Apologia is likely the most influential Mid Eva brand. Known for their End Abortion Now ministries, they have amassed over half a million subscribers on YouTube and have massive reach with names like Jeff Durbin and James White. However, in 2024, the Team Apologia spent the majority of the year attacking Joel Webbon over edgy memes in a group chat, stoking much division in the church. Whereas Durbin was originally slated to speak at Webbon’s conference, he backed out under the stated reason of refusing to share a stage with Stephen Wolfe.
Stephen Wolfe is the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, where he wrote a book advocating that Christians adhere to the political thought of the same Reformers they get their theology from. For several years, this has run afoul with Apologia personalities of James White and Jeff Durbin. Durbin and White played a key role in propping up the Antioch Declaration, which was a long-winded, embarrassing statement designed to call noticing patterns within certain ethnic and racial groups as categorically sinful while also opposing the use of Natural Law. Natural Law was foundational to the Reformers themselves in how they crafted polemical arguments, not because they relied upon Aristotle for theology, but Greco-Roman philosophers were often used in arguments of reason.
In a recent video, Jeff Durbin and Apologia Radio took on Stephen Wolfe by name with a stream entitled, “Do We Even Need the Bible? Responding To Stephen Wolfe.” At a runtime of one hour and forty-eight minutes, one might expect that they would have hit the ground running against Wolfe, but instead, the first 29 minutes deal with the “necessity” of using presuppositions to argue against abortion. As an aside, they are functionally boasting of their approach to ending abortion despite having zero legislative achievements, but at least they used their biblical presuppositions. In a society that is not majority Christian, presuppositional apologetics is not going to end abortion.
Then they dig into Stephen Wolfe’s tweet on climate change:
In my judgment the claims of climate change are exaggerated, and the policies proposed to fix it are absurd, but we Protestants must stop applying “biblical theology” to questions that can only be understood fundamentally in their own domains. Climate change is not a theological question. Do carbon emissions warm the earth, or cause more catastrophic weather events? is not a theological question. It’s a question of science, answered through scientific investigation. Thinking that we can dismiss such questions by appealing to theology has, frankly, made us dumb and also unwilling to enter these fields. Not every question can be answered by simply having the right “worldview.”
Wolfe is a critic of the term “worldview,” which he argues is reductionistic and anti-scholastic. This tweet was specifically in reference to a book written by Virgil Walker and Darrell Harrison, neither of whom are scientists by trade. Regarding climate change, Wolfe is stating that “whether excessive carbon in the atmosphere warms the earth is not a theological question.” In this, Wolfe is correct. It is either true or not. Theological beliefs might impact how one interprets the data, but they do not determine the truth of the core claim. The notion of God’s providence maintaining creation does not negate the question of whether Man can damage creation, which we know to be true via pollution, nuclear meltdowns, and hazardous materials. How we arrive at the conclusion that Hexavalent chromium causes cancer is via science, not theology.
Durbin’s rebuttal refers to various atheists who interpret science through atheistic presuppositions, including Richard Dawkins and Bertrand Russell. Quoting the atheist Russell, Durbin makes the following objection to Wolfe:
Bertrand Russell, again not a Christian, he says…give me justification now that the future is going to be like the past because everything depends on it…I’d like to see an answer from Wolfe apart from special revelation about how we know that the future will be like the past because all science depends upon it. So ‘not a theological question,’ it absolutely is.
The problem with Durbin’s example is that, apart from being long-winded, it assumes the premise that the past will be like the future based on the presuppositions of an atheist. Russell’s statement can only apply to things empirically true that have remained constant from which scientist derive subsequent assumptions upon. For example, Creationists do not dismiss the notion of light traveling at 299,792,458 m/s because it would not seemingly comport to a YEC worldview but rather work that fact into their models (which is not difficult). The claim of 299,792,458 m/s is not theological in nature but strictly scientific. One cannot prove or disprove that claim by quoting Genesis 1, but through the domain of physics. Regarding climate, if archeology suggests that the past had warmer or cooler climates or that the earth goes through cycles, then the conclusion must be that the earth’s climate was not constant. Taken to extremes, Russell’s words would be fallacious.
