Revealed Apologetics & David Bahnsen: A Conversation

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today

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I have a very special guest with me. As you know on this channel we place a great emphasis upon presuppositional apologetics and reform theology and these sorts of things and many of my listeners know how heavily influenced

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I've been from the work of Dr. Greg Bonson and it is a privilege to have his son

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David Bonson join me today in just a few moments. And so for folks who don't know who

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David Bonson is I'm just going to kind of share some information about him and then we'll invite him on the screen and we'll begin our discussion.

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So looking forward to it and thank you so much beforehand for those who are listening in.

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David L. Bonson is the founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of the Bonson Group, a national private wealth management firm with offices in Newport Beach, New York City, Bend, Nashville, Minneapolis, managing over four billion dollars in client assets.

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Prior to launching the Bonson Group he spent eight years as a managing director at Morgan Stanley and six years as a vice president at UBS.

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He is consistently named one of the top financial advisors in America by Barron's, Forbes, and the

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Financial Times. He's a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox News, and Fox Business and is a regular contributor to National Review.

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He hosts the popular weekly podcast, Capital Record, dedicated to a defense of free enterprise and capital markets.

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He's a regular lecturer for the Action Institute and the Center for Cultural Leadership and writes daily investment commentary at www .thedctoday

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.com and weekly macro commentary at www .dividendcafe .com.

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David is a founding trustee for Pacifica Christian High School of Orange County and serves on the board of directors for the

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National Review Institute in New York City. He's the author of several best -selling books including Crisis of Responsibility, Our Cultural Addiction to Blame, and How You Can Cure It, and The Case for Dividend Growth, Investing in a

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Post -Crisis World, and his newest book, There's No Free Lunch. I'm not sure if this is updated, he can correct me, but There's No Free Lunch, 250

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Economic Truths, which was released in 2021. David's true passions are anything relating to USC football, the financial markets, politics, and Chinese food.

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I think we're kindred spirits there, I love Chinese food. His ultimate passions are his wife of 20 plus years,

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Jolene, their children, Mitchell, Sadie, and Graham, and the life they've created together on both coasts.

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And so that is kind of the introductory information on David. He can let me know if I left anything out, but without further ado,

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I'd like to welcome David Bonson. How are you doing, brother? You are actually on mute, and no worries, that happens all the time.

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Thank you so much for the warm introduction, great to be with you. Well, it's a pleasure to to have you.

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Now, unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about economics and things like that, so there's no cool savvy question to give the impression that I'm overly familiar with with what you do in terms of the financial and economic sector.

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But is there anything going on that we should know about before we jump into into our topic?

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Is American economics in trouble? What's going on? Well, the American economy has been in a lot of trouble for some time in the sense of it's underperforming its own capacity.

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We have a robust capacity for economic growth in America. Our very

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DNA is rooted in the idea of prosperity, productivity and growth. And for about 15 years since the financial crisis, we've been living well below that productive capability.

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And that's very disappointing. I think it's a byproduct of us having to account for excessive size of government, excessive government indebtedness that represents resources that have to be allocated to things other than the productive, prosperous parts of the economy.

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So that's not going to get better overnight, but that's probably the thing I spend most of my time thinking about.

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But certainly, whether you're talking about the political economy or a theological case for economic growth, these are these are the things

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I do day in and day out that represent my my professional passions. Sure. Well, that's super interesting.

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Actually, I'm looking forward to kind of getting into how you navigate that from a Christian worldview perspective.

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And I think that'd be very useful for people to hear. But of course, folks who are familiar with my channel are obviously going to recognize your name.

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You're David Bonson, the son of the late Greg Bonson, who is a Christian philosopher and theologian and apologist.

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And so I want to talk a little bit about the legacy of your father. And I would imagine the questions that I'm going to kind of walk through and maybe some of the live audience might chime in a little bit.

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I'm sure you've heard a bunch of times. I know that you are fully aware of the impact that your father has had.

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But I do think it's important to remember those things and to reflect upon some of the great contributions that your dad has made to theology and apologetics, because one of the goals of this channel,

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David, is to promote reform theology, a presuppositional approach and make our small contribution to helping it continue on in at least the online world.

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So very much interested in hearing what you have to say with respect to to your father. Now, my first question for you,

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David, is kind of a broad question in your view and your understanding based upon your knowledge of your of your father as your father and his work as a theologian and apologist.

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What do you think is his greatest legacy that he's left the church? Well, I do think the greatest legacy is apologetical.

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I think that in terms of his work intellectually in philosophy and a distinctly

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Christian view of epistemology, that there is a legacy that will last for a long, long time.

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And I think it has both a practical, evangelistic benefit.

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And I think it has an intellectual legacy that will be tremendous.

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So we've already seen that to some degree in the limited amount of time, a few decades since he's been gone.

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I think that there has been a resurgence of interest in Christian apologetics. And I think that the

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Vantillian and the, as you call it, the presuppositional approach has gained a much broader audience as a result of his work that has seen a real leveraged increase in following since his passing.

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Sure. Now, how would you gauge the popularity of the presuppositional approach?

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Would you say that at the kind of the high point of your dad's apologetic career, was it widely known and was there a wide interest in it in a way that's much larger today?

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Or do you think this resurgent here in kind of our modern context is even larger than when your dad was alive? Definitely the latter.

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It's much larger today than when he was alive. I think a lot of that has to do, this is sort of my conjecture, that popular atheism as a mainstream pop culture reality really didn't exist in the 1970s and 80s and even in the first half of the 90s.

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My dad passed away at the end of 1995. The idea of guys like Christopher Hitchens and Dawkins and Sam Harris writing books that would sell over a million copies that were really meant to mock

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God. Look, atheism and some cousin of atheism rooted in secular humanism were very, very common before dad died.

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And I think some of the sort of postmodern developments that were taking place philosophically in our country and culturally in our country were well underway.

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But I'm referring to the specific marriage of these things to an active, almost evangelistic crusade of atheism.

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And I think that as we went through that, I'm probably talking my own book a little bit here, meaning talking my dad's legacy and my affections for him and his work.

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It didn't seem to me like we had the A -team available to correspond, to kind of pick up the mantle, to carry the sword as we were dealing with this.

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And these were becoming kind of household names, bestseller names, getting on all the talk show type names.

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Some guys filled in capably, but I do think there was a sense in which there are certain apologetical holes that exist in evidentialism and some of the classical models.

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And I think that they were found a little bit lacking. And I don't think that that same concern exists in the presuppositional approach to apologetics.

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But then also beyond that, there is obviously a big resurgence in some of the various elements of reformational theology, which

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I think presuppositional apologetics is deeply wed to. It is an attempt to apply some of the tenets of the sovereignty of God and the authority of Scripture to the apologetical realm.

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And as there has been a bit of a healthy growth in interest in thoughtful Christianity and particularly to Kuyperianism, the very specific

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Dutch theologian and thinker and intellect who was

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Abraham Kuyper and who was one of my dad's favorite influences in his view of sphere sovereignty and culture.

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I think that right now it is very rare that you engage with Christians who are advocating for some form of retreatism.

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And so as there is an increased popularity in cultural apologetics, it carries with it a burden for a better understanding of philosophical apologetics.

