October 11, 2018 with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington on “The Debate Over Retrieving Thomas Aquinas for Reformed Theology”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday. On this 11th day of October 2018, in about 15 minutes or so, we're going to be joined by our primary guest today,

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, who is an adjunct professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary to discuss the debate over retrieving

Thomas Aquinas for Reformed Theology. But before that, we're going to be joined by our friend

Mike Gaydosh, founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, just to give us an update on what's new at Solid Ground Christian Books and what deals they have to offer.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my friend Mike Gaydosh.

Thank you, Chris, I appreciate it. I wasn't expecting to be back quite so quickly, but I'm glad I can fill in for a few minutes while you're waiting for your main guest today.

I was trying to figure out which I fit into amongst pastors, scholars, and theologians.

I was a pastor, and I'm not a budding theologian, but I think that I would agree with Patrick.

We're just in the process of coming to the knowledge of who God is, and it's our responsibility to seek to know him and to make him known.

Praise God. Well, tell us about Solid Ground Christian Books for those of our listeners who might be brand new listeners, who haven't heard you very frequently promoted on this program.

But tell our listeners about Solid Ground Christian Books and tell us about new offers that you've got going.

Yeah, what I'd like to do today is just introduce a few of the new titles that we have recently done, as well as a title that I am going to be doing sometime within the next couple of months.

In fact, within the next month. Solid Ground has been serving Christ and his church since 2001.

I actually began publishing as a pastor when I was pastoring in Amityville, New York and Long Island, and we began

Calvary Press in 1991. And that's where I was saved by the mercy of Christ.

That's where you baptized me. That's exactly right. And I was a part -time employee of Solid Ground Christian Books.

That's right. That's right. No, Calvary Press. I mean, yeah, Calvary Press. That's right.

And Calvary Press is still in existence today, but it's not connected any longer with the church there in Long Island.

But Solid Ground actually kind of grew out when my wife and I moved to Alabama.

The Lord opened a door for me to begin a new work, and that work is now full -time.

I've been doing this for over 17 years. And we have published over 350 titles since 2001.

The largest we have ever done is the 22 -volume hardcover set of the works of Thomas Manton.

And we published 1 ,000 sets, and they all sold. And we're actually in the process of trying to do another printing, and we are gathering orders together, pre -orders, to be able to allow us to do that.

It's probably going to be a couple of years before we can pull that off, if we are able to. And I'm not certain that we will, but we are at least at the early stages of working on that.

But let me just tell you and introduce you to a few, your listeners, to a few of the items that we have recently done.

The most recent is a small work by W .G .T. Shedd. William G .T.

Shedd was born in 1820 and died in 1894. He was a pastor and he was a theologian.

He spent the majority of his life, at least the last part of his life, as professor, first of biblical literature and then systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary at New York.

At the time he was there, this was a reformed and solid seminary. He was himself a solid five -point

Calvinist. And what I have reproduced recently is a piece that has not been available for quite some time.

It's entitled, Biblical Exegesis, the Influence upon the Theologian and Preacher.

And this little work was done, in fact, it was when the day that he was instituted and placed into the position of being the professor of biblical literature, that he delivered this memorable address that's in this book.

It was January 11, 1864. He was inaugurated into the chair of biblical literature at Union Seminary.

The services were held in the Madison Square Church. Charles Butler Esquire was vice president of the board.

He presided, put the constitutional questions to the professor -elect. The services were opened with prayer by the

Reverend George Lewis Prentiss, the husband of Elizabeth Prentiss, the author of Stepping Heavenward.

He opened in prayer and then after the induction of Professor Shedd, the charge was delivered in behalf of the directors by the

Reverend William Adams. And then that was followed by this memorable address, Biblical Exegesis, its influence upon the theologian and preacher.

It's a powerful address and one that every pastor, everyone really, who is involved in opening the scriptures would benefit from.

Right before we did that, we also published a work by Benjamin Warfield entitled,

Thoughts on Predestination and Election. And these are two works, two smaller works that Warfield did and I brought them together and put them in this booklet.

And let me just read you the opening lines of some thoughts on predestination. He says, a great man of the last generation began the preface of a splendid little book he was writing on this subject with the words, happy would it be for the

Church of Christ and for the world if Christian ministers and Christian people could be content to be disciples, learners.

He meant to intimate that if only we were willing to sit simply at the feet of the inspired writers and take them at their word, we would have no difficulties with predestination.

The difficulties we feel with regard to predestination are not derived from the word.

The word is full of it because it is full of God. And when we say

God and mean God, God and all that God is, we have said predestination.

Our difficulties with predestination arise from a no doubt, not unnatural unwillingness to acknowledge ourselves to be holy at the disposal of another.

We wish to be at our own disposal. We wish to belong to ourselves and we resent belonging, especially belonging absolutely to anybody else, even if that anybody else be

God. We are in the mood of the singer of the hymn beginning, I was a wandering sheep, when he declares of himself,

I would not be controlled. We will not be controlled. Or rather, to speak more accurately, we will not admit that we are controlled.

He goes on and expounds the doctrine of predestination in a very powerful way. And then in even a longer essay entitled some thoughts on election, he has a powerful exposition, primarily of chapter two of Ephesians.

And I love Warfield, he's probably my favorite author. And that work, predestination and election is just a wonderful introduction to his powerful writing.

Another work, I know that we're running out of time already, but another work that I've recently done is by J .I.

Packer and Alan Stipps, entitled The Spirit Within You, The Church's Neglected Possession.

This was published some 50 years ago, and it's not been available for many, many years.

And I was able to get permission directly from J .I. Packer himself, when he was in Birmingham some 10 years ago.

And I sat with him for a conference that he was doing. And I had an old copy of the book in my hand, and I told him how much

I appreciated it. And I was sad that it had not been made available for many years. And I asked him,

I said, would you have any problem with me bringing this back into print and doing a new edition? And he said, oh, no,

I would be delighted. Unfortunately, it took me more years than I anticipated to get it done.

But it is now available, and we're offering it for just $5. It's a great little book, 10 chapters.

And it's really hard to tell who wrote the chapters, because both men, Packer and Stipps, wrote very similarly.

They both wrote with brevity and clarity, and those are obviously very important.

Just in the minute or two that I have left, I would like to share a book that I'm planning on doing. It's entitled

The Practice of Godliness, and it was written by Abraham Kuyper.

Kuyper was an incredibly brilliant man. He was prime minister. He was the founder of Free University in Amsterdam.

