An Interview w/ Mark Rushdoony #Theonomy #presup #apologetics

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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 special guest. If you've noticed the thumbnail there on YouTube, I am going to be talking with Mark Rushdooney, the son of the late

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R .J. Rushdooney. And just to give a little bit of information about R .J. Rushdooney, he was a

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Reformed theologian, philosopher, historian, who was a major influential figure in the

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Christian Reconstruction movement. He's best known for his work advocating the application of biblical law to every area of life, including politics, education, and culture, emphasizing the lordship of Christ over all society.

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Rushdooney's teachings were deeply rooted in a presuppositional apologetic framework, heavily influenced by Cornelius Van Til.

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We'll talk a little bit about that here in this episode as well. And he's written a lot of books.

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So if you've never heard of R .J. Rushdooney and you're interested, hey, who is this guy? I highly recommend you type in his name on Amazon or anywhere on the internet, and you will learn very quickly that he was a very prolific thinker and writer, writing over 50 to 60 books, with some of those books which include the

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Institutes of Biblical Law, the Messianic Character of American Education, and particularly of interest to those who are interested in apologetics, he wrote a book called

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The One and the Many, which is not primarily an apologetics work, but is relevant to the topic of the problem of the one and the many, and the

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Trinity, and things like that. So folks who follow this channel will find that information very useful. And he wrote a book on apologetics.

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I suppose he's probably written more than this one, but I'm willing to be corrected on this. He wrote a book called

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By What Standard, which is a book on presuppositional apologetics. And so I'd like to welcome on the show

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Mark Rushdooney. Thank you so much for making the time to be on here with me. Why don't you take a few moments to introduce yourself to the audience.

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Well, I'm the son of R .J. Rushdooney, and I've been working with Calcedon, the organization that he founded, since 1978.

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I was about 11 years old when he began it, and so I've been around it my entire life.

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And we're continuing to keep his materials available. More of his materials are in print now than ever before, and we're also putting them in audio books, and ebooks, and the like.

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One of our major purposes is to keep his material alive.

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Because he spoke to such a vast assortment of topics, we think these are issues that he addressed very early on that are still very timely, and they're issues the

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Church still needs to deal with and come to terms with. Yeah, excellent. Well, folks who just heard me kind of make a brief introduction,

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I did mention the phrase Christian Reconstruction. Do you mind kind of giving us a definition of that?

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Maybe expand a little bit on the brief comments that I made, so folks could understand what that is from kind of a helicopter perspective.

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Right. Christian Reconstruction is a term that my father coined in 1965, just after he had started

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Calcedon. And I define

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Christian Reconstruction as merely an analogy of the believer's responsibility into a sometimes hostile world, and a world that has become increasingly anti -Christian.

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In other words, what do we do in the culture that we are faced with? And so that's the basic issue that my father was addressing.

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Where do we go from here? Francis Schaefer asked much the same question in How Then Shall We Live.

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My father got a little bit more specific, and his theology developed that in a particular way.

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My father, in his very first newsletter when he started Calcedon in 1965, he compared what he was doing and what his supporters were doing to the

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Renaissance artists, and the great art of the Renaissance was financed by sponsors.

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Rich people, nobles and such, paid for these great artists to spend their time creating works of art.

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So he compared it to, you know, Renaissance artists. And then in the second newsletter, he said that, he referred to having to begin the work of Reconstruction.

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And so that name really stuck. And so he began referring to his worldview as Christian Reconstruction.

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It's essentially a worldview. How do we look at the big picture? And I think that was my father's great contribution.

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He looked at the big picture. Many Christian thinkers and leaders delved into very specific ministries, very specific endeavors.

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For instance, they wanted to promote Christian education. They wanted to fight abortion. They wanted to start a college.

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They wanted to do something, and they attacked very specific issues. My father always kept the big picture in view.

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And so he wrote on numerous topics, hoping that others would take the initiative to delve into these areas more specifically.

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And so he was all in favor of targeted ministries, but he wanted to basically keep the door open to Christians going into more and more activities.

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All of faith in life, he sometimes referred to it as. Yeah, that's excellent, because this channel focuses on apologetics.

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And so we talk a lot about presuppositional apologetics and methodology. But when you get a lot of the folks on the internet who use the internet as their main source of education, they kind of fall into this niche.

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Like, I do the apologetics over here, and this is where I get all of my information. And then my life is kind of a separate over there.

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And so what I appreciate about your father is that emphasis on worldview. Being presuppositional is not merely an apologetic issue.

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It's a world and life issue, which I think your father did very well in trying to apply that in a wide range of areas.

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So I think that's None of these issues are ends in themselves. Absolutely. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

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Amen. Excellent. Well, I know folks, we'll get into a little bit more of your dad's ideas.

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But what's always interesting to me, Mark, is when I read the works of someone as prolific as your father or other

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Christian apologists or scholars, we can be so enamored with their work. But what interests me is like behind closed doors, what kind of person, you know, is this person, you know, when no one is watching and he's not talking about quote unquote scholarship or whatever, what is it like growing up with someone like your father, someone as a great thinker, prolific writer?

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I would imagine he's super busy even at home. I mean, what did that look like for you growing up with with him?

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Well, that was one unique feature of my father is other than about a year when he worked for another foundation before Chalcedon, this is in the early 60s, he worked from home.

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You know, he was a pastor. And then later when he worked from Chalcedon, Chalcedon was mostly out of his home for all of the years that he was alive.

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So he worked at home. He was always there, which is a little unique to have a father that's just at home, you know, 24 -7.

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Although, you know, there were times in his life, mostly after I was an adult, that he traveled extensively.

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But something that came up on Facebook recently is we posted a picture of my father when he appeared to be laughing and people says that's not the

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Rush that I picture, that's not the Rush I understand. That Rush was his nickname. Okay.

