…going to get into 1 John 2:19. We’re on that section of the false teachers so we’re going to go ahead. We’ll review verse 19 and then we’ll get into verses 20 and 21. These are verses, which involve John the Apostle’s use of logical reasoning so we need to deal with logical reasoning and its biblical foundations today. Now let’s open with a word of prayer. Let’s open with a word of prayer.
(Opening prayer)
Well, on the handout you’ll see that in the review here we want to go back to verse 19 and capture some of the parts of that so we can get our head back in the argument of John. We said last time as we looked at verse 19, the emphasis here is on the separation of the apostles and the apostles are the pronouns. Look at the pronouns here. They clue you if you watch the text for the pronouns. The pronouns are “us” and we.
NKJ 1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us;
So they’re obviously two groups involved here. It’s the “us” group and the “they” group. The fact that they’re using those two pronouns shows that they’re two distinct groups. So the big idea of verse 19 is a separation here. You’ll notice how often in just one verse - look at the pronoun us and look at the prepositions associated with this pronoun. So you have a pronoun here: us…out from, us… not of, us…of, us… with, us…of. So clearly it’s a separation. We said last time that after we dealt with the pronouns the question would be well does John in the separation talking about him and his apostles as believers and the “them” as unbelievers. We said well John doesn’t make an issue of that because the issue here he is talking about here is having fellowship. Fellowship is not salvation; fellowship is a relationship post salvation (after salvation). He’s simply telling them you can’t have fellowship with these people because they are not following the teachings of us. They were not all of us.
This last phrase here:
NKJ …that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
In other words God engineers sovereignly the circumstances so that the false teachers basically didn’t want to socialize with the apostles. There was conflict. There was hostility. That hostility, that conflict, is good because it separates the false teachers from the orthodox teachers. So that was the sum and substance of verse 19.
So then we come to verse 20. Today we want to focus on verses 20 and 21. There are a number of issues here in these two verses so that’s why we are trying to take things slowly here. Next week by the way…the missions conference here so we won’t have a class. George McAllister is going to be speaking. So today we’ll try to get through verse 20 and start into verse 21. I’m taking this really slow because again people read this epistle like it’s some sort of casual, surface, shallow little devotional. I’m trying to show you that it’s not some shallow little devotional. There’s a substantial argument going on here. John is utilizing a lot of deep thinking.
So in 2:20 - here now we’re introduced to a third group. In verse19 there are two groups. There’s the apostolic circle; there are the false teachers. Now when we come to verse 20, now we have a new group – second person plural. So here who are the “you?” The “you” are obviously the people John is addressing in his epistle.
In distinction he says…Let’s look at verse 20. Verse 20 says:
NKJ 1 John 2:20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things
So here’s verse 20. Let’s look at what it’s saying here.
NKJ 1 John 2:20 But you
That’s the third group, you, the people that are receiving this epistle - to whom it’s being read. He says here:
have an anointing from the Holy One,
Well now, who’s the holy one and what’s the anointing? That’s a question that we have to deal with. And – all of you know or…
and you know all things
So let me first work with the textual problem. Here’s an example of a textual problem. I’m addressing this issue because if you’re working with some people they’ll say, “The Bible you know had different manuscripts; and we can’t really trust the text.” Of course these people that profess to have this tremendous literacy about texts never think about it when they read Aristotle or Plato. Plato and Aristotle were written three or four centuries before Jesus Christ, before this manuscript. The latest manuscript we have of Plato dates around 900 AD. Excuse me but if you want to be nit-picky about the text, I can be nit-picky about your text. The Bible has a lot more textual substance of the Scriptures than any other secular thing. I’ll bet you none of you in any of your education wherever you got into reading Plato or Aristotle or any of the ancients - can you name one time your teacher ever talked about the text? No! Why is the text suddenly become an issue of the Bible? You know why the text becomes an issue of the Bible - because they don’t like the subject of the Bible. So I’m showing you what a textual issue looks like so you’ll not have to be upset if this suddenly gets dropped in your lap someday.
