A Biblical Defense of Presuppositional Apologetics

Revealed Apologetics Introduction and Upcoming Guests

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I am your host Elias Ayala and today I have a very special guest on with us to discuss another application of presuppositional apologetics. Today we're going to be looking at the biblical foundation for presuppositional apologetics.

If you're wondering why I'm out of breath, my kids are upstairs and at the last second, right before we were gonna get started, my son needed water and so I had to run up the stairs, run back down so I'm out of shape.

So hopefully I will survive and not pass out in the midst of this interview. Just real quick, by way of some quick announcements, I have some really exciting interviews coming up as well to discuss other aspects of presuppositional thought.

Today of course we have Pastor Doug Wilson. On the 29th we have Jeff Durbin coming on to discuss how to apply presuppositional apologetics to competing religious perspectives. We also have Dr. James Anderson coming on on May 9th to talk about the nature of transcendental arguments and the different ways you can apply those sorts of argumentation within a presuppositional framework.

We also have Dr. Gary Habermas coming on on May 12th and Douglas Gruthius on May 15th. So we have a really great lineup. As you probably recognize, some of those guys I just mentioned are not presuppositionalists, but as I have expressed before in past episodes, I really want to build bridges and show that we can very, very much appreciate the work that's being done within the whole scope of the Christian Church with regards to defending the faith.

And so we can appreciate people who are coming from other apologetic methodologies, even though we disagree maybe with the foundation from where they're coming from. But again, this is an in-house discussion and I think we can engage in those internal discussions and debates with gentleness and respect as 1st Peter chapter 3 verse 15 tells us with regards to giving an answer for the hope that's in us.

So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our guest for today. We have today Pastor Doug Wilson. Welcome. Can I call you Doug? Wilson?

How would you like me to call you? Hey, hey you. Doug is fine.

The bearded man. Well, I'll just call you the bearded man. That'll be how I'll address you. That'd be really awkward for this interview if I did that. But I'm very excited that you're on. I greatly appreciate the work that you've done in apologetics.

I know you're a pastor and so your job goes way beyond just what a lot of people see on the internet and what you've done with regards to debates and things like that. Why don't you tell a little bit about yourself for people who might not know who you are and maybe you can share with us a little bit of your experience and background in apologetics and then we'll start with our discussion.

Doug Wilson’s Background in Apologetics and Debate

All right. Well, my name is Douglas Wilson. I'm a pastor in Moscow, Idaho. If you don't know where that is, it's in Idaho. And we're in the... Idaho has a panhandle and we're up in the chimney, up in the panhandle of Idaho.

We're about as far away from the potatoes as we are from Seattle. So this is logging and mining country. Very beautiful, very beautiful part of the country. It's called the Palouse. So I've been here a pastor for over 40 years.

I came here to go to school. My folks had moved here. I helped them move here and then I went in the Navy. And after a stint in the submarine service, I came to the University of Idaho here in Moscow and got my bachelor's and master's in philosophy.

And I did that because my father ran an evangelistic Christian bookstore. That's why he came to Moscow to open one of those. He did that in Pullman, Washington, which is just eight miles away and Moscow here.

There's a university in each one. The plan was to study philosophy and do what my dad was doing. I was going to go to another small town with a major university in it, open an evangelistic slash apologetic bookstore and run it as a ministry to college students.

That was the plan. That got derailed. So I've always been interested in apologetics and engaging with nonbelievers. And I did a lot of that when I was in the Navy and I was studying philosophy after I read a little bit of Francis Schaeffer in the Navy.

And I got interested in a thinking Christian response to the challenges of unbelief. So that's why I studied philosophy. And I sort of got pulled through the hedge backwards into the ministry. While I was doing my undergraduate work, I played the guitar.

I was the song leader for a little Jesus People type of fellowship that was planned here. Did you have a mullet? Oh, I didn't have a mullet, but I was more of a hair farmer than I am now. I had longer beard and I fit into the 70s.