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And he did like to laugh a lot. In fact, when he wanted to relax, he and mother wanted to relax, they would watch silly comedies on TV, even the reruns, you know,

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Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie. So silly stuff. Because my father had said,

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I don't want drama. He dealt in very heavy topics. So when entertainment to him was something that he wanted to be very, very light.

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Okay. And even though even when he did watch shows like that, he often had a book and he was reading a book while he did.

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My mother would sometimes say, you're not paying the least bit of attention. And he'd tell her exactly what was going on.

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But he could do that. He was an avid reader all his life. And he almost always had a book at his disposal.

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In fact, when I was young, he'd go to the post office and when he knew he had to stand, likely had to stand in line, he would take a book with him and he would read the book while he was standing in line.

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And he didn't waste any time. The first time he took us to Disneyland, he took a book.

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We were on the ride. He was reading the book. That was normal for him.

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Now, what kind of, okay. What kind of books can you possibly be reading while standing in line? I mean, was it like some deep academic book or is it just like any read very heavy stuff and he could stop at any, he had a phenomenal memory.

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He could stop at any given moment and put the book aside and then pick it up again.

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And he, he kept the train of thought. That's why he could read a book while he was watching television.

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His desk often while he was writing all these books, it was not isolated in a separate room.

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It was usually in a room where there was other family activities going on, including sometimes the television.

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So he had a phenomenal memory and a phenomenal ability to focus.

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And he had a very strong and a remarkable work ethic. What he got accomplished is truly amazing.

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Yeah. And, and I suppose, um, I remember N .T. Wright, I'm not a big fan of N .T. Wright, but I remember, um,

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N .T. Wright said this, uh, in an interview and it reminds me of, you know, the fact that your dad wrote so much.

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Um, it, there was a point in N .T. Wright's career where it looked like he was coming out with a book, like one after the other.

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And an interviewer said, Hey, you know, how do you write so many books? And he's like, well, you know, I've been reading for so many years,

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I figured I might just begin to jot it down. And so, uh, the same thing with your dad, I would imagine he wrote so much because he read so much.

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There was just so much there to synthesize and to get out. And so, um, that, that's hilarious.

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Um, and Disney, Disney, I can just imagine him standing on a line. That's hilarious.

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He didn't begin to write till after he was 40. Right. Okay. And so he got to the point where, um, he would pretty much formulate an entire chapter in his head and he would sit down and write the chapter often without, uh, interruptions.

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That's incredible. Now with someone with those kinds of reading habits, how, how did that impact you personally growing up?

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Did you pick up, uh, you know, a habit of being a voracious reader or you're kind of like, man, I'm sick of all those books.

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You know, my dad always had a book with him. I think I'll pass. I'm, I'm a very much in between.

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My, my, my grandfather may have had a photographic memory. He had a phenomenal memory.

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Okay. Father had an amazing memory. Uh, I did not inherit that. So, um,

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I do read, but I don't read, uh, voraciously. Okay. All right.

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Well, um, have you read all of your father's works? Most of them. Okay. All right. Many of them

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I, I heard as lectures. Okay. Growing up because most of his books he presented as lectures.

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Yeah. So often I'll read something that I hadn't read before, but it's familiar material to me.

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Okay. Now I'm happy that you said that he liked to laugh because I was just listening. There's this thing.

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Uh, I think it's not an app. It's a website that I have saved and it's called the pocket, the pocket seminary.

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And it's got all of your dad's, well, not all of them, but a lot of your dad's lectures on systematic theology.

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Um, and it's got all these topics here. Um, it's called the pocket college or something like that.

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And yeah, and I, I, I'm loving it, but he sounds so serious in all of them.

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That was like, he didn't, it wasn't usually photographed smiling because he just had this old fashioned attitude that scholars need to be serious and they need to be taken seriously and they need to act in a serious way.

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That was the, that was the public persona when he was, uh, speaking. He rarely, um, said anything that was, he, he rarely tried to be funny when he was preaching.

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Never. Um, uh, he, he believed a scholar, scholars behaved in a certain way.

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And so that was just kind of that old fashioned people and people, you know, would often ask him, Rush, could you smile?

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And, uh, it was very difficult to get him to smile. That picture that I was talking about that, that we posted, um,

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I, I, I posted a note that I, I, my guess is that the, it was a studio photograph.

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My guess was that the, the photographer said something and, uh, he laughed and he snapped the picture, you know, with remotely.

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And my dad didn't know that he was about to take the picture because that wasn't typical, uh, of my father.

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And my, my guess also is that my mother saw that and says, we want that picture. That's awesome.

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Very cool. Uh, now my next question here, what are some key events or experiences in your father's life that you can think of, um, that shaped his, his thinking and his ministry?

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Is there anything that stands out to you that was really, you know, definitional in terms of guiding his thinking and, and, um, leading to some of the things that he, that he wrote, some of the things that he did?

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Uh, well, there, there's a lot that, that we could say about that. Uh, he grew up in the son of Armenian immigrants that had escaped, uh, the massacre of Armenians during World War I.

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Uh, through a series of providential circumstances, they were able, they were not stuck in Russia as many

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Armenians were. Uh, they were able to get to this country, uh, within a matter of weeks, but he grew up in Armenian churches.

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So his, the community that he lived in was Armenian speaking. So he grew up learning Armenian. He knew

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Armenian before he knew English. It was really in school where he developed his

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English speaking, um, uh, skills. And in fact, he said that, uh, he did not, his thinking didn't shift to English permanently until he was in the university.

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So, um, his Armenian background was a huge impact on him.

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And many of these people in these Armenian churches, my grandfather served in five churches and they were all predominantly of Armenian immigrants.

