The American Churchman: A Conquering King

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Welcome to the American Churchmen podcast where we encourage men to take dominion, fulfill their responsibilities before God and love

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Him deeper. I'm John Harris. I'm with my co -host, Matthew Pearson. Hey Matthew, how you doing?

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I'm good, John. Hope you're doing well as well. I am. I am feeling like this is the normal time we do it, but it's not.

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Well, it actually is the normal time. It can be with the time change. Right.

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Right. It feels like this is about the right time, but it's 7 .20. So anyway, we're not gonna do it this way.

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Normally, I was on a bike ride. It was my first one of the season and I realized my legs are not strong enough yet to make the time

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I was hoping to make. So I had to do some frequent breaks and my thighs are killing me right now.

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I don't know if I should have said that, right? It isn't cycling that like the young zoomer, right? Right.

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Like they don't like cycling, right? Cause it kills your T. That's what I keep hearing at least. It's terrible.

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I don't know if it's just that. I think it's more so that a bicyclist can be very annoying on the road due to their sense of entitlement to a certain part of it.

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But, you know, it's just, if I see a bicyclist, I just, I go in the other line, you know, I'm not taking any risk. And they also have to wear spandex, which

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I mean, they don't have to, but that's, I mean, I'm not gonna say what I was wearing, but. I was gonna ask, were you wearing spandex,

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John? Well, I, my shirt was not, but my, I guess it's more important than my pants were, yes.

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And I don't know. I mean, it's got padding in it. It's just as great for cycling, but I'll be honest.

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I definitely make fun. I used to make fun of cyclists the way that they dressed.

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Cause I just thought it looked so weird and kind of effeminate. And now I got to eat those words because I've kind of gotten into it.

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I don't know if it's a phase or what, but yeah. You should do it, Matthew, because you live in a state that is known for having extensive cycling trails,

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Florida. My brother even said, like, he's like, you know, I could move to Florida cause they have so many trails and you could just ride on your bicycle,

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I guess, for hours and hours. I don't know, I've never done it, but. Yeah, there are nice trails, but I'm more of a, I like going on runs.

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So that's my thing or going on nice, relaxing Lindy walks. So that's me.

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I used to like that. Actually, that's why I got into cycling was cause I hurt my foot and yeah, I can't run as much, but well, with that, how do we transition?

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There is no transition. We just have to do it. So we usually start the podcast with an attribute of God and we have an attribute today, which

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I think is, it's one of the first attributes, I guess, as a Christian that you understand fully or at least not fully, but like you have to come into terms with, right?

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Which is grace, so take it away. Yeah, John, that's a good point about how grace is like sort of one of the first attributes of God that you really interact because it's by God's grace that you're enabled to respond to the gospel call, which is of grace.

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And even in talks of common grace, we see grace is all ever present throughout the entirety of the scriptures and it's fundamental to our faith.

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So yeah, let's talk about it. So I'll be beginning by reading two verses, one from Matthew 5 verses 44 through 45 and ones from Ephesians 2 verses 8 through 10.

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Both of these verses are very familiar verses. Nonetheless, I will read them. So first one,

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Matthew 5 verses 44 through 45, the Lord Jesus says, "'But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

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That ye may be the children of your father, which is in heaven. For he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."

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And then Ephesians 2 verses 8 through 10, which many Christians have this memorized because it is verses worthy of memorization.

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These verses from the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, it reads, "'For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves.

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It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For here his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which

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God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them." So notice in both of those verses, grace is present, but in differing manners.

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And we'll get a bit more into it when we discuss this more. So as I always do, when

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I discuss an attribute of God, I'd like to go into the sources which I use. And I use about three sources for this.

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The first of which being the one I always go to, Richard Muller's Greek and Latin, I don't really have the book on me right now.

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So it's his book defining the theological terms in Latin and Greek of the reform scholastics and all that.

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So I use that. The other one I use was Franciscus Junius' Sacred Axioms on Nature and Grace.

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And then also another book from Franciscus Junius, which I did not write down, but it's on my shelf.

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It's just called Catholic Doctrine. So I use those resources for this. So whatever you hear did not come from just my noggin.

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It was me consulting the sources. So, you know, have to set my sources. Even evangelicals who just had a heart attack,

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Catholic in the universal sense. I know, yes, Catholic in the universal sense. Franciscus, yes,

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Franciscus Junius was a reformed Protestant who frequently debated with Roman Catholics.

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So do not worry when he says Catholic, he's not using it in the Romanist sense. He's using in the sense of the universal church.

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All right, so how do we say that again? Studied under Calvin. He did, yes.

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So Junius was, he's one of my favorites, very underrated theologian. So I hardly recommend all read him.

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He is very good on things regarding nature and grace and is very good on anthropology and political theology.

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Kind of just hit it all. So he's good, but yeah. So let's talk about the grace of God though.

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What we're getting into. Essentially, grace is the benevolent disposition of God towards sinful humanity.

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And it thus is the divine operation by which the sinful heart and mind are regenerated, including the continuing divine power or operation that cleanses, strengthens, and sanctifies the regenerate.

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So when we speak of grace, we can speak of it as we think of this attribute in a relational sense because it's about God's relation with us.

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And it's a type of favor. And this relationship has both forensic and ontological implications.

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When I say forensic, what I mean is part of God's grace is justification. We speak of justification. That is a forensic declaration of righteousness.

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It's not a recognition of someone being truly righteous and therefore declared righteous. Rather, it is being clothed in Christ, having his righteousness imputed to us.

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And thus it is forensic in that sense. And yet grace is also ontological in that there are gifts of grace by which

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God truly does transform us and make us righteous. This is what happens in regeneration where God infuses into us the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and love, whereby the spirit of God works in us to change us, to conform us more and more to the image of Christ.

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So that was the definition I gave of grace. And then I have a quote from Franciscus Junius from his sacred axioms on nature and grace, where he says,

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God is the source of grace. By his goodness alone, he brings people positioned in evil nature back to good through his temporal act, carried out according to his eternal plan of predestination.

