April 7, 2025 Show with Jerry Johnson on “Was the Apostle Peter a Rationalist?”

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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 Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this seventh day of April 2025.

I have one of my favorite frequent guests returning to the program today for another interview, an old friend of mine named Jerry Johnson, who is a Reformed Christian apologist and renowned documentarian, most well-known for co-writing and co-producing the popular DVD series Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism, and for his podcast, or should I say webcast, series, Against the World.

Today, Jerry Johnson is going to be addressing Was the Apostle Peter a Rationalist? And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jerry Johnson. Thank you, Chris. It's good to be here, brother.

Peter, Rationalism, and Starting With Scripture

Well, if you could, first define what a rationalist is, and then tell us why you wanted to discuss this specific topic about the Apostle Peter.

In relationship to it. Yeah, and do let me say, I was talking with a buddy of mine, Dave Creter, in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I forget, they're opening up a new church. I forget the name of it. If Dave is listening, which I think he should be, having to email you the name of the church.

But he suggested, instead of rationalist, just say very practical. And I started thinking about that, and I think he's right. Because rationalism, you know, gives many different understandings. We want to be rationalistic, but we don't want to fall into rationalism like, oh man, what was a philosopher?

I just had a senior moment. Good, not with a big heart. So, we don't want to start with man. We want to start with the Scriptures. And I believe the Bible, the 66 books of the Old and the New Testament are the Word of God.

Now, saying all that, let me give you a little context. When I work out, and I try to work out twice a day since I've had the stroke. When I work out, I usually will listen to a sermon or read a book, you know, an audiobook.

And I was listening to a sermon, and the guy said something. And, you know, it probably was not what he intended, but my mind started racing. And let me just give you a little background of the text, if you will.

Because you'll actually find it in Matthew 9, Mark 2, and Luke 5. And what is interesting, and people can go back and read that passage, that is the conversion of Peter. Now, let me make a couple of points.

Peter was very, very practical. And if you look at the conversion of Peter, it's pretty long. Luke, I think, records it the longest. And you've got to remember, with Peter, Peter was probably a meat-and-potatoes guy, like me and most of your listeners, alright?

And very practical at that. And so, Peter didn't like any games, if you will, any drama. You kind of get the idea he was just your average Joe six-pack, alright? And when we get to his conversion... Now, I grew up in Florida, and I saw them clean out fishing nets before, and they used a pressure washer, and then they fixed the nets where they got snagged on something, on some rocks or something.

And it would take actually a while for them to do that. And I'm sitting there thinking, can you imagine how long it took without all the modern technology, without the pressure washer or everything else?

And here are these guys on a boat, and Peter is not in a good mood, alright? He hasn't had his morning coffee. He didn't catch anything. He's been fishing all night. And he's sitting there fixing his nets, and all of a sudden, this young rabbi comes up to him and jumps in his boat.

What would have been your first thought? Mine would have been, who the heck is this guy? What is he doing? And he starts teaching the people. And you're sitting there thinking, well, I wanted to say something, but you know I'm not.

He's a rabbi. He's a religious leader. He has evidently the respect of all these people. I don't want to be, you know, a killjoy, if you will. So he went on fixing his nets and washing them. And this guy's speaking to the people.

Probably more of a crowd gathers on the shore there. And Jesus is in the boat. And all of a sudden, he says he's done with his speaking. And he turns to Peter and says, hey, row out a little farther into the sea and drop your nets again.

Now, I want to tell you this. I don't know if you're a fisherman or not, Chris. I love fishing. The great thing is, I married a girl that loves fishing. Trace and I go out fishing all the time. Well, I know there's fish you catch at dusk.

There's fish you catch at dawn. There's fish you catch in the middle of the night. There are fish you catch in the middle of the day. You really wouldn't go to catch catfish at one o 'clock in the afternoon.

They're usually not feeding at that time. So I would argue that Peter was looking for a specific kind of fish that brought him good money at the market. And he didn't get any of it. And here's this guy saying, hey, row out farther and drop your nets into the sea.