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So he always was around people who had grown up and survived the massacres. That was a very big part of, of who he was in his, uh, through his teen years.

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And, uh, that, that was a huge impact on him at the, um, university. Um, a few professors he found, um, of great interest.

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And sometimes it was just one or two things they said that greatly affected his thinking based upon the fact that he was a voracious reader already.

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He was a, uh, uh, avid reader and it was already well read by the time he was at the university of California at Berkeley.

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Uh, one professor, um, discussed the, uh, iconoclastic controversy.

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And my father years later recalled that he said it really wasn't a religious matter per se, as far as the propriety of, uh, whether images should be in churches.

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He says it was really about who represented Jesus Christ. Was it the church or was it the state?

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And that was what the controversy was about. And the state really won that, that round of that, uh, debate.

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And of course the, the church maintained and continued to maintain that it was the embodiment of the kingdom of God.

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Well, neither is really accurate, but that was, he saw that development and that, that problem of statism continuing, and we're still facing the problem of the, the authority of the, the state and statism.

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Another thing that influenced him when he was in the university is, and this gets a little bit more to apologetics, is, uh, one of his professors, a professor

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Strong, Edward Strong, uh, spoke of the given.

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Before he heard the term presupposition, uh, this professor had told another student, don't argue with Christians, uh, about origins, uh, because inevitably you end up with a miracle of some kind that really can't be explained.

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And he said, Augustine would never discuss the origin of God. So don't discuss the origin of the universe.

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It's a given and start from that position. And my father's thought that that was a very honest thing to say in a self -apparent really thing to say.

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And, uh, he never forgot that. And so he had this concept of the given from, oh, uh, the late thirties.

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Uh, and, uh, it wasn't until after the war that he picked up a copy of, uh,

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Van Til's, uh, the new modernism. And he said, now here's a professor of religion at a seminary who's saying the same thing, but it's in a more, more

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Christian terms. And so he was already primed to be delighted with this, this, uh, this book by Van Til and Van Til called it, uh, presupposition.

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Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah. And that's interesting that he had that experience with the professor. I mean, presuppositions are so important, right?

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They kind of, uh, they allow us to identify the reasons why we're disagreeing with unbelievers so much.

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They guide everything that we, that we say, how we interpret reality. And so, um, uh, that's super important.

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Now I do want to get into the influence of Van Til on your father in a little more detail, but before I get there, um, your father, uh, did pastoral work.

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Am I correct? Yes. Out of seminary. He actually was a missionary to American Indians on a very remote area, uh, in Northern Nevada.

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It was very close to the Idaho border. He was a, um, a hundred miles,

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I think 20 or 30 miles from the nearest paved road. He was a hundred miles, either going

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North or South from the nearest town. And by town, we're talking about three, 4 ,000 people.

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So he was in a very remote area of Nevada. He was there for eight and a half years.

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Um, he went there in 1944 when the war was on and he didn't leave until 1950, early 1953.

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So, okay. So, um, uh, that was his first pastor. And then he was a pastor of, uh, churches in California for a number of years.

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Yeah. Now, how did your father's pastoral work inform his, you know, his later theology and his more philosophical writings?

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Is there a connection there? Um, or am I kind of way off there in terms of, of his ministry and his later ideas?

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Well, I, he went to, um, the Indian reservation because he felt that he, if he could make the faith relevant to another culture, then he would be better prepared to make it relevant to anyone in any context.

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Okay. And it was a very foreign culture and the Indians had some ideas that he wasn't prepared for.

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And his ideas of the Indians, uh, needed some adjusting as well.

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Cause he had, he had read, he went, the first thing when he found out he would be going to, uh, the

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Indian reservation is he read what the anthropologist said about these Indian tribes. He went into the university of California library and he found these reports by anthropologists and he, he studied them.

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And later, actually, he was able to, uh, meet with some of the individuals who had been interviewed by the anthropologist and get their take on what the anthropologist has said about them.

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And very often they thought it wasn't at all accurate. And so that was, and that was a very hard ministry.

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I mean, life on an Indian reservation was pretty tough. Uh, it was, uh, basically a socialistic environment.

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It destroyed the American Indian and, uh, their ability. A lot of the old Indians, he, my father spoke to Indians who could remember actually fighting white men in the, some of the later

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Indian wars, uh, in Idaho and Nevada. And, uh, they, some of those

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Indians remembered when they were forced to go on the reservation in the 1880s. And, um, it was a, a, a very different experience.

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And he saw how they were perceived and he had to try to make the faith relevant to them because when he went to the reservation, the idea of the

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Indian was that, uh, here's another white man with a cast off, a secondhand, something secondhand

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Christianity that the white man is rejecting, but he wants to give the Indian. And so they had a very negative view of, of Christianity because they, they saw the increasing, um, uh, abandonment of Christianity in American culture.

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And so they, their attitude was, this is just something else you don't want anymore that you're trying to foist on us.

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And so there was this, this negative thing. So it was a very difficult, um, um, first pastorate and then all the social problems of, uh, addiction and, and, uh, uh, alcohol and such quite brutal.

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Yeah. And he often used the experiences he had as a pastor, as, as examples, and he had some extreme examples.

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Wow. That's incredible. I didn't, I didn't know that about him. Um, you almost forget.

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Yeah. There are some Indian reservations, even today, you kind of just forget that about that segment. If you're not in touch with, uh, with American history and things like that.

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Wow. That's, that's actually pretty fascinating. Um, did he, did he ever write on that? Is there any way we could, uh, get it?

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And we published, uh, we have a little booklet that we offer, um, on it's called the American Indian and, uh,

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I forget the subtitle, but it's something to effect of, uh, uh, how we destroyed the

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Indian through the reservation system. Wow. Because see the Indians characterized their life before the coming of the white man as, as one of rare survivors.