Let's just say I fit it in. So the church plant, this little Jesus People fellowship was about a year and a half into it when the man who was doing the preaching announced one Sunday that he had gotten a job in another town, another city, and he was going to be moving and he was going to be gone the next Sunday.

And so that's how I wound up. I preached the next Sunday and I've been preaching to these long-suffering saints ever since. So the ministry side of it, the pastoral side of it started up, but this is a university town.

So very early on, we would schedule debates with various forms and various kinds of unbelievers, some atheists. I have debated Gordon Stein, who shortly after his famous, infamous debate with Greg Bonson, that was a surreal experience, I can tell you, because I debated Gordon Stein.

In my opening statement, I laid out a basic classic presuppositional argument, and Stein, who had just been through the mill with Greg Bonson, acted like he'd never heard any of this stuff before and said, well, I'm glad that Wilson is going to appeal to the classical arguments for God's existence, and this is what I would have said if he had.

So he just debated an imaginary... And I've debated Dan Barker a few times and Edward Tobosh. So I had a number of debate encounters with mostly atheists, and the most significant apologetic encounter I had was with the late Christopher Hitchens when he and I debated online at Christianity Today, and then that was released as a book, and then that book release tour that we did together was turned into a documentary collision.

So if people associate me with apologetics, it's probably because of collision.

Yeah. The first time I ever heard of you was in your debate with Dan Barker, and I think that might have been one of the first times I heard about Dr. Bonson because the person introducing you mentioned that Dan Barker was scheduled to debate Dr. Bonson, who passed away, I think it was a year before.

Is that correct?

Yeah, so it was right around that. I don't remember the exact chronology, but yes.

Did you ever get to meet Dr. Bonson at all?

Yes, I met him one time. He and I spoke at a Christian worldview conference. It wasn't for the young people, but we did a conference together in Delaware or Maryland, somewhere in there, and was privileged to meet him and enjoyed that.

All right, very good. Well, I never knew that you debated Dr. Gordon Steiner. Is that audio available anywhere?

No. Part of his deal was no recordings, and he didn't want anything. He didn't want anything documented.

Okay, well, that's no fun. No. All right, well, let's jump right into things here. The main thing I wanted to talk about with you is the biblical foundation for apologetics. Last episode, we had Dr. Michael Kruger on, and we talked a little bit about presuppositionalism applied to historical studies and issues in canon.

And so we had a very interesting discussion with regards to how to understand evidence and history within a presuppositional framework. But I figured I'd have you on as a pastor. You're very much connected with kind of that biblical foundation, so perhaps you can lay out for us, as you see it, the biblical foundation for doing apologetics presuppositionally.

And then perhaps we can dive into some of the more controversial passages that classicalists and presuppositionists go back and forth on.

The Biblical Tone of Presuppositional Apologetics

Sure. I would say that there are two ways to approach this question, and I'm persuaded of both ways. But let me just lay them out. One would be the intellectual slash theological question. How do we stack the statements with truth value claims attached to them?

How do we arrange them? What's the most foundational claim that's being made? It's the intellectual or philosophical or theological problem. How do you want to parse it? That's one way to approach it, and I figure we'll get to that also.

But if someone were to ask me what my central biblical case for the presuppositional approach would be, it would be tone. And that has to do with certainty. When I say certainty, I don't mean epistemic certainty as though a creature could have the kind of certainty that God has.

That was the temptation. That was the aboriginal temptation. You shall be as God. So I always must know as a creature. But when you look at this, when you look at scriptural declarations, the prophet comes out of the wilderness saying things like, Thus sayeth the Lord.

He doesn't come out of the wilderness saying, It seems to me, or I've been giving this a lot of consideration, or the people in my seminar group agree with me that this is a valuable question. The biblical faith is declarative.

I'm a preacher. I'm a herald. I announce things. And Peter says that the one who preaches should preach is declaring the very oracles of God. Okay, so the thing that strikes me is that in much modern apologetic debate, discussion, the thing that puts people off there puts people off on presuppositional, the presuppositional approach is that it sounds just way too cocky, just way too confident.