And Peter is thinking, this guy doesn't know anything about fishing. He doesn't know what we're after. You know, I might catch a fish. I don't want to sell in the market. I don't want to do it now. But because he asked, I'm going to go ahead and do it.

I don't want to embarrass him. And so they row out farther, and they drop their nets, and they didn't really expect anything. And I would argue that the fish that they were looking for that night is what was in their nets.

And they logically, they shouldn't have caught those fish. And their nets were so full of them that the net started to tear and the boat started to sink. And then Peter turns right around and what does he say?

Leave me, Lord, I'm full of sin. So here's something there happened. I mean, anybody that has fish, you know, the biggest fish stories come from fishermen. They love to tell you about the fish they caught 10 years ago.

There's no evidence of it, but they love. And the one that got away was the biggest fish of them all, right? And here they are dragging their nets into the boat, and their boat starts to sink. And he says that, leave me, Lord, I'm full of sin.

That had to really rock Peter's world, totally turned it upside down. And not only was Christ saying to him, I'm the Lord of the fish, but I'm the Lord of everything. And Peter realized it. Then when you get, I mean, Peter is going along because he leaves everything and he follows Christ.

Now we come to the conversion or the call of Matthew. And I find that real interesting because all Christ says to him is follow me, not this big drawn out story. Now, Matthew was a tax collector. He wasn't liked by most of your Israelis, if you will.

They thought he was a traitor. He sided with the Romans, but Matthew didn't care. He had wine. He had women. He had a big house. He was a tax collector. He had all the money you could want. And also he had the Romans.

He could say something and they would come to his defense immediately. But Christ simply had to say to him, follow me. Now, if you look in the gospel of Matthew, you've got two verses that mention the conversion of Peter, or Matthew, I'm sorry, his own conversion.

In the gospel of Mark, you've got two passages. And Luke, you've got about four. And that's it. And the other times is talking about, you know, Jesus says to him, follow me. And that's usually one or two verses.

And then the later verses are dealing with Christ having dinner with him and some of his tax collector buddies and the Pharisees asking, you know, why are you eating with these tax collectors and sinners?

Yeah, of course, Jesus says the statement to them, I didn't come to call the healthy to repentance, I came to call the sick. But can you imagine if you were Peter, and you went through this big drawn out thing of his conversion, and then you come to Matthew, and all you got is follow me.

Now, what was God trying to get across to Peter, and subsequently to us, that his ways are higher than our ways, that we're never going to understand, because it makes no sense to our minds, to our fallen minds.

Now, that's the only thing I could come away with. Because Dave cleaner asked me this morning, he said, what's the point? I don't know if there is a point. But I was hoping that some of your readers or listeners could maybe think about it also, and come up with something.

What is the point? I'm sure there's a point. I'm just not seeing it. Maybe it's to explain to us that God's ways are higher than our ways. Because Peter saw many miraculous things that I'm sure he thought didn't make sense to his own way of thinking.

It's meat and potatoes thinking. It wasn't irrational. It was just God's ways are higher than our ways. What we consider to be practical, God may not consider to be practical. What do you.

Think? Well, obviously, God can do anything, and very often we doubt that he will come through when we are praying, even fervently praying and repetitively praying for something. If we're too impatient about it, we can doubt that he will come through.

He has his reasons for making us wait. He has his reasons for not answering our prayer when and how we want him to on occasion. Not always, but on many occasions that is the case. And so, yeah, God's ways are higher than our ways.

He knows what's best for us. And I'm assuming you were trying to get to the point of the different approaches he had to calling them to discipleship when it came to Peter and Matthew, is that they were different people.

They had different mindsets. They had different presuppositions. And Jesus just approaches people as individuals. He doesn't have a cookie-cutter approach.

Yeah, I think of a lot of things like that. I was thinking recently, when the Israelis or the country of Israel, they were out fighting the Philistines during the time of Goliath. And the armies of the Philistines pretty much outnumbered the army of Israel.