Here are the two choices – “all of you know” or “you know all things.” Those of you who have diagramed sentences, you’re looking at the “all.” See how it’s floating. In one sense the all is in the subject. What’s the second sense? The all is in the predicate. So obviously all is in both manuscripts. The question is - is it in the subject side of the verb or is it in the object side of the verb. It’s floating from one to the other. In the Greek instead of floating spatially it has an ending on it - the ending on the word “pan” P-A-N from which we get pantheism - all. The ending is floating - or is changing rather. In English we structure our sentences by its sequence in the sentence. In other languages they structure the construction by the ending on the word. So the ending changes from this manuscript tradition and this manuscript tradition.
Now let me address briefly the manuscript traditions. See where is it says here – some old manuscripts. One theory of textual criticism is that you favor the oldest manuscript thinking that the oldest manuscript is closer to the source and therefore more accurate. I will say that 80% - 85% of scholars in this field favor the oldest manuscripts. The other group - and I’m not professing to be a New Testament scholar but I favor the majority reading. So it doesn’t really matter because let’s look at what the textual difference does in the sentence. Is it changing the subject of knowing? No. So that hasn’t changed regardless of the textual variation.
Okay. Now the first one – all of you know. Is that true? Well, yeah. He’s making that assertion – all of them know. Let’s look at the second one – you know all things. Do you sense a problem with that?
Comment
Yeah. Okay. What Nate’s saying it can’t be absolutely true because that would be an assertion of omniscience. Clearly John isn’t going to be teaching omniscience to the people. However this is John. So let’s hold the place and turn back to the Upper Room Discourse because remember this epistle is written with the vocabulary of the Upper Room Discourse. So hold the place. Turn to John 14.
This is another rule in Bible study is that when you are puzzled about a word, take a concordance, look up where the author uses that word or that expression elsewhere. So in John 14:26 here’s Jesus briefing the apostolic circle. As far as we know there are only the apostles and the disciples here in the upper room - probably only the apostles. So this is a small group. John was in that group. In fact he was sitting right next to the Lord when the Lord was doing His teaching in the Upper Room Discourse and apparently so impressed this young man that later in his life when he writes this epistle he’s talking like Jesus. He’s using Jesus’ vocabulary. So here in John 14:26, you follow that verse.
NKJ John 14:26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, …
So it’s not a clause foreign to John. So going back to the text here, we would say that there is nothing wrong with that second sentence. In fact we could explain what might have happened in the textual transmission. Early on what might have happened is that a scribe saw that not totally familiar with John’s reasoning. He saw that fact that John is saying that you know all things. That’s an assertion of omniscience; so in order to protect the Scriptures from error that scribe might have dropped off pan and wrote pantes meaning you putting it before the verb and that way feeling like at least by copying the text that way he kept it from being misunderstood. Those are the arguments that go back and forth. But I think from what we’ve said this doesn’t change any doctrine, does it? Have we encountered any kind of major issue here? No.
However there is one thing that we need to be aware of because there are a certain groups of critics that against biblical faith (the Muslims) who when they hear about textual criticism will jump on you and say, “Aha! See you Christians; your Bible isn’t like our Koran. In the Koran there’s no varied text. We don’t need textual criticism because we have one and only one manuscript of the Koran. At first you can see that proves the super naturalness of the Koran; but your Bible is fuzzy and doesn’t have the protection of a sovereign god.”
Well, that’s an abbreviated history. The reasons why the Moslems have only one manuscript of the Koran is because in one of the caliphs – back…I forgot whether it was the second or third caliph or whatever in Moslem history they recalled all the variant manuscripts, burned them, and if you didn’t turn them in you got killed. If we had done that in the apostolic era we’d have one set of manuscripts too. So it’s not true. That’s a false assertion by Muslims about the superiority of the Koran to the Bible that their textual tradition doesn’t have so many variants as ours, but that was because they artificially got rid of it.
They at one point said, “We want only one manuscript tradition for the Koran so we’re going to make sure we have only one manuscript tradition. We’re going to burn all the other ones.”
Any way, that’s the background on textual criticism.
Now we’ve got another issue here with verse 20 that we want to deal with. That is the anointing and the Holy One. Does anybody have any problems identifying who the Holy One is here? Going back to the Upper Room Discourse, who’s the Holy One? Yeah. So John is talking about the Holy Spirit here.