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So the source, God himself, because grace is an attribute of him, he is the source of this grace.

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And by his goodness, this is a thing, again, it transforms a relationship of us towards God in both an ontological and a forensic sense.

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Now, notice the two verses that I read at first. I read from Matthew 5, 44 through 45, and I read from Ephesians 2 verses eight through 10.

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And the one from Matthew, that was from the Sermon on the Mount where Christ is commanding us to love our enemies, to bless those that curse us, do good to those that hate us.

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And he then, in the next verse, talks about how the father makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

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So there are two sorts of grace which we can speak of. There is that one which is called common grace, and the other is a more particular grace, which we refer to as a saving grace.

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Now, both of these may be called grace because there's some reformed people who get really into reform scholasticism or classic magisterial

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Protestants. They kind of have a knee -jerk reaction to this notion of common grace, because they may think that, oh, well, that's just nature, and then grace is only salvific.

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And that's not necessarily the case. First off, that's typically, it's mistaken that this notion of common grace is a purely neo -Calvinist concept that emerged from someone like Hermann Bavink, then

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Abraham Kuyper, and then was taken by Vantillians. And that's not all the case. Read through the

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Institutes, you'll see notions of common grace. Repeat Amartya Virmily, you'll see common grace. Read Franciscus Junius and his sacred axioms on nature and grace, he speaks of common grace.

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Both of these can be called grace because they are above the nature of man. And we see this in that common grace shows a general grace to creation, whereby

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God in his providence still upholds and sustains all things, despite the fact that the world has fallen into sin.

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And we especially see this in particular saving grace in that the grace of God is applied in a particular manner to men for their heavenly end.

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So that's how it orients them is to a heavenly end. And notice how I was just talking about how there's nature and grace.

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The work I'm pulling from Franciscus Junius is sacred axioms on nature and grace.

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Grace is something that we distinguish from nature. So the reason we distinguish grace from nature is because there are certain things that are natural to men.

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And then there are things that are supernatural. I know that some of the Theopolis guys like Peter Lightheart don't like this distinction, but I think it's just a basic common sense distinction that you read, that you can just see very clearly in scripture that there's nature and then there is supernatural.

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And when I say natural, there's two senses in which we may think of natural. There are things which are natural to man, just as man, not in relation to man being fallen.

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So this idea of like, you know, loving those who are closest to you. There are certain inclinations where we know that there is a

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God as the apostle Paul speaks of in Romans, and these are natural principles in man that would have been in man, regardless of whether he had fallen or not.

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But we can also speak of nature in relation to man as fallen. So we are naturally depraved sinners.

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We're not naturally like sinners as men, but we're naturally sinners in relation to Adam because we are the progeny of Adam, because Adam as our forefather sinned, thus sin is now natural to us, but not natural in the sense that this would have, that this is essential to the nature of man as God created man.

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God did not create man sinful, rather man is now born sinful by virtue of his father,

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Adam's sin. So as I said, grace is distinguished from nature in that grace as a principle is not natural to man because the grace of God is a supernatural gift of God whereby he saves men.

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And the scriptures testify that this is not, we can know that it's not natural because we know that God's grace is not in all men.

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The apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 3, verse two says, and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men for all men have not faith.

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And if all men have not faith, it is thus not natural to all men. And this is how we can know that grace is something supernatural and not natural to men.

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And kind of going back to our distinguishing of common grace and particular grace, common grace can be seen as essentially as God's continuous upholding of creation, despite man's sin.

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As though man had sinned against God, God still did not remove from them certain common notions, principles and sparks of natural light.

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Man, even in his fallen nature can still know that there is a God. And the apostle Paul testifies to this in the book of Romans.

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But it is in particular grace where God acts in a manner to bring men into full communion with him through Christ, through participation in Christ.

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So grace would be God's benevolent favor towards us, which allows us to transcend nature in order to participate in God through Christ mediating work.

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Because God, who is the eternal transcendent God, joined himself to creation in order to bridge the gap.

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So in order for us to have salvation, it is necessary that the eternal God condescends to us, joins himself to us in order that we may be joined in him.

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And the same way that Athanasius said, God became man, that man may become God. Obviously we don't become

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God in the same sense in that our essence is actually God because part of the essence of God is to be eternal.

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We are not eternal, therefore we cannot be the essence of God. Nevertheless, by grace, we can participate in this and we participate through the gifts of faith that we receive in regeneration, in sanctification, because by grace through faith, we are made one with God.

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We are justified by faith alone through his grace. So that in a nutshell is the grace of God.

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That was really good, Matthew. Two things I wanted to explore a little bit more. One is, speaking of Roman Catholics, this notion of prevenient grace.

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And when you're witnessing to a Catholic, even on the street, they do have a concept of God's grace.

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It's necessary for salvation. But obviously there's a difference between how they view grace, saving grace, we're talking about,

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I suppose, and how we in the Protestant tradition view grace. You wanna talk about that for a minute?

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Yeah, certainly. No, so in the Reformed theological system of salvation, we have this understanding that, this saying is very much popularized by R .C.

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Sproul that regeneration precedes faith because it is in regeneration where these gifts of grace are infused into us by the spirit of God that we may, because remember what the three supernatural gifts are, faith, hope, and love.

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We are justified by faith alone. Therefore, if in order to exercise faith, faith must be infused into us in order for us to be able to cultivate this faith, which justifies us.

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So when we say that regeneration precedes faith, we're actually saying that infusion precedes imputation, which can scare some people because in the

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Roman Catholic conception of justification, it's purely infusatory.

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I don't even know if infusatory is a word, but you all can probably understand what I'm getting at. But there's a sense in which there's no legal status to it.

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And even if there is in certain Catholic systems, because there's not one Roman Catholic system of salvation, there's various schools of thought within Rome that are deemed as acceptable.

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But for them, it's like, even if there is a legal status, this legal status is upheld by our own continuous works of grace and things like that.

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So, but yes, Roman Catholics and Armenians, and many people have this understanding of provenient grace whereby it's like regeneration, because regeneration occurs at baptism, which if you're an adult convert, you must make the decision to be baptized.

