonnato Trent, how can you say Abraham didn't believe the trinity? We assume he doesn't have articulation of it, of the articulation of it that we do now, but he experienced slash believes same trinity we do now. Amen.

1:16:26Trent HornWell, what I would say is where does the Bible record,

1:16:29Trent HornAbraham

1:16:30Trent Hornhaving an interaction with,

1:16:33Trent Hornand knowing the father, son, and holy spirit? I know there's a typology of the of the three visitors that visit Abraham

1:16:40Trent Hornis a typological reference to the trinity, but that's far different from the knowledge of the Trinity you and I have of understanding

1:16:49Trent Hornfather, son, holy spirit, eternal generation, eternal, you know, spiration,

1:16:54Trent Hornor, of course, the different Catholic orthodox

1:16:56Trent Hornviews on that. I think I would say just it's very clear. Did people was the knowledge of the trinity among people who believed in God equal

1:17:04Trent Hornbefore and after the time of Christ? If you say that it was equal,

1:17:08Trent HornI would say that historically and theologically,

1:17:11Trent Hornthat makes no sense at all until the doctrine of the of the trinity was revealed through the incarnation.

1:17:18Suan SonnaAlright. Jay, would you like to respond?

1:17:20Jay DyerAbsolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is a great example of how there's a fundamental difference between us because trans presuppositions are that there was not knowledge of the trinity,

1:17:28Jay Dyerin an implicit form in this case. Of course, fundamental orthodox theology is that the theophanies are the person of Christ. They're the second person of logos. This is unanimously

1:17:37Jay Dyerthe teaching of the early church fathers until Augustine begins to question and on the trinity, I think, book three.

1:17:42Jay DyerAnd the fact that it's the logos and that that is so stressed in orthodox theology and iconography shows that we've maintained

1:17:50Jay Dyerthis very point, which is crucial,

1:17:52Jay Dyerwhich is that there is no generic god. Even in the old testament, there's no unit bare unitarianism.

1:17:57Jay DyerIt was always

1:17:58Jay Dyerthe father, the son, and the spirit, which is consistently revealed all throughout the old testament, have multiple talks going through the theophanies and the trinity in the old testament. Orthodox iconography in regard to the rubble of icon, for example, is there precisely to stress this point. And ironically, you know, Trent

1:18:15Jay DyerTrent's own theologians

1:18:18Jay Dyerin regard to if he was I I would say if if he were to go argue with a Muslim,

1:18:23Jay DyerI mean, this would be where he needed to go because, you know, Saint Justin Martyr makes these arguments against trifle of Jew to say,

1:18:30Jay Dyerit's the trinity in the Old Testament. And it's not a matter of whether the word trinity is used because the New Testament doesn't use the word trinity, but we all know the trinity is revealed. This is why Saint Maximus says,

1:18:41Jay Dyerthe Old Testament patriarchs all had a direct noetic perception of the trinity. This is why Jesus says, Abraham believed and rejoiced to see me.

1:18:50Suan SonnaAlright. The next question I have here is from, dro meme replies, and he says to Jay, how do you justify one presupposed system over another?

1:19:01Jay DyerBy comparison of the systems in terms of the internal critique to see which systems can give an account for the basic presuppositions of knowledge, epistemology, and metaphysics.

1:19:10Jay DyerExcuse me. Excuse me. Epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics.

1:19:13Jay DyerAnd so if the various systems are unable to account for those basic presuppositions

1:19:18Jay Dyerin terms of the categories, for example, then those systems make knowledge impossible.

1:19:22Jay DyerAnd so, thus, Christianity emerges as the only system or paradigm

1:19:27Jay Dyerthat gives an account for and makes knowledge possible. And I I didn't get a chance to respond to Trent's other point. I'm I'm not gonna do it right now, but, the Unitarian deity and the dyad deity have such internal,

1:19:39Jay Dyerpresuppositional problems that they make knowledge impossible.

1:19:42Suan SonnaYeah. Trent, do you have

1:19:43Trent Horna response? Yeah. I would just say that

1:19:46Trent Hornwhat Jay is doing is just natural theology in reverse. So he's starting with the conclusion

1:19:52Trent Hornof the triune god of eastern orthodoxy,

1:19:54Trent Hornidentifying

1:19:56Trent Hornthese elements of the world that need to be explained

1:19:58Trent Hornand then showing why alternatives,

1:20:01Trent Hornwhether it's atheistic,

1:20:02Trent Hornpolytheistic,

1:20:03Trent Hornnon Christian, or nonorthodox,

1:20:06Trent Horndon't get the job done. And that's kinda what I do. I just do it in a forward direction. I start with what we observe, show that nothing can explain this except for the religion that I'm a part of. So I don't disagree with what he's doing. I just really believe it's just natural theology in a reverse direction

1:20:21Trent Hornbecause he's using arguments to select between presuppositions.

1:20:24Trent HornIf he doesn't do that, then it becomes circular reasoning.

1:20:28Suan SonnaAlright. The next question I have here is from my name is Jeff.

1:20:31Suan SonnaThis is for Trent. So does your natural theology

1:20:34Suan Sonnapresuppose

1:20:35Suan Sonnathat

1:20:37Suan Sonnagod is supreme being in the chain of being? How does this accord with the father's teaching that god is hyper ousios?

1:20:47Trent HornAnd by the way, I didn't mean to laugh at the person's question. I'm hoping that's a reference to, 22 Jump Street, which is movie at the end of July.

1:20:55Trent HornBecause I watch it on planes, like, all the time when I travel.

1:20:58Trent HornYeah. I I think I would need to hear more about what the person means by the the eastern view of hyper ousios.

1:21:05Trent HornI would say analogia

1:21:07Trent Hornor or chain of being,

1:21:09Trent HornI would say that god is,

1:21:12Trent HornI would affirm the essence existence

1:21:14Trent Horndistinction.

