Review: How to Answer the Fool: A Presuppositional Defense of the Faith, with Sye ten Bruggencate

by Dan Phillips

CrownRights graciously allowed me to see an advance copy of Sye ten Varfenklavemann's new training vid on apologetics, titled How to Answer the Fool: A Presuppositional Defense of the Faith.

Known to himself, his parents, and everyone except me as Sye ten Bruggencate (— whatever), the intrepid Canadian has well-earned the admiration of folks like Fred Butler, who introduced me to him, and myself, for his in-your-face approach to applied presuppositional apologetics. He's known for his wonderful web page, Proof that God Exists, and for the many videos of his encounters and debates with unbelievers. Sye has a bit of a separated-at-birth thing going with actor Terry O'Quinn ("John Locke," ironically enough, on the TV show Lost), and hardly ever says "eh" or "soe-ree."

Summary: in the span of about 80 minutes, this video does well what I think is most-needed today and I would commend it, even if only for that alone. It models an approach to apologetics that is both distinctly Christian in intent, and thus fittingly unapologetic. Its weaknesses are outweighed by its value and strengths.

What is good. The video is a well-done interweaving of Sye teaching a class on apologetics, Sye doing apologetics in various hostile environments, and contrasting clips and books from better-known Christian evidentialists such as Geisler and McDowell and Strobel and Lennox and Turek (not Turk) and others. It also features helpful on-screen definitions of key terms.

Sye does a wonderful job of explaining how the fear of the Lord really and truly and comprehensively is the beginning of knowledge (developed at great length textually elsewhere), and why therefore a Christian must start with God and not with doubt. I've never ever seen anyone do a better job of opening up why the unbeliever has neither the right nor standing to position himself as judge over God and His truth, and how we mustn't join him in that stance. We must not sell out the indispensable, authoritative, foundational nature of God's truth in a goodhearted but wrongheaded attempt to persuade the unbeliever that he really ought to see his way clear to give God a chance.

Sye also does at least a very effective introductory job of dismantling evidentialism and showing its inadequacy. He does this by many interwoven slices of evidentialists assuring unbelievers that they're not even talking about the Christian God or the Bible, that they just want to put out some evidence and allow the unbeliever to sit as judge over the evidence. In this way, Sye shows that his critiques are not merely theoretical.

Sye has a few well-crafted and well-honed-by-constant-use ways of reducing unbelievers to fuming, sputtering, enraged impotence, and he illustrates many of them in this video. When an unbeliever informs Sye that he can't claim to know absolute truth, Sye asks him if anything can be known with certainty. When the unbeliever replies that nothing can be known with certainty, Sye asks him whether he knows that with certainty. Often they say "Yes" — and then show that dazed, Wile E. Coyote-ish "What just hit me?" look.

We are shown Sye doing this on campuses and talk-shows. Among the things I admire about Sye is that he apparently is absolutely fearless, and will go absolutely anywhere to talk to absolutely anyone; a quality I also admire about Doug Wilson, though the latter is in a different league of the same general organization.

And Sye's no dainty nuancer. I doubt you'll see this video promoted on the big RPB sites; if you do, think, "Ironic!" For instance: one talk-show host reveals himself as a professor of bilious bloviation, substituting sesquipedalianism for cogent thought, as if the utterance of one obscure word is a death-blow. After a while, this poor soul burbles "I love Jesus."

"No, you don't!" Sye shoots back, indignantly.

Can you imagine {Bible scholar} or {theologian} or {big blogger} doing this? Nor can I.

Often, Sye takes a phrase and simply repeats it until he's kicked off a show or his hearer walk away in a rage. He explains what (I think) he's doing here thus: this is his "big weapon." His opponents want him to set it down and play the game by their rules. He refuses to set it down. As Sye sees it, they just want him to concede that they have the right to adjudicate God's truth (without demonstrating how they have that right), and he won't do it. He calls them on it. He asks for their ID, and when they refuse to show it (because they can't), he refuses to play nice and go on.

I think this is right, though I'm about to say it's incomplete. Too many evangelicals wobble out of misplaced charity. They land a philosophical death-blow, but when the God-hater sniff's "I'm not bovvered," they shrug in agreement and move on as if nothing's happened. Sye's no shrugger, and he's not out primarily to make friends. He's out to vindicate God's truth and announce God's terms for surrender. This is a needed corrective in a wishy-washy, apologetic (in the wrong sense), scared-of-our-shadows day such as ours.

I can easily see a church using this as a training video —  though I would follow up with...

What could be better. Let me put it too simply, then unfold and illustrate.