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And that has led to a greater interest in the work of people like my late father. Now, was your father, your father's interest in Abraham Kuyper, was it for broad theological reasons or was it because of his emphasis on worldview, which

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I would imagine would resonate very much with with your father and his connection with Cornelius Van Til?

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Yeah, I don't see a way to separate those two things. I don't I don't believe that they are distinct.

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I think that Kuyper was most certainly a Calvinist in a lot of ways. And so as a reformational theologian, as my dad was, both his obsessive interest in the work of the

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Genevan scholar John Calvin, but really in the 19th century, manifestation of Calvinist thought brought to worldview matters.

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Kuyper, I think, is one of the great heirs of Calvin. And certainly that would have carried over into my dad's interest.

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And so, yes, it's worldview mindedness, which is obviously very connected to Vantillianism.

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And ultimately, if one holds to the views of antithesis that Van Til and Bonson did there, even apart from apologetical methodology, which wasn't

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Kuyper's forte, but they are certainly very likely to be wed to a view of worldview that Kuyper, Calvin, Van Til and Bonson would all share.

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Yeah, interesting. So now, in your opinion, what do you think the apologetic landscape would look like had your father continued on into the realm of, say, new atheism?

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I mean, I know I remember watching or rather listening to a debate between Dan Barker and Doug Wilson, who your dad was previously scheduled to debate.

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And I remember the moderator speaking about how Dr. Bonson passed away just the year previously.

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What do you think the landscape of apologetics would look like? Do you think that presuppositionalism would have taken a much stronger hold than it does now?

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Or would it have experienced kind of the dying down that it did and then this resurgent that comes later?

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What are your thoughts on that? I don't know. I have a better feel for what I think would have happened with new atheism than what

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I think would happen within people's different appetite for presuppositionalism. I haven't seen within the reform world a lot of up and down movement and presuppositionalism that was related to the merits of the case.

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It generally tends to be quite personal. And I think that within the broader realm of philosophical discourse, there's no question you've already teed me up as Greg Bonson's son.

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I'm not capable of separating my own biases from the subject, which, by the way, is a bit of irony to the very subject that we're discussing.

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But I don't think that the new atheist would have liked Greg Bonson still being alive. I don't think so either.

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But he's definitely missed. I mean, I've listened to his debates. I mean, I think

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I could joke around and say that Dr. Bonson lives in my car. Once I go on a road trip, it's just a

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Bonson seminary situation for the whole way. So he's influenced me so much and just his rhetoric, his argument, his persuasiveness.

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I think he was genuinely gifted in that area. Now, you did make mention of, if I heard you correctly, his obsession with Calvinism.

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Why don't you unpack that for us? I get this question all the time. Presuppositional methodology and reform theology are necessarily and intricately linked.

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Do you see, based on your understanding, a necessary connection? Because, and I ask this question because I'm not sure how familiar you are with the apologetic scene online.

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There have been Roman Catholics. There have been Eastern Orthodox individuals claiming to be presuppositional.

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And so you kind of see this odd mixture of these other traditions with presuppositionalism. What is the nature of the connection, as you understand it, between presuppositional methodology and reform theology?

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Well, first, let me say that when you say you're not sure how familiar I am with apologetics online, the answer is not at all.

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Sure. And so the various... I wanted to be gentle because I know you have other things that you deal with.

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So I want to understand. The various, you know, I spent five minutes on a reform blog 20 years ago, and those are not five minutes that I'm ever going to get back.

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But no, the most online debates and fights and things are not necessarily,

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I think, the greatest forum for discussion. And I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that happens.

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I do know the sociology of what you're describing very well. I've grown up in this world and it's not something

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I'm unfamiliar with as to how a lot of this stuff plays out. I have very strong opinions as to what

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I think about it. But as far as the substance of the case, which is a great question, I would think that there's a sort of best ball here.

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And what I mean by that is, no, I do not believe that only those who hold to Calvinist eteriology can be presuppositional in their apologetical method.

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I would be quite excited for the notion of a Catholic or Orthodox or even non -Calvinist evangelical to embrace a presuppositional approach.

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And that in a certain theory of knowledge and in a certain framework of ideas that I do think constitute worldview commitments and an understanding for preconditions of intelligibility,

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I don't think it requires a Calvinist eteriology. However, I do think a

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Calvinist eteriology requires a presuppositional approach to apologetics. And so in all cases,

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Vantill wins. Okay, very good. Now, the interesting thing, and people who are interested in this, they can check out some of my other videos where we do talk about presuppositionalism and Eastern Orthodoxy and issues like that.

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There's definitely a difference in epistemology that needs to be taken into consideration.

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We need to push for worldview consistency and how that applies to our apologetic. But definitely a topic in and of itself that's worthy of an entirely different live stream.

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But all right, so your dad is a thoroughly reformed in his outlook, and he's known for his debating and his teachings.

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What was your connection with the Bonson Project? I don't know if you recognize my name prior to connecting with me today, but we were somewhat linked together in an email chain where folks were talking about releasing the audio of your dad's lectures.

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And what was your involvement in terms of getting his lectures out in kind of the public square without any cost, at least for people who want to listen to those?

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I'm sure it costs somebody something. Yeah, I'll just say that I finance making that possible.

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I'll leave it there. Yeah. Well, thank you. I've listened to almost everything that your dad recorded, and I've listened to that on Sermon Audio, if folks don't know.

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So they're all available on Sermon Audio and the Apologia Studios website. So folks definitely want to check it out.

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You know, Sermon Audio and Apologia have been the two platforms that have the best platform. To run with it since they've been put into the open domain, others are free to as well.

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Covenant Media continues to make the material available. The fine work that my dear friend

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Randy Booth did for many years there with Covenant Media. He and his wife, Marinel, are single handedly responsible for so much of the platform growth of the legacy of Greg Bonson.

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But I believe that it was time to make it available at no cost to a broader audience for Kingdom expansion and Kingdom purposes.

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And it was something that was near and dear to my heart. And I'm really quite excited.

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But there will be other platforms that will take it on in the future as well. That's the beauty of open source and the technology, the leverage you get through technological capacity now.

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That there's no stopping anybody. That's right. I'm making this stuff available to the world.

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And Apologia and Sermon Audio both have done a great job in the aftermath of this. And I'm very pleased to see all that.

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Well, I mean, I lost count the testimonies of people who benefited greatly from being pointed in that direction of those audio lectures.

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I tell people all the time when I share, when I teach on presuppositional apologetics, people like, hey, what are some good books to start with?

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And of course, we suggest your dad's books, Always Ready, Presuppositional Apologetics, Stated and Defended.

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But I'm like, you know what? In my opinion, I think better than his books are his lectures, because when he teaches, his personality comes across the way he kind of turns a phrase.

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It's just it connects very well if you're willing to kind of sit through and listen to his many lectures.

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So I'm very, very happy and excited that that those lectures were made available. All right.

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Well, let's kind of shift gears now. What interests me personally, and when I'm studying someone in church history or, you know, someone in recent history, you know, a

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Christian thinker, studying the theology and apologetics and the philosophy are super fascinating.

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But I'm really weirdly interested in like a person when they're not doing those things, kind of the the regular man.