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There has to be a sense in which God's grace is working in you prior to that. And that happens in provenient grace, whereby in the gospel, there's a sense in which there's a certain notions of grace which are given to all men that they may be able to accept, but their free will, they can delineate whether they want to accept this grace, use this gift that God has given him or reject it.

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Whereas in a reformed understanding of things, because of irresistible grace, the transformative power of grace by virtue of the power of God is so powerful that man cannot do anything but accept that because of how powerful grace is.

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So it's a higher view of grace. Now, having a higher view does not necessarily mean it's more acceptable.

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I would say that Rome has a higher view of the sacraments than reformed Protestants do.

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Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that their view is right. But in order to like have real conversations, we have to have good understandings of our differing theological systems that we may dialogue well.

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So for them, provenient grace, you see this in Arminianism as well, basically like God's general grace makes it to where faith is possible to exercise.

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Whereas we would say that can't be the case because faith is only given by a particular sort of grace.

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It can't just be this common, provenient or general notion of grace because faith is a particular gift.

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And if faith unites you to Christ, part of benefits of union with Christ is receiving the gift of perseverance.

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And if we can just say that, oh, well, some people can be united to Christ but not receive all those benefits, that to me doesn't really seem to fit with the picture of the

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New Testament very well. Yeah, so between common grace and saving grace, there's a big wall.

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They're separate, very distinct concepts. Whereas in Roman Catholic theology, it sounds like the distinction that we have is not present, or at least it's not.

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Hear me, Matthew? Oh, I'm back. Yeah, I didn't get that last part, but I think you're basically saying that the provenient, like there's not as hard line of a distinction essentially.

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Yeah, so like when reformed people talk about common grace, they're talking,

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I think, more about providence. And when Roman Catholics are talking about provenient grace,

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I mean, they're sort of treating it as this common thing that it's saving grace, really. I mean, it's the kind of grace that we think is only for believers.

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And how do I put it? Like it's, well, I think you put it well, that the order is important here, that preceding the infusion or preceding the righteousness that we get from Christ, there's an infusion from Christ, meaning the imputation comes after the infusion.

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And I mean, this comes out in other places, right? Because I think even the concept of sanctification and justification, which are so distinct in the

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Protestant tradition, you don't see that same kind of thing in the Roman Catholic system or the

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Eastern Orthodox system, to be quite honest, because theosis is like, it's pretty much like that. They think that we

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Protestants make this line that doesn't exist in scripture, but I would contend it does. So yeah, all right.

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So the other thing I wanted to ask about is I have been critical in the past of common grace.

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And part of the reason is I discovered when I was doing some research on the social justice stuff, that people like Richard Mao and Tim Keller use common grace as their justification for all their leftism, right?

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And of course, I guess you could use anything to justify your leftism. You could use a loving your neighbor or it's a gospel issue to justify your leftism.

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But the logic that at least Richard Mao used was that common grace was the...

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Actually, let me read for you something from him. If I, I just pulled it up because I wanted to remember. All right.

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So this is something I wrote down in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, okay? For Kuyper, for Abraham Kuyper, which

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Mao says that he represents, who knows, but for Kuyper, common grace had a redemptive element that enabled unbelievers to exercise human virtue and cooperate with believers towards shared political objectives.

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Mao used this idea to broaden, and this is where I think there's a distinction that he smashes. He used that to broaden

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Christ's atoning work, that's his words, to apply to political institutions and the making of public policy.

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And this is a quote from him. He said, the payment that Jesus made through his shed blood was a larger payment than many fundamentalists have seemed to think.

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He died to remove the stains of political corruption and all forms of human manipulation and exploitation.

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And he bases this all on common grace, but it sounds like he's talking about saving grace. And so I don't know, because I haven't studied it deeply, but I know there's theologians who will say

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Kuyper thought that common grace was the basis for saving grace and that he kind of,

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I guess, compromised by letting this inner light, this spark of good in humanity kind of in the door.

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And this is the Arminianism or something. But anyway, I don't know if you've read anything on that, but it's a fascinating topic.

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And it actually made me want to try to use the word providence over common grace, even though I know what most people mean when they say common grace,

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I get it. And I'm not, I don't have a problem with what they mean by it. But I don't know if you have any thoughts, but if you -

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No, I mean, yeah, no, that's a fair concern. And like, what often it comes down to is just exercising wisdom and how to use these theological concepts for practical purposes.

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And sure, you can make this, you can make the claim that a fallen man still has reasoning faculties, though there are certain noetic effects of sin and things like that.

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Nevertheless, God has still allowed us to have the light of reason. The problem comes down to the fact that reason is not salvific.

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Reason cannot bring us to the triune God as revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ who died for the sins of humanity and rose on the third day and lived the perfect life.

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But yeah, what it comes down to is being, you can still operate within the framework that common grace or what

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I would like to say is like providence, God's upholding of man's rational faculties regardless of sin to say that, yes, even fallen man can have right conclusions.

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Like there's a reason why Christians throughout all of history have utilized philosophy, even if it's not explicitly

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Christian ones. I mean, you see this with many of the fathers using Plato, sometimes going too far.

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You see this in various fathers and medievals using Aristotle, again, sometimes going too far.

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But I mean, this is a part of the tradition is that these are fallen men, or even there are some people that aren't entirely sure on the salvific standing of someone like Immanuel Kant.

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Nevertheless, you see Kantian influence and most post -Kantian thinking among Christians.

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Oftentimes Christians will use philosophy because there's this understanding that this is using the world in order to come to certain conclusions about God.

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And what ultimately is you have to remember though, is there needs to be an exercise in wisdom and how we appropriate these things.

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And I think that appropriating any form of leftism, which is inherently like goes against any form of like hierarchy whatsoever, which

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I think that's entirely antithetical to the philosophical framework in which scripture is sort of assumed.

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Because scripture assumes that you have certain priors in order for you to understand it. There's this general assumption.

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And the only way in which scripture works is within a framework where hierarchy is not only like something that exists, but is a good.