This is all this. There's no room for discussion here, fellows. This here it is. Okay. Now, that's really interesting, because I just, I just finished today, as a matter of fact, listening through, again, Francis Schaeffer's book, He is There and He's Not Silent.

And this issue of tone came out, struck me. And that was Schaeffer's basic statement is, it's Christ or nothing. You know, it's, this is the only possible conceivable route. You've got to go this way.

Instead of saying this is the best available explanation out of 17, this is the one I prefer. And I think this one is prettier than the others. I think this is nicer than the others. Now, and the reason I think this is important, and this is probably the basic, the theological foundation of what I'm saying here.

If, if you were to ask me, what is it to prove something? What, what constitutes a proof? And I would say the thing that constitutes a proof is when you have obligated belief. Okay, when the person, if the person turns away and refuses to believe that person is sinning, they're not making a mistake.

They're rebelling, they're sinning. They've got something on conscience. Okay. So when, when someone has something on their conscience, after I've laid out a declaration or preached a sermon or shown them evidences for Christ, if they turn away and they're to go into, and this takes us to the first kind of argument, to go into the posture of the unbeliever in Romans 1, where they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

That means they've got something on their conscience. That means that this is a moral issue because if, if it were not possible to bring the apologetic endeavor into the realm of conscience, morality, and obligation to believe, then it's not, it will not be possible for God to judge the world.

How can God judge the world if belief is not obligatory? Right. And it's only obligatory if the person knows, you know, if someone knows that if they know what the truth is and they suppress it, then that is a moral failing.

It's not, it's not like I'm, so apologetics ought not to be like trying to explain calculus to a second grader where they just don't have the, the framework to comprehend any of it. I'm explaining something to the unbeliever that Romans 1 tells me, he already knows.

He knows already.

The Unbeliever’s Knowledge of God and Romans 1

If you don't mind me interrupting there. Okay. So this is, this is usually a point of contention between the different perspectives out there. And it's this, the nature of the knowledge of God, you know, what sort of knowledge of God does the unbeliever have?

Is it, is it an innate knowledge or is it a immediate knowledge? It's kind of a look and see, is it a little bit of both? And if so, if man has innate knowledge, what is the nature of that? Does he have innate knowledge of the triunity of God?

Does he have an innate knowledge of kind of just a vague notion of divinity? What's the nature of that innate knowledge?

Okay. That's, I think you've touched the thing with a needle. And this is the, this is a $64 ,000 question. And the way I would answer it is this. He is, he's suppressing knowledge of the true God. He's suppressing knowledge of the living God.

He's suppressing knowledge of the God he doesn't want in his life because that God is going to mess everything up. Okay. Now I don't believe that the non-believer has, and this is where I think Van Til maybe trips some people up where Van Til would say, you can't make, you can't form a coherent sentence without presupposing the triune God.

Okay. That does, that does not mean that the non-believer has the Nicene Creed tattooed on the back of his brain. And he, and he knows that that Nicene Creed, he knows what it means, and he knows everything it's saying, and he knows all the implications.

And he's suppressing the knowledge of the living God, who is triune. And the non-believer, in, in order to have that suppression be a moral failing, the, the person doing the suppressing has to know that this is the living God.

It's not a phantom, not a fairy, not a, not a construct. It's not a placeholder God. It's the, the God who, who lives, the God who's there. And so in Romans one, I see a non-believer, if you imagine knowledge of the living God as an over-inflated beach ball, and the non-believer is to hold the beach ball underwater.

And he's trying to keep it there. And his arms are quivering because, because it's hard to keep that beach ball under there. The job of the apologist is to come up and poke his arms, you know, hey, ticka, ticka, ticka.

So you stop it. And the reason he wants you to stop it is because there's going to be a reckoning. And if there isn't a reckoning that he is suppressing, then he has a defense at the last day. It all boils down to this.