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And that survivor to be a survivor in a very harsh environment in with that primitive lifestyle meant that you develop some, um, character habits.

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They weren't necessarily Christian character habits, but they were, um, uh, habits of, of character that, that enabled you to survive.

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Well, the reservation system was a welfare system basically. And it really destroyed that amongst the

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Indians in about a generation. And my father had, was seeing that transition in, in the forties and the problems that were just, uh, uh, systemic in the reservation system.

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I think someone in the chat said here, maybe, is this the title of it? Uh, the American Indian is standing indictment against Christianity and statism in America.

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Yes, that's it. Okay. Oh, interesting. I got to look that up. Uh, see, I like, I like stuff like this.

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I'm like, I didn't know that. So I want to, I want to, uh, pick that up. Um, all right, well, let's take a little shift here.

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So, uh, your dad is very much, uh, very well known for, um, Christian reconstruction, um, issues relating to theonomy.

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Um, what was his role in, in that movement? Was he the one who started the movement?

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Was he continuing it from some previous thoughts? Um, what is his role in Christian reconstruction and what led him down that path to focus on the importance of, of the application of God's law to modern society?

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I mean, I would imagine this is a development in his own thinking, and then he kind of went with it. Uh, he leaned into that.

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What was that process like for him? I think my father from a very early on, and you can sometimes find an old transcript of an old sermon or something he wrote in the, in the fifties before most of his writing or the early sixties.

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And you can see some of the themes he was developing. So these, this idea of Christian reconstruction was basically part of his worldview fairly early on.

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Okay. Um, and, uh, yeah, he coined the, uh, the, the term Christian reconstruction.

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So I don't know that it had any origins before that, but nothing in Christian reconstruction is, is necessarily unique.

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Uh, it's not a new theology per se. It's more of an approach to, to what are we supposed to be doing?

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When he wrote the Institutes of Biblical Law, he was very clear in, in saying that this is not, um, uh, contrary to Reformed doctrine.

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He said the, the Reformation addressed the issue of justification by faith, and it, uh, pretty much settled amongst

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Protestants that, uh, justification was, uh, an act of God's grace received by faith alone.

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But what Reformation never really resolved was what about sanctification?

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And my father saw biblical law as what do we do?

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How do we grow in grace? How are we sanctified? And my father said, this is the next issue.

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This is needs to be the next Reformation of the church. There were, there were several, there were several trends.

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And in, in, uh, Western Christian today, it's some sort of pietism. It's a, it's a general vague idea of, of, uh, of, uh, morality and, and goodness that's vaguely, you know,

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Christian, vaguely biblical. Um, but, but not a lot of specifics.

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My father said God's law was how he expects us to live. If we live and think along the lines that God has directed us, then we're safe.

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And, uh, I, you get into something of a presuppositionalism. In other words, if God created the world, if he's the sovereign

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Lord of it, then doing things God's way is the safe way.

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It's the way of blessing. And so he just had this, this big, um, perspective.

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And I don't think he ever set about to try to do anything that was, uh, radically new in Christianity.

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If I've sometimes told people that I think my father, if he was, had been born in the 19th century, he would have been just considered an old fashioned, uh,

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Presbyterian theologian. He wouldn't have been so radical.

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And he was in the Presbyterian church USA. He grew up in it and he was ordained in the

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Presbyterian church USA. And as it became modernistic, he, he basically had a hard time with it.

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And, uh, uh, he eventually left it in the, uh, in 1958 entirely.

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And, uh, so these are some of the things that affected him, but he never saw anything that he did as, as innovative.

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In fact, he was really didn't like the idea of some younger men who thought they had to be innovative in their job.

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He says, we need to be faithful, not innovative. Yeah. Now would you say, okay, this is interesting.

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So would you say that the reason why many people in the church today would see your dad's views as extreme is because of the, the watering down of morality in the world and the church that when he's just putting forth these ideas, which he's arguing, this is just biblical application to everyday life, which was completely normal when the

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United States was more biblically grounded in the past. But because we've moved so far from that, it seems extreme, you know, because you know how people talk today, right?

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Like, well, Jesus fulfilled the law. So that means, and what that means is the law doesn't matter anymore.

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You know how would you, how would you explain explain that in terms of the church where the church is today in terms of how they view morality.

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And then along comes your dad saying these things, which shouldn't be too controversial, but they're really controversial when he says it.

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Right. I think the, the churches has the, even the reformed tradition has, has fallen into what

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I consider a type of dispensationalism, basically the law versus grace that somehow the law is opposed to God's grace.

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And that's why a lot of people oppose my father. They think he's anti grace. They think he's talking about justification, which tells me they've never even read what he wrote on the subject.

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But there's this, this general feeling of that, yes, we should be moral, but in a, in a, in a vague way.

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And the historian Otto Scott once said,

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God is no buttercup. When, when God speaks, people should listen.

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And that was my father's position. Well, this is what God says. And I can remember once a, a paper in Sacramento kind of did a hit piece on my father and particularly his, his stance on homosexuality.

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He said, it was, it's a capital offense in scripture. It should not be tolerated. And my father's response to that was, and this was to me personally, he said,

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I wrote a book that institutes a biblical law. I wrote a book on what the Bible says, what did they expect me to say?

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And so a lot of people don't like the fact that the

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Bible is, is hard nosed about some things. It's when

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God speaks, he speaks definitively. And when we say, thus saith the

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Lord, it's not us. It's, it's what God says.

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There's, there's a lot about what, what God says in his words that we might be a little uncomfortable with, that we wish he had made a little bit softer.

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It would make the job of Christians, the job of preachers a lot easier if God had said it in a more genteel way.