Durbin takes presuppositionalism to an extreme with the illustration of the hydrogen engine.
However, without the Word of God, Special Revelation, you cannot meaningfully justify or provide warrant for the pursuit or the ability to create hydrogen engines. There are certain things that are necessary in the created order that have to know and understand and believe to create hydrogen engines, and those you don’t get from atheistic presuppositions in a coherent or meaningful way.
While he is not saying that the Bible instructs how to manually create an engine, he is saying that without biblical presuppositions, it is impossible. He then uses the example of martial arts, where the biblical principle of self-defense undergirds Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Someone rejecting Christ does not inhibit their ability to arrive at scientific truths. After all, the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Babylonians, and Egyptians all achieved high civilizations without receiving Special Revelation. The Greeks and Romans made numerous forays in science and engineering as pagans. The Roman Aqueducts were built by men who had completely pagan presuppositions, and so too the mathematical marvel of the Roman Pantheon.
Durbin is taking presuppositional apologetics to extremes. One can completely reject the Bible and still create a nuclear bomb, so the notion that atheistic or pagan presuppositions cannot achieve anything is empirically untrue. Contrary to Durbin, Genesis demonstrates that the unrighteous line of Cain was able to produce great earthly achievements while rejecting God. Every theological system has to explain how non-Christian civilizations were able to arrive at truths in areas of justice, law, scientific achievement, etc. without Scripture. Natural Law is merely a system to explain the ability of heathens to arrive at Truths accidentally. This is not to contend that Rome had perfectly biblical laws but rather explain why there was overlap between the laws of Rome, Hammurabi, and Moses.
The rest of the video, where they dive into the clips of Wolfe, is a continuation of this ultra-presuppositional approach. Wolfe’s central point against theonomy is the notion that, as a system, it is incapable of solving complex issues that the Scripture does not address.
Is Everything Theology?
The inherent problem with calling everything a “Theological” question is that nothing becomes distinctly theological. Just as the flaw in calling everything a “gospel issue,” if everything is theology, then ultimately theology means nothing as a discipline. Theology is a discipline that requires training. Not everyone is or should be a theologian, nor should the subject of theology be diluted with every other science or discipline so as to make theology everything. This is inconsistent with the historic Christian faith, including that of the Reformation.
Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation.
Westminster Confession of Faith
The Westminster Confession of Faith acknowledges that Scripture is necessary for all things pertaining to salvation. Even the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, which Apologia adheres to, describes Scripture as the “infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience,” which again denotes the scope, not as Special Revelation in all things, but that which is necessary for knowing the will of God. To claim otherwise is to contradict the Reformers. Not all knowledge is saving knowledge.
The confessions do not contend that all matters of science, mathematics, and medicine cannot be known without Special Revelation but that specifically matters of salvation require Scripture. Durbin makes the distinct claim that Special Revelation is required, but Special Revelation in theology can only refer to Scripture as written in the 66 books of the Bible. It is irreverent for anything else that can bear this title. Conflating Natural Revelation with Special Revelation is theologically dangerous. For someone claiming everything is a theological question, he appears to lack a basic understanding of theology.
The notion of making everything a theological matter is harmful for the church, and within Protestant evangelicalism, it is a flaw that people look to their pastors for guidance on politics and not laics who are educated in the domain. One does not go to their pastor to be their doctor, but to a physician. The church needs to build up its expert laity rather than relying upon the pastorate for matters that they are not experts on. The overreliance on theology to interpret politics is perhaps one reason why the Church is collectively awful at politics. Contrary, Wolfe contends that Christians pursue these academic fields.
Though all Truth is God’s Truth and His very nature is Truth, that does not mean that Man, through his logical faculties, cannot arrive, even by accident, at matters of Truth so long as such matters do not pertain to salvation. All Jeff Durbin has done is reveal his ignorance in matters of theology.