And we all knew the story about David and Goliath. But if you ever asked yourself, why didn't the Philistines attack? They had them outnumbered. Why didn't they just attack? Why did Goliath go out there every day for weeks and challenge one of their champions?

Why didn't they just attack? You know, according to them, according to man's wisdom, they should have been able to defeat them. But why didn't they attack? Why did they wait? Have you ever thought about that?

I don't know. I can't remember ever thinking of that.

Yeah, honestly, I had never thought of that. I thought of it recently. And the only thing I could come up with is they had heard the stories about them coming out of Egypt, and they were afraid also. As the armies, that's the only thing I could come up with, is that maybe they were afraid also.

Because it doesn't make sense to me. And I don't know. I guess if that is a point. All right, my dog just came. She loves, she comes in to see if I'm still here.

Rational Faith, Not Blind Rationalism

Well, going back to your original point, which you wanted to start off the discussion about, was Peter a rationalist? And to reiterate, according to at least one English dictionary explanation or definition, a rationalist is somebody who bases their thoughts and actions on knowledge and reason, not on emotions.

And it's interesting that this dictionary uses the word not on emotions or religion, as if religion doesn't involve knowledge, doesn't involve facts, and so on. Of course, there are religions and there are religious people that believe in all kinds of false things and lies and fables and fairy tales and superstitions, just because their religion tells them to.

But when you're talking about the true religion of God, the Christian faith, the God of both the Old and New Covenant, we are not just asked to blindly embrace things that are outlandish and defy any reason.

Now, there are many things that go against the grain of our thought process and presuppositions, and God and Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, have done and do things today that we might find astonishing and beyond our scope of experience.

We know that Jesus does things that we would never do. Jesus is patient with people, including ourselves, in ways that we are never patient, and he forgives people that we would never forgive, and we could go on and on and on.

But our faith is not something that defies all reason and is not based on knowledge.

Right. Remember in... Oh, man, I'm having a senior moment again. Philippians 2, it says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. And I guess if I had a point, rationalism, like the one that René Descartes articulated, started with man.

And I think what we're trying to say here is we need to start with God, and for us, we need to start with the Scriptures, because that's how we know God, through the Word. And so what seems logical or rational to man may not be the same thing to God.

So we've got to start with God, you know?

Well, just like the Jews who never in a million years would ever think that God in the flesh would die a shameful death like crucifixion, cursed is the man who is hung from a tree. And so, you know, there you have an example of even God, even the thought of God in the flesh dying, and even the thought of him not just always conquering his foes.

And, of course, there will be a day when that happens. But while they were on earth, and while Jesus walked the earth, he might and definitely was viewed by.

Many as a complete failure. Right. Yes, he was. In fact, there were, what, Robert Sungkyong Moon actually believed that Jesus failed as the Messiah because he ended up getting himself crucified, and that wasn't God's plan.

Well, in fact, I know that I may upset some or many or all of our Armenian friends who may be listening, but the understanding of what Christ did on the cross, all those who are outside of the theologically reformed camp, which believes in limited atonement, which just means that the purpose of Christ's death was to redeem a limited or specific number of people, not every single person, also called definite atonement, also called substitutionary atonement, which amazingly today many Armenians even call the atonement substitutionary, but it makes no sense according to their thinking.

But going back to my thoughts here is that according to the non-reformed person, the person who believes in universal atonement, Jesus did fail because in their minds his death was specifically to pay for the sins of every single human being, and most of those people who he allegedly died for in their system are going to hell.

So that is the biggest act of failure that I can even imagine. But we don't believe it's an act of failure, because we believe Jesus died on the cross specifically to save his people from their sins, and specifically for the elect, and he did redeem them, and he guaranteed that everyone for whom he.

Died as a substitute will be in heaven. Yes, I would agree, because the Armenians, if you actually listen to a lot of them, they'll say things like, Jesus paid the penalty for my sins. Well, what about the man over here that's going to hell?