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Right. When I think of Greg Bonson, I think of a professor. I think of debater.

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I think of theologian. I think of apologist. But that's not all. That's not the culmination of who he was.

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If I were just to be so blunt, can you share some personal aspects of what your dad was like in the everyday?

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What kind of person was he outside of the academic sphere? Yeah, I mean,

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I've shared quite a bit about this. You know, my dad was a was a very fun person.

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He most of the things I share, various people who only know him in the construct of his professorial or even pastoral context are a little surprised.

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He was a absolute walking encyclopedia of rock and roll. No, no bigger fan of the

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Beatles could have ever walked the face of the earth. And then my dad and even other rock music from the 60s, which, of course, is the decade in which he sort of grew up as a high schooler and then as a college student.

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And so that that bridge from youth to adulthood for him came with it a certain musical era.

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And he used to refer to I think the first person I ever used the expression music as a rite of passage was was my dad.

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And I think a lot of people identify a certain musical era with their own high school years.

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And it ends up having a kind of, you know, familiar and nostalgic benefit in their life.

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And my dad was no exception. He absolutely loved Saturday Night Live. What it was, he really enjoyed good humor in some of the characters.

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Sure. Comedians from his golden era Saturday Night Live in that in that kind of 1970s era was

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Steve Martin and Chevy Chase. And these guys, Dan Aykroyd, you know, he loved them. And then the movies they put out later.

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So he had a great sense of humor. He loved music. He loved food. Like me, I love

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Chinese food. So he was a very warm and caring guy.

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But the thing on a more serious note, I would say pastorally is that he was something that I don't really

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I don't see very often today, which I think some pastors seem to be very proud of being a really good shepherd and not necessarily a real intellect.

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And others that are really pursuing to be a true intellect and student of the word, but not necessarily a real shepherd, real pastoral sensibility.

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And I think that my dad's pastoral work was an incredible synthesis of the two.

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And so he was involved in a lot of pastoral counseling, a lot of real, you know, bottom up matters in people's own lives.

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And he viewed that as inerrant to being a pastor.

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It was an intrinsic part of the job description. And I don't know where, you know, he was only 47 when he died.

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I was only 21. I don't know if the movement towards presenting pastors as some sort of nebulous vision caster devoid of depth or theology or skill or work ethic or pastoral shepherding.

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I don't know if that movement was underway or not then, but I know it has accelerated since then.

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And it was not a movement that my dad would have jumped on with.

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He believed pastors should be both earnest students of the word and know their flock.

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And I don't meet many pastors today that seem to believe that. Sure, sure. Now, I was going to ask a not so serious question, but then you got into that serious vein.

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So you go to the not serious. It's fine. I want to ask one question, though, and then I want to kind of piggyback on this whole pastoral issue.

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What was your dad's favorite movie? Well, I'm sure it would have been, you know, he loved

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James Bond movies and Goldfinger was his favorite James Bond movie.

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But then as he loved comedy so much, I'm sure it would have been a Steve Martin movie.

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Loved the jerk by Steve Martin. He loved Caddyshack with Bill Murray. Oh, my

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God. So, you know, something if you're talking about something more serious that Shadowlands that Anthony Hopkins played

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C .S. Lewis, he loved that movie. And then on the comedy side, the jerk or Caddyshack, you know, there were a few.

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But he he really did love movies and he loved going to movies by himself, too. So a lot of people don't like doing.

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But he was a very contemplative guy. And yeah, he was totally comfortable just going to theater by himself, watching a movie.

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He enjoyed that. Yeah, I can. I think I've seen a couple of movies by myself. I don't I don't mind doing that now.

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Now, my more my more serious question. So you're talking about your dad as a pastor now, as a debater, as a philosopher, people who are engaged in those kind of disciplines can tend to be very intimidating.

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How does that stereotype of the intimidating debater and philosopher? How how does how does that match up with the actual situation where he would meet with people?

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And I really like how you kind of mentioned he kind of met people from the ground up, really worked in the work of ministry, the work of a pastor.

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Was that ever an issue of this issue of intimidation because of what your dad did? Did you ever come across that way when he was counseling others?

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If you if you even know. Oh, I don't know if he came off that way in counseling others or not.

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I would be surprised if he did. But I think he had a real interesting dual threat as a debater, as he was very winsome.

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I think he was very charitable. And yet he was vigorous, you know, and that's where the frustrations with like Gordon Stein when when dad debated him were not about dad's temperament.

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It wasn't uncharitable. He wasn't frustrated. He wasn't there wasn't acrimony. But he was he was very diligent and that could be upsetting.

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He also is quick, you know, is quick witted. And that's really what kind of usually wins a debate rhetorically is being quick on your feet.

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My dad was he wasn't fun to debate with, but that wasn't I didn't enjoy debating with him.

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But that wasn't because he was rude or mean or anything like that. It was because he was right.

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And or if he wasn't right, there were a couple of things he wasn't right about that I used to debate him on, but he was hard to beat in a debate because he was very thorough and passionate.

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He did his homework. And and so, you know, I think I see all those as positives, but I could certainly understand why others wouldn't wouldn't have liked it.

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So that would be my take on the debate style and skill and how it would carry over into other aspects.

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You know, me having a discussion with him at the dinner table about a theological issue or a political issue or something, that's where his debate ability should be coming out.

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I have no problem with that. But like in terms of in a marital counseling situation, do

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I think he was a he brought acrimonious debate to that? I don't I know I don't

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I don't I never heard anything like that. OK, now, in terms of debate, I remember listening to a lecture your dad your dad gave and he said, to be perfectly honest,

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I'm not afraid of any opponent I might come up against. And it's not because I'm super smart, but because I know the end of the book.

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Right. He kind of placed his trust in what scripture had to say. Scripture gives us kind of the the cheat sheet on the unbeliever, so to speak.

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And, you know, the scriptures speak of unbelief as foolishness. Why don't you kind of unpack and I'm not sure how old you were when he debated

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Gordon Stein. How old were you there? I was 11. I was about to turn 11.

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That was in February 1985. And I was born in May of 1974. But I was at the debate.

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All right. And so so I want to kind of talk a little bit about your dad's confidence. What did that look like?

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Because it it can be very intimidating when when he speaks of the confidence that believers should have when engaging unbelief, because we know the back of the book.

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But then you could you begin to wonder, well, I understand what you're saying.

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But I mean, the unbeliever is really smart. You know, how do we navigate from your dad's perspective the sort of confidence we should have?

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I mean, people might point to your dad and be like, well, it's easy for him to say he's got a Ph .D. in philosophy and he's really good at rhetoric and argumentation.

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How did your dad see how that confidence should trend should transfer over to the average believer?

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If my question makes sense there. Yeah, look,

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I think that for all people in other domains outside of theology, philosophy, pastoral ministry, there is a great area, a fine line in which one person's self -assurance or self -confidence can be problematic for others.

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I do believe that my dad had a very high degree of self -assurance and self -confidence when it came to things that he knew a lot about.

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And and as you stated that apparently, you know, you're repeating stuff he stated, his self -confidence in matters of apologetics or defending biblical truth and biblical fidelity.

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I have no doubt it stemmed from his Christian testimony, his confidence in the truth claims of scripture.