1:21:15Trent HornAnd so and the analogy of being that when we describe god and talk about god, we speak not in a univocal way, but not in an equivocal way. We always have to use analogous

1:21:25Trent Hornways of talking about god. While creatures participate

1:21:28Trent Hornin being,

1:21:29Trent Horngod only god himself just is being. I know Catholics and Orthodox

1:21:34Trent Horndiffer on some of the finer points of understanding the inner life of god, But I think we both agree on the core concept that god and the world are radically different. God is creator. We are creature. Infinite gap between the two. Though we can re we can see from the finite world, there is this infinite creator.

1:21:54Suan SonnaYeah. And, Jay, if you wanna say anything, just, you know, feel free to, to chime in.

1:21:58Jay DyerYeah. I think that's a a great question from Jeff. And I would just respond by saying that unless I misheard, it sounded like Trent said that he affirms the essence existence distinction, but that's exactly what actus purus is is intended to deny. There is no distinction in god between essence and existence. He is pure act.

1:22:16Trent HornYeah. I agree with that. I must have misspoke.

1:22:18Trent HornI I agree with the distinction, but not in god, but in other things.

1:22:22Suan SonnaAlright. So this next question's from, Putus Spencer. This is for Jay. He says, how do you know your deity is not actively deceiving you? Second Thessalonians two eleven. In your systems, claim revelation

1:22:34Suan Sonnafor morally sufficient reasons.

1:22:37Jay DyerRight. So these kinds of kind of logic puzzles or traps that we might see in, like, a, you know, philosophy one zero one class or like a, you know, you know, Descartes' evil demon

1:22:47Jay Dyerexample,

1:22:48Jay Dyeris precisely

1:22:50Jay Dyerone one way that I could go about refuting that is pointing out that it would make knowledge impossible. Right? In other words, I wouldn't have a way to delineate between the true and the false if all reality was essentially fundamentally deceptive in nature. So if there's no place for me to have a reference

1:23:05Jay Dyerto objective truth,

1:23:07Jay Dyerthen there wouldn't be a way for me to delineate between anything true or false. And so now all knowledge, all predication,

1:23:13Jay Dyerall delineation would be actually be impossible. So I would say by the,

1:23:18Jay Dyerimpossibility to the contrary,

1:23:20Jay Dyerthat would be an impossible worldview to accept or to hold.

1:23:25Suan SonnaYeah. Trent, do you have any thoughts on that?

1:23:27Trent HornYeah. I think what I would say is that line of argument of arguing that it's impossible based on god having a certain kind of standard. I think that it's valid, though once again, it shares a lot of arguments with natural theology.

1:23:39Trent HornOn my own,

1:23:40Trent Hornpremise, I would say that if I arg if we see god, the moral argument shows God is the standard of goodness. The argument of emotion shows that God is actus purus or he is, infinite being itself without any potentiality.

1:23:54Trent HornAs such, you would not have any deficiencies or or absences.

1:23:57Trent HornEvil is a privation. So if god has no privation,

1:24:01Trent Hornthen he couldn't possibly be evil. And as a result, he would just be goodness itself, and so he can never act contrary to goodness. And lying is is contrary to the truth

1:24:11Trent Horneven and we can discuss the question of morality of lying, but I would say that god being goodness itself would not actively engage in the sin of lying for greater utilitarian purposes from man's perspective.

1:24:24Suan SonnaOkay. So I I saw a question on, on,

1:24:28Suan Sonnafurther back in the chat, but this is from I can't pull up the question on on this screen, but on another one. This is from Ayush Manocha.

1:24:36Suan SonnaAnd he says for Trent, if we start our theology

1:24:39Suan Sonnaby reasoning from sense data of the natural world,

1:24:43Suan Sonnashouldn't all the death we see around us cause us to conclude death is natural?

1:24:48Trent HornI've I've heard this argument before. And just because we start with our sense data, it doesn't follow that we should end there. If we just look at the world around us, we couldn't determine if the creator was good or evil. All of the arguments for natural theology have to be put together.

1:25:03Trent HornFrom them, we see that god is perfect goodness itself.

1:25:06Trent HornAnd from and because of that, we can know god must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.

1:25:12Trent HornI will say, though, that death, whether it's natural or not, the Bible is very clear that God gave Adam and Eve green plants in the garden to eat.

1:25:21Trent HornSo, there was death prior to the fall when man invented the salad. So, and Aquinas affirmed even that the animals would have still had their predatory ways.

1:25:30Trent HornThe Bible seems to make it very clear when you look at Romans,

1:25:33Trent Hornwhat it's talking about is that death and human death entered at the fall, not death in general. Otherwise, you couldn't have had entropy. You couldn't have had the plants in the garden to eat. Human death entered at the fall, but we do believe in things like Romans eight that god will ultimately,

1:25:48Trent Hornbring us out from this world itself to something even greater to redeem creation.

1:25:53Trent HornSo in one sense, death nonhuman death is a part of the finite world, but god will redeem it and make it even better in the new earth and the the new heavens.

1:26:03Jay DyerYeah. I would fundamentally totally disagree with that assessment. In fact, you know, in first Corinthians fifteen twenty six, Paul says death is the enemy. So for the Orthodox Church, it is fundamental, especially if you read the deification of man by who

1:26:16Jay Dyeris a famous critic and rejector of natural theology, by the way,

1:26:20Jay Dyerthat, death will be destroyed. And so if death is natural in any sense, it doesn't really make sense to say that death could be destroyed. In fact, animal death, I don't believe existed before the fall precisely because

1:26:32Jay Dyerif you look at Romans eight, the cosmic scope of the redemption that Christ brings in terms of what's fundamental orthodoxy and and what's called the recapitulation doctrine, which is basically missing in Roman Catholic theology.

1:26:44Jay DyerMaximus and the council's recapitulation

1:26:47Jay Dyerdoctrine

1:26:48Jay Dyeris a fundamental acceptance that all death, whether physical or spiritual,

1:26:53Jay Dyeris a result of Adam's fall. And and I would direct those that are interested, and this is the the father serpent rose's great classic big fat book demonstrates this in about a thousand pages that this is the unanimous position of the church fathers as well as, by the way, especially for those that, are interested in the six ecumenical

1:27:09Jay Dyercouncil. Saint Sophronius'

1:27:11Jay Dyerconfession, which accepted,

1:27:13Jay Dyeras a dogmatic statement of the sixth council,

1:27:15Jay Dyeragrees with this. It affirms six day creation.