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But there's some things in the Bible that just have a very hard edge on it. There's some things we don't like about scripture because they rub us the wrong way.

33:27

But that's because we're sinners. You know, when, when, when God talks about sin, it, it grates on that aspect of who we are.

33:37

It's, it hurts. And so yes, discussing God's law is, is going to be a sensitive topic.

33:45

It's going to be something we're uncomfortable with. But look at the world we have today and what a mess we've made of it by, by thinking we could do things better than God's way.

33:59

When I was a kid, I grew up, I was, you know, basically a teenager in the sixties and you know, the, the, the world of the sixties was supposed to usher in this age of Aquarius, this, this age that, you know, where, where, uh, of, uh, of love and acceptance and such.

34:20

And we've made a mess of things by doing things our way. And so theonomy says, look, if, if we want to be blessed, we have to do things

34:30

God's way. And, and this is really true of our whole world in life view.

34:36

I mean, it's the lesson of the old Testament. Everything was going wrong for the Hebrew kingdoms.

34:42

And the prophets kept saying, it's because you've turned away from God.

34:48

It's because you do things your certain way. And very often the prophets would, um, look at a condition that says, why do you have this social situation?

34:58

It's because you're depriving widows and orphans of their property. It's because you have false weights and measures.

35:06

You're not doing things God's way. And therefore you're paying the price for it. Sure. And so addressing the real issue in terms of God's law is really the most loving thing that we can do and saying, this is why we have problems.

35:26

So to, to believers, he says, look, there's an alternative in obey

35:31

God and be blessed to the unbeliever. It's a way of saying, this is why your life is a mess and you have to believe and, and accept the salvation that God has offered.

35:46

Uh, and then you need to clean up your life and you could do things differently and, and things will turn around for you.

35:53

Sure. So it's, it's not easy discussing the hard things because God, a lot of what

35:59

God says is very hard for us. Sure. Now. Okay. So, uh, your, your dad was promoting the idea of in some way, applying the biblical law to our modern context.

36:10

And this has been obviously very controversial because even if someone were to agree and say, sure, yes, let's do that.

36:17

What does that look like? I mean, to try to apply it to our modern context has been seen as a, as a challenge.

36:23

I know that Dr. Bonson kind of tried to flesh things out in terms of how it might look in society.

36:28

Uh, what did your dad have in mind in terms of what that would look like? Kind of where the rubber hits the road.

36:33

Like, what does it look like to apply certain biblical principles in the old Testament to our modern context?

36:39

Right. And I know, you know, Gary North, they put out some biblical blueprint series where he tried to flesh out how, how, uh, things could look, would look,

36:47

I think we can, um, uh, we can, it's difficult to try to project how things will look in a godly society when we're not there yet.

37:03

In fact, let's go back to the term Christian reconstruction. Sure. What happens when you have a building?

37:09

Let's say it's an historic building. When you want it to be restored, you first of all have to assess its current situation and all of its problems.

37:22

And some of those problems may be structural. Some of them may extend all the way to down to the foundation.

37:32

And it's very possible you might have to spend far more than it would cost to tear the building down and start with something new.

37:41

So if you want to fix it, sometimes it's a very, um, um, uh, involved and painful process to do it.

37:51

But you have to begin somewhere. You can't just do service fixes and superficial things when you really need to address the problems.

38:00

And that's, that's true when we're reconstructing society. Obviously we need to begin with a gospel.

38:06

We need to begin with a change that, that is only possible by the Holy Spirit. But in the meantime, we, we can speak to Christians and tell

38:18

Christians, look, if you want to fix your life, you need to start complying. You need to organize your life personally, your family, your business around biblical principles and in order to be blessed, because God won't bless you if you're in rebellion against him.

38:36

And to the unbelieving world around us, then we have to, to say, you need the change that only the

38:45

Holy Spirit can give you. And that's going to also require then that you do things differently because you're creating your own problems in society.

38:59

And so the, the answer is not trying to figure out what, um, the perfect biblical society is going to look like or what the perfect laws are, because it's changing the laws is a top -down thing.

39:14

It's really going to be a bottom -up change, but that's really what the kingdom of God is all about. So Christian reconstruction is not reconstructing the political order.

39:23

And a lot of people want to start by imagining a godly political order when what we need is a godly social order because people are changed and therefore the social changes are going to come from, from the ground up because people are changed and people have to be willing to change the way they live.

39:50

Because even a professing Christian population that's disobeying

39:56

God isn't going to be blessed. They're going to have as much of the same problems as the unbelieving world.

40:03

So it's, it's not a simple matter of saying if this is what it's going to look like.

40:10

Let's look back at the kingdom of God and it began with 12 apostles and, and maybe a few hundred other followers probably.

40:24

And Jesus said, I'm leaving you here alone and now go out and spread this to all the world.

40:33

It wasn't an easy process, but look at the kingdom of God now.

40:39

It's bigger than it's ever been before. More professing Christians in the world today than ever before.

40:46

The kingdom of God has grown and I think it's going to continue to grow. It's not perfect, but it never was, even in the beginning.

40:53

A lot of strange ideas in the early church and they had to weed them out slowly. But look at, look at Rome.

41:01

What happened to Rome? It's in ruins. Rome is museum pieces now. It's in the history books.

41:09

The religions of the Romans, the philosophies of the ancient world are largely forsaken, although they still try to pop up now and then.

41:20

So the kingdom of God has grown and Christian reconstruction is really about the growth of the kingdom and that involves eschatology.

41:30

Sure, sure. Yeah. I appreciate what you said, that it's a bottom -up approach. I think a lot of people who kind of look at theonomy and Christian reconstruction from the outside, they'll say,

41:39

Oh, there are those Christians trying to take over the white house so they can impose the Bible on everybody.