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But there are people that fervently believe in the truth claims of scripture that don't carry the same self -assurance.

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Yes, there's personality differences. There's wiring there. You know, there can be a certain timidity around these things.

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I don't think that's a good thing, but I'm just saying there's different rhetorical giftedness and so forth.

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It's going to carry over into this. And I wouldn't say that one person with rhetorical insecurity has less confidence in the faith than someone with great bonds and self -assurance.

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You know, they both have a high degree of confidence in the faith and truth claims of scripture. And yet there are going to be different manifestations of it.

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And my dad just was blessed to really have, I think, quite a complete package around that, a very high degree of self -assurance, a real rhetorical giftedness.

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And he was a very articulate guy, both in the written word and the spoken word. And then being quick on your feet, you know, that's not normal.

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He had a rare talent in that. And you put all that on top of a foundation of real fervent love of what the truth claims of scripture are and a real familiarity with scripture.

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Yeah, the guy knew the Bible. I mean, I think that's a huge deal, because a lot of people can believe the

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Bible and not know the Bible. And my dad really knew the Bible. So that kind of makes me want to transition into another area that I think folks will find interesting.

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And I know you've discussed it in the past. And I know people who have listened to your,

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I know they have these Bonson Conference lectures. And you gave one on your dad, which was excellent.

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And I think you contributed to the Festrif, I think the Standard Bearer, a while back where you kind of unpack basically what you laid out in your lecture about your dad.

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But without rehearsing the idea that your dad got up earlier than you, although I always get a kick out of that story.

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But what was his study habits like in the times that you can see him study?

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Although, I mean, if he got up earlier than you, there's a lot you don't see. But in terms of the kind of studious person that he was, what did that look like from your perspective growing up around that?

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Yeah, I think that whether it was in the Festrif, which was a biography chapter I wrote only a couple of years after he died.

32:55

That's a long time ago. And then I did give a speech at the first Bonson Conference, I think six years ago, maybe seven years ago, where I did a little longer biography and so forth and legacy talk.

33:09

And the most recent Bonson Conference, I got to speak about Greg Bonson and economics, which was a lot of fun for me.

33:17

But it is true that I tell the story, which was a very true story about me being very young.

33:23

And no matter how early I got up, I kept getting up and he kept being already up. And he had me beat then.

33:29

And he did then pass away shortly thereafter. And I can only tell you now, he wouldn't have me beat.

33:35

I would have him beat now. Oh, wait a minute. What time do you wake up?

33:41

I'm pretty good about being up by 3 .30, 3 .40 each morning. And I don't,

33:46

I suppose there were days he may have been up that early. But when we were doing our 5 .30, then 5 .00,

33:52

then 4 .30 thing, you know, I don't think it was in the middle of the night. But either way, he was a morning guy, like I'm a morning guy.

33:59

OK, what time do you go to sleep? Oh, I try to be asleep by 10 most nights or at least in bed reading.

34:07

And so, OK, you know, I think my dad had a similar philosophy. There's a lot he wanted to do in life.

34:13

And he found a lot of it hard to do when he was laying down with his eyes closed. And I feel the same.

34:21

But my dad also, even apart from his early morning habits and his, you know, when he slept and didn't sleep and that kind of stuff, he was a very organized worker.

34:35

He had very rigorous self -discipline and was a real task oriented guy.

34:41

And, you know, before there were Franklin planners, let alone, remember, this is the thing people that now have become fans of my dad over the last 20 years can't necessarily comprehend that he never had the

34:52

Internet. Right. He never had email, let alone social media, let alone

34:58

Microsoft Outlook. And a lot of the electronic amenities of the day that are really quite useful tools in our own daily productivity.

35:08

And so his version of those things was pretty impressive. But he was a real list, like handwritten list kind of guy.

35:17

And then he crossed out the next thing. And he had short and mid and long term type tasks and objectives.

35:24

And so, yeah, there was a lot of self -discipline in Greg Bonson that people could learn from.

35:32

I would definitely I didn't just learn from it. I was obsessed with it. I mirrored all of my discipline habits

35:38

I got from him. All of them. Yeah. Well, my wife is list oriented. So a good thing she wasn't here when you said that you see

35:45

Dr. Bonson use the list. And she talks about how gratifying it is to just you just cross it off moving along.

35:53

So that's right. All right. Well, very, very interesting there. OK, so what about his personal devotions?

35:59

I know you've spoken about this. Maybe you could speak to this again. There is a great difficulty in having a busy academic schedule.

36:07

I mean, he's raising he's raising you and the family. And he is also a scholar.

36:13

He's studying. He's busy. He's speaking. How did he navigate the balance between all of that hard work and discipline and structure?

36:22

And his personal devotions? Yeah. You can share that with us.

36:27

Yeah. He was an early morning devotions guy. It was pretty, pretty daily.

36:33

And he I got his library when he passed away and would go through some of these different devotional books.

36:42

I was always pretty struck by how many notes in the margins and underlining and whatnot.

36:49

So my impression, I mean, I know he absolutely loved the book of Psalms. He was quite a

36:55

Bible reader. But then in terms of other non -Bible devotional books, he had a lot of old

37:01

Puritan writers that he seemed to be quite fond of. And he also had a lot of C .S.

37:09

Lewis. He loved A .W. Tozer, a lot of Tozer stuff that seemed to be more devotional, early morning reading.

37:17

So it was a mix of different writings and then, of course, scriptural reflections.

37:25

And a lot of those scriptural reflections, especially in the last six years of his life, were heavily rooted in the book of Psalms.

37:34

Yeah. Interesting. Now, if we can kind of transition back to his apologetics,

37:39

I do understand that he believed in teaching apologetics within the household.

37:45

What did that look like for you? How did he teach you how to think apologetically at a very young age?

37:52

Because apologetic can be very intellectually heavy and really be intimidating for the adult. How did your dad navigate that in terms of raising you as a young boy into your teen years?

38:03

I mean, did he talk about apologetics as often as he spoke about it outside the house? I mean, what did that look like?

38:09

Yeah, he talked about it quite a bit. He taught apologetics at the Christian high school that we went to, to juniors.

38:16

He taught one semester in theology and one semester in apologetics. And that syllabus that he used for high school juniors was the same syllabus he had used when he taught apologetics at RTS, at Reform Theological Seminary, which was grad students.

38:33

And so he, but even well before we were in high school, I mean, we had been, I'd been discussing

38:39

Van Til with him since I couldn't even tell you the age. I was a very, very young boy. And so we were, we were truly brought up in it in every sense of the word.

38:48

Sure. Now, I know that your dad spoke often about the Lordship of Christ and usually it's within the context of our theology and apologetics and things like that.

38:58

But what did that look like in terms of everyday living?

39:04

What does it look like to live a life under the Lordship of Christ for your father? How did he understand what that would look like in the day to day?

39:13

I'm not, I'm not sure, I'm not sure how I could answer that.

39:19

I mean, I think he understood Lordship in the way he talked about it publicly. I think he viewed it in a truly, as we covered a moment ago, in a very

39:30

Kuyperian sense. He believed in sphere sovereignty, but that there was a unique and nevertheless all -encompassing context of Christ's Lordship in the institution of state, the institution of church, the institution of family.