Can the non-believer say, I honestly say, I didn't know it was you. I would say Romans one says, he can't say that.

Yeah. Okay. So, okay. So, so man, man was without excuse. Now, someone, someone who I think has a good knowledge in audio, he said, someone's asking me, ask Dr. Wilson to put on his headphones. My output is going through his input.

That might be the reason why there's echoing. I don't know if you have headphones or whatever, that might be helpful. Oh, all right. That's fine. I hope you guys are enjoying this discussion. I'm trying really, really hard with the, with the audio issues going on.

I'm not a really techie kind of guy. I'm not in my office. As you can see, I kind of have a family issue that requires me to be home at this moment. So I don't have everything set up and stuff. He said, ask Dr. Wilson to put his headphones on because my output is going through your input.

Okay. So let's see if that works at.

All. Okay.

If we fix this, I might stop making sense.

Okay. Okay. I hear a little bit of my own echo, but we'll, we'll see what happens. Let's see.

Maybe if I put my headphones. Well, that sounds better to me already. Just bear with me.

He does it. Okay. Let me see here. You control your volume down here. Thanks for being around. Yeah. I don't think I even have my headphones. Did you say I sound much better?

Yeah. How do I sound better to you?

Let me see if I could, if I could look at this, you see reformed people shop alike with regards to their headgear. Let's see here. So I'm going to turn my, my AirPods on. Let's see if this works a little bit.

Okay. He said, yes, the echo is gone. Can you hear me? I can, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Okay, cool. All right. So they said they're saying the echo is gone. So let's hope it's in fact gone. So, all right.

So what I was going to ask before was with regards to the knowledge of God, you said that he knows the true God. Now this is an epistemological issue because I do understand that you most likely understand that the nature of the triune God is necessary, uh, necessarily connected to the epistemological issue.

In other words, man naturally thinks in one and many categories, you understand? Now, if he doesn't presuppose the Trinity, right, he has no knowledge of the Trinity. Can he justify any of his claims given that oneness and many-ness that he's functioning in necessarily must be grounded in the triune God.

So does he know that God is triune? If not, in what sense does he know God and does he have justification for the things that he knows?

Ontology, Epistemology, and the Trinity

Right. So I say the way I would answer that is that he must presuppose the triune God in order to, uh, deal with the one and many. He must presuppose it. The question has to do with how conscious, how to build and how conscious is that presupposing?

Okay. Now I'm, what I'm maintaining is that it's conscious enough to be culpable. It's conscious enough that he has, has no excuse. It's not so conscious that he could recite the Nicene Creed and say this is Trinitarian Christianity.

Um, most Christians can't do that. Right. Right. So the, the fact that, the fact that I'm presupposing the triune God before I know the word, word Trinity, before I, you know, let's say I'm a three week old Christian and I'm praying to the father in the name of Jesus.

And I, I believe there's a Holy spirit, but nobody's sorted it out for me. I'm presupposing all of that. And I can't, I can't function, you know, I really can't function without presupposing that. And astute and refined thinkers, if you take Parmenides and they're pursuing the one and the many, they can solve that problem.

Given sophisticated analytical thinkers cannot solve those problems without appealing to the, okay. The, the, the same sort of thing with, uh, Aristotle's unmoved mover and Plato's God that knows us and Aristotle's God that doesn't know us.

Um, they can't, they can't, they, though there, there'd be no peace. There between those positions apart from a record, a direct recognition of the Trinity, but you've got all sorts of rank and file non-Christians who precepts the Trinity without consciously being able to pass even most fundamental quiz on what the doctrine in front of the Trinity claims.

Okay. So where are you? Yeah. Say that last part again.

Uh, how much, how much self self-conscious knowledge, um, does it take to call it a presupposition? I'm, I'm created in the image of God. And if we're a non-Christian, I would still be an image bearer.