41:46

And I think the big focus is, and I think it was a quote from a movie that resonated with me as you were saying that.

41:52

Have you ever seen the movie back in the day? I think they made it in like the seventies. It started off as a series,

41:58

Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Nazareth. Remember that movie? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There's obviously the line is not from the

42:05

Bible, but I resonated with the line. It's very much in line with what you said, where these Jewish leaders were discussing the

42:12

Messiah and how the Messiah is going to rise up and overthrow the Roman empire. And one of the characters, he says, before kingdoms can change, men must change.

42:23

And that really resonated with me because in terms of eschatology, the post -millennialism and proclamation of the gospel, bringing people under submission to the

42:33

Lord Jesus is the work of the spirit through the proclamation of the gospel as the gospel conquers the hearts of people.

42:40

And so when people change, then society changes. And I think that's a very important aspect to all of this.

42:46

Would you agree? Would you disagree? What do you think of that? Yes. I think my father's eschatology, which was post -millennial, it was very much a part of it.

42:54

And he says the kingdom is going to grow with or without us. If we want to be part of it, then we need to do things

43:02

God's way, because again, otherwise God will cast us aside. Remember, twice

43:07

God destroyed his own temple in Jerusalem. And that was his message to the prophets.

43:15

He says, Jerusalem is gone. It's finished. And I'll bring back a remnant, and I'll work through that remnant.

43:24

And most of the Jews never did come back from captivity.

43:30

God did bring back a remnant, and he did fulfill his promises. And God will advance his kingdom with or without us.

43:43

But if we are obeying him, if we are serving him, then in some very small way, we are doing the work of the kingdom of God.

43:54

And that's really all that Christian reconstruction is saying, is what's our job? God never says,

44:02

I want you to bring the kingdom of God into its fullness.

44:08

All that's expected of us is faithfulness. But how are we to be faithful? And that's where theonomy comes in.

44:14

And theonomy is really just, how do we obey

44:19

God? That's basically the question that's being answered by theonomy. And so I think that probably the saddest thing,

44:32

I think, about the church in my lifetime is that it doesn't want to embrace theonomy.

44:41

It doesn't want to embrace God's word as the blueprint for how we are to behave and act.

44:48

It wants a sort of a loose...

44:54

Loose isn't the word. It wants a vague piety of goodness that looks like something that God would approve of, but very subjective.

45:07

The leading of the Holy Spirit, whatever I happen to think it is, ethic. And I don't think that's the ethical standard that's pleasing to God.

45:20

Okay. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's a lot to chew on there. And I think those are all great points.

45:26

And I want to shift real quick. I know on this channel, we often talk a lot about apologetics and the work of Van Til and Bonson.

45:32

And if you're able to answer this, how did Dr. Bonson get mixed in with your father?

45:38

Did you know Dr. Bonson? Was he close? I didn't know him well, but he was around.

45:45

I was sort of in college when he was working with Chalcedon. And so he was in Southern California.

45:51

He didn't live near us, but so I would see him. And there was a time when he was alternating with my father in teaching on Sundays.

46:02

And so I heard a number of his messages at the time.

46:07

But I know my father knew Greg when he was fairly young.

46:14

When was Greg born? 40s? Yeah, I think 40s. He knew him as a teenager.

46:24

He knew his parents. They were in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church when my father was in the

46:29

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And Greg's family was in Southern California.

46:35

My dad, before 65, was in Northern California. But my dad would sometimes attend or speak at some of these summer family camps.

46:44

And he said he remembered Greg as just a kid then. And he knew his parents better at the time, obviously.

46:53

But it was fairly early on and Greg showed great promise. And I'm not sure exactly the circumstances that brought

46:59

Greg into my father's orbit, but I think it was kind of inevitable when they were that close in Southern California.

47:06

Okay. And with respect to Van Tilney, you did mention that your dad picked up the, what was that Van Til book he said?

47:13

The New Modernism. The New Modernism. What specific aspects of Van Til's work really resonated with your dad?

47:21

Is it just that kind of holistic worldview approach? Was there something specific that really impacted him more than other ideas?

47:28

It was this idea of the given. And my father picked up a copy of that book.

47:36

It was in a pastor's home. He had heard of the book, but he hadn't seen it. And he was actually traveling.

47:42

He was in a pastor's home and he saw a copy of the book.

47:48

And the pastor saw that was quite interested in the book. He was flipping through it.

47:56

And the pastor said, I'm never going to get around to reading that. If you want it, go ahead and take it.

48:01

And my father took it and he was traveling by train from the

48:07

East coast to the West coast. And he read most of it on that train trip.

48:14

And some months later, he saw a review of the book in a seminary journal.

48:22

And it was a very negative review. And he immediately wrote a letter to the editor saying that the book was really treated badly.

48:35

And he sent a copy of his letter to the editor, to Dr. Vantill.

48:42

And that began a correspondence with Vantill. And then, well, about a dozen years later, he published his book on a

48:52

Biowet standard on Vantill. And during that whole process of writing the book on a Biowet standard, he was sending the chapters to Vantill for comments and suggestions.

49:05

Okay. That's funny that you said that he saw a book in a pastor's house. It's been a great blessing for me to be friends with pastors because every time

49:13

I visit a pastor, I leave with a book. This one here, I was able to finagle off of Pastor Bill Shishko.

49:21

It's a signed copy. Vantill signed it here in 1973, a copy of The Defense of the Faith. So every time

49:28

I would meet with him, he would let me grab a book and I was like, hey, can I take this? And he goes, absolutely not. But after meeting with him,

49:33

I was able to con him out of it. And then when my father came to California as a pastor, that was in January of 53, he was able to meet with Dr.