He was just an incredible writer. And this book, The Practice of Godliness, is one of my favorites on the subject of the godly life.

He divides the book into three sections, the Christian warfare, Christian patience, and then humility before God.

And it's a book that I hope to have available within the next month or so.

And I love the way he begins the book. Do I have another minute? Yes, you do.

He begins the book by saying... Actually, the very opening chapter is titled Our Troubled Lives, and then it's subtitled

Working the Work of the Lord. He says, "...was beset with troubles when the angel brought him the word of the

Lord through the prophet, not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, sayeth the

Lord of hosts." How often we have heard those words applied to problems of today, as if they were a warning against all human effort in kingdom work.

But they were not that. Indeed not, for the Lord encouraged Zerubbabel in the work of his hands.

The angel says, "...the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house, and his hands shall also finish it."

The spirit of the Lord using the hands of Zerubbabel would accomplish the work, though physical might and power to match that of the enemy was lacking in the little band of zealous workers.

There are Christians who maintain that the godly life is a life of quiet submission and of patient waiting, waiting upon the

Lord till he perform his own work. For the battle is the Lord's, and Jehovah shall fight for you, they say.

But he goes on and points out the fact that while this was true in the Old Testament, there were times when

Israel was told to stand by and watch God work. He says, "...the era of such miraculous intervention is past.

Wonders such as of old God does not choose to perform now, though at the return of Jesus upon the clouds he will again thus gloriously manifest his power."

In the meanwhile, he is working immediately through us, and it is ours to be up and doing, ours to work the work of the

Lord, ours to labor in the name of the Lord amid troubles that beset us on every hand.

And he goes on and describes the enemies that we must battle against. It is a powerful, powerful book.

It is simple, it is devotional, and I'm excited about the opportunity of being able to introduce it to the

Christian community throughout the world. Oh, you know what happened? I just want to mention this, too.

The other day, it was right after I was on with you,

I got my very first order from Saudi Arabia. Wow. Yeah, first time

I've ever had an order from Saudi Arabia. And my wife and I were able to actually find the hospital where this order was placed from, and he ordered it.

It was a nice order, too. It was a good -sized order, and that's going to be shipping out either today or tomorrow and heading to a brand new country for us.

We've shipped to well over a dozen countries, but that's the first time that we've ever gotten an order.

Do you know if it was somebody in our audience? He didn't say, so I'm not sure.

It's possible. It's very possible that he is, but I don't think he actually stated how he found out about us, but that would be interesting, wouldn't it, if he had indeed found out about us?

Have you had notice of listeners from Saudi Arabia? I cannot think of one right now, but we have had listeners from all over the world, even

Japan and Pakistan and South Korea and Africa, many different countries on the

African continent. Of course, we've had orders from almost every one of those countries as well. I've had many orders that have come through Iron Sharpens Iron.

It's really been a mutually beneficial relationship that we've been working together this way, and I'm very grateful for you and for Iron Sharpens Iron.

I'm excited about the G3 conference that's coming up. I plan to be there. Health has gotten stronger and stronger, and my wife and I are expecting to be able to spend the whole time there this year, starting on Wednesday night for the debate and then staying right on through Saturday afternoon.

We're very excited about that. I'm excited about seeing you again face -to -face and sharing fellowship with you.

Maybe we can once again drag Larry Silviero up there. Hopefully, we don't have to drag him, but I think he'd be delighted to be able to come again.

Hopefully, there will be several others as well. I know last year we had several friends that came over,

Lou Ivan and many others that came over, even the short time that I was there for the debate. I'm very excited about being able to go back to G3.

I heard Todd Friel and Phil Johnson talking about it the other day. They had me splitting a gut, and that's not a good thing for somebody who just had open hearts.

I realized I don't want to listen to Todd Friel right now. He makes me laugh, and that hurts.

I know you've got your guests coming on now, but I appreciate, Chris, the opportunity to be able to introduce your customers to some of these new works.

I hope that your guest... Is your guest on now, or is he waiting? He's waiting, actually, to call in.

We're looking forward to having Jeff back on the show. In fact, Jeff specifically asked me, please have

Mike Gajdasz consider publishing some of my books. He has written a couple of books, and he's a very brilliant guy and seems to be fairly well -known amongst

Reformed folks, especially Presbyterians all over the country. That's great. Well, we'll have to talk about it and give him my contact information, and we can discuss how we might be able to begin working together.

Great. Well, just always remember that the website for Solid Ground Christian Books is Solid -Ground -Books .com.

Solid -Ground -Books .com, and unlike our friend in Saudi Arabia, please always remember to tell

Mike Gajdasz that you heard about the Solid Ground Christian Books from Iron Trip and Iron Radio.

We look forward to having you back many times. We are still praising God over the successful heart surgery that you underwent and that you are getting stronger every day.

I am, and I'm very thankful for the prayers of your listeners. And you as well,

Chris. I'm thankful for you, for James White, for many, many others who let their listeners know about my surgery, and it really meant the world to me to know that you guys were doing that and that your friends and your listeners were praying.

I'm just very grateful for the way that I have just continued to get better day by day.

So, thank you. Praise God. Well, God bless you, Mike, and we'll talk to you soon. All right. Love you, buddy. Love you, too.

Bye -bye. And don't go away, folks, because we are going to be joined momentarily by our primary guest today,

Dr. Jeffrey Waddington. And Dr. Waddington is going to be discussing the theme, the debate over retrieving

Thomas Aquinas for use in Reform Theology. And if you have any questions on that subject, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back, God willing, right after these messages from our sponsors.

Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here. I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years.

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G for group, dot org forward slash podcast. Hi, I'm Stephan Boulay, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our

Lord Jesus Christ need to be firmly grounded in the truth of Holy Scripture. I'm excited to be teaching such subjects as the nature of theology and the doctrine of Scripture, and even the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Our churches and our people need to be well -grounded in these truths. Indeed, future ministers of the gospel need to understand these truths in order to proclaim them to all of God's people.

If you want to learn more about our program, visit us online at irbsseminary .org.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting books for all ages.

We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com. That's solid -ground -books .com

and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. My name is

Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Masters Seminary in Los Angeles.

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in Midtown Manhattan.

You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc .nyc.

They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

.nyc. Have a great day. Welcome back. We are now going to introduce our guest today.

That's Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, who is stated supply. I hate that term.

It's almost like calling your wife the designated breeder or something like that. Dr.