The word anointing is Christos. It’s that word that we say when we say Jesus Christ. That’s why we said Jesus is not His first name – well, it is His first name; but Christ isn’t the second name of Jesus. Christ is His title. His second name in Hebrew is Jesus Ben Joseph even though that would be customary in His case because He was virgin born. In His Davidic line He is. He is Iesous Ben Joseph. But for our purposes, He is Jesus the Christ. We don’t put “t-h-e” between Jesus and Christ when we say that. But if we were to be technically correct we would be saying not Jesus Christ; we would be saying Jesus the Christ. So this word “anointing” is Christ. It’s the word becomes the Messiah kind of thing, the anointing. We talked about that when we talked about the false teachers so we won’t press things here. The anointing was used in the Old Testament just by way of review - when kings were chosen, they weren’t elected by a Gallup Poll. In Israel unlike other places – in other places if you wanted to be pharaoh you basically murdered your way and assassinated your way to the throne. That’s the way it was in Babylon. That’s the way it was in Persia. That’s the way it was in Assyria. That’s the way it was in Egypt. So the way to the throne was murder. That’s was the way it was in Rome. Julius Caesar – what happened on the Ides of March? Who killed Julius Caesar? Brutus. It was a fight for who’s going to be Caesar. So you kill the person. You try to kill the person in public office that you’re trying to replace. But in Israel, in the Southern Kingdom at least - in the Southern Kingdom, the kings had to be chosen. They had to be chosen by whom? By a prophet. Why did the king of Israel have to be chosen by a prophet and the pharaohs, the kings of the gentile nations weren’t?
(Comment)
Right. They had no prophets to start with. Why didn’t they have any prophets? Because they were in a what relationship to God? What is unique to Israel in world history that no other nation had? They had a contract with God. A contract has to be administered by contract administrators. The contract administrators in Israel were prophets. So it was the prophets who articulated God’s will. What did the prophet do when he chose this boy to be king? He physically did something. He anointed him with oil. Now that boy (David, thinking, say late teenager), that boy did not ascend to the throne right away. There was an interval between the anointing of the king - he was a candidate.
Today we would say sort of like the primaries in our type thing where a party has a primary before they select a candidate to represent the party. In Israel they didn’t have a primaries. They had a prophet. The prophet articulated that. But that didn’t mean that the result of the anointing became king right away. In the story of 1 and 2 Samuel, David didn’t become a king until 2 Samuel. What was the interval? What was going between the time that Samuel anointed David and the time David finally rose to assume command? A series of adventures. In those series of adventures that God traces, what do you suppose God was doing in that interval of time between the anointing and the time he ascended the throne? What do you suppose was the purpose of that historical interval?
(Comment)
What was that? Prove him. How was he proven? By conflict - by watching how this boy who was supposedly anointed by the prophet handled himself. Why was that important? Politically why was it important to have that period of time?
(Comment)
He had to gain the allegiance of the people - exactly. Okay. I’m going somewhere with this so hold on for a minute. You have this period of history. The young man has was anointed by the prophet has definitely been chosen by God. He goes through a series of trials so the rest of the people in the nation can see him. So when it comes time for him to ascend to the throne he’s got political clout because he’s proven himself.
Now that anointing is the Old Testament version of what we call meshak or Messiah. Does anyone now knowing that Old Testament picture – how does that help you understand about Jesus? What are some parallels between Jesus’ career and the Old Testament archetype? First of all, who was the key character in all four gospels? Do the gospels start with Jesus or somebody else? John the Baptist. Now isn’t that striking? Why do the four gospels start with John the Baptist? He’s a prophet. And what do you see early on in all four gospels? John baptizes Jesus. That’s the chosen point. Jesus at that point, at the beginning of all four gospels, has been chosen by God publicly approved by a prophet.
Has Jesus ascended the throne yet? The Father’s throne, but not the Davidic throne – not the Davidic throne. For 2,000 years Jesus Christ is proving His worthiness by gathering the church. He’s still doing that, until the church is finally completed. Then He breaks the seals and He begins the holy war that will end in His triumph and sitting publicly in the city of Jerusalem as world ruler, publicly visible and physically visible to everyone. That event has not happened because Jesus is still gathering because when He ascends the throne He has got to have credibility. At that point He will have had credibility not just in this world, but in the unseen world of the principalities and powers. So there’s a process that’s happening.
Now we want to look further.
NKJ 1 John 2:20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.
Now watch what happens in verse 21. Here we get into John’s argument, John’s use of the rules of logic. He says in verse 21 – follow this. Look at it.