39:49

Yeah, he had a robust understanding of Lordship and the whole concept of antithesis.

39:58

He believed very much in this total enmity between God and man.

40:06

How do I say this? The rhetoric of Lordship was not a buzzword.

40:14

I mean, it was something he believed in, preached about, talked about, wrote about, and in my mind lived out really quite exhaustively.

40:25

Now, this kind of leads me into my next kind of set of questions, because it sounds really cool as a

40:32

Christian to stand up in front of a pulpit and say, we need to live under the Lordship of Christ, right?

40:37

Or if you're giving an apologetics lecture and we quote 1 Peter 3 .15 and we emphasize the setting apart

40:43

Christ as Lord, and that all sounds really cool. But what that looks like and how that should be done can be a little challenging, depending on the situation.

40:54

So what does that look like for you? I mean, given what you do, what does it look like to do what you do working in the sphere of economics and kind of in the public eye, so to speak, talking about such really important topics.

41:09

How do you navigate consciously the reality that Christ must be

41:14

Lord over everything we do in the specific realm that you function in as a,

41:22

I mean, what would be your official title in terms of your job so that I know what I'm trying to call you? Well, I'm the managing partner of a wealth management firm called the

41:31

Bonson Group, manages about 4 .1, 4 .2 billion dollars of client capital.

41:38

And I serve as the chief investment officer. I'm managing all of the money. And so there is a deep commitment to economics.

41:50

We happen to be very engaged in financial economics, monetary economics, practical economics.

41:56

But I do want those things to be rooted in a certain theoretical and the approach one would take to economics for a worldview minded believer has to first fully engage the theoretical and the foundational truths that help lead to the practical.

42:18

And I don't think very many would do that. I think most people are at a high level in the profession of portfolio management and financial management might be really good at moving pieces around on a chessboard, but are very rarely doing so with any kind of worldview commitments or self -awareness about worldview commitments.

42:41

And that to me is what the burden is for us as Christians to engage in these efforts with a really comprehensive understanding of creational truth.

42:53

And very few domains need that and require that as much as economics.

42:59

Sure. And so my passions for a creational foundation economics are incredibly rooted in what

43:10

I've learned about worldview and lordship from Greg Bonta. So now if we could, if we could, if you don't mind me, can you kind of unpack what that looks like?

43:18

So, so what you do is rooted in a Christian worldview. But what does that look like in terms of the specific things that you do that are the everyday functioning in your role?

43:30

What does that look like in terms of, okay, what I'm doing is rooted in a Christian worldview.

43:36

And so what I do is going to look like fill in the blank. Can you give like an example in terms of where your

43:42

Christian worldview really comes out when you're trying to navigate some, you know, situation or context in what you do?

43:48

Yeah, I think most people that manage money that might be of faith believe that they are managing various random events in the universe that have probabilistic outcomes.

44:00

And that is what most portfolio theory is rooted in. There's a probabilistic outcome that comes from history and it is mathematical and econometric.

44:12

And in my worldview, what happens in economics is an outflow of human action.

44:19

Humans are acting because they were made in the image of God with certain faculties and they were made to act in a certain way.

44:30

And so I have both anthropological commitments, things I believe about the human person, things

44:36

I believe by human nature that directly influences the way I would manage client money.

44:44

And my belief in what we call dividend growth investing is an outflow of the idea of things not being merely econometric, but that there being various principles of self -interest.

44:55

Humans are made with reason. Humans were made with rational faculties. Humans are made with a self -preservation instinct.

45:04

Humans have an eternal destiny. And there are a lot of factors that play into why

45:10

I believe the profit motive is encapsulated in enterprises that are producing the goods and services that meet the needs of mankind.

45:22

And if I am going to capture that risk premia, that opportunity, that reward, that investment profit out of this process and capture it in a portfolio on behalf of clients, we're going to use those financial returns to meet goals, to use it as a solution to financial objectives that they'll have.

45:47

It sure seems to me it's incumbent upon someone to understand where that comes from, where that risk premium comes from, where the reality of profits comes from, the commandment for profits, the belief that markets work can be shared by believer and unbeliever alike.

46:11

But believers who believe markets work, I think have a more robust appreciation for why they work and how they work.

46:19

And I want to tie those things to creational truths so that I can never be swayed by the temptations of the day, which are largely superstitious and even in a best case, reduced to probabilistic assumptions.

46:37

But rather still maintain a risk, still not only maintain, but embrace a risk and yet do so in the construct of understanding human behavior, human nature, and then being able to advise clients with those kind of epistemological commitments.

47:00

So that's an example that is fundamental to how we view money management. On a more practical basis,

47:07

I think somebody who believes in Lordship of Christ and obedience to scripture, they ought to have a particularly vigorous view of integrity, of honesty.

47:17

My business, we've done very well because we won't work with clients who don't trust us.

47:22

We need them to have a very, very high level of trust and commitment to us.

47:28

But see, I've never defended that on the basis of blind trust.

47:34

I believe that that trust needs to be a byproduct of trustworthiness. And when people say, how does someone demonstrate trustworthiness?

47:42

And this could apply in my profession, but it could apply in any profession, lawyers, accountants, you know, other even non -white collar jobs.

47:52

How does one demonstrate trustworthiness? And I think a really good place to start is by not telling people lies.

48:02

Just tell the truth. By telling the unvarnished truth. There's a profound simplicity to that.

48:08

The problem in many professions is not so much lying like, I won't steal your money.

48:14

And then you steal their money. Well, I think stealing money is wrong, whether you say you're going to do it or not.

48:21

But however, when you tell somebody it's okay that they're spending more money they can afford to spend because they want to do it and it's going to make them feel good.

48:32

You're not stealing from them per se, but by lying to them because you know, it's what they want to hear.

48:39

You know, there's a lot of people really upset at me because I am a huge critic of the

48:46

Bitcoin space. And people want me to say that I think Bitcoin is wonderful and that it's going to totally replace the need for government money and blah, blah, blah.

48:54

And I don't believe it. And I know who wants to hear it, but I won't say it. And if they're right and I'm wrong, that's fine.

49:01

I'm not. But even if I were, the point being that sometimes you say things that are unpopular and you develop trustworthiness out of that.

49:12

And I don't do that for any other reason than it is a deeply held part of my value system embedded in what

49:19

I believe as a Christian, what is required of me to be fully obedient.

49:25

And so telling the unvarnished truth, being trustworthy, having a coherent philosophy of managing money.

49:32

These are some of the ways I could go on for hours, but these are some of the ways in which this stuff matters to us in our business.

49:40

Well, I find that super helpful because it's so easy to speak about lordship, lordship. And yeah, that sounds cool.

49:45

But just to see what it looks like in kind of a specific example, I think that kind of adds some flesh to that.

49:51

So thank you so much for that. I appreciate it. Now, I want to talk briefly about this idea of the sacred secular distinction, this idea where people kind of I call it kind of waffle mindedness.

50:05

You take a look at waffles, you know, you have the individual squares, these little compartments. And so sometimes we make these distinctions in the way we approach life.

50:14

What was your father's view of people who do that, where they will make a distinction between their job, you know, their job that they wake up in the morning to do and the sacred elements, which include ministry and worship and things like that?