1:27:18Jay DyerAnd, the Trollo Canon one zero nine, which is accepted at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, condemns those that believe that death existed before the fall.

1:27:29Suan SonnaAlright. The next question I have here is from, p j q 23. He says, Trent, do you grant a distinction between vicious

1:27:36Suan Sonnaand virtuous circularity

1:27:38Suan Sonnaunderlying any system of knowledge?

1:27:41Trent HornNo. I believe that's an ad hoc,

1:27:44Trent Horndemonstration

1:27:45Trent Hornthat has been created. In fact, the the vicious

1:27:48Trent Hornvirtuous circularity

1:27:49Trent Horncomes from modern presuppositionalists

1:27:51Trent Hornlike Cornelius Van Til, John Frame.

1:27:55Trent HornI don't believe that there are any other logical

1:27:58Trent Hornfallacies

1:27:59Trent Hornwhere you have a a virtuous version of it or a vicious version of the fallacy. The reasoning is either sound or it's not sound. And what I think I made very clear in discussing with Jay is that he agrees you can't justify

1:28:12Trent Hornthe existence of anything, not even transcendentals like the laws of logic through circular reasoning. He would reject the view logic explains itself,

1:28:19Trent Hornbut he's trying to apply this only to god, and that leads us to the problem then of which presupposition do you choose, which not. And either you use arguments to pick one presupposition over the other, which is natural theology,

1:28:32Trent Hornor you just pick the one that happens to be your religion and it's special pleading and it's, circular reasoning as a result. So, no, I don't believe that. If if if you need to reason in a circle, p q r t p,

1:28:46Trent Hornyou don't need to use that reasoning. You can just start with p. P, therefore p. Circular reasoning is unnecessary.

1:28:53Trent HornYou can just say the thing is true because the thing is true, and then that actually gets you to a kind of foundationalism that Jay,

1:28:59Trent Hornwas against tonight.

1:29:01Jay DyerWell, again, Trent's not understanding what presuppositionalist

1:29:05Jay Dyerand trans argumentation is actually attempting to do. He's merely restating his position. And in fact, the whole point, as I said earlier, was that it's a metamological question, which trend just seems to reply as if you solve a metamological question with logic.

1:29:18Jay DyerIt's a metamological question, meaning it's prior to the doing of logic.

1:29:23Jay DyerThat's why it's a more foundational paradigm level question. And until Trent

1:29:28Jay Dyersees that, I don't think he's gonna understand the argument that's being made. And my whole point in drilling down into his strong foundationalism that he affirmed earlier was to show that his own position was precisely circular.

1:29:43Suan SonnaOkay. And the the next question is from Joshua Opal,

1:29:46Suan Sonnaand he asked to Jay,

1:29:47Suan Sonnawhat are these evidences you refer to for Christianity?

1:29:52Jay DyerWell, there's a lot of different types of evidences that I could give, but Christianity

1:29:57Jay Dyerin terms of apologetics to the unbeliever is a, I believe, an argument of comparing paradigms.

1:30:03Jay DyerAnd the reason I think this is not because I intend to, you know, dispense with arguments in the church fathers. For example, there was a recent book published by by doctor Bradshaw where there's a kind of a dialogue back and forth between Swinburne, Bradshaw, and multiple other,

1:30:16Jay Dyerorthodox,

1:30:18Jay Dyertheologians about this question of natural law and natural theology.

1:30:21Jay DyerAnd one of the things that Bradshaw noticed noted in his

1:30:25Jay DyerPalamas chapter, for example, was that

1:30:28Jay Dyerit's fine to talk about telos and causation in the ancient medieval world. But when we get to modern philosophy, what happens is that there's kind of a flipping of the question to where

1:30:38Jay Dyermodern, epistemologist after human Kant are really asking

1:30:42Jay Dyerand pointing out that you're not really justified in making the move to do all the metaphysics and do all the metaphysical baggage and claims that you're doing until you answer the prior epistemic questions.

1:30:53Jay DyerI'm not saying that skepticism is true because of that. I'm saying that their right to critique

1:30:59Jay Dyerthe illicit move of doing metaphysics,

1:31:02Jay Dyerright, without giving an account of the epistemic

1:31:05Jay Dyercriteria first.

1:31:06Jay DyerAnd so that's what we're actually trying to do here is to critique the world views in the systems. And so it's not a battle of evidences because evidences are are are, I think, theory laden. Everything is theory laden. And anybody that thinks that it's not, which is really what the transposition is is resting on, is that there's some self evident non theory laden truth. There's a huge, burden

1:31:26Jay Dyerof proof upon that position

1:31:28Jay Dyerto try to demonstrate that that's the case to make natural theology work. In other words, I'm just asking questions pre,

1:31:34Jay Dyerright, prior to the doing of metaphysics.

1:31:37Jay DyerAnd and Trent just wants to do the metaphysics without doing the big questions that I'm asking.

1:31:44Suan SonnaTrent, do you have a response?

1:31:46Trent HornYeah. I do.

1:31:47Trent HornJay, do you have the Brad the Bradshaw Swinburne book that you could hold up? You have it, nearby you?

1:31:52Jay DyerYes. It's in the morning.

1:31:53Trent HornFeel free to hold that up because,

1:31:55Trent HornI would say, that's actually a really good book. I read it as well, Natural Theology in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.

1:32:01Trent HornSo I thought it made a very positive case for traditional natural theology. So I'd encourage anyone to read it, and I think you'll come away with the same positive affirmation that I did. So Jay's read it. I I I can see. I would recommend checking that out. With evidences, I think that's interesting that Jay says, yeah. I think it's great to offer evidences

1:32:19Trent Hornthat, like, okay. But if our paradigm was enough, why do we need the evidences? That seems to implicitly acknowledge many unbelievers

1:32:26Trent Hornwon't accept just a paradigm presuppositionalist

1:32:29Trent Hornargument. They're gonna need more evidences to move them. So I might offer to those watching who are presuppositionalist,

1:32:35Trent Hornperhaps you should consider just adding to your repertoire

1:32:38Trent Hornto presuppositionalism

1:32:40Trent Hornalso other ancillary arguments like Old Testament prophecy, historical witness of the resurrection,

1:32:46Trent Hornmaybe planting as evolutionary argument against naturalism,

1:32:50Trent Hornarguments from reason, consciousness.