Jeffrey C. Waddington is the stated supply of Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

He is secretary of the board of the Reformed Forum, panelist at Christ the

Center and East of Eden, and article editor for Confessional Presbyterian Journal, and adjunct professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Today we are addressing the debate over retrieving Thomas Aquinas for Reformed theology, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, my good friend,

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington. Hello, brother. It's good to be here and to be doing what is probably very unusual.

I'm not there in the studio with you. I'm sorry that I'm not, but I'm on the road.

Thankfully, traffic is slow, so I don't have to worry about accidents of any kind.

Great. And it's sparse as well. Slow and sparse. I like that kind of traffic at rush hour.

Amen. Well, I hope we're not causing you to actually break the law in New York. You'd be breaking the law. No, not at all.

In that case, you would have been actually voluntarily breaking the law. I wouldn't be forcing you to do it. This is hands -free.

Amen. Well, I'm glad that you said that because we don't want to encourage people to be talking on their cell phones while driving.

But anyway, why don't you tell our listeners about Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

Well, Knox is a congregation, one of the original congregations to come out of the mainline

Presbyterian Church in the 1930s. So it's been in existence for, what does that make it, 80 -some years?

We've been at our current location for 42 years, since 1976.

We meet every Sunday, in morning and evening worship. The worship at Knox is unusual for the

OPC in that the congregation is committed to exclusive psalm singing with non -instrumentation.

Dead error. Actually, I was pouring myself a cup of coffee. I didn't think you were going to stop at that point.

Okay, that's okay. We'll call that white space. Editors of magazines and books are really concerned about white space, so we'll just call that audio white space.

And by the way, I don't know if you've ever read the book, Old Light on New Worship.

It is a book in defense of acapella worship by a Reformed Baptist pastor up in Rochester, New York, Race Baptist Church.

John Price, who I've had as a guest on the program, we actually did a three -part series on that issue.

And to tell you the truth, I think that John makes a very strong argument for exclusive acapella worship.

He is not an exclusive psalmist, but he does believe in acapella exclusively in the worship service, although he is not doing battle against those that disagree with him.

He doesn't use that as an area of division, and he is fully aware that the vast majority of Reformed Baptists do use musical instruments.

But he is convicted from his study of scripture to the strictly acapella position, and I have to say, as I said, he makes a very strong argument.

But that is not our theme today. I do advise people, strongly recommend that people listen to that three -part series.

If you go to ironsherpinsironradio .com and go to the archive in the past shows podcast section and type in John Price, you will get all of those interviews in that series.

You could even type in acapella, which is actually two words, A -C -A -P -P -E -L -L -A.

And I'd love to hear back from you what you think of those. But tell us also about the

Reform Forum. That's where many people are familiar with you, it seems, that listen to Ironsherpinsironradio .com.

The Reform Forum, in fact, I think just had a conference where you spoke, did they not? We did.

Reform Forum has been around for about 10 years, basically began as conversations around the table, kitchen table or dining room table, or restaurant table, about theology, and we thought, well, maybe we were enjoying and benefiting from these conversations, maybe other folks would as well.

With the idea in mind that there are folk in parts of the country where Reform Churches are scarce or nearly non -existent, and for those folk we began the

Reform Forum program. We've now had five annual fall theology conferences, plus we did a conference in Austin, Texas a few years ago as well.

This conference was devoted to what we call the seeing

God, the deeper Protestant conception, a phrase drawn from the

Reform Dogmatics of Gerhardus Voss, and comparing or assessing

Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth in light of Dr. Voss's idea of the deeper

Protestant conception. Gerhardus Voss was one of the early faculty members of Princeton, correct?

That's correct. He was the first professor of Biblical Theology at Princeton, and the big question often comes up when we think about him, but did he come to Westminster when

Machen established Westminster Seminary, and of course the answer is no, and then the question arises, then why didn't he?

And about the only thing, and I think this was his eldest son Johannes's view as well, the only thing that we could say about Voss at that time was that he was well on in years and would lose his pension and didn't have a lot of money in the bank at the time.

Remember, this is in the middle of the Great Depression when all this happened in 1929 when

Westminster was founded. However, having said that, Voss was thoroughly supportive of what

Machen was doing with Westminster. I think he probably, his body was in Princeton, but his heart was in Philadelphia at Westminster.

That certainly is the implication of some of the reading

I've done. In fact, in addition to the conference, the Reformed Forum will be publishing in the next six to eight weeks a book, a biography of Gerhardus Voss by the

Reverend Danny Olinger, who is the General Secretary for the Committee on Christian Education for the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Yes, I had the great privilege of interviewing Danny on the old

Iron Sharpens Iron radio program out of New York on his book, A Gerhardus Voss Anthology.

Right, and this is a nice little follow -up. It's 344 pages, hardback.

Anyways, people can find information about that at the Reformed Forum website.

But that book that you just mentioned is not in print yet, right? Not yet. It should be available sometime.

The printer tells us six to eight weeks. It was submitted two weeks ago, so subtract that.

It could be November that it would be available. We will announce that through the website and the

Crisis Center podcast and the various social media. Well, and last but not least, why don't you tell our listeners about Confessional Presbyterian Journal?

Sure. That is a journal that is about the same age as the

Reformed Forum, published out of Texas. Chris Caldwell is our publisher.

I've had the privilege of being an editor now for a few years. And it's basically a place where conservative

Bible -believing Presbyterians can discuss theological matters of a significant nature.

It is published once a year. It averages about 250 pages and covers a gamut of different subjects.

We tend to focus on a person, a theologian, or theme, but not always.

But generally we do. Not everything always in the edition of the journal is tied directly in with the theme, but we try to keep our focus when we do publish that.

That will be due out typically somewhere around Christmas. That's the next issue, which

I believe is volume 14. So that's our 14 years. So it's a little older than the

Reformed Forum. And, of course, you have recently been added to the faculty there at Westminster Theological Seminary in the

Philadelphia area. Glenside, Pennsylvania specifically, right? Yes, as an adjunct professor.

This semester I'm serving as a teaching assistant and assisting

Dr. David Garner and Dr.

Lane Tipton in three different classes. And I also have a THM student who is doing an independent study that I'm directing, which is kind of like tutoring in the fashion of Oxford or Cambridge.

Yes, well, I'm looking forward to seeing your colleague David Garner preach next month.