Well, that image that I'm bearing is the image of a triune God. I can't run from the Trinity because it's, it's woven into the very fact of my being. Of course I have to presuppose the Trinity in order to think, because I have to propose me in order to be able to think.

And I can't presuppose me without presupposing someone made the image of the triune God.

General Revelation, Special Revelation, and Natural Theology

All right. Now this tends to also be connected to the whole issue of what a lot of classicalists will, um, will criticize presuppositionalism for. And it's this confusion of ontology and epistemology, you know, that, that God is the, the triune God is the ontological grounding for knowledge, but is the assumption of, of the triune God a necessary precondition for knowledge?

And so, uh, the, the classicalists will often say that they agree with the presuppositionalism, the presuppositionalist. Yeah. God is the ontological grounding, but that doesn't mean man has to presuppose God in his thinking to acquire knowledge or have a justification for the things that he knows.

Well, how would you address that issue? Do you think it's one or the other, or is it both? Do you think that the, uh, that the ontological grounding is God and that one must assume because he has knowledge, innate knowledge of God in order to have a justification.

For the things that he knows? No, I would say because we're finite thinkers in our theology departments or in our systematic theologies, we have one section called ontology and another section called epistemology.

But in the actual world where people live, ontology and epistemology are all descriptions of the same world. The fact that, the fact that I can make different philosophy departments or I can say he studies epistemology and he studies ontology.

Well, maybe they ought to get together and visit more. Maybe they ought to communicate more because these questions have something directly to do with one another. So, uh, so the classical, um, evidentialists will say, yeah, ontologically speaking, there's no world with the triune God because the triune God made it.

But when we're speaking of epistemology, it's a different ball game. Well, I would, I would want to parse it further. Are we talking about the knower, the person who's knowing stuff, or are we talking about the, the, the student of epistemology who is looking at the knower, knowing stuff?

Which one are we talking about? So the man, the, the man who knows that that's a tree over there or knows that that's a park bench or knows that, uh, this is his wife and these are his kids. He can't know that at all unless he's, he's a knower and can't be a knower unless he's creating the image of God.

But that doesn't mean that he is a student of epistemology. That just means that he's, he's assuming things he's never proven in order to know that that's his wife. Now, I would say a sophisticated student of epistemology who has pursued this with, with the refinement of Greek philosophy and has pursued it for 300 years is going to get to the point where he says, you know, that, that guy can't know that that's life without presupposing the triune God.

I think that would be true. Right. I think it's, so everything has to do with how self-conscious a presupposition is. Okay. How self-conscious is it? That's it. How, how self-conscious is it? How self-aware is it?

Right. And so we would say that the knowledge that,.

That everyone has the, the natural man, for example, someone who doesn't have a Bible or anything like that is a general, is a general knowledge, is general revelation. So would you say that general revelation, the general knowledge of the general revelation of God and the knowledge that man has innately of God, what is that?

Is as presuppositionalists who affirm innate knowledge, would we back off from trying to gain specificity with regards to what that knowledge entails since perhaps we can't know biblically, we just know that he has enough of it, that he's without excuse.

How would you describe the nature of that knowledge in detail, if it could be done?

So I, the way I would illustrate it is because knowledge is a very strange thing when you, when you think about it. So let's say, let's say I walk out of my office and look down main street here, here in Moscow and two blocks away, I see a little tiny figure, you know, a little tiny person.

And I know instantly it's my wife. Now, how did I know that? And let's, let's say I walk down there and sure enough is I didn't, I didn't recognize clothing. I didn't recognize it's, it's far away, but my ability to apprehend that that's my wife is something that is built in.

God has wired us this way. Now I believe that non-believers when they're running from God are not running from the God of the Jehovah's witnesses. They're not running from Allah. They're not running from Baal or Dagon.

They're not running from any false constructs or any false gods. The fact they're running from true God, the fact that they're running from the true God doesn't mean that they're close enough to see all the features.

They just know enough to know that that's the God they don't want to deal with because that's the God who will deal with them. Right. It's sort of like Edmund in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As soon as he hears Aslan's name, he knows he doesn't like it.