NKJ 1 John 2:21 I have not written to you
See that’s the people.
because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.
Now isn’t that interesting?
NKJ 1 John 2:21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, …
John is saying, “I’m not teaching you anything new here. We’ve already seen that before, remember? You heard the antichrist is coming.”
These people are already taught; but they’ve got a problem. They’re not thinking through logically the content that they already know. You can’t apply the Word of God if you don’t think logically to apply it to the situation.
“So I’m not writing…I’m writing to you because you do know the truth. If you do the truth, you ought to be able to see an error.”
So that leads us now on a little chain of thought here. Christianity’s critics (most of them, 95% of them) assume that Christianity ought to be logical. And how do we know that they assume the Christianity ought to be logical because what do they try to do? Try to show that we’ve got a logical conflict either something internal to the Christian faith (like the Trinity, the Doctrine of Suffering) or external to the Christian faith (like archeological evidence and so forth…historical science.)
The very fact that they’re erecting those kinds of criticisms shows you that the unbeliever says, “Logic rules, and you guys failed the test.”
But they start with the fact that one should think logically. Of course they’re correct.
However what I want to do in our remaining time is take you to a little verse, Romans 2:1. Paul again of all the writers of the New Testament is quite clear how Paul reasons. He was trained in the rabbinical schools. They used logical rules. But what I want to show you in verse 1 of Romans 2 is a principle. This is a logical principle, and we want to pick up on this principle.
NKJ Romans 2:1 Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself;
Of course the “therefore” refers back to chapter 1. If you look at the preceding verses you see a sinless. He’s saying everybody is sinning. So now the therefore means that if you’re judging someone else, you have to be judging yourself don’t you because you do the same things?
Now let’s apply that to the rule of logic and the criticism. If an unbeliever requires of you a use of logic; we can turn around, you can turn around and require of him the use of logic. What applies to the goose, applies to the gander. So let’s look at this issue of logical reasoning because the unbeliever must also defend his position with logical reasoning.
I’ve shown you this chart several times of the four-layer cake thing. Let me review that because I’ve added a layer to this in the Pastors’ Conference that we were addressing an issue there and I want to bring the issue up. Let’s review these four words, one on top of the other. Visualize these as blocks, building blocks, because each one depends on the one below it. Up here politics. I don’t mean just politics. I mean any discussion in public – social discussions. I put politics up there rather than social discussions because politics is usually where it gets most vigorous. But, it’s not just politics. It’s public discourse - what we debate, what’s on the news, what’s in your family, what’s in your classroom, what’s in your workplace. All of that - that’s up there in the first layer. Underneath that people are making use of “ought”, “should.” Right? You use those in a conversation - ought and should. Well if something ought to be or should be, they’re making an ethical claim. So underneath this is ethics. The problem is that after you’ve made an assertion that something ought to be true or should be true, that implies that you somehow know ethical norms and standards. How do you know ethical norms and standards as distinct from your personal, private opinions? So epistemology or knowing comes under that - then under that metaphysics which is just another word for reality. So here’s three alternate words rather than use these technical words. For ethics think of conduct. For epistemology, think of truth. For metaphysics think reality. Conduct, truth, reality.
Now what’s happening in our culture today is – and this has been articulated in journals, by law professors. I’ve got a bunch of documentation if you’re interested in this. What is argued and I was not myself aware that it had been argued this clearly. The man who has argued this most clearly has been considered to be - and I never even knew of this man until a few weeks ago – the most articulate political philosopher in America of the 20th century. His name is John Rawls - R-A-W like raw. R-A-W -L-S. You can look him up in the Encyclopedia Britannica or anywhere. John Rawls taught for many, many years. Here’s the substance of his work. He wrote the book Political Liberalism; and it’s considered by people that are in the know in academia to be the articulation of this position. But here’s his argument. His argument is this that in a pluralistic society… What’s a pluralistic society? One in which you have different religions, different beliefs, so forth. In a pluralistic society the only way you can have civic peace is to have a gentlemen’s agreement. When you have diverse worldviews, in order to get along we have a little gentlemen’s agreement in which we will not to discuss worldviews. Because if we discuss worldviews, what is the danger? The differences are going to become obvious, yes? Okay. We don’t want that to be so we agree not to discuss things in any deep, deep way. The problem is, how do you discuss anything without bringing oughts and shoulds into it? The moment you bring oughts and shoulds into a discussion, you’re bringing in from below ethics and truth.