1:32:52Trent HornI believe that natural theology can be a wide diverse field,

1:32:56Trent Hornand still be and still be true and good what we're defending tonight.

1:33:00Jay DyerCan I say something or not?

1:33:01Suan SonnaYeah. Of course.

1:33:02Jay DyerMhmm.

1:33:04Jay DyerThe the chapter, obviously, that I would find most,

1:33:07Jay Dyerconvincing is the one about the Greek theologians in the last fifty, sixty years that either severely critique or reject natural theology. So if if people are interested and they read that book,

1:33:17Jay Dyerthat's the chapter that I would agree with.

1:33:20Suan SonnaAlright. Next question is from Ryan Pope. So he asked the question, what is the precise difference, I think this is to Jay, between a logical question and a metalogical

1:33:29Suan Sonnaquestion?

1:33:30Jay DyerRight. So logic is typically dealing with the assumption that logic works and that it functions in the way that, you know, or or or syllogisms,

1:33:39Jay Dyeryou know, go and then how they proceed to the conclusion.

1:33:44Jay DyerAnd metalogical questions are asking about the status of logic itself,

1:33:48Jay Dyermuch like math theory is asking questions about the status of mathematical entities themselves.

1:33:53Jay DyerAnd so that's why I'm arguing, and I I think it's it's pretty obvious that those are prior questions to the doing of logic.

1:34:01Trent HornYeah. I would agree with essentially that definition,

1:34:03Trent Hornmeta logic or, we have philosophy of mathematics,

1:34:07Trent Hornphilosophy of philosophy.

1:34:09Trent HornWe're asking for ultimate foundational questions like with logic.

1:34:13Trent HornWhat kind of logic?

1:34:14Trent HornHow do we demonstrate the law of non contradiction? Is the law of excluded middle,

1:34:18Trent Hornalways the case? Could that be modified?

1:34:21Trent HornBut I would say that in Jay's presentation,

1:34:25Trent Hornhe hasn't shown,

1:34:28Trent Hornin or in order, once again, that he says, well, we need to have a foundation for things like the laws of logic. I gave different presuppositions that

1:34:37Trent Horncould explain that, platonism,

1:34:39Trent Hornother, you know, other views, other Christian views, non Christian views.

1:34:42Jay DyerRight.

1:34:43Trent HornAnd so you would have to figure

1:34:45Trent Hornout what is the true one either through argument, which is natural theology,

1:34:49Trent Hornor through a kind of circular reasoning or or assertion.

1:34:52Jay DyerAgain, I would just say that that's a category error that using the logic and the argumentation does not necessitate or prove that it has epistemic or ontological priority.

1:35:02Suan SonnaThis is a question from a.

1:35:04Suan SonnaHe asked to Trent. If man's intellect is darkened through the fall, how can man use natural reasoning alone to come to knowledge of god, especially with created grace that cuts off god from man?

1:35:17Trent HornRight. This is called the noetic objection,

1:35:21Trent Hornto man's knowledge or god. You see it sometimes among certain Calvinist authors. But even the first Calvinist thinkers like, Calvin himself, for example,

1:35:29Trent Hornwouldn't embrace that. I I agree. Sin has a noetic effect or sin makes you stupid, makes you do dumb things, but man can still come to understand God. Like, people who say that atheists

1:35:40Trent Hornbelieve in God but suppress

1:35:42Trent Hornthe knowledge of God, you can't suppress knowledge of something unless your intellect grasps it, evaluates it, and decides it wants to reject it. So even though and I don't believe in total depravity. Even though the the the image of God in man is defaced, not erased,

1:35:57Trent Hornwe can still, through reason, come to know there is a God, but that predisposes us to the gift of faith. The synod of Dort, Calvinist

1:36:04Trent Hornsynod, actually said, there is to be sure a certain light of nature remaining in man after the fall by virtue of which he retains some notions about god.

1:36:13Trent HornSo even the early Calvinists did not believe man was so depraved. He couldn't use reason to know there there was a god.

1:36:21Suan SonnaAlright. Next question. I'm sorry.

1:36:23Jay DyerWell, my comment on that would be that, there's a great, chapter precisely on the very question that Seraphim's asking, again, from Saint Justin Popovich for the orthodox in the book Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ where he does an analysis of the epistemology of Saint Isaac the Syrian.

1:36:39Jay DyerAnd he shows that the epistemology,

1:36:40Jay Dyerwhich is, again, centered around the doctrine of the Logi,

1:36:43Jay Dyerrequires

1:36:44Jay Dyerthe cleansing of the news. I didn't get to go deep into the the the doctrine of news, which is, again, something that separates Orthodox anthropology from Roman Catholic anthropology.

1:36:54Jay DyerAnd for us, man's noetic faculty is precisely the the organ that he has to know god directly,

1:37:01Jay Dyerwhether from reading scripture or whether from interpreting the natural world. And I think Saint Joseph makes some really convincing

1:37:08Jay Dyersound arguments that

1:37:10Jay Dyerin order even to interpret the natural world, we've got to have a cleansing of the noose and the noetic faculty.

1:37:17Suan SonnaAlright. And this question's for you, Jay. Doctor Klein asked, would you agree that the justification for the Orthodox Christian god as the only basis

1:37:27Suan Sonnaas opposed to the Protestant or Catholic god is because it has been revealed?

1:37:33Jay DyerSo what if there's a if you read the essay, that I'll that I'll send to Suwan after this called, the contingency of knowledge by, doctor Russ Mannion,

1:37:42Jay Dyerhe makes a great point about the comparison of systems and what exactly revelatory theism is. He's he's not a Calvinist, by the way. And and by the way, none of theologians

1:37:51Jay Dyerthat

1:37:52Jay DyerI've referenced tonight have anything to do with Van Til or Bahnsen. I mean, Van Til and Bahnsen, I think, have good points and good arguments here and there, but most of what I've talked about, I don't think, is is at all directly referencing them.