Sye seems to focus on utterly destroying the unbeliever and his worldview, period. Winning the unbeliever to a God-centered worldview (conversion) does not seem to be the priority.

You see very little appeal, very little bridge-building, very little outreach. Paul's concern that he might win as many as possible (1 Cor. 9:19-22) isn't at the fore.

Here's what I mean: it is as if Paul told the men at the Areopagus, "I saw an altar to an unknown god, and I am here to tell you that your worldview is hollow and bankrupt, and besides, you already know the unknown god, you just suppress that knowledge." But that isn't quite what the apostle did, is it? He took the altar to the unknown god as his "in," and used that confession of ignorance to proclaim the true and living God and, in the process of this positive proclamation and call to repentant faith, systematically demolished their bankrupt and apostate worldview.

I am saying that I think that everything Sye does is correct, true, and needed. I just think more needs to be done and modeled

This has long been my observation about presuppositional apologetics. In a way, presuppositional apologetics often is like that kind of "testimony" that we all object to: 40 minutes of lurid detail about what a wretched sinner I was, stealing drug money from toddlers and shooting heroin into my eyeballs, followed by 3 minutes about how Jesus saved me, He's great, yay Jesus, let's close in prayer. So, presuppositionalism tends to be 40 absolutely devastating and wonderful and solid-gold minutes about how bankrupt the autonomous worldview is, then "you really need to repent and cry out to the Lord because only He is true, which HEL-LO you know already anyway, so goodbye."

For instance: by all means, do what Sye does. Challenge the unbeliever. Listen (Sye generally does that very well). Interact. Do a round or two of "Do you know that? How do you know that?"

But then, instead of repeating that until the person walks off in a gnarled bird's-nest, stop, and say something like

Look, friend. Let me explain what is happening, and why. You have taken on yourself an impossible task. You can't live without knowing something, yet you aren't able to know anything the way you're going about it. Your final court of appeal is you, and you just aren't all that. I'm not, either. No man is! You would have to know everything, and understand everything you know — and you just don't. No man does. Right? But you keep doing that because you've convinced yourself that that's all there is. 

So let me ask you this: if it were possible truly to know true truth, would you be interested? Would you want to?

And deal with that response. If he says "Yes," preach Christ as Lord. If he says "No," say "Look, I understand. I was in that exact same place. We all really want to be our own gods. But I have already shown you — you don't have the résumé for it. None of us does. It's a doomed endeavor."And so on.

Or this:

Assuming that God is who He says He is in the Bible, to what higher authority do you think He should appeal, to get you to believe Him? He created facts, He created evidence, He rules history... these are small, petty things. What is the higher authority to which He should appeal?

Or a hundred other ways.

So, he tells this puffed-up "I love Jesus" doubletalker, "No, you don't!" We cheer, because we're starved to see anyone speaking edgily and with conviction. But would a better response have been, "You do? Can you love Jesus without believing anything He taught or submitting to His commands?", or "Describe this 'Jesus' you love"?

And so, rather than broken-recording one phrase until the person we're trying to win is utterly exasperated, alternate with "I would love to discuss that, but how can we do that when you won't deal with the elephant in the room?", or "How can we talk about truth when you don't have a way to know truth, and won't deal with that?", or "Is it fair to keep saying to me, 'This game has no rules except the ones I make up — but just play anyway, blast it'?"

There is, after all, something to the warning against winning an argument and losing a person.

Look, believe me: I am not saying this because I think I could do better than Sye. I do not. I admire Sye. I've learned from him. But as I watch him, again and again I get the feeling that he "counts coup" when a believer goes away in a rage. I think of Samuel Johnson saying "Well, we had a good talk," and Boswell replying "Yes, Sir, you tossed and gored several persons." He has won the argument, and lost the man. I think we should aim at both. That's an element which I wish I could see modeled more clearly in Sye's encounters with unbelievers.

If evidentialism goes too far in flattering the sinner (and it does), presuppositionists often go too far in flattening the sinner, without pointing robustly and thoroughly and patiently to Christ with equal thoroughness and conviction. Which takes more than 40 minutes of demo work followed by "So repent and call on Christ. Goodbye!" We must tear down, yes; but we do so in order that we might build up.

Imagine if the book of Romans ended at 3:20!

What you get: you get someone clearly explaining and showing why and how Christian apologetics must be different and distinct, must be unapologetic apologetics, and must aim at the demolition of the autonomous worldview. You also get illustration of this in process. It's an excellent and needed start, and with the reservations noted above, I do commend it.

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