So John Rawls says, “Yes, I know that happens; but what has to happen is that you smuggle it into the conversation.”
As one law professor from San Diego put it, it’s called smuggling. Smuggling involves masking your oughts and shoulds so it appears that you’re ethical without discussing the ethics. I’ll give you an example. We’ve talked about this before using the word equal.
“Well, we think everybody should be equal.”
We think for example in marriage what? Marriage equality. Have you heard that word recently? Marriage equality. Doesn’t that sound like a moral judgment’s being made. Doesn’t that sound like a should or an ought? Here’s the problem as we’ve mentioned before. We’ve made this case. Are blind people equal to seeing people? Doesn’t that sound nice? Doesn’t it sound like it should be? Aren’t blind entitled to the same things as seeing people? What’s the problem with this? On a superficial level that sounds good. But the moment you begin to think about it, what starts happening? Are blind people equal to seeing people when it comes to voting? Yes. Are blind people and seeing people equal when it comes to driving a car? No. Well, what’s happened to the word equal? A difference. Hum. Deciding whether blind people are equal to seeing people when it comes to automobiles if you use the concept of equality in discussing it, has equality played a role in your decision about whether blind people should or should not drive a car? It has no relevance whatever, does it? It’s driving a car that’s the issue. So what happens? You see the fog of confusion that goes on here? So that’s what Rawls is addressing - is that in our society there is a profound inability by choice not to get into the deep issues because the moment we get into the deep issues we begin to divide one from another.
Well, the problem is this. John Dewey thought of this, one of the architects of American education. He said the Christianity and democracy are ultimately incompatible. How can he make a point like that?
He said, “Because Christianity divides people into the saved and the lost. They’re not equal any more. We can’t have a unified society of democracy this way. Christianity splits.”
Anybody remember some things Jesus said about… “I have come,” what? Not to - but to do what? “I bring a sword to divide family against family.”
That’s the divisiveness that Rawls is talking about. That’s the divisiveness that you personally as a Christian face in your own family unit, in your own social group because as an ambassador for Christ in a fallen world, conflict is inevitable. It’s uncomfortable. Nobody likes to start a fight. We don’t go around relishing a debate all the time. We want peace just as much as everyone else. So our problem as Christians is the moment we stand firm for the Word of God, we face this social peer pressure to conform; and we feel it. We feel the ridicule; but the problem is there’s no way to avoid it in the battle between various worldviews.
So on this diagram we’ve drawn a red line. That’s the gentlemen’s agreement. So now we’re the conflict points. The conflict comes in two directions. We have to be gracious and loving for the people – compassionate; but we have two points of conflict we want to focus on. One of them is on the left side of that chart.
This is the kind of conflict, which you see here. You’ve seen that quote before. That’s Bertram Russell the beginning of the 20th century taking the conclusions, the behavior, the conduct, results of cosmic atheist evolution and drawing the consequences. Now Russell is a logician. He’s one of the top mathematicians of the 20th century. There’s nothing illogical about what Russell’s doing here. What Russell’s saying is once you grant the atheist material cosmology, you have to go along with these consequential ethical results.
“You can’t escape those if you’re an honest person trying to live consistently to what you say is your worldview. You are left in the position of saying that man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that everything we do in life is the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms that nothing can preserved beyond the grave; that the entire human race with all of its genius is destined to extinction in the vast depth of the solar system.”
Is there anything illogical Russell has said given his starting point? Do you see what Russell is doing here? He’s taking the reality picture of that worldview. The truth of that worldview and he’s driving it up to the area of conduct and politics. People don’t like that. That is uncomfortable because all of a sudden they’re in a position where they build themselves up on this platform of atheist evolution; but “ Man. I have to deal with this now. Is my life consistent with this platform?” You see that’s an exploitation device. In other words, as Christians when we’re around…this can be used… this technique can be used when you’re around thinking people who have really thought about origins, who have thought about reality. You press them not to be hypocrites because if you believe that view of reality and you’re not living consistently with it; you’re a hypocrite.