50:31

Did he agree with such a distinction? If he didn't, how would he have expanded on his understanding of what people typically do in terms of breaking those two categories apart, the sacred and secular?

50:44

No, he didn't agree with it. And this was a very serious part of his

50:50

Protestantism, the priesthood of all believers. There there is a historical difference here,

50:58

I think, between a lot of Protestant thought and Catholic thought. And I believe that the sacred secular distinction is fundamentally, by definition, dualistic and he was no dualist.

51:14

And so Kuyperians embrace lordship in all areas. And I think a dualist is looking for ways to see certain things as belonging to the world and other things as belonging to Christ.

51:26

But like Kuyper, my believe that every square inch, my dad believed that every square inch was under the domain of Christ.

51:33

And the notion of an elevated role for clergy, for priests, for pastors, for ministry, what have you, and then a somewhat lower role in the kingdom for people engaged in various other careers.

51:56

Was so far outside of his theology, so far outside of his belief about scripture, it's unbelievable.

52:04

And I am working on a book right now on this very subject applied to vocational understandings, to calling, to a truly robust Christian theology of work.

52:17

My book is going to be called Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life, and it will come out in February of 2024.

52:25

I still have several more months till my manuscript is due, but I'm deep into the writing of it.

52:32

And the tenets of my book are marinated in Greg Bonson.

52:39

Well, that's wonderful. All right. Well, thank you for that. So we shouldn't make that distinction.

52:45

Everything is owned by Christ. We live and function and move both in our jobs and in ministry.

52:53

We should be always conscious of that fact. So I like that. We don't want to be waffles. We want to be consistent thinkers in a way that has a worldview that is interconnected.

53:03

And we do not separate those things. So I very much appreciate that. Well, that was my last of my kind of my main questions.

53:10

I'd like to kind of jump into some of the listener questions. We can just take a few of them since we're at the top of the hour here.

53:17

And I just want to thank you ahead of time for giving me of your time because you are super busy. So I actually heard kind of a side note.

53:26

I actually heard that from your dad in one of his lectures that you were big into playing basketball when you were younger, right?

53:35

What did that look like for you? Did you play a little basketball for fun or were you hardcore? No, I was pretty hardcore, but I didn't take it up till kind of late.

53:42

So throughout high school, it was definitely a big, big part of my life. I still love basketball to this day.

53:47

I'm not able to play it the way I used to after me blowing up and other things like that.

53:53

But throughout high school, it was really me and my brothers. We were tremendously into basketball.

54:00

My dad came to almost all of our games. He was really committed to being one of those dads, very involved, very supportive.

54:08

We did basketball camps and played all through the team. I was co -captain my senior year and just had a wonderful time.

54:17

What position did you play? I actually played point guard. Really? Okay. How tall are you?

54:22

I'm 6 '2". I was 6 '1 in high school. I was the taller guard, but we sort of had a unique offense that facilitated it.

54:29

Interesting. I see you had some good handle, I presume, right? That was an old day. A long time ago.

54:38

All right. Well, let's jump into some audience questions I have here. Chris, this is not a question, but a fun comment. I just want to say

54:43

I love David Bonson, despite the fact that because of him, I'm no longer the big man on campus. Because of my

54:49

Bonson collection from Covenant Media Foundation, now everyone has access to it. So there you go.

54:56

You've released the secret knowledge that only few are privy to. But I'm sure folks are appreciative of that.

55:03

So let's jump into our first question here by Just Cody. He asks, what are your thoughts on Gary North's economic commentary on the

55:12

Old Testament? Of course, if you're not familiar with any of these questions, feel free to just say pass. I'm not familiar with that, but I'm just going to ask him anyway.

55:19

What are your thoughts on Gary North's economic commentary on the Old Testament? Would you recommend it or is it reading libertarianism anachronistically into feudal society?

55:29

Well, I don't know about the second part. I wouldn't say that necessarily.

55:35

I think there's some really good stuff in it. There's some stuff in it I don't think is great. But I've never struggled.

55:42

Well, maybe that's not true. I think I did used to struggle and I don't struggle with it anymore.

55:48

The notion of liking some things from a particular person and not liking other things.

55:55

And the idea that one has to be all in or all out to the works of Gary North or to the works of Greg Monson, for that matter.

56:05

And even myself with various other people that could be more controversial or less controversial.

56:13

I love quoting Tim Keller on different things where I think he's outstanding and there's other stuff. I may not articulate things the way

56:20

Tim does, but there's a whole lot of people, whether it be in a theological construct or philosophical or even economic, some of the greatest influences on me economically were secular rationalists like Friedrich Hayek or Ludwig von

56:37

Mises or Milton Friedman. And even some people who were real

56:42

Scottish enlightenment empiricists like Adam Smith completely changed the world.

56:48

Some of the greatest Christian moral philosophers of all time, I recognize where their contributions were strong and where they weren't.

56:57

And there are certain things that I can see in the field of economics that have holes in them that I want to be able to spend some of my time and effort and whatnot in my adult life trying to fill in some of those holes where I can.

57:13

But there's no part of that that is problematic in my mind that we can like some things and not like others.

57:21

And that's how I feel about Gary with Gary North is economic commentary, which is not just Old Testament.

57:28

He ended up before he died doing economic commentary, the entire

57:34

Bible. It's only available PDF. A lot of the books in the Old Testament he actually published hard copies of.

57:40

But I wouldn't say it's something I swear by or view as a valuable reference each and every day.

57:47

But there are some things in there, some nuggets that I think are really good. And so that's my very honest answer to a mixed bag, but a resource that I have used from time to time.

57:59

Yeah, I think that's a really helpful answer, because I think especially in the theological realm and apologetics realm, you do have a lot of these people who are the like you're all in or you're all out.

58:08

I think there's great value in being able to read someone you disagree with and really see the great truths that they can plunge into and be kind of critically minded and identify those areas where you're like, hey, this doesn't work.

58:21

I mean, you know, when I suggest someone, you know, it's like, what's a good book on presuppositional apologetics? And God forbid

58:27

I suggest like a book by John Frame, you know, a Bonson purist might say frame, how could you?

58:33

Well, Frame's got some great stuff, even though there's some differences between himself and your dad. We need to learn to be discerning and appreciate.

58:40

Yeah, I don't want to burst the bubble of any people that think they're Bonson purist and anti -frame, but I don't know what to do with that.

58:50

Sure. How could someone be a better, a more pure Bonson than Bonson? But who could possibly have loved the work of John Frame more than Greg Bonson?

58:59

Good luck. Yeah, it's absurd. Yeah. And that's the kind of things we have to deal with sometimes because you have these kind of like, you know, these team mentalities.

59:09

I'm team Bonson. I'm I'm team Frame. I'm team James Anderson. I'm of Apollos. I'm of a

59:15

Paul. You know, you got this the same idea in the apologetic realm, unfortunately. Yeah, no, I understand.

59:20

And hopefully people, including yourself, can tell what I think about that. Sure. Absolutely. Bonson memes,

59:28

I would imagine that's not their real name. So but here you go. Follow up question. If God isn't completely sovereign, doesn't that destroy the presuppositional platform?

59:38

So if someone denies the complete and utter sovereignty of God, wouldn't that affect one's presuppositional approach?