Did Jesus pay the penalty for his sins? And they will say yes. Well, but he's still going to hell, so evidently he didn't pay them. I mean, could you imagine if you were, you know, pulled over by the police and given a ticket for going 55 to a school zone, and it was actually a blind school zone, and you were in jail, and your bail was $25 ,000, and I paid it for you, and as you were leaving the police station, they tried to enact another payment out of you.

Because that's what they have. They have it be in double jeopardy. Jesus paid the penalty for your sins, but they're not paid yet. That's what they're saying, and that's kind of a contradiction. It makes God, His Father, doesn't accept the payment that Jesus made, and that definitely creates a problem in their system.

Yes, as.

Charles Spurgeon, I don't have the quote right in front of me, and perhaps I'll look it up during a break, because he said it so eloquently and perfectly. Not perfect, like the inherent Word of God, but using a euphemism there, but he basically said that if you believe that Jesus died for people, who will be punished in hell after he allegedly already received that punishment upon himself?

That that is a God more grotesque than a God of the pagans and thugs, and that could be found in his booklet, Defense of Calvinism, which I believe is an excerpt that Chapel Library has put into print out of his autobiography.

But it makes no sense, which I believe, if I'm not mistaken, in your documentary Amazing Grace, don't you have a Nazarene college professor rebuking his students for using the term substitutionary atonement?

What he is doing, and that was J. Kenneth Greider, he actually chastised Armenians for saying that Jesus paid the penalty for your sins.

And he is an Armenian.

Yeah, and what he does then is he goes on a diatribe, if you will, about the governmental theory of the atonement, which really says Jesus didn't pay the penalty for your sins, but he simply suffered for your sins.

And that's what he says, and he suffered for everybody equally. And that is foreign to the New Testament, totally foreign.

The Gospel Call to Different People

Right. Well, we have to go to our first break, and if you have a question for Jerry Johnson, it doesn't have to be on that specific issue of the question, was the apostle Peter a rationalist? It could be on anything, because Jerry is an anthropologist.

Doesn't mean he is guaranteed to give you an answer for your question, but he does have a broader scope of knowledge than the title of our conversation today. But our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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Now shipping worldwide, that's cvbbs .com, shipping worldwide. We're now back with Jerry Johnson, and I did find that quote, by the way, that I wanted to read exactly the way Spurgeon said it. This is in regard to comparing limited atonement, which is also known as definite atonement, and particular redemption and substitutionary atonement.

If Christ on his cross intended to save every man, then he intended to save those who were eternally lost before he died. If the doctrine of universal atonement is true, that he died for all men, then he died for some who were in hell before he came into this world, for doubtless there were even then myriads there who had been cast away because of their sins.

Once again, if it was Christ's intention to save all men, then how deplorably he has been disappointed, for we have his own testimony that there is a lake which burns with fire and brimstone, and into that pit of woe have been cast some of the very persons who, according to theory of universal redemption, were bought with his blood.

That seems to me a conception a thousand times more repulsive than any of those consequences which are said to be associated with the Christian doctrine of special and particular redemption. To think that my Savior died for men who were or are in hell seems a supposition too horrible for me to entertain.

To imagine for a moment that he was the substitute for all people and that God, having first punished the substitute, afterwards punished the sinners themselves, seems to conflict with all my ideas of divine justice, that Christ should offer an atonement and satisfaction for the sins of all men, and that afterwards some of those very men should be punished for the sins for which Christ had already atoned, appears to me to be the most monstrous iniquity that could ever have been imputed to Saturn, to Janus, to the goddess of the thugs, or to the most diabolical heathen deities.

God forbid that we should ever think thus of Jehovah, the just and wise and good. So, obviously, as I said, Spurgeon put it much more wonderfully than I could have ever done on my own recollection.

Yeah, he was an eloquent speaker, and I do not have the same flowery speech that he did. He could think of things off the cuff and say them in such a way I wish I could, but I would agree with him. If you have Christ paying the penalty for every single person, and then a lot of them are in hell, then what did he pay?