Right. That that's the, that's the kind of knowledge I'm talking about. It's instantaneous love or hatred, attraction or revulsion. And for fallen man, it's always revulsion unless God is in the process of drawing that person.

And that's what, that's what brings the culpability in. And that's why I think the apologist or the evangelist needs to be dogmatic, declarative, pronouncing, because he's saying to the people, I'm telling you something, the word of God says, and in your heart, what I'm saying resonates with what you know already.

It's like a, it's like a tuning fork. You hit the tuning fork and it's resonating with what that person's heart knows. And for them to reject that moment introduces culpability. They're now at that moment without excuse.

And it seems to me that many of the, on the other hand, and I want to play along with, not play along with, but I want to cooperate fully with your desire to have evidentialists and presuppositionalists learn to play nice and learn to have fruitful interactions.

But one of the things I've seen in many popular evidential approaches is it seems to me to want to give the sinner too much wiggle room, too much room to maneuver. And I believe that our responsibility is to give them no room to maneuver and they'll call the repentance.

Right. And I would, and I would fully agree with that. And I think another thing I'd like to emphasize is that when we appreciate what other people are doing within different apologetic traditions, that's not to say that we compromise on our own convictions as, as reformed Christians, as presuppositionalists, because I do believe that there is far too much wiggle room with the, even just the wording as to many of these classic listen debates, the wording that they, that they use when presenting their case, I'm come thinking, I'm like, I can't imagine the apostle Paul phrasing the argument in that way, you know?

So, so yeah, I definitely agree with you there. Now, now with regards to, to Romans 1, a lot of classical apologists use this to support a sort of natural theology. Why don't you tell folks what natural theology is and what you think with.

Regards to Romans 1, is it in fact supporting a natural theology? Yeah, I'm, as I identify myself, I hesitate to say any more and more that I identify as a thing, but, but I identify as a Vantillian, right?

So I, I'm, means I'm nervous about certain expressions of natural law. Okay. And the expression, the expression of natural law that I'm nervous about is the kind that wants to carve out autonomy, where people talk about, they can around the idea of whether or not natural law would remain negatory, even if there were no God, you know, can you have natural law in an atheistic universe?

Well, that, that to me is like trying to draw round squares. Natural law means there's a law giver, natural relation, which is a phrase I'm much more comfortable with, is, means that there's a revealer, someone who gives that information, the heavens declare the glory of God.

So I don't have any problem affirming that there is a, a declaration that God is making in the created order. I have a problem with the created order serving as, as this nebulous foggy quarry from which the, the stonemasons of human thought can go out and carve their ideas.

I don't, I don't think we go discover things all by ourselves. I think God reveals, I think God tells.

Revelational Epistemology and General Revelation

So you would hold to, you would hold to a form of revelational epistemology.

Yes, very much so. So, so I believe, uh, so I believe that, um, someone who's not yet encountered a Bible knows from the sun, moon, and stars that he is a creature. He knows that he is not, he said he is not the one who made all these things.

He, you know, uh, a fallen finite man can know that he is not God, right? He must know that he is not God. Now, the way I illustrate it is Leah, two school boys come home to their, uh, one of the boys' house, houses, and the mother of that, of one of the boys, uh, took some brownies out of the oven and left them on the counter and left a note for the boys on the brownies.

And she said, um, uh, boys, I'd like you to help yourself. There's some milk in the fridge. And, um, but before you do that, I'd like you to carry this desk upstairs. Okay. And the two boys walking, uh, to the house and the house is beautifully kept and there's beautiful pictures on the walls.

Uh, she's a wonderful housekeeper, the whole place is like brownies. And then there's a note on the brownies. The house and the brownies are general revelation boat is special revelation. I like that.

That's really good. Now, but there's only one mom. Okay. So, so the problem that this goes back to our,.