1:38:03Jay DyerThe justification for the Christian god in in terms of how we know god is only based on revelation.

1:38:11Jay DyerAnd my view is that it excludes Protestantism

1:38:14Jay Dyerand Catholicism

1:38:15Jay Dyereven though they have specific attributes in common just like with when I mentioned the theistic fallacies paper,

1:38:21Jay Dyerit really doesn't matter because if you look at a logical conjunct and if we were to put all the beliefs that, for example,

1:38:29Jay Dyerorthodox Christianity has in the logical conjunct,

1:38:32Jay Dyerin the parentheses,

1:38:33Jay DyerIf I took one of those out,

1:38:36Jay Dyerit's it's not this set. Right? Because what defines this set and every member of the set is the relationship of the set as a whole and each to another. So for example,

1:38:45Jay DyerGreg Boyd's open theism. Right? When when Greg Boyd takes out one of the attributes of god's omniscience or he redefines it to be whatever he wants it to be, it's it's not this set anymore even if it's got everything except,

1:38:57Jay Dyerright, just one of the attributes.

1:38:59Jay DyerSo which is actually because, you know, Trent kind of conceded a little bit about that when it came to the the set of necessary attributes

1:39:06Jay Dyerin regard to natural theology.

1:39:09Jay DyerBut if you look at the Gariepy paper,

1:39:11Jay Dyerwhich I yeah. I think he is an atheist. I'm not I'm not agreeing with his position. His his atheism doesn't really do with his his argumentation per se because I think the arguments are solid.

1:39:22Jay DyerGariepy's point there is that the if you take the set,

1:39:26Jay Dyerexcuse me, any member out of the set or try to, impose it on another set, it doesn't really work because it only has the meaning that it has within that set or system.

1:39:36Trent HornYeah. And I would say, as I said in the debate, I don't believe that designator schema in the set works.

1:39:41Trent HornBoth Aristotle and I believed water existed,

1:39:44Trent Hornbut I have a lot more propositions about water, its acidity, its triple point, its molecular composition.

1:39:50Trent HornSo I have many more truths in my set about water than Aristotle does. So my concept is more complete, thus more true, but we're both expressing belief in the same wet substance. So I I just reject that. I'll also add that this,

1:40:04Trent Horndiscussion also and I don't wanna beat a dead horse, so I can make the same reply over and over again about whether it's circular or he's doing natural theology in reverse. I would say natural theology is helpful here as a symmetry breaker because you can use,

1:40:16Trent Hornreligious experience.

1:40:17Trent HornYou get the same religious for objective

1:40:20Trent Hornevidence, you could look at two people. They have the same religious experiences, different religions, can't tell which one is true or false.

1:40:27Trent HornTwo people offered identical presuppositional

1:40:29Trent Hornarguments with different presuppositions.

1:40:32Trent HornYou don't have a way to break to pick which one or the other, but I think natural theology is the the way you can tell which cons which conception of God, which system is more true, and which is less true. And Jay admits he does that by saying that Eastern Orthodoxy

1:40:46Trent Hornbetter explains

1:40:47Trent Horngod and the arguments surrounding it than any competitor.

1:40:50Jay DyerRight. So Which

1:40:51Trent HornI don't I don't agree with, but he does.

1:40:52Jay DyerYeah. Trent is confusing in my view, the difference between

1:40:56Jay Dyerusing logic and argumentation and natural theology. So if from my paradigm or my system, if I'm using logic and argumentation, that doesn't equate to natural theology.

1:41:05Jay DyerIn my view, everything that exists is common ground. There's not, you know, these arbitrary sort of list of attributes or commonly general ideas the way phaser speaks of justifying the self evident principles. I don't think there are those things. And so I'm actually making an argument that challenges that presupposition and that assumption.

1:41:23Jay DyerAnd I'm not just making the argument challenging. I'm actually trying to show and demonstrate that the the in the case, for example, of your, list of attributes regarding,

1:41:32Jay Dyerwater, the difference here is that,

1:41:34Jay Dyerthe the traits of water are different than a belief system. So it's a false analogy, and this actually comes up in the Gariepy paper, and he refutes the very example that,

1:41:44Jay DyerTrent gave because belief systems are different than physical objects. And the way that we know the properties or validate

1:41:51Jay Dyerthrough empirical sense data what a a a physical object has or doesn't have is different than the way that belief systems as a whole determine the members of the set. This is why, for example, the Gariepy paper,

1:42:03Jay Dyerhe lists the Nicene Creed as the set of beliefs as an example of what a Christian theism is. I mean, the the council is saying this is what Christian theism is.

1:42:14Jay DyerSo if that's the case, then there's not a generic theism by which we have a self evident theory neutral access

1:42:21Jay Dyerto personhood or to omniscience or any of the other attributes that we might list.

1:42:26Trent HornSwan, I lost track. Is

1:42:29Trent Hornwas it j, then I, then j gave an extra reply?

1:42:32Suan SonnaWell, like, I'm just kinda letting you guys hash it out.

1:42:34Trent HornOh, okay. Then I would like one little extra reply

1:42:36Suan Sonnato the

1:42:37Trent Hornnext question. And then we'll move on. Yeah. You could take out water as an example. You could use belief systems like modern Platonists and ancient Platonists

1:42:45Trent Hornboth believed in the existence of the same numbers, but modern Platonists have more truths about those numbers with the advent of Cantorian set theory, things like that. But we'd say they're still talking about the same thing even though one has a more developed knowledge. You could change the example. The point still remains.

1:43:00Suan SonnaAlright. So, trendy web one, he asked the question, given Jay's arguments about revelation,

1:43:06Suan Sonnahow does he address those who have no access to the church and divine revelation?