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And the problem with leftist thought is that leftists conceptualize hierarchy as inherently unjust, because for them, justice is equity, or equity in outcome.

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When in reality, that's not how justice works. And those who are not leftists would say that hierarchy is embedded within the created order.

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It is a good because God is the ultimate hierarch and thus it's kind of, it doesn't make sense to appropriate leftist systems of thought through common grace, because that paradigm of thinking is inherently like antagonistic towards scripture.

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I think what it enabled Keller to do in Mao is to categorize things that weren't innately

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Christian. Like for example, Keller writes about in every good endeavor, this like painting thing his church did where they got painters together.

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And some of them weren't Christians. It was somewhat of an outreach, but it was also, it had this higher purpose of worship and reflecting the world that God created.

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And it's all under this banner of common grace. But what it does is it allows you to see

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Hollywood movies that aren't Christian, that might even have sinful things in it. And then you find the elements of common grace in there and now you categorize that as that's

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Christian. So you can then cooperate with the world on different initiatives.

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I remember from the book, Woke Church, Eric Mason says, oh, we should learn the gospel from the denazification program in Germany or the anti -apartheid program in South Africa.

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These guys weren't, that has nothing to do with the gospel, but he was trying to use this notion of common grace and muddy it and merge it with saving grace to then categorize things that are not

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Christian as Christian. And I think what you're saying is actually, so common notions, meaning things that everyone has, that God has wired into creation that are gifts from him, that's what common grace, if you wanna properly use it, that's what you should be referring to.

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So it's not like this lens or worldview or it's not something that you as a non -believer can do that pleases

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God and that reflects Christian thinking. It's not Christian, it's common.

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It's just what God has given to every man. And anyway, I'm sort of recovering myself from some heavy, deep worldview thinking that I suppose over the course of decades,

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I imbibed and it just, it challenges me because I have to, yeah, just pay attention to my language and like, what am

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I communicating here? But just because people abuse the term doesn't mean I guess the term is always bad.

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That's maybe my point. So, all right, well, we can get off of this. We've been talking about this for almost half an hour, which is cool.

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Yeah, there we go. There's some comments coming in. We got someone watching from Liberia, that's impressive.

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Yeah, have you, Matthew, have you seen what's going on in, oh goodness,

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I'm so tired. I'm forgetting the name of the country, Syria. Syria, have you seen what's, the

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Christians are getting killed there and so forth? I don't know. I haven't looked into it too much, but I think that was sort of like what would be expected if the

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Assad's regime collapsed. So, it's pretty unfortunate to see. Yeah, it's not on the

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TruthScript website or anything. There's no article, but I did mention when the regime was toppled that I would really appreciate it if someone out there who had connections to a

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Christian ministry that did something about this would reach out. I really didn't get many leads that ended up going anywhere when

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I asked that. So, if anyone still has anything, let me know. Matt Borish says,

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Mao sounds like Schleiermacher's moral influence theory of the atonement. It's been a while since I've read

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Schleiermacher. Maybe, maybe. It sounds like liberation theology to me.

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Dr. Bob says, I know how to offend the ADL and Stone Choir. Okay, well, I have ascended,

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Matthew, to Tim Keller's third way. I have transcended the political divide. No, I'm just a traditional conservative.

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I'm trying to look at things, not just through that, but through my Christian understanding. And I don't know, that's how

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I sort of process stuff. Mick Daily Review says, some folks use common mercies instead since grace is technically reserved for those who are under the grace of Christ.

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Huh, I'm trying to think if I've ever heard that. I don't think I've ever heard that term, common mercies. Yeah, I haven't heard that, but part of the reason why

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I would find that it's permissible to still use the term grace is because while grace, in its particular sense, is reserved for those who are united to Christ, nevertheless, all of creation subsists through Christ upholding it.

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Because I think of Hebrews 1, one through two, where it talks about how it's through,

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I don't remember what the actual verse says, like word for word, but I do remember that it speaks about how all of creation is sustained through Christ.

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I'm looking it up right now. Forgive me for using NIV for this.

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It may not be verses one through two. This is just what came up. But no, I mean, verse three, it talks about the son is a radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful world.

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So nevertheless, divine providence is exercised through Christ's continual sustenance of the world.

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And in that sense, we can speak of a notion of common grace. But I can understand, I think

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I would err on the side of caution in using common grace. The only reason I'm somewhat comfortable with it is because I do know that it's not completely foreign to the tradition.

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There is a sense in which like God is graceful in a general sense with creation, given that it has fallen and yet he continues to sustain and uphold it.

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So that's why I'm a little more comfortable with saying common grace. Well, common mercy to me is,

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I mean, that's like withholding a punishment that's deserved. I don't know, it seems like it's more of, that's a negative and it seems like giving reign on the righteous and the unrighteous, that's more of a positive.

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So I don't know, I guess I'm fine if someone wants to use that. But anyway, if you're streaming right now, you have a comment, leave it on Facebook or X or YouTube and I'll be sure to try to get to it.

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Well, since we are actually over half an hour in, we'll probably just do one article. And I want to see if I have this set up,

31:08

I do. I wanna do an article called a footstool for a king and just talk about this interesting concept.

31:14

And I don't, I'm still digesting it. I'm not exactly sure what I think, but the article makes the case here.

31:23

Oh, that's not it, hold on, I'll pull it up here. There we go, is that it? There we go, okay.

31:29

So the article, it talks about Joshua. Now, the funny thing is actually just went over Joshua in family devotions.

31:36

When Trump won, I was like, all right, we gotta conquer the land here. Let's read Joshua in family devotions.

31:42

And so he goes through some of this. He connects it though to these,

31:48

Joshua's conquering the promised land to Messianic Psalms. And so he's, he quotes

31:53

Psalm, I should say that the he here is Philip Nair, who is a blue collar worker with a

32:01

BA in biblical studies and Christian philosophy. So that's, I just wanna give credit where credit's due, but he quotes

32:07

Psalm 28, ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth, your possession.