That's really good. That's really good. I never thought of it that way. That makes sense. That's makes sense. Okay. So, so you're saying that the brownies, the cookies, the hospitality, the, the, the people who go to the house, no, this is, we, we can know something about the woman who lives here because she looked at all the wonderful things she leaves out.

Um, we can even see family portraits. So like, Oh look, maybe she will, you know, or she has three kids or blah, blah. And then the special revelation would be more specific, a letter or, or even the,.

The woman coming out and saying, Hey, how's it going guys? Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. The thing that I, the thing I want to lean against or resist is our, because when we're talking about this, when we were talking about ontology and epistemology, uh, we just, because we can give a name to two different disciplines doesn't mean that those disciplines are separated in the world.

So, so in the real world, um, the God who, the God who spoke and drama into existence and, and the God who inspired Paul to write Galatians is, is the same God. So he's communicating to me one way in this setting and he's, he's communicating to me another in another way in setting.

Now the, the problem with natural theology is that people want to separate the disciplines of let's study the, let's study the book all by itself. Let's study nature all by itself. And then they come up with all kinds of, uh, you know, uh, fossil records and what the scientists said, they, they, they misread the book because they've detached it.

They, they go off off into the garage and eat all brownies.

Because he refused to read the note. That's really, that's really good. I like the way you, the way you did that there. Um, and I know the difference between these things, but the way you just put it there, I was like, that actually is really good.

It kind of, uh, uh, makes the point very clearly there. Let's, let's take some questions from people who are, who are listening in. Um, some may be related to what we're talking about. Some may not be related.

And so, um, you know, if, if you want to answer a question, go for it. If there's a question that you think like, man, I don't know if I'm gonna address that. You can just, you know, hand wave.

It away. No big deal. Uh, answers 40 answers 42. That's right. Okay. So Anthony asks, I know it's.

Hitchens, Bonson, and Books on Biblical Epistemology

Off topic, but ask, uh, ask him, that's you, what his favorite memory of, of Hitchens was. I know, I, I assume you guys were somewhat friends. I don't know if you guys were close at all, but,.

Uh, what's your favorite memory? I would say, uh, in, you can get a good glimpse of it in, uh, in Colleen, there's a place, there's a part in the film where, uh, we're at King King's college in New York and we got to, we're both great.

We're both great lovers of PG Woodhouse. And we got to quoting favorite lines from, uh, from what's back and forth to one another. Uh, Christopher Hitchens that what it boils down to is this career Hitchens was, uh, uh, just really gracious to me in all of our interactions, except when we were on stage.

So when we were on, when we were on stage, he would move into his, his, um, bad boy shtick, you know, he would, he would insult me and do different things on stage. But, uh, you know, if we'd have, when we had breakfast together, uh, in New York, just, just the two of us visiting, and it's just a very amiable and good, uh, conversation.

So my, my, um, uh, my, my favorite memories would revolve around being able to share meals with him. Uh, and the, uh, camaraderie or fellowship is way too strong, but there was an affinity there. We really, we really did get along, uh, famously.

We got along really, uh, really, really well. Uh, one time, another, uh, uh, we were sharing, we were in a little, little place. I think this was in Dallas. We, we spoke at a, uh, uh, at the Christian sellers, uh, thing.

We were on a panel there and Christopher and Christopher and a few other of my Christian friends. And I were, uh, in a coffee joint or something someplace. And we were talking and I told him that he was still a Christian because he'd been baptized in the church in England and he'd never been excommunicated and he really ought to have been excommunicated, but that wasn't up to him.

He couldn't just admit that he wasn't a Christian, that the church had to come out and he really needed to do something about that. And, uh, and that kind of took, took him back a couple of,.

Couple of steps. Okay. That, that's interesting. Uh, that's funny how he's super nice. And then you're on stage. Christopher Hitchens was a funny guy. I really, out of all the atheists that I've watched, uh, he was the most enjoyable to watch, uh, you know, obviously apart from his blasphemous, uh, of course, many of the blasphemous things you would say.

He very, very quick and very,.