I don't know if you were aware of this, but November 9th and the 10th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

I will be manning, God willing, an exhibitor's booth there. And David Garner is on the roster of the speakers there, and it's on the theme,

The Cross of Christ. Well, he's very good as both a teacher and a preacher, so that will be wonderful.

The conference there in Quakertown is always a high point, I think, in the life of the church there and in the life of folks in the area who come to attend the conference.

It's very well attended. Yes, this will be my third Quakertown conference.

Ah, then you know very well. And the actual theme is The Glory of the Cross. I misspoke.

It's obviously very similar to what I said, but The Glory of the Cross is the exact theme. And not only will

David Garner be there, but Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Wynn will be there

November 9th and the 10th. And I hope that many of you listening in the Iron Trip and Zahn Radio audience will be there with me.

And you can go to Alliancenet .org, Alliancenet .org, click on Events, and then scroll down to Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology to get more information about registering.

Well, by the way, if you want more information about Westminster Theological Seminary, you could go to wts .edu,

wts .edu. And if you want any more information about Knox Presbyterian Church, where our guest is the pastor, or should

I say the stated supply, you can go to knox -presbyterian .org,

k -n -o -x -presbyterian .org. The Reformed Forum website that you can find out more about that organization is reformedforum .org,

reformedforum .org. And then last but not least, the Confessional Presbyterian Journal, you can find out more about that at cpjournal .com,

cpjournal .com, c for confessional, p for presbyterianjournal .com.

We're going to be going to a break right now, and we are going to come back, God willing, to continue our, should

I say, begin the theme of our program today, the debate over retrieving

Thomas Aquinas for Reformed Theology. If you have questions about that specific theme, we will allow you a broader field of topics to ask questions over, especially since Dr.

Waddington is a pastor, so we will permit you to ask pastoral questions as well, or topics on the broad theme of Reformed Theology.

But it'd be even better if you have specifically a question about Thomas Aquinas, and that email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Don't go away,

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That's also our email address to send in a question to Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, our guest today, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com and we are discussing the debate over retrieving Thomas Aquinas for Reformed Theology.

We would love to hear from you on a question specifically on Thomas Aquinas, on Reformed Theology in general, or even a pastoral question since Dr.

Waddington is a pastor. And by the way, I want to remind you, if you do not have a church home and you're not prayerfully seeking for one, you are living in rebellion against God.

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But now, Dr. Waddington, this is a very, very, what's the word

I'm looking for, intriguing theme that we are discussing today, especially since there is division even amongst

Calvinist Reformed Christians over this issue, the debate over retrieving Thomas Aquinas for Reformed Theology.

I have even had guests on this program, even from your denomination, who are very opposed to the inclusion of Thomas Aquinas into the thinking and teaching of Reformed Christians.

And I've had those who wholeheartedly support the use of Thomas Aquinas whenever he is in agreement with the scriptures, of course.

And why don't you tell, first of all, our listeners who are ignorant of Thomas Aquinas, tell us something about him.

Okay, well, Thomas Aquinas was born in 1224 or 1225.

There's some hesitancy about the exact date.

And he died in 1274, so he was about 50 years old when he passed away.

But in that period of time, he became a voluminous writer.

He was a Roman Catholic priest. He was a monk.

He was a member of the Dominican Order, or sometimes if you see

Catholic books where the initials OP appear after a person's name, that means

Order of Preachers. And that was a monastic order that was dedicated to education.

It would not surprise us, considering that Thomas Aquinas was not only a preacher and a priest and a monk, he was also a university professor.

And so was Johann Tetzel, as I remember? Well, I don't know if Tetzel was a...

He was a Dominican. He was a Dominican, yes, yes. There are going to be serious issues with Thomas.

I come down on the side of not finding him overly helpful or useful as a resource for building my own theology.

So I don't come to this as a neutral observer, but actually as a participant in the debate.

And we already noted that the Reform Forum had a conference last weekend in the Chicago area in Grays Lake, Illinois, at Hope OPC, where we talked about Thomas Aquinas.

We also talked about Karl Barth, a more recent theologian. And then we assessed the two of them in the light of the insight of Gerhardus Voss and what he calls the deeper

Protestant conception, which actually is an expression that's in contrast to the deeper

Roman Catholic conception, the conception of the image of God and man in particular.

But Thomas wrote many books.

Probably best known are the two works, the Summa Theologiae and the

Summa Contra Gentiles, not Gentiles. I just had that for lunch at Mario's.

Okay, all right, yeah, yeah. I had taken some form of an

Italian sub. No, actually that was a dinner plate with the side of gnocchi.

Anyway, okay, all right. Well, Thomas Aquinas had a nickname called the dumb ox.

In that instance, he was a big man physically. It wasn't a reference to his intelligence, but the fact that he was naturally quiet, reticent.

And his teacher, Albert the Great, said at one point that when he speaks, he will roar and the world will hear him, something to that effect.

So the question is, is Thomas worth using as a resource for building your own understanding of the

Word of God, in other words, your own systematic theology, and that it's not a new debate.

As you've already had indication, you've already indicated, rather, you've had guests on the program,

Chris, who have taken both sides. And this is not, I guess you would say it's not a mark of orthodoxy per se, although I would say

I would wonder myself, as someone who truly understood

Thomas, both in the details and in the overall structure of his theology, whether they could be of sound mind and body.

But anyway, that's another matter. Well, you just insulted the late Dr. R .C.

Sproul, who upheld... You see, brother, he's now in heaven and he knows better.

So I'm assuming you don't think that he'll be meeting Thomas up there, or has already met him? Well, no,

I don't have any... I'm not questioning whether Thomas was a believer.

The question is whether his theology is helpful. Now, can you start with positive things about him?

What led Dr. R .C. Sproul and others who I have interviewed to uphold

Thomas Aquinas as a great hero of Christendom, next to the likes of Augustine, next to the likes of John Owen, for a more recent name.

And they really think that he had an enormous part in the formulation of biblical, systematic

Christian theology. So if you could tell us about why. And in fact, as far as on the opposing side, which we'll go to after this, but if I'm not mistaken,

I believe Cornelius Van Til was opposed to retrieving Thomas Aquinas for Reformed Theology.

Well, yeah, certainly he was critical of Thomas's theology.

And maybe if we get to the details, we'll see why. And the reason I brought Van Til up early is that may explain some of the reasons, it may,

I don't know if this is just a quote -unquote coincidence, but Dr. Sproul, as you know, did not share

Van Til's presuppositional apologetic. And I'm wondering if that has something to do with the

Thomas Aquinas connection. There is a very close connection between acceptance or rejection of Thomas's way of doing theology and the question of what method of apologetics you embrace.