1:43:11Jay DyerRight. So, when Trent was reading the the the section where, you know, Paul speaking to the Athenian philosophers,

1:43:17Jay DyerI think he misread the text, because, you know, Paul says that

1:43:21Jay Dyerthe unknown god is the one I proclaim to you. So, I think that we have to affirm that there's a sense in which the pagan knows and doesn't know god at the same time. And if you look at apophatic theology via negativa,

1:43:34Jay Dyerwe kind of say this already. Right? We all we we kind of say that if we say that god's essence, for example, is unknowable in the in the the orthodox tradition,

1:43:43Jay Dyerwe're saying something

1:43:44Jay Dyerin a sense that's cataphatic while at the same time we're saying something that's apophatic. So we're not defining it, and we're saying something about it, namely that it's unknowable.

1:43:54Jay DyerSo this is a feature of apophatic theology. And and my reading

1:43:58Jay Dyerof acts 17 in concert with Romans one is precisely that Paul is not granting them that they have direct access to god via the creatures per se. I think Romans one is primarily talking about the innate sense of god and actually many, you know, early church fathers

1:44:16Jay Dyerbelieve that as well. A lot of the some of the texts that come up in the Bradshaw book that I think Trent was referencing earlier on in the debate are actually talking about the innate senses divinitatis,

1:44:25Jay Dyerthe innate sense of god, which I think is the moral law. And but there's this curious quote where where Paul says to the pagans, the word is near you even in your heart. The word is not a generic concept.

1:44:36Jay DyerThe logos in John one is not a generic concept. Christ lighteth every man that comes into the world. So I would literally say there's a sense in which, yes, they do and do not know the trinity, and that's precisely because according to Romans one, Paul's not arguing about the

1:44:51Jay Dyerconclusions of philosophers there in Romans one in terms of syllogisms and god at the end of a syllogism. In Romans one, Paul is talking about the heart of man. Again, the note the news doctrine of orthodoxy is what we understand Romans one to be talking about. That the heart of man knows in its inner sense that it has sinned against the one true god even though at the same time, he doesn't know the one true god.

1:45:14Suan SonnaYeah. Trent, do you have a response?

1:45:18Trent HornYeah. I would say that, as I said in the debate, people

1:45:21Trent Hornhave a relationship with god, one, because god sustains everything that exists. They have a relationship with God even if they don't know it.

1:45:28Trent HornThe other ways they can come to know God would be through,

1:45:32Trent Hornthrough revelation. And I think I made that clear in my statements when I cited Romans one,

1:45:36Trent Hornin other videos, and Jay would agree with me. Romans one, Paul is drawing a lot from the book of wisdom. And in wisdom 13, it seems very clear that the the author is saying that you can perceive

1:45:46Trent Hornthat god exists,

1:45:48Trent Hornthrough the things that he has made. And the error of the pagans, he says, is they stopped at the midpoint and thought that the things they perceived,

1:45:56Trent Hornthey they didn't go all the way to the thing that made those things. But as for Act 17, I think it's very clear here.

1:46:02Trent HornI found an altar with an ins with this inscription to an unknown god. What therefore you worship as unknown,

1:46:08Trent Hornthis I proclaim to you.

1:46:11Trent HornSo it seems clear to me these people,

1:46:13Trent Hornknew there was a god. They knew it was worthy of worship,

1:46:17Trent Hornbut they knew nothing else about this deity. And then Paul told them about it. But notice Paul doesn't talk about Old Testament. He doesn't mention Jesus. Instead, he continues common ground with them by quoting,

1:46:28Trent HornGreek poets. And, of course, the Lagos was also a concept widely in Hellenistic

1:46:33Trent Hornculture. He's not necessarily using the Yochanan concept.

1:46:37Suan SonnaYeah. I feel pretty bad because there's a lot of people who are still asking good questions, but we run out of time, for this section. And so now we're going into our five minute rebuttal, section or portion. And so, yeah, Jay

1:46:49Jay DyerI have one point to that.

1:46:50Suan SonnaYeah. Sure.

1:46:51Jay DyerReal quick. I would just take issue with the end statement that Paul just tries to stay on common ground. No. In fact, Paul goes directly to the resurrection. He says Greek wisdom is foolishness, and he goes directly to the resurrection of Christ.

1:47:07Suan SonnaAlright. Jay or or Trent, do you wanna say anything in response to that, or do you think we should just go to rebuttals?

1:47:17Trent HornRight. Yeah. I I be okay. Yeah. I'm saying here he did preach Jesus and resurrection,

1:47:21Trent HornActs, seventeen eighteen.

1:47:24Trent HornI'm just saying in the part where he's addressing those who worship specifically

1:47:28Jay DyerWell, but you said he didn't go into Christ in the Old Testament.

1:47:32Trent HornRight. Well, he he certainly didn't talk about the the Old Testament.

1:47:35Jay DyerYou said he didn't go into Christ or the Old Testament.

1:47:38Trent HornOkay. Well, then I'm sorry. I I misspoke. I'm talking about the specific section

1:47:41Trent Hornwhere he's talking to those who are worshiping the the altar of the unknown.

1:47:45Jay DyerYeah. But in that section, he does talk about Christ.

1:47:47Trent HornHe's saying I agree. And I agree that that Paul does talk about,

1:47:51Trent Hornresurrection.

1:47:52Trent HornHe uses miracles

1:47:53Trent Hornand their ability to help people see that God has revealed himself. Absolutely.

1:47:57Suan SonnaAlright. And with that,

1:47:59Suan SonnaI'll let Jay Dyer get ready to give his five minute closing statement. And so, once again, Jay, like, once you get down to ten seconds, I'll kind of expand the screen and everything. But whenever you start talking, I'll start, your five minute closing statement.

1:48:15Jay DyerAlright. So, I think that what I really wanted to get to here was

1:48:20Jay Dyerthe epistemic problems of a,

1:48:23Jay Dyeran approach that Trent has to strong foundationalism, which you affirmed early on

1:48:28Jay Dyerregarding

1:48:29Jay Dyerthe way that we go about doing natural theology.