32:14

And then he relates this to the conquering of Canaan and draws a parallel there. He talks about, he says,

32:22

Joshua was a man among boys and a warrior among men. He was a man who bore the marks of devotion to Yahweh and a conviction to lead.

32:29

Exodus 33, 11 reveals Joshua's willingness to depart from the presence of God in the tent of meeting as he lingered there in the spying out of the land of Canaan.

32:38

And Joshua, along with Caleb, believe the promise of God, even among giants. We remember that story. He says, born out of that passionate devotion came a warrior who led the

32:47

Israelites. Joshua 10 gives us the account of the five Kings. And that's an amazing story.

32:55

I mean, they made a movie on Amazon or a mini series on David, but they should really make one about Joshua.

33:03

I guess maybe it would be too violent. I don't know, but it'd be cool though. It would be pretty awesome if they made one about Joshua.

33:10

Lots of killing, lots of destruction. And let's see if I can get to the main thrust here.

33:18

So he says, there's a prophetic image beginning to form in the wording of the story of that particular battle in Joshua 10.

33:26

The nations have been given to Joshua and the people of Israel. And it says in Joshua 1, 3, that every place on which the sole of your foot treads,

33:33

I have given it to you. Joshua 10, 24 says, come near, put your feet on the necks of these Kings for thus

33:38

Yahweh will do to all your enemies with whom you fight. And this sounds a lot like Psalm 2, the language of Psalm 2 about Christ or God conquering.

33:49

Kiss the son, right? And lest he not be angry. So anyway, he gets into Daniel 7, 1

33:55

Corinthians 15, just this idea of the reign of Christ. Now, the question

34:00

I suppose is like, is this a foreshadowing of Christ? Is this an attempt to teach us about Christ's kingdom, which the author

34:11

I think is convinced of? I don't know. I don't know. And it probably will depend on your hermeneutic to some extent of, do you have like more of a

34:22

Christological hermeneutic where you see these things jump out even when they're not explicitly said, you just see the parallels, or if you're a grammatical historical guy, you're kind of hesitant about those things.

34:34

But I don't know if you have an opinion on this, Matthew, what do you think? I think that the way that the

34:42

New Testament views the Old Testament is very much in a Christological sense.

34:47

I hesitate to say Christocentric, not because there's anything wrong with it. Just, I don't know that buzzword, just like for some reason.

34:54

It's probably grace, it just keeps getting abused. A little bit, yeah. Even though Christocentric is probably fine, but no,

35:01

I think it's fine to interpret the Old Testament that way. And I think it's very much possible to hold like the grammatical historical method with a more

35:09

Christological sense. I think that there's balance. I think that this is how third way I am.

35:15

I think that some people in the grammatical historical completely neglect any shadows of Christ because they just want to focus on what does this literally mean?

35:24

What is the ancient Near Eastern historical context of this? What are this blah, blah, blah, blah, or versus like the more

35:29

Christological where it's like, okay, so Moses went into Egypt with, or left

35:37

Egypt with 10 baskets of this. And these 10 baskets exemplify the 10 virtues taught by the pre -Socratics.

35:43

And then these virtues correlate with this. And that correlates with the four humors in the body, which you can see when you read

35:49

Aristotle. And I'm just like, okay, okay, pause. Because I've seen both where you either overdo it or you completely underdo it.

35:57

And I think that the way the New Testament does it, especially if you're reading through Galatians with Paul talking about the allegory of Sarah and Hagar, or you read through Hebrews where the way that it uses the

36:09

Old Testament is very Christological. You can retain the historicity of something while still saying this has

36:16

Christological implications because we have a high view of providence, of sovereignty. And I remember there was a time where I was not really a younger creationist.

36:27

I kind of went away from that. And part of my polemic was, oh, well, the time or like the ages and the genealogies of Genesis, they're very long numbers, but that's because these actually all contained messages in them.

36:40

Like the long ages of these people, it's not literal ages.

36:46

It's just trying to communicate something in the Hebrew basically. And lo and behold, I just had a ridiculous view of providence because it very much is a case that they could have been that old and that part of the reason

36:57

God in his providence allowed them to live that long was in order for their age to be recorded for a particular message to be communicated.

37:05

Now, of course, there's like little things like the differing ages and the Septuagint and things like that, yada, yada, yada.

37:10

Nevertheless, there is a principle where you can have Christological framework while still retaining the historicity of a narrative.

37:19

Yeah, this is something that I think I'll be learning for a while to be quite honest with you because there are some really weird interpretations.

37:27

For example, one of the weirdest ones to me is Song of Solomon. And maybe you just, I don't know, but I don't see this as a narrative about Christ in the church.

37:36

I don't think that was the intention and it gets a little awkward. I don't know about you.

37:41

It gets a little weird when you start saying this is Christ in the church with some of the more explicit things that Song of Solomon says.

37:49

So you can overdo it, I think. At the same time though, you're right. I have seen this tendency where it's like you can't ever notice any pattern.

37:58

And so, yeah, I don't know. I have to,

38:04

I really don't know where I land on this. Yeah, I think with Joshua entering the promised land, it's obviously meant to teach us something.

38:11

We know that from Hebrews, that these things were meant to teach us something. Jesus said, obviously, that if you knew the

38:18

Old Testament, if the law, especially, well, you know, what they had, that it talked about him and the

38:24

Pharisees, you know, didn't know that. But is he talking about every word? Some people have interpreted it that way.

38:30

Someone every word talks about him, or is he just saying that the message containing his coming is in there?

38:40

I don't know. I tend to think that it's not every single thing is about Christ directly.

38:49

It can be related to Christ because he is God. But yeah,

38:55

I don't know. I don't know about Joshua entering the promised land. There's definitely a parallel. We'll put it that way. There's definitely a parallel.

39:01

I think that you have to sort of envision that there has to be a parallel from a framework of the

39:06

New Testament, because the entirety of leaving Egypt, going through the Red Sea, like wandering in the wilderness, entering the promised land, the way the

39:16

New Testament views that, especially Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, you know, it talks about how they were baptized into the sea and how they were fed with heavenly manna and how

39:24

Christ refers to the manna in John 6, even to say that this manna, they didn't live forever, but with my body and blood, you know, he will live forever.