So if you could start with the positive things that you could think of.

Yeah, well, there are. I will tell you, for the past year, I've been reading Thomas, and he's a brilliant mind.

He's absolutely brilliant. It's a beautiful thing to see, a brilliant mind at work.

Even when one disagrees with a brilliant mind at work, it's a beautiful thing to see.

He was very influential, as we've already noted. The Reformers, of course, have a mixed reception of him.

Luther was rather scathing. And Calvin, both

Luther and Calvin are critical of scholastics, although they don't always mention which ones in particular.

And it's not always clear that it's every scholastic that they're going after. Thomas would be like the epitome of medieval

Roman Catholic scholasticism. It's an academic way of doing theology. And yes,

Thomas is a major part of the Western Christian tradition.

He's well -established within that tradition. So we're not,

Reform Forum and myself individually, we're not making an argument that Thomas isn't influential in our heritage.

We're simply asking the question, is it wise to knowingly draw from him when it can be demonstrated, not only by our own reading of Thomas, but also by interacting with Thomistic scholars who love what he does or did.

In other fairly well -known, well -established theologians in the

Roman Catholic tradition who are students of Thomas, and comparing, we're asking questions and we're comparing what we see with what they see.

And very often it's the same thing. The difference is they love it, we don't. But again, a brilliant theologian, a

Bible commentator, he's probably not as well known for his commentaries on the Bible.

There are quite a few that are available in English, commentary in Romans, commentary on a few of the other

Pauline epistles, the Hebrews. He's really well known for his Gospel of John.

Then there's the Catena Aurea or Golden Chain, which is, I believe, the synoptic gospel commentary.

He's also commented on various Old Testament books as well. So he's worth reading.

Don't hear me saying don't read him. I'm saying read him with discernment, and do not be quick to adopt his theology.

Do not be, because at the end of the day, I'm not even thinking so much about the obvious thing that he's

Roman Catholic in his sacramentology. He's Roman Catholic in his understanding of justification.

I'm trying to go deeper to look at how he understands the overall structure of Christian theology and the

Christian life that stems from it. Now, how would he, to your knowledge, you just mentioned two of the areas where he agrees with the

Council of Trent, which was three centuries later. Or should

I say the Council of Trent agreed with him on those two areas because they were more recent in history.

They were in the 16th century, that gathering at Trent. But what ways was he in any way different from what those at Trent declared in their counter -Reformation attempts to make clear the separation between Rome and the

Reformers? Well, of course, he predates the Reformation.

By three centuries, well, two and a half, actually, if you think of 1517 as the beginning of the

Reformation, right? But he fully illustrates or manifests medieval

Roman Catholic, not only theology, but spirituality and piety, all of those things.

He has a full formulation of the doctrine of transubstantiation of the

Lord's Supper, elements of the bread and the wine. In fact, if memory serves me right, he's one of the first to give a full articulation of that.

And of course, that's not the subject of my own research, but that's a very, very clear matter.

In fact, Dr. Lawrence Feingold has written a book that just came out called

The Eucharist, which is, for all intents and purposes, a Thomistic defense of the

Roman Catholic understanding of the Lord's Supper. It's not limited to Thomas. He also interacts with other

Roman Catholic sources like Pope Benedict and earlier popes.

But if you're wanting to read something that's hot off the press, Lawrence Feingold's The Eucharist will give you a clear understanding of what

Thomas taught about the Lord's Supper. And for Thomas, the Lord's Supper, the

Mass, is the center of Christian existence.

The center of Christian existence. My colleague, Reverend Dr. Glenn Clary, did a lecture at the conference last weekend on the

Eucharist, and Thomas is setting the Eucharist in the overall structure of Thomas's theology and showing how it squares beautifully with the rest of his theology.

That will be, if it isn't already, available online through the

Reform Forum website, where you can listen to it audio or watch the video as well.

We interviewed Dr. Feingold two or three weeks ago, so there is an episode of Christ the

Sinner in the last three weeks where we interviewed him, so we were able to ask him those questions, clarifying questions.

He's a very clear writer, by the way. One of the things I have to say is that there is a resurgence of Thomistic scholarship in Roman Catholicism, and for the part, these writers are brilliantly clear.

That's not always the case, as you know, so it's actually a pleasure to read them, to know what

I disagree with, to be able to understand what

I have problems with and why. But anyways, on that particular topic of the

Eucharist and Thomas's understanding of it, that is a place to turn for a contemporary scholar.

So the Eucharist for Thomas is the center of the Christian experience, the

Christian life, the center of the church, and there's reasons why that's the case, where the word in Scripture doesn't get that kind of space in his thinking, at least not to the extent that the

Eucharist, in terms of the living out of that Christian life from that perspective.

Now, I have heard, and perhaps you can either confirm this or disagree with it, but it's been some time, so I can't cite a source right now, but I remember hearing, at the very least, in the 13th century,

Thomas Aquinas was in opposition to the growing

Mariolatry that was rising up in the Catholic church at that time. Can you confirm that?

It's not an area that I've done significant reading in. That would be an interesting question, you know, one way or the other.

And brother, this is one thing we need to do, that I have said over and over again, is that the

Ninth Commandment applies to dead theologians just as much as it does living theologians.

The point is, I'm studying Thomas, and I expect it to be for the rest of my life, because he's that brilliant a theologian.

Even though I disagree with him, he will be a major focus of my own personal research. I'm doing that because I have an obligation before the throne of God to treat him honestly and fairly.

Not to create a straw man and then, you know, knock down a straw man, but to deal with him as, you know, according to what he has said, but also according to how the

Roman Catholic Church has built upon his theology. Trent being the example that we've already brought up, that there is actually a church council condemning the

Protestant Reformation and the doctrines of the Reformation, affirming the basically

Thomistic theology. By the way, here's a bit of trivia. When I was a

Roman Catholic, and I was confirmed, I chose Aquinas as my confirmation name, not because I knew anything about Thomas Aquinas.

I just thought it was a cool name. Yeah, I mean, it is a cool name.

That actually comes from his town. He was from Aquino. That's where, in Italy.

So he was an Italian by birth. So really, what we were trying to get at with this conference is to show the structure of his theology and to show, and to answer the question, if systematic theology is systematic, then it's not so easy to borrow from Thomas without bringing with it, whatever we're borrowing, without bringing with it strings that attach that doctrine or concept to its original home.