59:45

What are your thoughts on that? No, it wouldn't.

59:50

You said it would not destroy. No, I don't think it would. I think that it would make it inconsistent or shall we say impaired.

01:00:01

I as I said earlier, I think one is arguing for presuppositionalism from a theological position of God's sovereignty.

01:00:09

It's in a much stronger position. But could one hold to a non -Calvinist etiology and still believe that the fear of the

01:00:19

Lord is the beginning of wisdom? Of course they could because billions of Christians have throughout history.

01:00:26

Sure. And you would just point out that perhaps there is inconsistencies that might be the person might be open to in terms of.

01:00:33

Yeah, but not a consistency that breaks it, just an inconsistency that if resolved strengthens it.

01:00:38

OK, I got you. All right. Thank you for that. The sire says, why did why did you get so interested in economics?

01:00:45

So, you know, here you go. There's Greg Bonson's son, you know, people who are enamored with the work of your dad.

01:00:50

They're like, man, I would have I'd love to get into philosophy. And and all of a sudden, David Bonson. Yes, I'm going to get into economics.

01:00:57

What got you into economics, given how you were brought up and things like that? Yeah, I.

01:01:05

I was into finance at a very young age. My dad very much encouraged me to not go into pastoral ministry, to teaching ministry.

01:01:16

There were times I thought I would want to do that as a very younger guy. But I had no interest in pursuing the exact same career that my dad had.

01:01:30

Yet I was totally wed to the idea of applying the biblical truth to what

01:01:36

I would do in my adult life. And so my passions for economics,

01:01:42

I was far more into politics than my dad ever was. And that was a pretty good political thinker.

01:01:47

He was interested, but it was really more a side dish for him where I was kind of a junkie.

01:01:53

So I was reading Bill Buckley and National Review as a very young age. My dad really appreciated

01:01:59

Bill Buckley and National Review, but he wasn't obsessed with it. He loved Reagan.

01:02:04

You know, he was a conservative political guy, but he wasn't a political junkie.

01:02:10

And I more was. But yeah, in terms of finance and going to Wall Street, I had a real passion for that.

01:02:17

And I can assure you that if I had gone to my dad at some point later than the point at which he died, let's say

01:02:25

I was in my mid -20s and dad was still with us as opposed to him leaving before I had a real sense of career direction.

01:02:32

And I had said, dad, I'm going to fork in the road. I need you to break the tie. I'm either going to go into seminary or into Wall Street.

01:02:40

I break the tie. And he would have been dropping me off in Manhattan.

01:02:47

All right. Very interesting. Now, the next question here, it's got I'm not I'm not aware of how familiar you are with philosophy and theology.

01:02:56

But so I'm just going to going to have this question up here. You can feel free to engage it if you understand it. And if you're like that's something you're not familiar with, we can kind of move on.

01:03:05

So Cody asks, I like reformed epistemology, I guess more in line with, say, like an

01:03:11

Alvin Plantinga kind of approach and reading some of Duja Vird. What are the obstacles dividing our approaches and keeping them apart?

01:03:20

I think a unified reform philosophy would be interesting. Specifically between Alvin and Duja Vird.

01:03:27

That's what it seems to be. Yeah, I would I would say just in the interest of time that I'm not the right person to address that subject.

01:03:35

I'm pretty well read and I have my thoughts on it, but I don't like it when pastors that I know don't understand economics, talk about finance and a question of that granularity both in our limited time and in my subject matter expertise.

01:03:52

I'll defer to my friend Brian Mattson or Andrew Sandlin. All right. Thank you for that. The Sire has a question here.

01:03:58

How should Christianity influence their economic beliefs? It's kind of a general question, but I suppose you could answer that in many ways.

01:04:05

Because one should formulate their economic beliefs out of the Garden of Eden. And anthropology is fundamentally where economics comes from, what we believe about the human person, because all economics is, is the study of human action around the allocation of scarce resources.

01:04:24

The world was created with scarcity. And if it wasn't, then we wouldn't have any such thing as economics.

01:04:31

But because the world was created with scarcity, it behooves us to understand the creation and understand the people who are to be stewards of that creation, which is us.

01:04:42

And so economics is fundamentally, in my mind, done optimally, requires

01:04:49

Christian anthropology. Very good. He continues on to ask, can you explain how your thesis in Crisis of Responsibility applies to the situation with COVID and the banks recently?

01:05:02

And the banks recently? Is that what he said? Yeah, yeah.

01:05:08

I mean, I don't I don't think that the issue of the banks has a whole lot of application here, but I think that.

01:05:17

Well, let's put it this way, my thesis in Crisis of Responsibility is that we have a society of blame casters and that that has become true on both sides of the political aisle.

01:05:31

And that remedy to this high politicization and tribalization and polarization around what seems to be every issue, that the remedy will come from a more robust rediscovery of individual responsibility.

01:05:48

I think there was incredible institutional failure throughout COVID. And unfortunately,

01:05:55

I think we're in a vicious cycle where the downward trend in credibility of certain institutions or experts or elites is not a good thing.

01:06:07

And the belief that expertise is in and of itself a problem, as opposed to expertise that is itself wrong or not yet sufficiently humble, or most importantly, and this is what we experienced through COVID, wed to power and the propensity, as Lord Acton taught us, to abuse power, to become corrupted by power.

01:06:33

That, to me, is the real error of our ways. And during COVID, I think we got to see that on steroids and a society that embraced an individual doctrine of responsibility that allowed people to take risks, give them as much information as they could to calculate risk,

01:06:53

I think would have been a much healthier society, both spiritually, economically.

01:07:03

And now, I would argue, in terms of that political divide, COVID, rather than being a unifying moment, became a divisive moment.

01:07:11

And I think that's rooted in this crisis of irresponsibility we're dealing with. All right, thank you for that.

01:07:18

Now, next question here, I'm kind of prepping the next question because it's kind of someone asking for a resource here.

01:07:23

Feel free to chime in if you know a resource. I definitely have a resource. I'm just going to put in the comments here for them.

01:07:30

But here's the question. Oops, sorry, that's not the question. The question here is, what are some resources for pre -self apologetics against Buddhists or other worldviews that do not have a worldview that believes in objective truth?

01:07:43

Why don't you share your thoughts there? And I'm going to. I would defer to you on that. OK, let's see here.

01:07:50

Let's see. There is a book by Michael Robinson.

01:07:58

He's kind of a popularizer of presuppositional apologetics, where he wrote a book.

01:08:03

It is called Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics examines Buddhism and the foundation of Buddhism.

01:08:11

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to copy that. And it is nine ninety nine on Kindle.

01:08:17

So I highly recommend you check it out. He had some really good popular level material. And I think it proved it will prove very useful for for you there.

01:08:25

Just Cody. All right. So that's going to be dropping in on the comments there. All right. We're almost we're almost finishing up,

01:08:31

David. You're doing a great job. I appreciate it. And we just have a few more questions and then we'll wrap things up.

01:08:37

Is that OK? Absolutely. All right. So here's a question here. What was your family dynamic like after the passing of your father?

01:08:45

Did you and your siblings grow closer? Did you go further apart? What did that look like? Yeah, my brothers and I definitely went through a lot of different things and certainly grew closer in kind of the obvious ways.