39:34

The way the New Testament views it seems to almost be that way. And Joshua is not just, you're not just,

39:40

I mean, in our Bibles, it looks like this because it's different books. Like you go to Joshua, oh, here's a new narrative, but no, Joshua entering the promised land is a continuation of the exit from Egypt.

39:50

And you can sort of see that there's this understanding where it's like Egypt is conceptualized as like the realm.

39:55

It's almost like a, it's kind of like a pilgrim, like, you know, the narrative of the

40:01

Exodus leading up to the promised land, it's almost like a proto -pilgrim's progress, but we would affirm the historicity of it because they're leaving this foreign land, they're going through the waters, and you can, you know, that's a very much a type of baptism.

40:16

You know, you think about how Paul speaks about this in 1 Corinthians 10, and they're wandering in the wilderness and they have to persevere.

40:22

And then there's the reward of the promised land. So, and of course not every particular applies, but like you can generally speak of this being almost a type, and then, you know, while still affirming the historicity and not trying to hyper -focus in on every little detail.

40:39

But the reason why I'm inclined to do that is it just seems that the authors of the New Testament did so in such a manner where it's, they're not just using it for like visual imagery.

40:48

It's not just like a sermon illustration. It seems to be like, no, this was a foreshadowing. In the same way that many of the, you know, propitiatory sacrifices were foreshadowings of Christ, even though they were real sacrifices for atonement.

41:03

Moses lifted up the serpent, so the son of man must be lifted up. I mean, who would have thought at the time that this was foreshadowing

41:11

Christ, but it was. It's important to realize though, that there's an actual people who's conquering an actual tangible land here.

41:19

Correct, yeah. For purposes of their nation. And I have heard people, especially Christian apologists, try to downplay the importance of that in the

41:29

Old Testament, when there's things that they find inconvenient, they'll say, well, all that fighting and violence and, you know, quote unquote genocide, this was just foreshadowing something.

41:41

So then it doesn't really mean anything. It's not, we don't have to think that God would have actually commanded this for any like physical purpose.

41:51

This was all for a spiritual purpose. And I don't know if we want to go there.

41:56

Like there clearly was physical reasons for some of these things. Yeah, well,

42:02

John, what you have to remember is that, no, I'm not gonna get in trouble for this. Maybe I will, I don't care. The entire purpose of the modern apologetics machine for Christianity is to appeal to, is to try and baptize

42:17

Christianity and make it more appealing to modern people. That really is the purpose.

42:23

And so they'll go out of their way to be like, oh, it wasn't really this. It was this in order to make it more easy for modern people with modern sensibilities to digest.

42:32

And it's like, there's a good reason behind it. Like, I will say that. I don't think that they're doing this maliciously. I think part of it is like, people need to be receptive to the gospel.

42:40

And if you just go and you shove all this in their face, it's not gonna work. I mean, even Augustine hearing

42:45

Ambrose preach the Old Testament, found it to be abhorrent. And it wasn't until Ambrose went up to Augustine and said, look, buddy, just interpret it allegorically and it's fine.

42:54

Where Augustine himself was like, oh, I guess this is easier to digest. So, I mean, that's nothing new, but I think that the intention behind many modern apologists is to sort of make it more appealing to modern sensibilities because that's what a lot of the fathers did with their allegorical interpretations.

43:10

I mean, you saw these tales. I mean, even in like the Greco -Roman context, you heard these tales of the gods of like how they're committing adultery with one another, how they're killing each other.

43:18

And so they have to like take this more platonic synthesis and say, oh, well, actually, this is a representation of the forms or a virtue and things like that.

43:29

And so being in that cultural context, many of the Christians did the same thing in order to make the Old Testament more appealing.

43:35

So this is nothing really new, but what you have to do in order to like, you want real liberation theology, tear off the shackles of modern sensibilities, read

43:44

God's word and take it for what it is. Yes, these things did happen. Yes, God did send a flood that killed everybody.

43:52

And it was the right and just thing to do. Think of Romans nine. Who are you,

43:57

Amanda? Like, who are you to be the clay saying to the potter, why would you do this? That's what I would say.

44:03

And it's a very easy temptation to fall into because many, even in the past, fell into it because we have this sort of idealized sense.

44:09

Oh, the enlightenment ruined everything. Oh, the post -war consensus ruined everything.

44:15

Oh, and it's just like, no, this has been a temptation for years. That's a good point. It's always been that way.

44:22

And like I said, just tear off the sensibilities, tear off the shackles, read God's word, take it for what it is, see yourself as the clay and that you have no right to say to the maker, why have you made me like this?

44:34

Why have you done this? Why is there this vessel for destruction? Yeah, I think what you're saying is,

44:40

I've said this before that modern apologetics is, the attempt is to reconcile Christianity with liberalism, essentially, modern liberalism.

44:48

And so, I mean, an example would be, who really treats women well? Christians. And they go over all the reasons that Christians treat women better than other groups.

44:58

And then someone who wants to point out, well, wait a minute, aren't they supposed to submit to their husbands? Didn't Jesus call one of them a dog?

45:05

Look at, there were multiple wives in the Old Testament, whatever they wanna point to. And then immediately, like the defense goes up of like, that was in that context at that time.

45:14

It's not universal, or it's figurative. And I just,

45:19

I don't find that helpful. I think it just undermines the Bible. And Jordan Peterson kind of, you reminded me of him.

45:26

He does this sort of thing. Like, I don't know if you, have you ever watched his whole debate with Sam Harris?

45:32

No, I didn't see it. It is pretty interesting. There's like three of them, I think. And they attract thousands of people to watch these two guys.

45:40

And Sam Harris is an atheist, but Sam Harris brings all this stuff up of like, didn't God just kill like women and children?