1:48:32Jay DyerWhat I heard from Trent throughout the debate in many, many instances was actually equivocating

1:48:37Jay Dyerand

1:48:38Jay Dyerword concept fallacy shifting between natural law, moral law, the revelation of god in nature,

1:48:45Jay Dyerand his Thomistic conception of natural theology. My whole point in this debate was that those things are not equivalent. But multiple times of debate, Tridentine to switch back between the these different things, which are very specific and nuanced, as if they're all just talking about the same thing. Of course, my questioning here is to

1:49:02Jay Dyerraise that very I'm I'm questioning that very assumption right there that I I don't think those are all talking about the same thing.

1:49:09Jay DyerI wanted to really stress that this approach

1:49:12Jay Dyerthat Trent's doing is an empirical approach. I didn't say Trent or Aquinas was an empiricist. I said the approach is empirically based,

1:49:21Jay Dyerand that's not in doubt because in De Veritate, Aquinas

1:49:25Jay Dyerclearly says that there's nothing in the intellect that's not also in the senses.

1:49:30Jay DyerHe also affirms the distinction between what is better known in itself and what is better known by us. And this is really the basis of the the foundationalist

1:49:38Jay Dyerapproach that we have here. If we're gonna take that approach, we have a series of problems

1:49:44Jay Dyerthat I raised one as an example of properly basic beliefs in terms of the section when I was questioning Trent about circularity of properly basic beliefs. This is just one problem for any empirically based epistemology.

1:49:57Jay DyerAnd make no bones about it, Trent's natural theology is an empirically based natural theology.

1:50:04Jay DyerSo he's gonna have to demonstrate

1:50:05Jay Dyerthe justification

1:50:06Jay Dyerfor the empirical argumentation that he's doing to say natural theology is the case when I am saying that natural theology isn't the case because I can come to the table and critique the presuppositions in the exact same way that human can't do

1:50:21Jay Dyerthat you're gonna have to give an account for. And why do you have to give an account for it in that way? Because of the nature of your presuppositions and the foundationalism itself. Foundationalism

1:50:30Jay Dyeris saying these are self evident. These are things that everybody agrees on that we start with. What does it matter how many people agree with something or disagree with it? That's a appeal to the masses fallacy.

1:50:41Jay DyerAnd so if Trent's going to have a foundationalist epistemology,

1:50:45Jay Dyerhe's gonna have to answer not just that, but the questions of

1:50:49Jay Dyerwhat is the metaphysical content of all the words that you're listing here in terms of this sense data?

1:50:55Jay DyerWhat is the status of the external world that you're presupposing in these metaphysical claims?

1:50:59Jay DyerWhat is the certitude that you have that the sense data matches up to the objects in the external world? How do you solve seller's problem of the myth of the given?

1:51:07Jay DyerHow do you resolve the underdetermination

1:51:09Jay Dyerof data?

1:51:10Jay DyerHow do you account for the fact that the parapathetic axiom itself is not in sense data?

1:51:15Jay DyerHow if that's the case, do you account for induction and deduction on an empirical basis?

1:51:20Jay DyerWhat are the primary what are the properly basic beliefs given the fact that I don't think the ones that you listed are actually properly basic beliefs given the critique that I gave of of Descartes' Cogito?

1:51:31Jay DyerIf that's the case and we start with induction, how do we get to the justification

1:51:36Jay Dyerof universals, right, from induction? So if deduction is a problem excuse me. If in induction is a problem, deduction also goes.

1:51:44Jay DyerWhat is the justification

1:51:46Jay Dyerfor the epistemic bootstrapping project at the outset that that Trent is involved in given that, as I tried to show, there are no properly basic beliefs.

1:51:54Jay DyerAnd also given the fact that things like the uniformity of nature, that logic works and operates in an external world, or that the external world actually has a causal relationship that it imprints

1:52:06Jay Dyerdata upon Trent's mind.

1:52:09Jay DyerNothing in that was a affirmation

1:52:11Jay Dyeror an accusation that Trent is a human empiricist or that Aquinas is an empiricist. I never said that. So Trent was replying to a straw man. I simply said, how does Trent res reply as a foundationalist to these classic

1:52:24Jay Dyerproblems for any foundationalist

1:52:26Jay Dyersystem? It really doesn't matter which one we pick.

1:52:29Jay DyerOne thing that I would really wanted to conclude with was about the arguments of Saint Maximus for the Trinity, and I'll just run through these really quick. Maximus thinks that the modes of natural contemplation lead us to the logy, which leads us to the logos. The logos is a rigid designator not for generic

1:52:44Jay Dyerreasoning

1:52:45Jay Dyeror Marcus Aurelius' logos, but in fact for, as Trident said, the wisdom literature logos of,

1:52:50Jay Dyerecclesiasticus,

1:52:51Jay Dyerproverbs, and John one, who is the second person of the godhead. It's a rigid designator.

1:52:57Jay DyerCreation then according to Saint Maximus is fundamentally christological and fundamentally triadic.

1:53:01Jay DyerAmbiguan 10 shows that creation is a veil for the logos. The created world, Maximus says, is a book. It's a book that's the same as the logos in terms of the bible book. Right? Maximus just goes on, of course, to say that the created order is a theophany.

1:53:15Jay DyerAnd my main point here is that natural theology posits a deity that does not allow

1:53:21Jay Dyerthe created world to actually be a theophany.

1:53:25Jay DyerAnd I think the Thomism demonstrates

1:53:27Jay Dyerthat.

1:53:28Suan SonnaAlright. Thank you, Jay. And sorry. I don't know if you heard me chuckle in the background, but there are just some funny comments. And, I just wanna say, was it Kyle Myers? He appreciated that this debate was fruitful. And so we've we've been getting good reception from, on both sides. And so, Trent, yeah, this is now your final statement, so let me know whenever you're ready, and, you know, I'll start the timer. Sure.

1:53:49Trent HornWell, once again, I wanna thank Swan for hosting this. I wanna thank Jay for taking part. He brought a rigorous and well developed case, and so I appreciate that. Let's do an overview of what we talked about. Remember, Jay had the burden of showing us that Christians should abandon

1:54:05Trent Hornnatural theology.

1:54:07Trent HornSo the burden is on him to show why we should give up something that has been practiced uniformly across the church for two thousand years in scripture as I showed.

1:54:16Trent HornWhat arguments did he give for that? He basically just kinda gave two arguments.