Now, this is another metaphor. There's an organic connection between each individual doctrine and the system of which it is a part.

In other words, if you play with one doctrine over here, it will have an impact upon this doctrine over there.

Now, I have heard the same thing, however, from my fundamentalist friends, when we uphold someone like Augustine as a hero of the faith.

Now, of course, Augustine was centuries before Aquinas. There was no Roman Catholic church when

Augustine was alive. It was a Catholic church with a small c, but there was no Roman Catholic church.

But at the same time, as much as Augustine contributed to a biblically orthodox understanding of election and other things, in fact,

Calvin upheld him as one of his own heroes. I have heard also that Augustine was laying the groundwork for even the concept of the mass.

And the concept of purgatory. And its infancy.

I don't know if you've heard this. Well, the idea of the mass actually occurs many centuries before Augustine in a book called the

Didache. The mass? The idea, well, it can be understood that way.

There's dispute over what is meant, but it talks, so that idea of what we call a sacrifice of the mass, it occurs in the 90s,

A .D. 90s. Wow, I didn't know the Didache, which I know that's the earliest extra -biblical work that we have in writing in the

Christian era. Right, and Didache simply means, is the Greek word for teaching. Right, right.

But anyways, Augustine was not perfect. In fact, Dr. Van Til talks about, in Augustine, there being

Siamese twins, neoplatonic or platonic philosophy, and Christianity, and over time, the two twins couldn't survive, only one could survive, and it turned out to be, by God's grace, the

Christian faith that won. Right. And, you know, in a sense, of course, that's true for all of us in this

Christian life, that hopefully we are maturing and growing in grace and the knowledge of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is something different. I'm not talking about an imperfect theologian.

If I, you know, was that stringent, then everyone, including myself, would be discounted as useful resources.

So you're saying... Yeah, go ahead. Well, I'm just saying that our fundamentalist friends, and some others might say, you know, you are really walking on thin ice, constantly going back to Augustine and others who are part of the

Catholic Church, because you are going to be perhaps unconsciously used to lead people back to Rome, or perhaps lead yourself back to Rome, and therefore, if we're going to criticize people for using

Thomas Aquinas as a reference, we should be leery of using Augustine. But would the difference be, between the two, that you have a much more full -blown

Romanism involved with Thomas Aquinas, since he is centuries later after...

Yeah, about 800 years later, Augustine being in the 300s and 400s, and Aquinas being in the 1200s, certainly there's more going on with Thomas, and part of that would be that more fully developed what we would recognize as Roman Catholicism.

And you're right, in Augustine's day, there was no pope in Rome. There was a bishop in Rome, but not a pope.

And that bishop, while he had, I suppose, moral authority, that is, persuasive authority, he did not have the kind of authority that we typically associate with popes.

So Thomas, of course, does share a lot of the teaching that we associate with Roman Catholicism.

Now, Roman Catholicism is wider and deeper than Thomas, as you might understand.

Thomas' entomism is one strand of thought within the broader

Roman Catholic tradition. Admittedly a dominating influence, but hardly the only influence.

And in our day, post -Vatican II, Thomas would look pretty good compared to some of the other developments that have been occurring in Roman Catholicism.

Well, I mean, at least they're not putting us to death anymore. At least that's a positive note. That's true.

There is, as we say, there is a debate. So we have brothers who are wanting to draw upon the theology of Thomas, and I'm talking about younger men who have been influenced, of course, by the wonderful research done by Richard Muller in the area of Reformed Scholasticism.

And this is not, again, this is not a criticism of Reformed Scholasticism, but those who have studied

Richard Muller, studied with him, or read his books, will know that the Protestant Scholastics drew upon Thomas Aquinas.

So this is not, we're not making a historical argument that Thomas has never been influential in Reformed circles.

He most assuredly has. And in the earlier generations, he was most assuredly more universally influential, and that would be a subject for another day.

But we're talking about, we're making, we're talking about the normative question. In other words, is he helpful?

And this is not a matter of the simple differences between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism that we could all mention.

This goes deeper than that. All right, we're going to go to our final break, and then we could get into all of these areas of concern that you have in regard to the uplifting of Thomas Aquinas as a hero of the faith by many, even within our own circles of fellowship, our own denominations, brotherhoods, even in our own congregations, perhaps, who disagree over this issue.

But let me read you a question from a listener, and then you can answer it when we return. We have, let's see, we have

Christopher from Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, I was wondering if you agree with your colleague in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Pastor Kevin Swanson, who wrote in his book,

Apostate, the Men Who Destroyed the Christian West, that Thomas Aquinas should be included in that notorious roster.

And we will have you answer that when we come back. And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, we do have some of you patiently waiting.

Well, at least, I hope you're waiting patiently. But if anybody else would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Stephan Lindblad, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our

Lord Jesus Christ need to be firmly grounded in the truth of Holy Scripture. I'm excited to be teaching such subjects as the nature of theology and the doctrine of Scripture, and even the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Our churches and our people need to be well grounded in these truths. Indeed, future ministers of the gospel need to understand these truths in order to proclaim them to all of God's people.

If you want to learn more about our program, visit us online at irbsseminary .org.

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Welcome back. We are now in the final segment of our interview today with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, a stated supply at Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Lansdown, Pennsylvania.

And he is also adjunct professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.

We are discussing the debate over retrieving Thomas Aquinas for reform theology. And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And Dr. Waddington, before the break we had Christopher in Suffolk County, New York, ask if you agreed with Kevin Swanson, who is another

Orthodox Presbyterian Church pastor, who wrote in his book, Apostate the

Men Who Destroyed the Christian West, that Thomas Aquinas should be included in that notorious roster.

Do you agree with that? Um, I'm not sure that I would want to put it in such a vehement terms.

Because remember what I said earlier, I'm not making a judgment on his whether he's saved or not.

We do have to make it we do have to allow for the historical place location where Thomas is.

Right, but you said earlier that he his his opinion or his belief,

I should say, of in regard to the doctrine of justification was later echoed 250 years later by the

Council of Trent. So wouldn't that put him at odds with those of the

Regenerate Church? As far as the official teaching?

Yes. But there are there are people who are worse than their doctrine, and there are people who are better than their doctrine.

That's a good way to put it. And so I'm not I can't make that would be a rationalistic approach.