So, you would have to take away the idea that there was an actual payment for sin, and then you get into worse salvation. Well, wait a minute. Man has to add his 1%, his faith, in order to make it active.

So, he didn't actually die for anybody, no specific persons. He died for everybody equally, and the majority of the time, because he tells us that brought us the way that leads to hell, all those people that he shed his blood for that are going to hell, he can't take that to his father and say, here is payment for these people.

Amen. Go ahead. I'm going to let you go.

Different Approaches in Evangelism and the Problem of Universal Atonement

Well, I was just going to say, before we move on to any other subject, I know that you said that you didn't want to necessarily limit yourself to the title of the theme that we opened up with, was the Apostle Peter Irrationalist.

But when we go back to what you were saying earlier about how Jesus, when he was calling people to follow him, didn't say perhaps the exact same thing to each individual, because they were from different backgrounds and so on, is that evidence to us that although the gospel message is always exactly the same, and that we are never to alter the gospel or soften it or make it more palatable and digestible for those who hate Christ, we still nonetheless may have different approaches to different people according to the presuppositions and backgrounds and behaviors of these people, and also according to the circumstance.

Like, for instance, you move into a neighborhood and you've got a neighbor next door who is not a believer, or vice versa. It might be you that has lived in the neighborhood, and you have a new neighbor that doesn't believe in the gospel.

You're going to perhaps have a different approach of ministering to that person through the evangelizing and the declaration of the good news of the gospel. You're going to have a different approach, perhaps, with somebody like that, that you know, or that you're confident, anyway, that you're going to have many opportunities to get to know that person, for them to get to know you, so that they can have a sense of perhaps respect for you and admiration of you and appreciation of you for your kindness.

There's going to be a different way, perhaps, that you minister to somebody like that than when you are on a train, plane, or automobile, or waiting room, or even on a street corner doing open-air evangelism, when you know that there is a likelihood you will never see the specific people you are talking to ever again.

There's a different approach. Am I making sense?

Yes, you are. I mean, and that's one thing. We've got to be careful not to put the presentation of the gospel into a cookie cutter. Now, I agree with you, the substance will not change, but how do you deal with a girl that is dancing nude at a nudie bar versus your neighbor that is like Joe Sixpack?

And, of course, a Christian cannot be evangelizing a woman while she's dancing nude in a nudie bar. You have to be speaking to her after or before she gets into that condition, or into that activity, I should say.

Let me do this, Chris. I want to change, I want to keep on this idea of the atonement, all right? Because I think that's a very important topic. A mutual friend of ours recently wrote a diatribe on his Facebook page, and he has, in my view, gone so far from the face, faith.

I read this post and I'm like, I don't think this guy ever understood what we would call Calvinism. And he was a professor and Calvinist at one point. Yes. And what Calvin called Augustinianism and what Augustine called the gospel.

I don't know if he ever believed it. He is writing about some guy that had a shirt that I do believe the shirt was wrong. But let me say this, don't create a straw man, because that's what you're going to end up doing.

And a straw man is where you argue against something based on something else, based on something else, based on something else. And it's almost an act of sophistry where you believe that if you disprove something, that the whole system will fall apart.

Now, just to go back to this t-shirt, which I remember from this blog article, there was a man wearing a t-shirt that said something like, Calvinism, some lives matter, taking off of the Black Lives Matter.

And that might be viewed by most people who would see that as a non-Calvinist mocking Calvinism. But according to the author of the blog, this mutual friend of ours, this was actually a professing Calvinist.

Wearing that shirt. Right. That's what he said, and I'm sure he's telling the truth. The problem is, the shirt is wrong. Right. God said, thou shalt not commit murder. It didn't say, thou shalt not commit murder against people who go to church.

It says, thou shalt not commit murder. It's a blanket statement. It applies to every single person. So, the shirt is wrong. So, what he's doing is, he's arguing against the phrase, some lives matter, when that is not what the Bible speaks on.