45:47

Didn't God do horrible things? He flooded the earth and there was slavery in the

45:52

Old Testament. And Jordan Peterson is always like, dazzling the audience by saying like, oh,

45:58

Sam Harris, like you don't understand what that's really about. And then he comes up with some very esoteric interpretation that it like sort of, it feels nice, it feels fulfilling.

46:11

Maybe there's even some truth to it, but it's not, it sidesteps the issue of like, this stuff actually physically happened.

46:19

God actually did command these things or tolerate them or whatever. So, yeah,

46:25

I think you're right. Like we have to, we shouldn't apologize for God. God is the conquering king, as the article talks about.

46:33

He's going to be the one that judges the earth. And as scripture says, we're gonna be there.

46:38

The saints are gonna judge the world with them. So, we shouldn't take this condescending posture that we have to somehow prove ourselves to the world or anything like that.

46:49

So, and also read the Old Testament the way Jesus did, right? I mean, he believed it, he believed it was literal truth.

46:57

So, but on the topic of Joshua, I don't know what to tell you. I think there's parallels there.

47:03

I don't know because I don't think Jesus ever explicitly said that that's what that was about. The New Testament doesn't say that's what that was about but you can definitely see the pattern.

47:14

And speaking of patterns, in literature, there is this concept of like the hero's journey, right?

47:22

It's supposed to be like the oldest archetype where, and it follows a progression, the hero's journey, the hero, like Lord of the

47:29

Rings asked this, the hero's journey. The unlikely hero sort of has a coming of age and becomes the person that he is and develops virtue as they face challenges.

47:41

But there's this tell us to the whole thing. Like eventually they have a goal and they reach the goal and it's fulfilling.

47:47

And, but the story, the entertainment aspect is like all the things that happened to get there.

47:53

So obviously like the Odyssey is the hero's journey. Pilgrim's progress is the hero's journey, right?

48:01

And there's this pattern that exists in all cultures and you see it in their folklore and their writings.

48:09

And some of that stuff does come out. Like I think C .S. Lewis and Tolkien really tap into this kind of thing.

48:15

Like they can tell stories about civilizations that never existed, but they hit us in this real way because they're expressing real things about the world, human sentiment, the order that actually exists.

48:29

They sort of like stir us and call us to a higher plane of existence almost.

48:36

And sometimes even in Old Testament stories, you can sense that same kind of thing. Like there's an arc to these stories.

48:44

Even in Joshua, you know, you see like this, he sort of starts out as this kind of like wet behind the ears, young man who just has simple faith.

48:55

And then it's all the things that happen in conquering the promised land and he develops and he grows.

49:01

And then at the end though, it's sort of like a tragedy. They fail to actually root out the

49:07

Canaanites completely and he dies and he dies without the whole thing being fulfilled. But the entertainment or maybe entertainment's not the word, but part of the fulfillment is the whole process of getting from A to B and the lessons along the way, right?

49:25

So like a millennial, not all who wander are lost, but it's the journey, man.

49:31

It's the journey. Yeah. I mean, I think of like the Odyssey, especially as like one of like the greatest hero's journeys ever recorded, you know, the tale of Odysseus returning to his wife and his son

49:44

Telemachus to take back his house, him longing for his homeland and trying to go back.

49:51

You know, that's a really big one. And don't even get me started on that atrocious Odyssey movie that's coming out though.

49:56

The Odyssey is one of my favorite. It already came out, right? No, no, no. There's an

50:02

Odyssey movie that they're making and it just looks atrocious. Another one? No, there was one that just came out, I thought.

50:08

I haven't seen it yet. I was interested in it. It's not called the Odyssey though.

50:13

I'm trying, now it's gonna. This one's called the Odyssey. It's a, let me look up Odyssey movie, but it looks pretty rough.

50:20

The casting is, it's coming out next year. Okay, okay.

50:26

It came out last year. It's rated R, I don't know. Well, for the Odyssey, probably it's rated R. I can't recommend it.

50:33

I haven't seen it, but it's with Ralph Finneas. He plays Odysseus.

50:39

So I don't know. I love the Odyssey. I actually, I mean, and I know it's pagan literature. This is where, right?

50:45

The Puritans would not like me for this, right? They would not like either of us, right? Because it's a pagan literature, but.

50:51

Well, Christians throughout history read it. So, I mean. They did. I mean, it's part of our classical kind of civilization.

50:58

Yeah. All right. Mark's safe from seeing the new Odyssey movie. Let's get to questions.

51:04

Let's see if we have questions. John, you should check out Andrew Walker's commentary at the end of the World and Everything In It news podcast.

51:10

Okay. I don't know why. He doesn't say why, but okay, I'll. I don't know if I'll check it out. I honestly,

51:17

I just gotta be honest with you. I almost lied. I'd like to, but I don't know. I really don't know with everything going on.

51:24

I don't know why you want me to check it out. So, maybe give me a reason. Sorry, that sounds so cold.

51:30

Mick Daly. I think that when you have a biblical worldview and you're steeped in the culture of the Bible, sometimes the principles are repeated by various authors.

51:37

I would attribute it to God's providence. Okay. Yeah. You learn the same lessons multiple times.

51:43

That's so true. Okay. You're gonna have to weigh in, Matthew. I don't know what this means. Tertullian would be quite popular with the

51:50

Gen Z crowd. I don't know why. Why would Tertullian be? I'm trying to figure that one out too.

51:56

I don't know. Would a lot of Gen Z like Montanism? Are they going like charismatic -ish?

52:04

Is that what's going on? Is there like - Well, yeah. Gen Z is either like papist, orthodox, or non -denom charismatic.

52:12

So, I guess that's why the Zoomers would like it. So, we have a very specific niche, I guess. That is very true, yes.

52:20

Are democracy and republics pagan and incompatible with Christianity? No. It's just a form of government.

52:27

I don't think so. It's a form of government. And if it works for a particular people, that should be the form of government.

52:33

And if it leads to vice, then there should be a consideration whether it ought to be changed.

52:38

But those are perfectly permissible forms of civil government. But yeah, I don't think there's one form of civil government for all peoples.