49:49

Vantill on a regular basis because Dr. Vantill would come to California about once a year and spend a lengthy vacation here.

49:59

His doctor was in California, Dr. Gilbert Dendulk, and he had a summer home.

50:09

He lived in Ripon, which is in the central part of the state, and he had a summer home in the Sierras and one in Mount Hermon, near where my father was a pastor.

50:19

And so he got to see Vantill and visit with him on a regular basis when he was in Santa Cruz in the 50s and into the early 60s.

50:29

That's super cool. Now, I have one more question for you, and then if it's

50:35

OK, there are a couple of questions in the live chat. If you don't mind taking a few of them, that's up to you.

50:40

I'd be fine. OK, so how did your father respond to critics who argued that Christian reconstructionism leads to a theocratic or authoritarian model of government?

50:52

I hear this a lot from people who they think theonomy entails fill in the blank, and it's often based on misrepresentations of the perspective.

51:03

How did your father respond to critics who brought things like that up? That's usually been the most common criticism from outside the church.

51:14

We're seen as a political movement. That's why not so much in recent years, but for a long time, every election cycle, somebody would be, some candidate would be tied to my father vaguely or remotely with kind of connected dots in a peculiar way.

51:37

And it was always with the idea that these are the people who want to stone homosexuals. These are the people who want to impose

51:46

Christianity and the death penalty on all the biblical offenses.

51:52

And they usually mention the ones that are most offensive, like obstinate children, incorrigible children or something.

52:00

And this is absolutely wrong because my father, some occasionally would define himself as a

52:10

Christian libertarian or almost libertarian. I avoid the term libertarian these days because really in the last 20 or 30 years, there's been a very new kind of libertarianism that I don't want to associate with.

52:31

And of course, libertarianism has a different ethic than biblical law. What they do share though is the idea of a limited civil government and a limited responsibility and a limited legitimacy of the state.

52:49

A real one in Christian thought, I think, but a limited one.

52:56

So in a Christian society, the state would necessarily be small and the family would be more important.

53:10

And much of the Ten Commandments actually, which my father saw as the overriding principles of the other laws of scripture, he categorized all the biblical law under the

53:21

Ten Commandments. He says much of it actually deals with the family. Honor thy father and thy mother.

53:30

Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt don't steal because property was family owned and family controlled.

53:44

So the four of the Ten Commandments really very specifically deal with the rights and the jurisdiction of the family.

53:53

So the family would be far more important. So I think individual liberty in a Christian society, a truly biblical society, would be very limited.

54:01

And of course, the Hebrew society was patriarchal. And so it was very good.

54:07

And a lot of people have seen in the Old Testament references much of a representative government based upon that patriarchal model and the idea of representation.

54:22

It's one reason they decided they needed a king because they thought that maybe that was a little too slow and they were concerned about how quickly they could respond to the aggression of the surrounding nations.

54:36

But the state in the Old Testament was relatively small and had limited functions.

54:43

And the important function of the Old Testament as far as government would have been by the

54:50

Levites. The tithe went to the Levites, and they gave a tenth of the tithe then to the temple priests.

54:57

But the Levites had all kinds of social functions. And we haven't done enough study into what all the

55:02

Levites did or how they did it. But they were in charge of education, for instance, and charity.

55:11

Well, those are two huge aspects of them that are now primarily done by the state.

55:19

But that was all done by the voluntary giving of tithes and offerings to the

55:27

Levites. Thank you for that. Once again, if folks are just tuning in, I'm speaking with Mark Rushduni, the son of the late

55:33

R .J. Rushduni. We've been talking about the legacy of his father. Well, he mentioned a bunch of different things from personal stories to his work.

55:42

I find those things all terribly interesting, and I hope you guys find it interesting as well. At this moment, we're here at the top of the hour.

55:48

We're going to take some questions from the listening audience here. And let's start here.

55:55

Scott Terry says, I heard Rushduni's library was accessible at one point. Where could we read his marginalia?

56:01

Is there still a tour or a way we could browse his library? No, his library is not accessible.

56:09

People have suggested that they would be willing to take his library, but most institutions don't really care about Rushduni or the

56:18

Rushduni legacy. So I've never agreed to that because they would take the good stuff out of his library and get rid of the rest.

56:31

And it's not all super important. My father read quite a variety of things.

56:41

His marginal notes are of great interest. This is another reason I'd like to keep it intact. Another reason

56:47

I haven't been too anxious to give it away is if I do give the library away,

56:53

I'd want it to be a very financially secure institution so it's not just broken up 10 years down the road.

57:04

Okay. Scott also has another question here. Does Mark have any thoughts on the recent biography of Rushduni by Michael J.

57:12

McVicker? Are you aware of that? Yes. It was pretty good. And whatever faults it had,

57:21

I sort of blame myself because he came out here and a friend had talked to him and encouraged me to give him access to the library, which is not at all organized.

57:34

His papers aren't at all organized. Michael did a, I can't believe in the few days he was here, how many pictures he took of the documents that he was able to use in his book.

57:45

But he did a pretty good job. He even tried to understand Van Til, which

57:51

I thought was really remarkable of him. And my father, or excuse me,

57:57

McVicker did realize that my father's point was not political. It wasn't political control.

58:04

He understood a lot. And I think generally it was very good.

58:12

There were a few mistakes in there and a few things misstated. He gave me the opportunity to read the book and I never got around to it.

58:20

And that's my bad. So I probably could have corrected a few things that were -

58:27

Oh, you're a busy guy. Don't be so hard on yourself. I guess the title of it put me off because it was something about R .J.

58:38

Rushtuni and the religious right. And I figure, he's not really part of that movement. And that was really his focus, his influence on the rise of the religious right.