Conclusion
For nearly two hours, Jeff Durbin proceeds to strawman Stephen Wolfe, and when he is not doing that, he is chest-beating about how End Abortion Now argues biblical presuppositions on the issue of abortions—despite having never succeeded in passing meaningful legislation. Presuppositional Apologetics can be useful, just as a hammer in a toolbelt, but ultra-reliance on it is not going to succeed in changing those who reject the very presuppositions being argued. If one’s approach to apologetics is to suggest that without biblical presuppositions, then there is no means by which Man can know even the most basic of truths, like 2+2=4, then that is a losing strategy which will ultimately fail and be found unconvincing. The purpose of apologetics is to defend the faith, so the sole reliance on classical vs. presuppositional is the most banal of debates in Christianity and is counterproductive towards the Great Commission.
Powered by RedCircle
2 Responses
Some observations in no particular order:
1. There were multiple natural law traditions that were part of scholasticism and came out of the Middle Ages, of which Thomism is the worst.
2. Thomism became the establishment scholasticism because of its alliance with the papacy and becoming embedded in the universities where theology and philosophy were taught until the monopoly was broken in the 17th century by lay thinkers such as Locke.
3. For the Puritans, theonomy and natural law were the same as far as content, so were two mutually supporting paths to the same thing. The same holds true for continental Reformed scholastics such as Althusius, who could move from one to the other without noting a change in topic. Evan Ockham had noted that there is nothing in natural law that is not also taught in Scripture.
4. James Jordan, of all people, pointed out (at the time he was breaking away from Tylerism) that the Mosaic law differs from ancient law codes in omitting the crucial section on water rights. This omission makes it inadequate even for the needs of ancient Israel.
5. If you are walking across your lawn one day and suddenly you see grass for the first time, it is not because you had just then decided to assume the Christian presuppositions which give you knowledge of the world. In fact, such things don’t happen because most knowledge is accepted involuntarily, not on the basis of some justification whether presuppositionalist or Thomist.
6. Neither presuppositionalism nor worldview theory works as an epistemology, whatever their value in considering religious outlooks.
7. Worldview theory can mean all sorts of things (see Naugle’s book Worldview) and it is pretty useless to be for or against it without taking that variety into account.
8. Van Til’s type of presuppositionalism has its own presuppositions on the structure of knowledge, the nature of meaning, the role of epistemic justification, etc. and these are drawn mainly from Kant and Hegel, although Van Til and Bahnsen won’t admit it. People like Durbin have no understanding of the systems that they are playing with.
9. Abraham Kuyper noticed that the Reformed scholasticism had completely failed to offer effective resistance against materialist modernity, and he dated that failure to 1650 onwards. If you read Paul Hazard’s well known The European Mind, 1680-1715, you will find that the main “critical”, skeptical views that your seminary teachers said were introduced by 19th century German theologians, were in place by the end of the 17th century, especially in the Netherlands. That illustrates the failure of Reformed Scholasticism. Of course, Kuyper’s solution was really just a big mess, as well as being 200 years late, as illustrated by Durbin and his ilk.
10. Scholasticism was at first a method based on trying to harmonize all the authorities that were accepted as such by medieval intellectuals. It developed in two directions: an ossified dogmatism known to us as Thomism, and a much more empirical and critical tradition that did not depend on university departments, and eventually gave rise to science and to the independent philosophies such as British empiricism.
If anyone wants to argue with me about this, I suggest they first read my two books on the subject, on Amazon, cheap. Also read Willis B. Glover’s Biblical Origins of Modern Secular Culture if you can find a copy.
“He then uses the example of martial arts, where the biblical principle of self-defense undergirds Brazilian jiu-jitsu.”
Which is false. It was in Eastern Buddhist societies that opposed self defence that most of the martial arts still known developed, precisely because their anti-self-defence stance didn’t allow common people to legally carry weapons.