01:08:59

And we it was a very difficult time for all of us.

01:09:05

We were all very young and and, you know, it's kind of an unimaginable set of circumstances.

01:09:12

Here's an interesting one. Do you have any thoughts? I'm not sure the him he's referring to, but the reputation that presuppositionalists often have of being arrogant and rude in their approach now on the online sphere.

01:09:23

This is actually quite common where you'll have presuppositionalists take they'll they'll latch on to the confidence level that presuppositionalism is often couched in because of the emphasis of the confidence in God's word and the strength of the argument.

01:09:39

Have you experienced or have any knowledge of the experience of people coming across using this method in a very unbiblical and arrogant way?

01:09:46

What are your thoughts on that? Well, of course, I have actually more observed it to be very often coupled to the reformed world at large, not merely the subsect of the reformed world that is presuppositional.

01:10:03

So I guess, to be honest, I haven't ever identified it as uniquely presuppositional arrogance, as uniquely what is what is the phrase young, reformed and restless?

01:10:16

I have very strong opinions on it. I think I'd offend a lot of people if I shared them. I won't share all of them, but I think it's very problematic.

01:10:24

I think it's often repugnant. It is not something I want any part of. I've observed it for a long time, and I also think a lot of it is sociological.

01:10:37

There's an attraction to the sort of bespoke nature of being reformed or the kind of intellectual uniqueness of being presuppositional.

01:10:49

And it meets a certain psychological need for a particular demographic.

01:10:56

But I don't think that's very healthy spiritually or impressive. All right.

01:11:02

Well, this is my second to last question, and hopefully you'll end the debate right now. There is a huge debate going on in the sports world that I think we would benefit greatly from from you chiming in.

01:11:13

I just have to say this. Who's better, Michael Jordan or LeBron James? There's no debate going on about that.

01:11:21

Dan, we need to have a very robust debate about who the second best basketball player of all time is.

01:11:28

Because those that would posit LeBron as superior to Michael Jordan know not of what they speak, and they speak from a dangerous level of ignorance.

01:11:42

But the notion of a really vigorous debate over who's the second best, I think, is a fun, healthy conversation.

01:11:50

And LeBron and Kobe and these guys get in that list. But no, Michael Jordan is in an absolute sovereign, unimpeded sense, the sole owner of the number one goat spot.

01:12:07

And I find any argument to the contrary to be unserious. Now, you guys have heard it here.

01:12:13

David Bonson says Michael Jordan is the best. I would agree. Growing up in the 90s and being able to see firsthand the complete and utter fear that he would strike in the hearts of his opponents was a very fun thing to see as a

01:12:27

Bulls fan. So thank you for sharing that. I had nothing to do with anything. I just someone put it there.

01:12:32

I was like, I have to ask this question. I'm going to make this a separate clip so people can know who is the greatest, who's the goat.

01:12:40

Now, my last question here before we kind of wrap things up is, in your own opinion, is a very subjective question.

01:12:47

But if if Greg Bonson was still with us today, what do you think he'd be saying to the church in light of the condition of the church today with all of its different problems and issues that can span kind of a vast array of areas?

01:13:03

What do you think the message of Greg Bonson would be for the church today if he was still with us?

01:13:09

Well, I think it's better for me to answer and it's better for other people to answer, you know, for their own purposes with what we do know versus what we don't know.

01:13:21

Sure. You know, I struggled with this a lot after 9 -11, as I had really strong opinions of what my dad would have said about foreign policy, about geopolitics, about just war theory, about the reality of that particular act of aggression by jihadists on Americans.

01:13:40

And yet he had been gone for six years by the time 9 -11 happened and he wasn't there to opine on it.

01:13:49

And I think it'd be inappropriate for people to speak to what he would have said. Sure. And I don't know where that temptation comes from for people who want to do that.

01:13:57

You get a lot of it, too, of people saying that so -and -so, you know, would have rescinded something they believe or whatever.

01:14:03

And, you know, I mean, conjecture is just that, it's conjecture. But what I do know from what he did say and what he did do and what he did represent is he had strong beliefs about the church being faithful, being obedient.

01:14:19

I don't think he would have jumped on the sort of easy believism that people seem to believe in today and advocate for.

01:14:27

And so I think he would have been a tremendous defender of the notion of a church being bold and a faithful witness and much more engaged in the notion of obedience than it is today, where there seems to be a real low regard, a real latent antinomianism that's embedded throughout the church.

01:14:53

I, my dad was a pretty committed Presbyterian. That's not something

01:14:59

I share with him in terms of his ecclesiastical commitments. All right.

01:15:04

What are you? Are you a Baptist? What are you? Well, no, I'm a Reformed. I have a very

01:15:11

Presbyterian view of sacrament and covenant, but I'm referring to church ecclesiology.

01:15:18

Ah, I see, I see. And I don't think that that there's, that's really, to me, the unique value proposition of Presbyterianism, as many who are

01:15:27

Calvinist who aren't Presbyterian. But Presbyterians have a certain view of church polity and ecclesiastical structure.

01:15:34

My dad believed all that, and I don't have any reason to believe he would have abandoned that.

01:15:41

I hope he would have for his own sake, but it's not up to me to say he would have.

01:15:46

Sure. And so I have opinions on what I wish he would have done and for his own sake, but I'm going to let his testimony speak for itself.

01:15:56

And he was a Presbyterian. He believed in a particular view of church and sacrament, and I'm sure he would still today.

01:16:08

But as far as your question on what it would exhort the whole church.

01:16:13

Sure. The broader institution of church at large, it's very hard for me to think of anything other than the desperate need for the church to be more bold and more obedient.

01:16:25

Sure. More bold and obedient. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this has been David Bonson, the son of the late

01:16:31

Greg Bonson with us. David, I really, really want to thank you for giving me of your time.

01:16:37

Once again, I know that you're super busy, and I'm sure you've had variations of all these questions asked to you.

01:16:43

I'm sure multiple times. And so I'm very grateful for you to come on and have this discussion with me.

01:16:50

Well, it's my pleasure. I hope people have gotten something out of it, and I appreciate your warm regards that you have for my father and this hospitable conversation.

01:17:00

Thank you very much. It's my pleasure. And words cannot express how deeply I've been impacted by your dad's teachings as lectures, and I continue to be blessed by them every day.

01:17:10

So I'm very much grateful for that. Well, why don't you stay on with me for just 30 more seconds? I'm just going to close the show out, and then

01:17:16

I'll just have a few things I'd like to share, and then we'll close things out. Okay?

01:17:21

So ladies and gentlemen, this has been David Bonson sharing about his dad, his dad's apologetic philosophy, and some other issues that I'm looking forward to hearing back from people.

01:17:32

If you've been blessed and edified by this conversation, let me know. Throw me an email, revealapologeticsatgmail .com.

01:17:39

I'd greatly appreciate it. In terms of upcoming shows, I'm going to be trying to get the folks over at Cultish, which is kind of a branch off podcast of Apologia Church on the show to talk about the occult and the cults and apologetics towards that context.

01:17:56

And so I'll let you guys know when that goes down. But until next time, thanks again for listening in, and I appreciate you guys.