Okay, let’s go further. That’s the battle zone right there, going up, up from this – the idea of a person’s worldview making them live consistently with their own worldview.
But there’s another line of attack. That is in the area of politics downward. So an example of that is what I’ve said about these arguments and I refer to Norman Geisler’s book Conversational Evangelism. You can get it on Amazon. It’s only about 7 or 8 bucks - paperback. It’s great. It’s written by Geisler and his son. The old man was an apologist, evangelicals for years and years and years. His son David works on college campuses with the millennials. So his son has taken his dad’s apologetic; but he’s phrased it in terms a millennial can work with. So here are questions. Now here’s where you’re driving downward from the normal everyday conversations. What you’re trying to do is force people to think about – “Wait a minute. Is this right? Is this wrong? Is this true? Is this false?” So you’re driving downward.
“Can you give me a reasonable argument about why I should care for the environment?”
It’s never asked. Have you ever been in an environmental course any time – environmental course? Has this question ever come up? No! The curriculum, the teachers go waltzing on. You better believe if I was in the class I’d ask it the first day of class.
What do you see as the reasons why the scientific method works? That’s a good discussion question. Science requires uniformity of nature. It requires the legitimacy of the logical rules of thinking. It involves the fact that my mind must correspond to outward reality. Do evolved ape minds necessarily correspond to reality? These are questions that are legitimate. Have you ever been in a science course – anybody – high school, college? Ever taken a science course where this was asked? See the problem? And until it’s asked, people aren’t thinking; and it doesn’t open the door for the gospel. That’s the problem. Nobody’s thinking. In the institutions that are most claiming to precipitate thought – the educational institutions.
Do you think that life has a purpose? Good conversational question. It can be asked if it’s asked in a loving manner. Do you show compassion on the person your talking to so they understand you’re not trying to be a smart aleck. You’re really genuinely concerned with them. Well, we all are. These are people for whom Christ died; and they’ve been hijacked by the principalities and powers. We’re trying to drive a wedge between the principalities and powers and these people.
Do you think there are absolute truths that hold for all time for all people? You can see that once you precipitate some thought with these questions, then that tells you what about them? What do you learn by listening to the answers? You learn how they think and that’s helpful because if you’re going to continue reasoning with them and you’re not talking by them. You’ve got to talk to them; but you can’t talk to them if you don’t know how they think. So that’s why this book - Geisler has dozens and dozens of these kind of questions.
Do you believe some things are either right or wrong, and if so why? One last point and we’re running out of time here; but let me just show something. Once we get down here in the outline, we’re talking about deductive inference. Two things are needed for deductive thinking - categories that are purely mental and I give you two examples there. The concept of twoness or threeness or fourness – the idea that I can write a numeral. If I had a whiteboard here I could write 2. I could take an erasure and erase the number 2 on the white board. Can you still conceive of what 2 is with no material manifestation of it? Why? Because it’s a mental concept; it’s not a material thing. It’s an immaterial thing. Where’s it coming from then? See that’s the problem a materialist has. We use concepts.
So this presupposes…we’ll skim down there real quick. What I’m saying by this diagram…see the calculator there? A calculator is just a logic machine. The calculator doesn’t care. It has the rules of logic embedded in the circuitry. You put something in; you get something out. Logical rules work. The work to produce something that’s not valid, something is valid depending on how you use the reasons.
Very quickly … presupposes.
So in conclusion, here is our biblical position. You’ve seen this. God has created both man and nature. He has created both – both nature and man are made designed by the same Designer. That’s why our minds can think about nature. We have the two great truth tests, correspondence criterions – that man’s ideas can correspond with factual reality outside his head. Why? Because both are part of a unified creation. The consistency test - man’s thoughts can be orderly because God’s plan is orderly. That is the only justification for the true truth tests. Philosophers have struggled and struggled and struggled on a non-Christian basis to justify theses two things that they have to use all the time. What we’re saying is that the Bible alone provides that because the Bible says in Proverbs 1:7 - the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom.
When you are in these kinds of an argument or discussion, you might think about this response. Again it can’t be done with a smart aleck attitude or this just erects defenses. So you can’t do it with that attitude. Here very sincerely you can say this. I have to presuppose the Bible in order to make sense of what you’re telling me, and you do too. We have to presuppose the Bible in order to make sense of what you’re telling me.
(Closing prayer)