1:54:21Trent HornOne was a critique of foundationalism.

1:54:24Trent HornHe gave a lot more critiques of foundationalism in the closing statement, which I see no need to reply to because they weren't previously brought up in the debate.

1:54:31Trent HornBut I would say that I showed, and I think it's very commonsensical,

1:54:34Trent Hornthat we can affirm there are certain self evident truths,

1:54:38Trent Hornand we can reason up from these. They just we interact with them, and we see their truth, and that it's self evident. I think I made it very clear infinite regress doesn't work, and I showed all of the problems that set end up if you try to go through a circular route as my opponent does. So I would say his idea to critique foundationalism to get rid of natural theology,

1:54:59Trent Hornit sim it simply doesn't work. I'll also add there's a wide variety of natural theology schema. I have one. Richard Swinburne has another. William Lane Craig has another. The the common thread that runs through them is the ability of reason to know that god exists. Now my opponent said, well, there is no generic theism.

1:55:15Trent HornIt's the Logoi. Everything is is the Trinity. If you can't show that, there is no generic God that is a person. I would say if you believe that, you're gonna have to believe some really strange things,

1:55:26Trent Horneven leaving aside the old the Old Testament patriarchs having explicit knowledge of the Trinity. Did a Jew in exile in Babylon

1:55:32Trent Hornknow that God is a trinity with the same confidence that I do or Jay does? Under his view, it would seem like you'd have to say, yeah. If they, prior to Christ, that the Jews in exile in Babylon or the Jews in the time of Job, knew that God existed, that they had the same knowledge of the trinity, not just that the patriarch interacted unknowingly with the trinity, but the same knowledge belief in the trinity as us, I would say in philosophical

1:55:57Trent Hornspeak, that's highly counterintuitive.

1:56:01Trent HornBut let's talk about,

1:56:03Trent Hornbut that's what you you get with this kind of circular approach. What were my arguments for retaining natural theology against the resolution we should reject it? I said we have freedom in Christ, so this is our default position that we should stay with. If this was such a problematic thing, if this was so problematic,

1:56:22Trent Hornthat Christians should avoid,

1:56:24Trent Hornthis type of theology,

1:56:26Trent HornWouldn't we expect the bible to condemn it? Wouldn't we expect the church to condemn it?

1:56:31Trent HornBishops,

1:56:32Trent Hornothers in, you know, in the East, in the West, ecumenical councils.

1:56:37Trent HornMy opponent agreed that no ecumenical council has condemned

1:56:41Trent Hornnatural theology.

1:56:43Trent HornAnd in fact, I showed that the first Vatican council condemns those who say that we can't use natural theology. Of the seventh council. Well, okay. Okay. You can talk about it later after the debate.

1:56:55Trent HornSo I think that was clear, and then I showed how it was used. You can go back and listen.

1:57:00Trent HornMaybe I could upload my opening statement, you can read through it. How natural theology is used even among the eastern fathers to guide nonbelievers

1:57:09Trent Hornby showing them things in the world that naturally point to god. This is very obvious in John Damascus'

1:57:15Trent Hornexpedition of the orthodox faith,

1:57:17Trent Hornand in Gregory and this is great catechism.

1:57:19Trent HornI show that presuppositionalism

1:57:21Trent Horndoesn't work, that my opponent is either doing natural theology backwards

1:57:25Trent Hornbecause he then he sees he starts with orthodox Christian god, and then he sees there are these effects, but then he makes arguments showing why you can't presuppose

1:57:36Trent Hornatheism,

1:57:37Trent HornJudaism, Islam, Protestantism, or Catholicism.

1:57:40Trent HornYou have to presuppose his version of god. If he's using arguments

1:57:44Trent Hornor human reason that tells us something about the attributes the one true god has, he's doing natural theology, but he's just doing it in reverse. If he doesn't do that, which kind of what he was doing a lot and trying to say why orthodox Christian reality theology,

1:57:58Trent Hornultimately because it is revealed, how do we know it's revealed? Because it is, well, any presuppositionalist

1:58:04Trent Hornfrom any persuasion, Van Til, frame, Protestants,

1:58:07Trent HornCatholic presuppositionalists,

1:58:08Trent Horncan make the same argument. If the argument works for all of them equally, it doesn't work at all. So I would say that, ultimately, that, this is not a good system. My opponent has not shown we should give up a mainstay of theology.

1:58:21Trent HornInstead, we should explore it. We should make it better. We should gather insights from it. And there are forms of natural theology that are very close to the transcendental arguments my opponent made. If you're interested in that, check out Alvin Plantinga's work on warrant and function and his evolutionary argument against naturalism,

1:58:38Trent Hornvery similar to what Jay brought up, but I would say it's within the bounds of natural theology. But I'm grateful for everyone. And as I said earlier in the debate, I say we should just follow what Saint Peter said, always be ready to give a reason for the hope within,

1:58:50Trent Hornbut do so with gentleness

1:58:52Trent Hornand with reverence.

1:58:54Suan SonnaAlright. Well, thank you, Trent. Thank you, Jay. I've been looking at the comments here. There's a lot of positive comments about both sides, really. And, I think said it best when she said hit the thumbs up on your way out. Thanks. And please check out, you know, Jay Dyer's channel and Trent Horn's channel. And also, Jay, I'll make sure to upload your your notes, you know, after the show and everything like that. But

1:59:14Jay DyerOne thing that one thing I take issue with was that I did explicitly say that I think that the seventh council implicitly does condemn the natural theology that he's advocating. So I did that's all I wanted to correct.

1:59:26Suan SonnaLet me let me just step in really quick and just say that,

1:59:30Suan Sonnalet's see here. Well, so a lot of people asked if you'd be willing to do a part two with each other. And so maybe this would be a launching point or something like that, but I think we have to kinda end the discussion right here if that's okay,

1:59:41Suan Sonnafor the sake of time. But, I mean, with that, gentlemen, thank you so much, and I appreciate it. But, yeah, let's see if we can get a part two or something else going.

1:59:48Jay DyerYeah. I'm open to that. Yeah. We'll see what happens.

1:59:50Suan SonnaSure.