That is not what Calvinism, or what we would call the gospel, speaks on. What are you going to do? Hey, you know, I will tell you this, Chris. It often amazes me that people allow God to have an elect in the Old Testament, but somehow He's not allowed to have an elect in the New Testament.

Right. What makes that even more amazing is the vast majority, not all, but the vast majority, of Messianic Jews and Messianic Jewish ministries reject the concept of unconditional election. Now, I don't know what the theological makeup today of chosen people ministries is, but chosen people's ministries was started in the 19th century as a result of the evangelistic efforts of Presbyterians in Brooklyn, New York, and an Orthodox Jewish rabbi heard the gospel from Reformed evangelists and embraced the gospel.

And I believe that he himself was a Calvinist, this rabbi. And that's what launched chosen people ministries. And I know that Mitch Glaser, who was for a long time, he may still be the president, I don't know, but Mitch Glaser, a Jewish believer, was or is a Calvinist.

He's a dispensationalist, but he is a Calvinist. So those things are not antithetical to each other. But it is true that most Messianic Jews who believe God had an elect in the old covenant do not believe that He has an elect in the new.

That is at least comprised of those from out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation as being the chosen. In their mind, it's still the Jewish people who.

Are uniquely and exclusively the chosen. Right. And that, I mean, a simple reading of Deuteronomy 28, when God gives the curses, if you don't obey, you come away with thinking, wait a minute, you know, how can the, let me say it this way, there is nothing consistent saying that you believe in God and you reject Jesus Christ as Lord, as both God and Christ.

You can't do it. Jews that say they believe in the Old Testament, but they reject Jesus Christ as Lord and God, they do not believe in the Old Testament because the old, whole, whole Old Testament was about Him.

And, but getting back to it, it does astound me a lot of times. You'll sit there and talk with Arminians and they do believe that the children of Abraham were the chosen people in the Old Testament, but you're not allowed to have a chosen in the New Testament.

And of course, what you and I believe, God or Abraham believed God and it was accounted unto him as righteousness. It's the same way for you and me or Joe Schmuckatelli. If we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and we believe the gospel, then we, it is accounted to us as righteousness.

And Galatians 3 actually makes the argument that we are partakers of the Abrahamic covenant. We are his children of promise. And I don't get, one time, I don't mean to pick on dispensationalists here, but one time I was at seminary, at Knox Seminary, and the professor had been a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary.

And we were going through the book of Galatians and he read Galatians 3. And I raised my hand, you know, because I didn't want to embarrass the man. He's a good man. And I said, Fowler, how could you as a dispensationalist read Galatians 3 and come up with your distinction between the church and Israel?

And he got very solemn. He looked down at his Bible. He looked back up at me and he said, honestly, Mr. Johnson, we ignored those passages. And that was it. And I'm like, well, that's what you would have to do.

You would have to ignore those passages. And I want to deal with every passage, honestly. The idea that Calvinism teaches that some lives matter. What do you do with Abraham's brothers or his father? What do you do when God loved Moses, but didn't love him the same way that he did Pharaoh?

He gave all these things to Pharaoh, you know, the course, the hierarchy, everything. The prince, you know, he was the prince of Egypt and here was Moses put into a basket. Yes, he was raised in the court of Pharaoh, but then he was exiled and he was a wanderer in the desert and he ended up loving Moses more than he did Pharaoh.

Now, did the Egyptians who died in the parting of the Red Seas, lives matter to God? Well, that wasn't the issue because you can look down. I mean, one of the things I've often, and I tell Christians, be very careful when you say, God won't reject us.

Yes, he will. But does that mean your life? I know when I was a little kid, the girl next door to me had married a pastor and the pastor and his children before church were going to get milk and they died in a car accident.

Does that mean that he didn't love them because they died? Of course not. You know, I don't know for what reason he called them home. I don't know. But the thing is, some lives matter is incorrect because it should have read some souls matter.