58:49

He was really peripheral to that. He was a little bit involved in that mix, but that was not the focus of his ministry.

58:58

And so I think that this isn't really that pertinent. I didn't realize how much my father, it was really almost a biography of my father.

59:08

And I probably should have given him input that I did not, but it's not a bad effort.

59:17

Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Henry asks, how would you differentiate between reconstruction with general equity theonomy?

59:25

Well, general equity theonomy, I think, leaves a lot, and it depends how you define general equity.

59:40

I think the more recent use of general equity is that God's law are vague principles that we need apply.

59:53

And in that sense, I don't think it's good. Others have argued that's not what it originally intended.

59:59

I'll leave that to scholars who study that a little bit more. But my father said, no, we better just read it as it is.

01:00:10

God's law is what it is. And we don't try to reduce it to principles because when you reduce something to principles or this general equity idea, then there's too much of you in it.

01:00:23

There's too much of man's reasoning in it. Why not just say, this is what God expects, and it's a pretty tough standard.

01:00:31

Okay. Thank you for that. We'll do two more questions and then we'll wrap things up.

01:00:36

I really appreciate you giving me your time. This is super cool. Scott has another question here.

01:00:42

He says, I heard Rush Juney helped found the young earth creation movement by helping publish the

01:00:48

Genesis flood. What was Rush Juney's role in helping young earth creationism, if there was any?

01:00:54

Yes. When my father was a pastor in Santa Cruz, and I believe this was in the 1950s, late fifties, he read manuscripts for Presbyterian and Reform Publishing Company.

01:01:10

People who were interested in getting their material printed would send things to them.

01:01:19

And my father was, I don't know how many people were doing this, but my father was receiving manuscripts and he would read these manuscripts.

01:01:27

It was a good way for him to to figure out what was coming up next in the

01:01:33

Christian movement. And he got this manuscript by Morris and Whipcomb, and they had been turned down,

01:01:44

I think by Moody and one or two other bigger, much bigger publishing companies.

01:01:50

They submitted it. I mean, these were dispensational Baptists, basically, and they were turned down by big line publishers, and they went to Presbyterian and Reform.

01:02:02

My father read the manuscript and he told them, says, you, oh, by the way, they were told that if the manuscript was going to be published, it needed to be edited down substantially.

01:02:19

And my father told Presbyterian and Reform, this is important, it should be published, and it should be published in full.

01:02:26

And so they trusted his word for it, and they published it. And it's one of the more important, most important Christian works,

01:02:33

I think, in the 20th century. And it really revived young earth creationism, that it really suffered a setback since the

01:02:45

Scopes trial, if not before. Is the Genesis Flood you're talking about, that book? The Genesis Flood, what did

01:02:51

I say? Okay, so that's a must read for folks interested in that topic? The Genesis Flood really began all the modern creationist movements, really all the origin back to the publishing of the

01:03:03

Genesis Flood. Okay, all right. Now, did your dad read the manuscript for that on the line to arrive on Disney?

01:03:13

This was before that. I'm just kidding around. All right. My last question for you is, before we die, what three books should we read from your father that you're like, hey, if you can't read all of them, here are three books

01:03:26

I highly recommend? Well, people ask me that. He wrote about a number of topics.

01:03:33

Again, his idea was that we need to address all these topics, but he wanted other people with specialties to pick up these ideas and develop them a little bit further.

01:03:44

I think certainly the Institutes of Biblical Law, Volume One, he ended up with three volumes to them.

01:03:51

Volume One is very important. The one in the many is very important.

01:03:59

It's a tougher read, but if you're into apologetics, you could understand it.

01:04:07

And Messianic Character was also one of his tougher. Earlier in his career, he was speaking more to academics.

01:04:18

And then by the mid -60s, he realized it was educated laymen who were his real target audience.

01:04:24

And he began writing in a much more understandable level and really a better level as far as communicating.

01:04:34

Messianic Character was historically very important to the Christian school movement.

01:04:40

Personally, I like his history because I'm more interested in history. And This Independent Republic was always one of my favorites.

01:04:48

If you just want an introduction to my father's thinking, I recommend Law and Liberty. Okay.

01:04:55

All right. Well, thank you so much for that. Mark, I really appreciate you. I've enjoyed this conversation. I hope that I've done an okay job as a host and that you've enjoyed it as much as I have.

01:05:06

Thank you so much. I have enjoyed it. Good talking with you. Same here. And folks, if you want to check out the works of Rush Dooney, you can look them up on Amazon.

01:05:18

Do you have a website, Mark? Yeah. Chalcedon .edu.

01:05:25

Chalcedon is spelled C -H -A -L -C -E -D -O -N. Okay.

01:05:31

And many of the books, well, I'm not sure how many, but a lot of them are available on audio for folks who like to read.

01:05:38

I know one in the many is on audio. By what standards on audio? I'm not sure how many more, but I have those two.

01:05:43

Virtually all of them are available on audio. Okay. Excellent. That's right. Okay. So folks definitely check that out.

01:05:50

Now, if you guys were listening in on my last live stream, I kind of broke down Dr. James Anderson of Reformed Theological Seminary, his argument for God from logic.

01:05:59

We've got some interesting responses in the comments there from our local atheists. And so in my next live stream, which

01:06:05

I have not yet scheduled, I will be doing a response to many of the objections to that argument.

01:06:11

So keep your eye out for my next episode. I'll let folks know the date as soon as I get that set up.

01:06:17

But that's it for tonight. Thank you so much, Mark. And thank you everyone else who's been watching and commenting.

01:06:23

And thank you for 10 ,000 subscribers. We just reached 10 ,000 subscribers on YouTube just a few days ago.

01:06:28

I really appreciate the love and support from everyone. So until next time, guys, take care. God bless.