52:45

I think that's silly and rooted in like not the best anthropology because peoples and countries and nations are different.

52:54

And thus, they ought to be governed in different ways. And if you wanna learn more about that sort of thing, you should, you know how I was just talking about Francisca's genius, beginning of this podcast, you should read his book,

53:03

The Mosaic Polity, where he basically goes against both theonomy and radical two kingdom.

53:12

And he articulates a very good form of classical two kingdom. So you should read that. It's a short book, but it will probably take you a long time to read.

53:19

Or maybe it just took me a long time to read because I kind of have a pea brain with that book because it took me like quite a few minutes on every page trying to digest everything, but great, great book.

53:30

Yeah, particularity, particularity. Yeah, that's what the liberals, right? We're there to make democracy like the universal system that you just add water and it will, everything will go well.

53:41

And yeah, it doesn't really work. First time, I don't know what this even means. The first time

53:46

Sam saw a man fighting man. I don't know what that means. Okay, sorry. I agree.

53:52

I pronounced Ralph Phineas wrong because it's actually Ralph Fiennes, apparently. Is it really?

53:59

Okay, I guess I'll just say it's Phineas instead just to make everybody mad. Yeah, okay,

54:05

Ralph Fiennes. That is literally since he played Luther, I've been saying Phineas and no one corrected me, but it really isn't

54:12

Phineas. You look at it, it doesn't even make sense. Why did I say that? No one corrected me though for years.

54:19

Okay, so here's the answer. Two Trillion was fanatically fundamentalist, but I guess went overboard briefly.

54:26

Okay, I don't know what that has to do with Gen Z. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. All right. Can we talk about gossip in the workplace and how to deal with it?

54:34

We have five minutes. Yeah, don't gossip in the workplace.

54:41

So true, and learn how to differentiate talking about people in a wholesome way to describe what is going on in your life versus talking about them in a manner that you wouldn't talk about them in front of them because it would almost be slandering to their character or detrimental to them and their wellbeing.

54:56

That's well said. I would just, I guess I would add to that, my mom always said, probably a lot of moms said that you're either part of the problem or part of the solution, and that's a good metric to use.

55:08

When you're talking about a problem or a person who's creating problems, are you doing it with an eye to correct the problem and help the person?

55:18

Or is this just idle talk that you don't actually, you just wanna feel good about how they're bad and you're good or something?

55:25

That's a good idea. Yeah, you have to think of the end in mind. There's a few things that I like to think of.

55:31

Would I say this in front of the other person? And if I wouldn't say it, am I saying these things for the purpose of a good end?

55:37

So figuring out how to deal better with this person. Because there are some things that even if it's not wrong to say about them, you still wouldn't wanna say to their face just because it would make a problem worse.

55:48

But if you're trying to be like, man, how do we deal with X person? We have to make sure we're on good terms with them, but he keeps doing blah, blah, blah.

55:54

I think that's fine. The reason I don't mind talking about this kind of thing is because I feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding on what constitutes true gossip where people either just talk about anyone in the worst ways possible and don't even think of gossip as a sin at all, or there's this understanding that any talk about anyone while they're not present is gossip, which

56:12

I'm like, that's ridiculous. You can't construct human society that way or sustain any relationships.

56:19

Yeah, Jesus talked about people who were behind their back sometimes. The rich young ruler walks away and then he uses it as a negative example to his disciples.

56:29

Well, there were - I don't think Christ was gossiping. He was gossiping. No, he wasn't gossiping. And of course, he said all kinds of negative things about the

56:36

Pharisees, and sometimes even in very veiled ways. So they didn't even know sometimes he was talking about them.

56:46

So yeah, but I think if you're trying to tear them down, build yourself up, and it's serving some kind of a prideful purpose, then you're just a destroyer.

57:00

You're just a backbiter, as Proverbs says. I want my wife actually to talk to other people sometimes about me, like behind my back.

57:08

I want that because sometimes she needs encouragement or she needs, like she can't,

57:13

I don't know, like she can't just talk about all her, if she,

57:18

I'm giving the impression my wife has all these issues with me, she doesn't. But if she has a struggle with me or something, she does need to talk about it with me.

57:25

But sometimes, like scripture says, older women teaching younger women how to love their husbands, right, like she needs to talk about it with someone else.

57:31

So how is women voting on biblical? Well, look at the time. We -

57:38

Wait, which one of us said that? Yeah, I didn't say, well, they might be, they might be referencing some podcasts

57:46

I did, but I never actually said that. I was talking about women wielding political power and that not being

57:53

God's role for them. But there are situations, again, situations, where necessity, like Deborah, for example, there's not a male, so they have to do, like if I'm supposed to defend my home, but if someone breaks in and I'm not home, my wife better defend my child.

58:10

You know what I mean? Like that's, these are not the rules, these are exceptions to the rule.

58:16

But I never talked about, well, voting, not in the recent past, at least. Yeah, you may be getting like Christian influencers mixed up,

58:25

Miss Anita Smith. You may, you might be thinking of, I shouldn't say names, but I'm thinking names. Yeah, I don't really make that a huge stand.

58:33

I have talked about it in a historical sense of like why people opposed it, what it did to our culture, that kind of thing.

58:39

But you better believe my wife votes. And I make sure it's for all the people I want her to vote for.

58:45

I'm glad to hear you're a good, hard feminist, John. That makes me very happy. That's exactly right. Yeah, she,

58:50

I asked her like five times. She's being a little elusive with me. It's like, you're voting for Trump, right? And she was kind of like,

58:58

I don't know, his rhetoric. And I'm just like, you better vote for Trump. Then I made it a matter of like, look, you know, you got to submit to your husband.

59:06

And I'm telling you, you got to vote for Donald J. Trump. And so she voted. Well, I shouldn't say,

59:11

I shouldn't really speak for her, but I'm pretty sure. She didn't show me the ballot, but I'm pretty sure she ended up voting for Trump.

59:16

So, all right, that's it guys. We have 30 seconds left.

59:22

God bless. And until next time, go serve the King of Kings, the Lord of the universe.