But but even a person, even even a person who is, who is or was truly regenerate, even if it's something that only

God and that person knows, or that only God knows, they still could have been used in a negative way to help destroy the

Christian West. That's true. That's my but I would I would agree that that that the official teaching of Thomas Aquinas is at the end of the day, when fully understood and assessed, contribute, it does contribute to the to the downfall of the church.

It's wrong. It's wrong on so many issues. It's wrong in its whole contours, which we haven't got to yet.

I haven't yet had an opportunity to try to address that.

What is the problem with Thomas beyond the basic Roman Catholic element?

There is there is more to it than that. But of course, that's not that's also included. And that would be why

I guess one of one of my concerns of those who want to retrieve Thomas for reform theology is they're abstracting.

In other words, Thomas is a full blooded Roman Catholic theologian.

Go ahead, finish that thought. That I mean, he's fully he's, he's, he's a man, he's the epitome of the

Rome of the medieval Roman Catholic theological project.

Okay, before we go into, I'm sorry, continue. I'm just saying, just thinking, one of the things he's trying to do is to blend.

Now, this is the difference, I think, between Augustine and Thomas to get back to the earlier question. Augustine had, you know, if you know anything about Augustine's biography, he came through various philosophical schools.

He tried them out, right? And finally, the grace of God broke through and he became a

Christian, came to faith in Christ. Thomas, and so Augustine has, he borrows here and there, or from, from his philosophical context, where he believes it helps.

Thomas is doing something more than that. He's purposely wedding, if you will, marrying

Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy to Christian theology.

That's where the mass comes into play. Yeah, it's a larger project. It's a larger, more cohesive project.

Yes, Augustine is the one who casts the shadow over, you know, all the centuries now, millennia actually.

But he was, we might say, accidentally, if that's the right word, he was using the, there was an influence of philosophy upon, or pagan philosophy upon his thinking.

That, over time, changes. With Thomas, he's purposely embracing or using elements of pagan, he's marrying the two.

Now, there are instances where he clearly rejects Aristotle. For instance,

Aristotle held to the eternality of the universe, and then, of course, Thomas being, you know, publicly a professed

Christian, he knows that the Bible teaches that the universe was brought into existence by God at a particular, or, well, where time began.

So, in other words, Aristotle was a Mormon? Or Mormons are

Aristotelian. So, yeah, at that point,

Thomas knows that the Bible is pretty clear on that, so he rejects that.

But there are other instances where he accepts the teaching of Aristotle, where we might, and I'm not saying

Aristotle is wrong on everything, or Plato is wrong on everything, that's not what I'm saying. And there are people who actually think that.

I don't. What I'm saying is that the, if you understand Aristotle, you understand

Plato, or you understand Neoplatonism as a school of philosophy, you will understand their view of things, of each of their doctrines.

For instance, Plato on the immortality of the soul. So we're happy Plato believed in the immortality of the soul.

Well, if you look at the details, Plato believed in reincarnation, and that's why he believes in the immortality of the soul.

That's not the Christian notion of the immortality of the soul, and we believe in the resurrection of the body, as well as the immortality of the soul.

You see, it's that kind of thing that we want to do as Christians whenever we read somebody that's not the

Bible. You know, I'm not a big fan of Norman Geisler, the

Armenian apologist, but he did get one thing right.

He says, I read the Bible, I only read the Bible to believe all others to consider. Right. One thing

I can be certain is that, in regard to Plato, parents, those of you who are listening, never let your children use

Plato with a shag carpet. It's really... I knew that. I knew that.

I'm not the kind of guy who does the same thing, you know, Plato. I was talking about Plato.

I know that's what you were talking about. I know you were. By the way, you just had probably countless numbers of conditional immortality advocates, the disciples of Ed Fudge, the late

Ed Fudge, who heard you attribute the immortality of the soul teaching to Plato, because that's what they do.

They say that it's not a biblical doctrine. No, that's not what I said. It was his particular form of the doctrine.

It's not biblical. Our understanding is the soul is immortal, but it's immortal because God upholds the soul, not because the soul inherently possesses that quality.

By the way, we have a listener who has a question. Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania asks, with all of the criticism of Thomas Aquinas, I heard of something that you and your guest should both agree upon, and that is that he was an advocate of double predestination.

Is that true? And if it was true or is true, how can that be compatible and coexist simultaneously with a merit -based understanding of justification?

Well, that's a very good question. Thomas is a very subtle thinker, and he saw himself, of course, as being a student of Augustine.

But from my own reading of Thomas, I would say, for instance, his doctrine of sin is, while he affirms it, it doesn't seem to have a lot of effect on the thinking of the fallen person.

That's one of the big areas of disagreement. But yes, I believe that's true.

Again, not the area where I concentrated my reading in regard to Thomas's doctrine of double predestination.

That would make him what I already said he was, which was in the general school of Augustinian theology.

And just for our listeners who think that that's a bad phrase, an ugly concept, double predestination, you're probably erroneously thinking of equal ultimacy, which is something that I would think that you reject, along with me.

But we believe, for the most part, as Calvinists, in double predestination. And that does not mean that God forces morally neutral men to be evil as he rescues his elect on the other side of the spectrum from their immoral and damnable state and gives them new hearts and regenerates them.

It's not like he is supernaturally doing the same thing to the reprobate, where they have to be forced to be reprobate or evil.

Correct. That's not happening. We've landed ourselves in a discussion between the supra and infralapsarians.

But yeah, Thomas would be...and you are correct to point out that equal ultimacy does not hold.

The way that God chooses the elect...remember that we're all fallen in sin.

And God chooses from what, in the Latin, would be something like massa damnata, the damned mass, the mass of sinners.

He chooses from that mass of people who are unworthy of his grace, have not merited

God's favor. He chooses to save some and to pass by the others, and that's called preterition.

Or preterition. And it's a little slightly different, so they're not equally ultimate.

They're not exactly the same. And that double predestination recognizes that distinction.

Right. Well, I want you to focus now, for the remainder of our time, on the things that you are aware of, that you know of, that would separate...

No. That's helpful. I'm sorry, what'd you say? It's helpful if I do.

Well, things that would separate Thomas Aquinas from biblical orthodoxy that we should be aware of, that should give us reason for pause when anyone is considering adopting him as a hero.

Okay, well, the most obvious, beyond the basic things that we already know, because he's a

Roman Catholic theologian, and therefore articulates those doctrines in probably their best form that you could find, would be his...

He is an Aristotelian empiricist, that is, all knowledge begins with the senses, the five senses.

The problem with that, of course, is that the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1 tells us that we know

God, that is, we are created with knowledge of God. And that's one of the areas where Thomas stumbles very seriously and falls to the ground.

He thinks that we only can know God from his effects in creation, and we can't know him really all that much, we can only know that he exists.

We can't really know who he is or what he is without the help of what we now call special revelation.

Yeah, he seems to be isolating Romans 1 and leaving out any special revelation that would occur.

Yeah, there's a whole... I don't believe that Thomas has a notion of what we call natural revelation, that's part of the problem.

God reveals himself in creation, including in our nature.

In other words, God reveals himself in nature, including human nature. See, we would argue, along with John Calvin, that all men, because they are made in the image of God, have a sense of the divine, right?

They know God. As Paul says in Romans 1, we know God, we know his divine nature, we not only know his divine nature, we also know what he expects of us morally, and that the kinds of sins we participate in are sins that deserve death, right?

That's what Paul says in Romans 1, 18 to 32. But Thomas, when you read his commentary on Romans, which

I have done, he basically says that God created us so that we can know

God, or might possibly know God, because it requires what we call an inferential process.

In other words, we look at the world and then we think about it and we come to the conclusion that there is a

God, not necessarily the God of the Bible. Now, he believes it's the God of the

Bible, there's no doubt in my mind that he thinks it's the God of the Bible, but if you were to look at his actual arguments, they yield a

God, not the God. Also, he operates with what's called the chain of being, that is,

God at the top of the chain, or ladder, and the prime matter at the bottom. God is simple, his essence and his existence, to use

Aristotelian language, coincide. For the rest of us creatures, our essence and existence are not coincidental, we are not simple, okay?

We have a mix, a combination of essence and existence. I'm now getting into technical languages, unfortunately there's no way around it, but anyway, the really serious part is that for us to exist, that is, human beings to exist, we have to participate in the being of God, okay?

Which looks to me like a form of pantheism. And there are other issues as well related to this, but Thomas' system of theology is very cohesive, it's coherent, all the parts seem to interlock, if you will, almost like, what's the puzzle, the box that you pull the parts out and then the whole thing, is it

Django? I think every puzzle is described the way you just described it.

Okay, let me repeat, the parts, so our debate with the brothers who want to use

Thomas, and by the way, many of these are personal friends of mine, so I don't bear any animosity against them, it's a serious discussion, and it's not a small matter of what we're talking about.

It's not a parlor game, but I do have friends on the other side of this debate, and I would consider, you know,

I didn't know Dr. Sproul personally, but I benefited greatly from his teaching ministry over the years, as I did his mentor,

Dr. John Gershner. I would not be surprised if Dr. Sproul, in fact, even in a continuing sense, since his writings and his recordings still live on, but I would not be surprised if he was one of the primary, if not the greatest human influences in the 20th and 21st centuries of Armenians coming to the including the lost coming to salvation in America, at least.

Well, he was certainly one of my favorite writers as a Wesleyan, and that's,

I suppose, why I became Reformed. That's right, if anybody wants to hear Dr. Waddington's testimony, it's archived at irontreppanzironradio .com,

and our listeners may be surprised to know that our guest, Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, was in the

Salvation Army, a very Wesleyan denomination, prior to coming to the Reformed faith. And I, you know,

I early on read Holiness of God and became, you know, attracted to Dr.

Sproul's writings, but on this issue, I would have to disagree with him. And again, it's,

I want to treat Thomas honestly, and frankly,

I think I'm doing that, and the more I read him, the less I find him attractive.

And so the question really comes down to not whether we should read Thomas. I think we should, if only to be aware of what came before, you know, what's in the historical background.

But the question is, can we dislodge any particular truth from Thomas' system of theology without bringing the rest of that system with it?

And I'm suggesting that that's a harder thing to do than we realize.

I'm not suggesting that it's totally impossible, but I'm saying it would require what

I, the expression I used at the conference last weekend in Chicago was that we would have to give him a

Christian power wash. If any ideas that we bring from Thomas would have to be thoroughly washed, just as it would from any other, you know, a pagan writer, that we would have to, you know, a non -Christian writer, we would have to filter whatever we read through the biblical lens and our confessional lens, and then see if what we learn actually agrees with the

Scriptures. And I guess at the end of the day, what I'm saying and what my colleagues at the

Reform Forum are saying is that, in fact, no, Thomas' work fails with regard to that test.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says,

Don't you think that one of the beautiful things about Reform theology is the freedom that it gives us?

We can have the courage to pursue reading and learning about those, even if their teachings are riddled with errors, without fear that we will become apostates because we believe that true, regenerate, born -again people will not permanently become apostate and abandon the gospel.

It seems that many Christians are so paranoid over what their flocks may be reading or investigating that they seem to be simultaneously denying the very teaching of perseverance of the saints.

What is your thoughts on this? Well, on one level, I agree with that thoroughly.

On a pastoral level, obviously I have to wrestle with this question all the time, in the sense that what

I'm able to read and what a member of my congregation is able to read may not be the same thing, depending on their spiritual state, their authority level, that kind of thing, right?

Right, because especially when you're talking about a new believer, it might be more dangerous because... Right. Right, exactly.

So while I agree with that writer's comments in general,

I would have to then take into consideration with a particular people what their spiritual condition is before I would encourage them to read

Thomas or other less trustworthy or other untrustworthy sources.

All right, I'd like you to have about two minutes now to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Well, with regard to Thomas, respect him as a historical source, a historically significant theologian, but at the end of the day, his theology does not add up to biblical

Christianity. And I say that with a sense of sorrow because he had the same

Bible that we have, you know, taking into consideration a different version, but he had the resources at his disposal.

When he was reading the Bible, he was a monk. He was a university professor of theology, so he was teaching

Bible, and there are times where what he says in the biblical commentaries is helpful, but he was so far the mark.

It's a healthy reminder that that is only by God's grace that we remain faithful to the scriptures that he has given to us, and that it...

So Thomas is, I guess at the end of the day, is for me a lesson in what to avoid more than what to embrace.

Well, I am so delighted that you were able to be on the show today. Dr. Jeffrey Wallington, the website for Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania is knox -presbyterian .org,

and that's K -N -O -X -presbyterian .org, and for those of you who want to listen to the

Reformed Forum, go to the reformedforum .org, reformedforum .org,

and if you want to find out more about the Confessional Presbyterian Journal, go to cpjournal .com,

cpjournal .com, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater