August 3, 2021 Show with Jeffrey D. Johnson on “A Critical Appraisal of Thomas Aquinas”

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

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This is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this third day of

August 2021.

I'm thrilled to have back on the program someone who I've always loved to interview,

Dr. Jeffrey D. Johnson who is founder of Free Grace Press and

pastor of Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas which is the home of Grace Bible

Institute and today we are going to be addressing a latest book by

Dr. Johnson, The Failure of Natural Theology, A Critical Appraisal of the

Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron

Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Jeffrey D. Johnson.

Thanks Chris, it's great to be on the show again.

It's great to have you back and we also have joining us as a special co

-host today my dear friend Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, pastor of Faith

Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania.

He is also an author, a conference speaker and vice president of the board of directors

for the Reformed Forum.

It's great to have you back on the program Dr. Waddington.

Yes Chris, it's wonderful to be here on this day and especially with the

topic that we're going to tackle and to meet at least

I can see him on our technology but anyways it's good to be

here.

It's great to have you back as well and for those of our listeners who are interested in hearing

more about the topic that we are addressing which is basically a critique of

the philosophical theology of Thomas Aquinas, you can also after this show is over look up

an interview we did with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington on the same issue on October 11,

2018.

I can't believe it was nearly three years ago Jeff that we discussed this.

The specific title was the debate over retrieving Thomas Aquinas for Reformed Theology

and Dr. Waddington took the same position as our guest today,

Dr. Jeffrey D. Johnson.

Before we go into our discussion, Dr. Johnson, please let our listeners know about Grace Bible Church in

Conway, Arkansas.

Yeah we're a Reformed Baptist church in.

The middle of the state of Arkansas.

We've just celebrated 20 years.

We founded the church 20 years ago right out of college and then

10 years ago we started For Grace Press.

We've got about 50 titles to our name now so it's a growing publishing company.

We're doing two, almost three books a month so things are ramped up.

We're really putting out some books now and then we are in our fourth year

with our new seminary, Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

We've just brought on.

Dr. Owen Strand from Midwestern has moved over and now he's a residential professor, provost.

What a gem he is, I tell you.

He's mind -blowing.

Yeah, he's right across the office from me right.

Now.

He's one office down.

It's been a blessing to be able to eat lunch with him almost every day and get

to rub shoulders with him and he's a blessing to us.

That's brought in a lot of inquiries to the seminary.

We're going from 20 students to probably 2 ,000 students overnight.

It's quite a lot and I'm exaggerating but it feels that way.

Just a small seminary that's in the middle of a lot of growth and we just want to be a

solid, reformed, non -woke seminary in an age where

people are going liberal.

On us.

Yeah, well if anybody wants to know more about Grace Bible Church of Conway, Arkansas, go to

gbcconway .com, gbcconway, c -o -n -w -a

-y .com.

And you can also find out more about Free Grace Press at freegracepress .com,

freegracepress .com.

Dr. Waddington, please let our listeners know a bit about Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church of

Floren Grove, Pennsylvania.

Sure, we're a small congregation here on the Mason -Dixon line.

The congregation has been in existence since 1936.

It was an independent Presbyterian church until 1964 when it

came into the OPC.

So it left the mother denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA in

1936 but then aligned with the OPC 28 years later.

And so we are pleased to say we had

three new members added just about a month, month and a half ago.

And looks like we may have two more new members joining in September

or October.

So that's very exciting to see that.

And I just love serving here in this beautiful region.

It really is.

We're, as you know, Chris, about an hour from you, about an hour from Gettysburg, about

45 minutes from Antietam and Harper's Ferry, all you Civil War

aficionados.

It's a beautiful area and God is blessing us.

Lots of challenges that go with being a small rural congregation, but I

love it here with all of the various challenges that are

present.

It's a great, great place to serve.

And now tell us about the Reform Forum.

Oh yes, the other organization of which I'm a part.

The Reform Forum is an internet -based Christian education

outreach.

We host the Crisis Center podcast, which is

now, I think, in its 13th year.

And we drop a new episode every Friday.

It's discussing all things biblical and theological from a Reform

perspective.

There are other podcasts and we have a new outreach called the Reformed Academy,

where we are in the, you might say, the infant stages of building a curriculum

and creating online courses for those who are

interested in building their knowledge base

of Reformed theology, biblical theology, systematics, church history, and the like.

So that is a growing enterprise internationally.

We have, well, the last time I had a

figure, we were in 1 ,700 students in the Reformed

Academy involved in various courses at this point.

So that is and that is totally online.

There's no bricks.

It's just the clicks at this point with no plans at this point

for other than our, you know, the Reform Forum offices, which are out in Grayslake,

Illinois, where our executive director, Reverend Dr. Kim Debussy

resides and works.

And we do conferences as well.

We have one annual conference this year being held in Texas in Pflugerville outside of

Austin.

It will be the first time it has not met at HOPE OPC in Grayslake in the

several years we've been doing it.

Then we have occasional regional conferences as well.

I'm hoping to do something even here with Dr. Lane Tipton, my good friend and

colleague, who's a member of the faculty at the

Reformed Forum.

Okay, well, if anybody wants information on Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn

Grove, Pennsylvania, the website is faithopc .net, faithopc .net.

And for more information on the Reformed Forum, you can go to reformedforum .org,

reformedforum .org.

Well, I think it'd be wise for us, first of all, to get two things established.

Dr. Johnson, perhaps you could give us a little background on Thomas

Aquinas, who is revered as a hero by the

vast majority of Roman Catholics and even quite a substantial number of

Protestants, and then get a definition from you of what exactly

natural theology is.

Yeah, two good questions.

Thomas Aquinas was an interesting man.

He lived in the 13th century, born in 1224 in Rocca Seca,

Italy.

It's interesting that he almost died in infancy.

There was a lightning strike that came into the window and killed his twin sister,

and he survived, and it led to his mother thinking there was something special about Thomas.

He would grow up and was born into royalty, basically, but he

sometime in his, you know, he went off to university in Naples, and being there, he

was drawn to the Dominican order, a newly established order of preachers, and then parvished

preachers, preachers that had to take a vow of poverty, and unlike normal

monks, this order of preachers would go and take their message to the streets,

and his parents were very upset with that decision, because one, there's not a lot of money in that type of

decision, and so they, strangely enough, they kidnapped him on his way to Paris

and brought him.

For about a year, they had him locked up, and it's reported, I don't know if this is true or not, but most

biographies count it as a true event, where his brothers throw in a prostitute to try to

get him to break his vow of chastity.

Wow.

And yeah, he withholds that resistance and doesn't fall into that temptation, and after a year, his

mother felt sorry for him, and

basically, off to Paris he goes.

He sits under one of the leading theologians of that day, Albert the Great, who was already

heavily into Pseudo -Dionysius and Aristotle, the two main men that would influence

Thomas's life, and so he was set under Albert the Great, even went with Albert the Great

to Cologne to help him start a new college there, then he goes back to Paris and ends up

teaching at the University of Paris, and then from that point forward, he would go back

and forth to the rest of his life, all over Europe essentially teaching,

but he had one main objective.

His main objective was to try to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy, which at the time the

Catholic Church had censored because Aristotle didn't believe in a God that could

create a world out of nothing, and that's against the Catholic orthodoxy, so

Aquinas was deemed as a heretic, unorthodox literature,

so he had the task of trying to redeem Aristotle from his

own unorthodoxy and bring him under the banner of the Catholic Church, and he spent

his whole adult life trying to accomplish that task, and then he died

before he reached the age of 50 at 49 on his way to Lyon, and

some say that he hit a low hanging branch, others say it was just a matter of being sick.

We're not for sure what caused him to die, but he died prematurely,

and then within 10 years, his theology was debated, censored, but within 30

years, the Catholic Church is basically adopting Aquinas' theology,

and within 50 years, he's deemed as the hero of the Catholic Church, and ever since that time,

basically Aquinas is really considered the angelic doctor, the

principal theologian right next to Augustine for the Catholic Church, and if you want to understand

Thomas Aquinas' theology, you just need to read the Council of Trent.

For almost everything besides the view of Mary, the Council of Trent is almost verbatim

in agreement with Aquinas' own theology.

So that's a little bit about Aquinas.

The second question is his natural theology, and

that's a big question because a lot of people confuse, even good people confuse natural theology

with natural revelation, and we believe in natural revelation.

That's the revelation that God gives all humanity through creation, so it's not necessarily

innate knowledge that we're just born with this innate knowledge that's just there.

It's revelation that comes through the mechanism of creation, through the universe,

through looking at the stars and the trees and even observing your own self.

Creation identifies certain truths about God.

It tells us certain things that are true about God, and what it reveals to us is that which is not only universally known, but is

immediately made known, and so that's natural revelation that we hold to.

The Bible affirms that in Psalm 19 and Romans 1 and Acts 17 and other places.

We have that which we affirm, but then you have natural theology, which is not

natural revelation.

It's really more or less philosophy.

It's a philosophy of a religion, what we can know about God

through reason or through sense experience.

What can we deduce or induce about the nature of God by studying creation?

So, it's not immediate awareness of God.

It's built on a blank slate of agnosticism and then studying the

world, the universe, and trying to figure out how God is like by studying what

He's made.

It's studying God or trying to have a knowledge of God by looking at creation

and deducing back to God.

So, that's philosophy of religion or natural theology, and my book is trying to critique

that, that natural theology doesn't lead to the God of the Bible.

Now, I'd like to start now that we have that

outline of the main theme of our discussion.

I'd like to start with having both you and Dr. Waddington share

anything that you can think of that you view positively about

Thomas Aquinas' contribution to the Christian church,

if any.

We'll start with you, Dr. Johnson, if you can say anything in a positive vein

that you might have in mind, knowing of his life and legacy.

Yeah, there's two things I admire about Thomas.

Aquinas.

I don't know of any other person in history that I've ever studied that had the fortitude

to think deeply and extensively about a single topic

without distraction.

The man literally wrote over 100 books, and like his summa, his

magnum opus is 1 .5 million words.

So, one of his books is a million and a half words, and most of his books are just big tomes.

Very few people write to that level, even with word processors.

We don't have that ability to put out the product that Thomas Aquinas was able to produce

in a relatively short time.

We're looking at the age of about 25 to 49.

He's putting out an average of three books a year.

One year, he put out 14 books.

It's phenomenal.

The man was able to think deeply and longingly and stay focused on a single topic.

He only ate one meal a day, which is phenomenal, and he would basically wear himself out and stay up

late at night, wake up early, gave himself completely to this task.

He had three secretaries.

At one time, he had three secretaries that he would dictate to him.

When I look at that, I'm impressed.

Of course, he wasn't married, and he refused every type of

promotion that he could have got that could have distracted him.

He stayed focused to teaching and to lecturing and to writing.

I love that about him.

That's commendable.

I've read 50 biographies about Thomas Aquinas.

I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I've lost count of all the biographies I've read about him.

The guy seemed to be very kind, gentle, kind of a loving, respectful

person that people loved him.

He was a gentle, kind, I would say maybe even humble type person.

I would imagine if I knew him, I would like him as a

person.

I'm not crazy about his theology, but as a person, he's very commendable.

Yeah, I have the same sentiments towards a living individual, Mitch Pacwa, who you may

have heard of.

He is a Roman Catholic priest and also a theologian and apologist.

He has been involved in at least two debates that I orchestrated with Dr. James R.

White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

I'm not sure why we're getting that high -pitched whistle occasionally, but please excuse me, folks, for that.

Dr. Waddington, if you could now let us know any positive thoughts that you have on

Thomas Aquinas, just so our listeners don't get the idea that we're just being nasty and totally

dismissing him.

Well, I would echo what Reverend Johnson has

said.

I think probably the

benefit of wrestling with someone like Thomas is that he is such a

brilliant theologian, philosophical theologian, and anyone

who is like that is going to make you think.

And Reverend Johnson's book is one that

shows clearly that he has carefully read Thomas himself,

as well as various studies on Thomas's thought.

I don't know that beyond the two

things that he has noted that there would be anything that I could add, because when you

look at his theology, because he's so brilliant, it

is so well -coordinated, each facet

of the diamond, if we can use that analogy, is interrelated with every other facet.

So, because he's, and he made the comment, and I

think, Jeff, you noted this in your book, if you start at the wrong

place, you're going to end up at the wrong place, basically.

And there are so many assumptions that he starts out with

that are problematic, so that I

cannot commend his theology, and I don't.

Now, he is known for being, you know, generically orthodox, although

I think, and you're only going to get the bare tip of the iceberg, I might say,

in our program today.

But when you look at the details and the presuppositions, the assumptions that he

starts with, the big one being, of course, the synthesis between

Aristotle and Christian theology, I think the projects,

it's brilliantly conceived, but it's, you know, brilliantly wrong.

So, I guess I'm the wrong person to ask for more than what Reverend Johnson

has said are the high points.

He's a fascinating figure to read about, in terms of his biography,

fascinating to wrestle with his thinking, but at the end of the day, I just, I cannot

commend him beyond the fact that he is in the bloodstream of the

Western Christian tradition, although me

thinks that people have not always read him as carefully and as

thoroughly as.

They could.

And Dr. Johnson, when you said that if you just, if you want to get an idea of

who Thomas Aquinas was, just look to what the Council of Trent

taught, with the exception of the Marian dogmas.

Obviously, you're speaking of someone who lived centuries before

the Council of Trent, but you're saying that the Council of Trent would later, in their protest against the

Reformation, crystallize Romanism.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

The Council of Trent.

Was made up of many delegates around Europe, but the majority of them were made up of

convinced Thomists.

The leading theologians of the Council of Trent were Thomists, and the only

book laid next to the Bible on the altar during the Councils that they met in Trent was

the Summa of Thomas Aquinas.

And I'm convinced, I've done a lot of study on the Reformation, and they were linked to the Reformation with

Thomism or Thomas, and the leading opponents towards Luther and Calvin were convinced

Thomists, like Cajetan, a guy named Colin from Cologne.

These guys were heavy hitters.

They were Thomists, the leading theologians of their days.

They're the ones that, like Billamore, Robert Billamore, these guys are the ones that

challenged the Reformation in the Counter -Reformation period, and these guys are the ones that

were trying to carry on Thomism, and they would argue against the Reformation, not according to Scripture,

but according to deviating from their principal theologian, Thomas Aquinas.

We have to go to our first break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own,

our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z

-E -N at gmail .com.

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We'll be right back with our critique of Thomas Aquinas, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Jeffrey D. Johnson,

and he is discussing his new book, The Failure of Natural Theology, a critical appraisal

of the philosophical theology of Thomas Aquinas, and we have also been joined

by our special co -host, Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, Pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church of

Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

And a couple of other things I wanted to address, Dr. Johnson.

You said that the Council of Trent went

further, perhaps, in their exaltation

of Mary, the mother of Jesus, than Aquinas did.

If you could explain that in more detail.

Yeah, Aquinas would hold to, his view of Mary is stronger than I'm comfortable with.

He had a very strong view, a very high view of Mary, but didn't view Mary

as having an immaculate conception of herself.

He didn't view her as sinless.

He would definitely use the word that she's the mother of God, that she

was maybe sustained sinless after the fact.

So, there was a little bit of Mary worship more than I'm comfortable

with, but the Council of Trent and the doctrine of Mary took off after

Aquinas.

It really developed to where it is today in the Catholic Church in the centuries that followed

Aquinas.

So, he kind of, the trajectory was there in Aquinas' day in the 13th century, but it wasn't as fully

developed.

And so, in that way, he was a little bit more orthodox than what would later come.

But at the same time, he was headed in that direction, or he had the trajectory of that direction.

And so, we would still have a more.

Modest view of Mary than Aquinas did.

Now, I have heard from defenders of Aquinas that had he lived

during the 16th century, they are confident he would have joined the Reformers.

I know that that is really requiring the gift of prophecy, but

as far as what you know of him, is there anything that would make you inclined to agree with that

opinion?

No, I'm 100 % opposite.

There's no way he would have done that, not unless he rejected his own theology, not unless there was a conversion

experience of his own.

Only the Lord knows that.

But based upon what he taught, he was,

again, he's the leading theologian that the Reformation leaned on.

He definitely wasn't pro -Protestant theology in

any sense of the word.

But the truth is, during his time, he joined the Dominican Order.

The Dominican Order was established by this man named Dominique in the year 1215.

And what he was established was to be countermeasure to the new

problem that they had in Lyon, France, the Waldensians with Peter Waldo.

And the Waldensians were preaching out in the pew, they had unsanctioned preaching, and the Waldensians

challenged the Catholic Church in three areas.

In the doctrine of purgatory, the doctrine of the abuses of the

church, and they wanted to get the scriptures and and the language of the common person.

And so Peter Waldo, that was his conviction.

Now, later, they would become more and more convinced of not just Sola Scriptura, but they would come to the

doctrine of justification by faith alone.

And they become more and more what I would consider orthodox.

But they were challenging the Catholic theology of that day.

And the Dominican Order was established as a countermeasure to the Waldensians.

And they were the ones given the instructions to carry out the Inquisition

against the Waldensians.

Now, the Waldensians are the ones that joined the Reformation, they integrated into the Reformation.

And it was the Inquisition held by the Dominicans that fought against

the Reformation.

So, not only is his theology contrary to the doctrines

espoused by the Reformation and the Reformers, he was a Dominican.

And though he didn't take part of the Inquisition that was raging during the 13th century,

where they would go and massacre the Waldensians, his

gave doctrinal support for for the Dominican putting to death,

especially civil authorities to put to death heretics.

And he clearly argued against the Waldensians.

He names the Waldensians as heretics, and partly because the Waldensians rejected

purgatory, and two, because the Waldensians rejected the Pope as the supreme

authority of the church on earth.

So, they rejected those two things, and thus Aquinas deemed the Waldensians as heretics.

So, it's hard for me to say that Aquinas could reject the Waldensians in his days, but yet receive the

Reformers if he had happened to live three centuries later.

It's hard for me to come to that conclusion.

So, are you saying that.

The Inquisitors with the Spanish Inquisition were the first

to say, where is Waldo?

Sorry, I couldn't resist that.

For that very purpose to find Peter Waldo.

Dr. Waddington, if you have any questions.

Well, just an observation that Thomas

obviously was thoroughly Roman Catholic, which we would expect

unless he had been in the Eastern Church, of course.

So, I know that John Gerstner back in the 70s or 80s

wrote a series, he wrote on Thomas a fair bit, as did his

disciple R .C. Sproul, and I have high regard for both men, but on this

issue, I think they are, well, they're no longer Thomists of a sort,

because I believe they're in glory, so they've been corrected on

that point.

But Thomas, yeah, Gerstner wrote basically, I think it might have even been

for Table Talk or for Eternity Magazine, he wrote an article on

Thomas the Proto -Protestant, and I just find it hard to believe, and

this goes in both directions, right, that those who have referred to

themselves as Reformed Thomists clearly are putting Thomas through a

major filter in order to do that, and to think that Thomas would have

become a Protestant is, I think, an exercise

of a very vivid imagination.

Yeah, well, if you could describe.

The Council of Trent as a crystallization of the thought of Thomas Aquinas,

when the Council of Trent condemned anyone who were to

believe in the salvific teachings of the Reformers to

hell, it's mind -blowing how anyone could have this idea.

Yeah, Thomas Aquinas didn't believe in the.

Imputation of Christ's righteousness, he didn't believe in substitutionary atonement, he didn't believe in justification by faith

alone, he didn't believe in sola scriptura, he didn't believe in

purgatory, he believed that your own sufferings, that you're made righteous through the sufferings that

you experience, he believed that there was merit to be received through

going to Jerusalem and fighting in these crusades, and he

believed that there's no salvation outside of being in submission to the Pope.

The very things that the Reformers fought against are the very things that he taught, are the very things

that, you know, these things are not just suddenly developed in the 14th, 13th, 14th, 15th

century, they were developed principally by Aquinas, now they predate Aquinas, he's not necessarily the

origin of these things, but he codified many of these

theological beliefs that the Roman Catholics still hold today, and he is considered by all Roman

Catholics to be, along with Augustine, he's considered to be their chief theologian.

So it's strange that Protestants want to baptize this Catholic

theologian that the Reformers fought against.

Now, obviously, there's going to be some doctrinal continuity, there's going to be some certain

truths that we say, oh, that's true, I would agree with that, but as a whole,

he's truly a Roman Catholic in the true sense of the word, and

it's hard for me to see that people think that he's a pre -Reformer.

Now, one of those things that fellow Reformed

Christians say, in his defense, who tried to redeem

Aquinas, they will say he shared our understanding of double predestination.

Do you know anything about that?

And I'll let both of you comment on that, starting with.

Dr. Johnson.

Yeah, they do look at that, they look at his strong view of predestination, but you've got to understand that

that's rooted in his theology proper, that's rooted in his view of the nature of

God, and if you understand his nature of God, there's only one conclusion that you would draw,

and it would be this strong, strong view of double predestination,

and stronger, of course, I'm definitely, I even consider myself a super lapsarian, but

he, Aquinas has a lot of overlap in that area, but I want to look at the

theological framework in which led him to that, and I would reject that theological framework that led

him to that, and though he may be intersecting with us in certain areas that we can affirm,

it doesn't mean necessarily that that particular doctrine is something that I would look to as a good

explanation of predestination.

Dr. Waddington, any comments on that?

Yeah, it's going back to.

What I said earlier, and what Dr. Johnson has said, that

because Thomas is so brilliant, each part of his

theology, each loci of his theology

connects with each other, so that if there's, yes, the bare statement that he

affirmed double predestination is true, but when you look at how he got

there, and what he meant by it in all the details, we're going to differ with him

in those details.

His doctrine of God is of a particular shape and color, and

that will work itself out through every department

of his theology, every department.

Now, Dr. Johnson, is the area of Aquinas's

philosophical theology that a

significant segment of Reformed scholars agree with,

is it involving his natural theology?

I think that's where like R .C. Sproul and some of these men that we love, that's where they gravitated towards

Aquinas.

It's always strange to me, R .C. would say that Aquinas is his favorite theologian, but when you read his books and

listen to his lectures, he quote Luther, he quote Calvin, he would quote the Puritans,

Turretin, all these people that I really treasure, he would quote these guys and very rarely quote

Aquinas, but in word he would say Aquinas was his favorite theologian, but in practice he didn't

really cite him much, and he didn't really allude to him, and I want to be careful here because I

don't know for sure, but from what I've read of Sproul and his usage of Aquinas, I'm not

confident that he had a clear understanding of Aquinas.

For instance, R .C. Sproul makes the basic categorical mistake

of confusing natural revelation with natural theology, and he's looking at the

cosmological argument of Aquinas, and then he goes and looks at Romans chapter 1 and

Psalm 19 as proof texts, and that's exactly what Aquinas did.

He used these proof texts to give biblical support to his philosophy,

and it's just a categorical mistake, and I would challenge

R .C. Sproul on that particular point, but that's where Protestants lean towards Aquinas

is they don't lean to him when it comes to their doctrine of sociology or especially not ecclesiology.

They lean upon him on theology proper and natural theology, and

that's where they find him useful, but that's where my book, I'm trying to go, no, he's not even useful in

those categories as well.

He's deficient there.

He's inconsistent with himself, and that's what I want to do in my book is to show that

Aquinas was not able to reconcile Aristotle with the God of the Bible,

and he ended up with a theology that is incongruent, and it's

self -contradictory, and so I want to put my finger on where that contradiction is and where

the tension is in his own philosophy and show how that tension wouldn't be there if he

wasn't trying to bring in Aristotle into his theology proper.

We have to go to our midway break right now, and please be patient with us folks because the midway break is always a little

longer than our other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida

requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to

localize geographically all of their programming to Lake City, Florida.

They do that with their own public service announcements and other local things that they air during

this break while we simultaneously air our globally heard

commercials, so please use this time wisely.

Write down as much of the information as you possibly can from as many of our advertisers as you possibly can so that you can more

frequently respond to them, even if that just means thanking them for sponsoring the show, and also

send in questions to Dr. Jeffrey D. Johnson at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We'll be right back after these messages.

I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

My friend Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I are headed down to Atlanta, Georgia once

again for the G3 conference.

This year's G3 will be held Thursday, September 30th through Saturday, October 2nd on the theme

Christ is Supreme Over All.

I'll be joined by over 20 other speakers and musicians to lead in the worship of God through preaching, teaching, and

singing, including John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Conrad M. Bayway, Daryl Bernard Harrison, and

Virgil Walker.

For details, visit g3conference .com.

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Chris Arnson and I hope to see you September 30th through October 2nd at G321.

This is James White reminding you that Christ is supreme over all.

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A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in

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Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he

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Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a God -centered focus.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant.

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Good to be back.

Chris, I always enjoy our time.

You, uh, I have to tell you, I'm one of the better interviewers out there and I've been doing this for 30, more

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Wow, that's some compliment.

How much do I owe you for that?

You don't have to owe me anything.

We're in good shape.

I'm glad you said it on the air so I don't have to brag about myself.

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And they even have in stock What Every Christian Needs to Know About Social

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I know that you have known about and had a very good relationship with Mike

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Yeah, I've known Mike for 10, maybe 15, well at least 10 years.

He's been a big supporter of Free Grace Press, of our products.

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Before I return to Dr. Jeffrey D. Johnson and Dr. Jeffrey C.

Waddington, and our conversation on the failure of natural theology, a critical appraisal of the

philosophical theology of Thomas Aquinas, I just have a couple more very important

announcements to make.

First of all, I thank all of you from the very depths of my heart for your prayers for my

oldest brother John, 76 years old, in a

skilled nursing facility in Denton, Texas.

As anyone who listens to this show regularly knows by now, my brother

John has been battling with cancer and critical stage emphysema for quite

some time.

He received a very grim prognosis recently that he has six months to live.

Of course, only God knows that for certain, but I'm asking you to continue to pray, not only for physical

healing for my brother and an extension of life on this earth, but infinitely more important,

pray that it becomes more and more crystal clear that my brother is truly a

child of God, a new creation in Christ, born again and headed for heaven.

He has been saying very promising things about his trust in Christ, and

perhaps I should just be overjoyed right now and consider him my brother in Christ.

I just have some apprehensions knowing that people of different religious understanding

can use the same words that we use, but have a different dictionary.

So just please pray that the Lord makes his profession

even more crystal clear of his total trust in Jesus Christ, his death on the cross,

his resurrection, and the salvation that only he provides for sinners,

and that my brother's goodness has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I will give you updates as I receive them myself.

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Lastly, if you are a man in ministry leadership, either a pastor, elder,

deacon, or a leader in a parachurch organization, I invite

you to a free event that I'm having, and I hope you can attend.

Dr. Conrad Mbewe, my favorite preacher of all time.

He is the pastor of Kibwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

He is going to be my next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon Speaker in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Send me an email to ChrisArnson at gmail .com, ChrisArnson at gmail .com, and put Pastors Luncheon in the

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That's also the email address to send in a question to Dr. Jeffrey D. Johnson about the failure of natural

theology, a critical appraisal of the philosophical theology of Thomas Aquinas.

That's ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside

the U .S .A.

Well, if you could, Dr. Johnson, go through some more of the most

critical areas in Aquinas's philosophical theology specifically

that make him not worthy of the embracing of

theologically Reformed or any heir of the Reformation as a hero

and someone whose teachings should be embraced and followed.

Well, the main thing is that he ends up denying.

The sufficiency of scripture, and he does it in a way that I don't think he intended to do.

He was a student of Aristotle, and going back to his philosophy,

Aristotle wanted to understand the metaphysical realm, understand God, by

studying the physical realm, by studying the

world.

And by studying the world, he observed that everything in the world, everything in the universe is in motion.

And then he come to the conclusion that nothing that's in motion set itself in motion.

From that, he deduced certain attributes or certain characteristics that are associated with motion.

Now, basically, there are certain attributes that are identified with everything that's created, and so he's

basically saying these attributes that we would say are central to a created

object.

Anything that's not self -sufficient, anything that's derivative or contingent, have certain attributes.

But Aristotle placed those attributes in the mother attribute of motion.

And he concluded that everything's in motion is contingent.

Everything in motion is not just contingent, but mutable

and finite.

And there's other attributes that he placed to that, and therefore, God must be the opposite

of all the things that are in motion.

He must be the first cause, the unmoved mover.

He must be without motion.

Thus, he is infinite.

He's not finite.

He's not mutable, but he's immutable.

He's not complex.

He's simple.

And he deduced certain attributes that must exist in God based upon his

study of the physical world.

And then that becomes his theology proper.

Aristotle sought to understand God essentially by understanding

the world.

And God becomes the opposite of what the world is.

Whatever the world is, God is not that.

He's removed from that.

And Aquinas found that intriguing, and Aquinas sought to develop that into his own

philosophical thinking.

But there was a problem with Aristotle that made the Catholic Church, prior to Aquinas, reject Aristotle.

He was among the forbidden literature.

Though the logic of Aristotle was still maintained within the Catholic Church, his metaphysics was

rejected, principally because Aristotle believed in this unmoved mover.

And this unmoved mover, according to Aristotle, cannot create.

He cannot interact with creation.

He can't govern through providence.

He can't create something.

He can't destroy something, because those type of actions would require movement in God.

And thus, the universe, according to Aristotle, has to be eternal.

And it has to be, you have to have something non -movable and something movable that is

both co -eternal and co -dependent, if you would.

So that ends up leading to a God who doesn't know the universe at all,

and can't interact with the universe, has no relationship to the universe, and it leads to a kind of a deistic

God.

Wow.

And so that's obviously against orthodoxy.

Sounds like the Mormon understanding of the universe.

Well, it's quite problematic, for sure.

But not to mention that Aristotle wanted to redeem, I mean, Aquinas wanted to redeem Aristotle, but he

had to figure out how to get this unmoved mover to be the creator of the universe, how this unmoved

mover could have free acts that is not necessary acts, that the

creation is not necessary.

It's a free act of God's volition that he could have not have created if he didn't want to create,

and this creation is out of nothing.

Those are orthodox teachings that the Catholic Church affirmed, but yet it's incompatible with

Aristotle's philosophy.

And so, Aquinas spent his whole life trying to reconcile that dilemma,

and I'm convinced that all he did was bring in tension, and

he ended up bringing in that dilemma into his theology, and it undermined his

theology proper, and it led to an unorthodox view in the end of God

and who God is.

Though he would affirm that God is trinitarian, he would affirm that creation's out of nothing,

he would affirm these things, but he was not able to reconcile.

Them with his philosophical commitments.

And, well, we have some listener questions that I think we should go to before I

ask any more of my own.

And, well, let me first go to.

Dr. Waddington.

Do you have any follow -up comments or questions of your own?

Yes, see, Chris, Dr. Johnson has shown,

just in the brief comments he's made, that Thomas's doctrine of God proper,

what we usually call theology proper, is problematic, and he's only touched on one,

basically one element, well, many elements, but he's rightly

focusing on the problem of what's called divine immobility in Thomas,

which I think contradicts his doctrine of pure action

in God, but that's maybe a discussion for another time.

What I was going to add is that on top of, and there are other elements,

if we wanted to spend eternity talking about the problems in Thomas, I think we

could unpack and show where, even where he affirms doctrines we would agree

with, his method of arriving at or explicating

those doctrines is very problematic.

His understanding of the processions of the Son and the Spirit are an issue, I think, for

another day, but epistemologically, that is, with regard to knowledge, Thomas embraces

Aristotle's empiricism, and therefore, if you look at his

commentary on Romans, which I have on my shelf behind me, Thomas clearly

reads the Apostle Paul as backing up what he thinks, and

that is that we can only have indirect knowledge of God through his effects,

and even then, it's not adequate knowledge, I would argue,

because God is simple and we are not.

So, there are all sorts of issues that are a problem that get Thomas

into trouble because he's doing this classical synthesis project of

trying to harmonize Aristotle.

Now, that's not the same thing as saying that, you know, we can find truth

among unbelievers.

The problem is this is a bigger project than finding truth wherever God

places it.

Aristotle did say some true things about logic, for instance, but

with regard to the big project that Thomas was

after, the harmonizing of Aristotle with Christianity,

he often doesn't really do a good job in

saving Aristotle, in quotes, right?

He doesn't do an adequate job.

In other words, he doesn't, you know, where he says, for instance, that the universe is eternal.

He affirms, he has to affirm the creation out of nothing

as a voluntary act on God's part, but it clearly

goes up against the teaching of Aristotle that he embraces.

And I don't remember off the top of my head, but maybe Dr. Johnson can inform us.

Neoplatonism and Thomas, as was Aristotle, is not a completely

new thinker.

In other words, Aristotle is building on Plato and Thomas

is retrieving Aristotle in a context of

Neo, through the history of philosophy, which also included Neoplatonic thought.

In Neoplatonism, God creates but doesn't know he's doing it and he doesn't do it on purpose.

Where was Aristotle on that question?

I don't remember off of all the reading I've done, I don't remember that issue.

It goes, the difference between Aristotle and Plato is the.

How do you define good?

Good is the old way of being, you know, that's who God is, is that which is good.

And Aristotle defined goodness as that which is lacking nothing.

And so God doesn't, it's not a charity which you give of yourself.

We think of goodness as a charity you're giving.

Aristotle viewed goodness as that which needs nothing.

And so he's self -contained, independent, autonomous, self -contained being, and he's

there, and creation is not created.

Obviously, the universe is just existence as a necessary entity.

So it kind of leads to this kind of dualistic pantheism model

with Aristotle.

Well, Plato understood goodness a little bit different, but it's something that gives of

itself, which allows, Plato allows for creation to come out of God,

or Aristotle didn't.

Now, they both lead to some form of pantheism, both models do.

But with Plato, it's God is prior to the universe, or the universe

is derivative from the being of God.

Now, like you said, it's not an active choice.

It's a, the universe is necessary, and it flows out of God.

It radiates out of God, like the sunbeams radiate from the sun, even if the sun's unaware of what the sun

is doing.

Creation is just flowing out of God into this chain of being.

Creation's a lesser being, and ultimately into it, travels so far away from the source that it

becomes non -being.

But nevertheless, at least Plato allows for the universe to come from

God, which allows God to be the moving cause.

So Aristotle, God couldn't have been the moving cause of the universe.

So that's why Thomas needed Plato.

He needed Platonism to fix the unorthodoxy of Aristotle.

So he's blending the philosophical systems to create a

philosophical theology that's somewhat more congruent with

the theology derived from the Bible.

Okay, we have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, with a

question who asks, did Aquinas

have a role in the Aristotelian concept of accidents

and substance that the Church of Rome would later make a very

important understanding of transubstantiation, where the elements of the mass,

even though they appear to be bread and wine, are in reality the literal body and

blood.

Of Christ?

The answer is yes.

Aristotle gave them the terminology and the framework in which they could articulate what they already believed.

Just unlike Thomas Aquinas was the origin of that, he just gave them some

terms to help them articulate their understanding of the mass

and how the physical objects became the literal body of Christ.

Now, I would add that I doubt Aristotle would recognize

his distinction between substance and accidents because what Thomas does is turn them on their head.

The substance in Aristotle is the thing that makes a thing what it is.

Accidents are things that can be gained or lost without changing the essence of something.

For instance, Dr. Johnson and I have beards that are graying.

Okay, the graying of the beard doesn't change the fact that we both have beards.

My beard at one point was dark brown, it no longer is.

That's an easy illustration of a substance accident, but when you

get to the doctrine of transubstantiation, it gets turned

around so that you're losing the substance while retaining the

accidents.

In other words, you're retaining the taste and texture of bread or

wafers and you're retaining the texture

and the flavor and the bouquet of wine, but you're

losing the substance.

It's changing the things that can change, don't change.

Right, so it's an interesting thing where I think Aristotle would go, what?

But yes, it's clear that he's using the categories offered up by Aristotle,

even though he's using them in ways that I don't think Aristotle would find acceptable.

Okay, we have, oh by the way, Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania,

you have won, by virtue of your question, the book we are addressing today,

and that book, as we have been saying throughout the broadcast, is the book

which is a critique of Thomas Aquinas, The Failure of Natural Theology, A Critical

Appraisal of the Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas.

That is yours if you give us your full mailing address there in Dauphin County,

Pennsylvania, and cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service

will ship that book out to you at no charge to you or no charge to Iron

Trip and Zion Radio, and we thank Free Grace Press for providing these free copies.

We have a question from John in Bangor, Maine.

Have either of you read a critique of Thomas Aquinas

by Dr. K. Scott Oliphant titled Thomas.

Aquinas?

Is it worthy of recommending and reading?

I'll go first if I may.

The answer is yes, and yes, and no.

Yeah, I'm, of course, I'm a biased person, so you just need

to know that up front.

It's not long enough.

You know, the biggest, the major critique I would offer is that it's, and it was, it's part of the

Great Thinker series that PNR Books is publishing, still an ongoing project,

so it's almost too brief in my opinion.

Let's just say that Dr. Johnson's book is longer.

I don't know that it's a lot longer, but it's, it's, I have other issues,

concerns about the book.

I think it treats Thomas almost as if he were a modern analytical philosopher, which he most assuredly was

not.

What I mean by that is analytical philosophy tries to understand

propositions by breaking them down into their basic elements and dissecting them.

If you're familiar with Alvin Plantinga, the Christian philosopher, he is an analytic

philosopher, and Thomas most assuredly was not

an analytic philosopher in that vein.

All of that to say, also speaking for myself,

I don't have a visceral reaction to Thomas in the way that Dr.

Oliphant does.

I think we agree that Thomas is a problem.

I think he was, Dr. Oliphant may have been raised Roman Catholic, so there's that element in his

background that I was not raised in that tradition.

So now I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Johnson so he can give his

views on the matter.

Yeah, I've enjoyed, I did read the book.

In fact, I read it twice and enjoyed it.

I like Dr. Oliphant and appreciate his work, appreciate reading that book.

I take a little different approach.

My critique's a little different approach.

I don't think it's necessarily, you know, incongruent with Scott's approach,

but it's just a little different.

I view things a little bit differently.

I'm not necessarily trying to argue against Thomas by looking at the noetic

effects of the fall, though I do believe in those.

I do believe that sin has affected our thinking and that gives us a disposition to run from the

God of revelation, from natural revelation and special revelation, and it taints us and we become willing

fools.

So I believe in the noetic effects of the fall, and that has to be overcome by saving grace.

But I don't believe the noetic effects of the fall makes us inherently

illogical.

It does in that we knowingly reject the truth and we'll knowingly become fools

to grasp after our sins and reject the God that we know.

So that makes us illogical and foolish.

But the problem with natural theology

is not that man's logic is incapable of

deducing a solid worldview.

It's the fact that natural theology doesn't have the information needed

outside of divine revelation.

If you reject divine revelation, which is what we know through natural revelation, and you reject

special revelation, you cannot get to the God of the Bible.

So it's not so much that we don't have the logical tools to get there.

We don't have the content to get there.

And we need special revelation.

We need the doctrine of the Trinity to make sense of the greatest problem in philosophy,

and that's the problem with the one and the many.

And the Trinity is the solution to that.

That comes through natural special revelation, and it makes sense.

Special revelation makes sense of what we already know in natural revelation.

So I've kind of just approached my critique a little bit differently.

And so I'm not saying that mine's better.

It's just the way I.

Think.

Well, I think Dr. Waddington already said it was better.

Yeah, I was going to say I'm happy

to recommend both books, but I can stand behind Dr.

Johnson's book, I think, without reservations.

I don't think I read a thing in that book that I could disagree with.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm serious, and I was looking, but no, I didn't find anything.

So, I mean, I thought it will be in, you know, it's a top -notch

work, and it will be useful in

serving the Lord and strengthening his church, which is the most important thing, you know, we can

do.

Okay, and guess what,.

John and Bangor Maine, you've also won a free copy of this book that we are discussing today

by Jeffrey D. Johnson, the book that Jeffrey

Waddington just heaped a lot of praise upon, The Failure of Natural Theology, A

Critical Appraisal of the Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas.

Please make sure we have your full mailing address in Bangor, Maine, and we'll have

CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, ship that out to you, and once again, we thank Free Grace

Press for providing the books.

Before I go to the final break, which will be a lot more brief, I just want to ask a question from a listener,

and then you can answer it when we come back.

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who asks, Can you list

some prominent thinkers that you view as valuable men

in our day and age who uphold Aquinas as a hero in

opposition to your views?

I'm not saying this as a way to out these men, but I'm saying this just so

our listeners have a more broad view of the fact that there are people who disagree over this

issue.

We'll have you answer that when we come back.

Anybody else wants to join us, send in your question now because we're rapidly running out of time.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

We'll be right back after these messages.

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Welcome back.

And the question that we received.

From that was Bobby in Hartsdale, New York.

He wanted you to list some folks that you respect and look up to but who still nonetheless

disagree with you on Aquinas and uphold Aquinas as a hero.

Yeah, the easy one to point out initially is R .C. Sproul, one of my heroes of the faith.

He's so clear.

He's such a great teacher, able to take big concepts and put them down on the shelf for

all of us to understand.

He's a rare jewel that God has given to the church and so thankful for his ministry and

for his works and profited much from R .C. Sproul.

But yeah, he was a huge fan of Thomas Aquinas.

At least he said he was.

Like I said earlier, I didn't see a lot of citations of Aquinas in his books

or his lectures.

But yeah, he would make it clear that Aquinas was one of his favorites, if not his favorite theologian.

So we respect Sproul and disagree with him on that point.

But it shows you that.

There are some good men like Aquinas.

I would also add, of course, his own mentor, John Gerstner, where

he taught along similar lines.

And I'm trying to think there are, of course, other theologians who interact

with Thomas, but I don't know that they don't necessarily come out and say they're pro

-Thomas.

I appreciate the work of Dr. John Fesco, a lot of his

work, but I think he's dead wrong on reforming, reformed apologetics

and trying to go back to Thomas and the classical method of apologetics

rather than the presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til.

So yeah, I mean, just because someone likes or appreciates Thomas doesn't mean I dismiss

that thinker.

I just, I would perhaps, you know, be a little more sober in my, I would read with

more care and.

Hopefully with my thinking cap on.

Hey, thanks.

Thanks, Bobby.

Make sure we have your mailing address because you have also won a free copy of Jeffrey D. Johnson's book.

We have Grady, very faithful listener in Asheboro, North Carolina, who's also a generous

supporter of this program.

Greetings, brothers.

Dr. Johnson, did I understand you to say that the Roman Catholic Church considered

Thomas Aquinas a heretic when he was living and didn't accept him until he had been

dead?

If so, what did they consider him heretical about?

No, that's a little misunderstanding.

There.

After he died, three years after his death, there were certain doctrines, certain

points that Aquinas taught that was censored.

The University of Paris, there was a professor there that arose as kind of a, he was upset about

Aristotle coming into the church and he had a list of

theses that he said were unorthodox, and three of those theses

came from Aquinas, and in so doing, it kind of censored Aquinas initially.

It doesn't mean that the Catholic Church viewed Aquinas as a heretic during his life or even

after his life, but it meant that his theology wasn't readily received.

There was some debate, and it took about 30 years of debate

about his beliefs, kind of figuring out what he actually taught for the Catholic Church

to embrace, kind of his system, not just his beliefs, but many of his beliefs were just what the Catholic

Church already taught.

It wasn't like he coined or solidified all the doctrines of the Catholic Church.

He just taught it in a way that brought clarity or affirmed the Catholic Church's teaching

on many of these things, but he introduced a kind of a framework, I would say

a grid.

I consider it kind of a worldview grid in which to understand theology, and it basically

shaped how you understand Scripture.

So, you're viewing and reading Scriptures from this framework, and that's why I believe it's

ultimately, it challenges the sufficiency of Scripture rather than Scripture identifying its own framework in

which it's to be understood and interpreted.

It's being interpreted through the framework of Aristotelian philosophy, and that as a

grid of thinking was eventually adopted and became the standard

kind of framework of the Catholic Church after his life, but he was never

deemed a heretic by the Catholic Church.

Okay, great.

You give us your address, and you've also won the book.

We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

Have you ever read Richard Muller's defense of Thomas Aquinas,

which appeared in a Reformation 21 article?

I haven't read that article, but I've read most of his works.

He's got a four -volume set, or three -volume set, it looks like.

He's a premier historian when it comes to historical

theology.

There are some things I disagree with Muller on, and this is one of the areas that I

strongly disagree with him on.

I'm definitely not in the same caliber of researcher that he is, so I understand I'm

a small guy from Arkansas disagreeing with Richard Muller, but in this particular case,

I think he's straining at gnats.

Paul Helm does the same thing.

He strains at gnats, finds some similar threads that you

can link the Reformers with Aquinas.

It's like, look, here's a little thread that runs through their thinking, and the Reformers didn't question

this thread of thought and embraced it as their very own.

That's true.

There's no doubt about there's these little threads that run through their thinking that can connect them.

That's not wrong, or not actually saying much at all.

There's just some categorical distinctions, big distinctions that the Reformers

rejected, and these things are blaring rejections, and I think you're

straining at a gnat and overlooking the elephant in the room that there are some major categorical

distinctions between the Reformers.

The main Reformers, not all of them, but the main Reformers, Luther, Calvin, Zingley, Bollinger in particular,

these guys rejected philosophical theology, and they

rejected Aquinas in particular.

Bollinger was trained at University of Cologne, and they had the leading Thomas scholar,

and Bollinger sat under that.

He's very familiar with Aquinas' thinking, and comes out and rejected.

Melanchthon rejected the scholastic schoolmen of the Catholic Church as well, and he was

very familiar with scholasticism.

Luther as well.

Luther maybe went too far with his understanding of fideism, but nevertheless, they rejected, in a

good way, they rejected this notion of extra -biblical

sources as authority of our faith, and that's what I think they're good at.

I think even Calvin himself, he only quotes Aquinas three times, twice, negative one.

He was just neutral on, but his view of natural theology

and natural revelation is completely different than that of Aquinas.

So I differ with Richard Muller on his

understanding of the link between Aquinas.

And the Reformation.

Ronald, you've also won the book.

Get us your mailing address.

We are out of time.

I also just want to chime in very quickly to say, unless anybody has the wrong impression,

interestingly, although both Thomist scholars,

Dr. R .C. Sproul and his mentor, Dr. John Gerstner, neither

were ecumenists with the Church of Rome, and they both, or at least Dr. Sproul, vehemently

opposed the ECT document, the Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

I just wanted to make that clear.

If anybody wants more information about the Church where Dr. Jeff

Johnson pastors, go to gbcconway .com, gbcconway

.com.

And if you want to find out more about Free Grace Press, go to freegracepress .com, freegracepress

.com.

And of course, don't forget about the church where Jeffrey Waddington is the pastor.

That's Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, faithopc .net,

faithopc .net.

And the Reformed Forum website is reformedforum .org, reformedforum .org.

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in.

I want to thank my guests, my guest Dr. Jeffrey D. Johnson and my co -host

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington for the superb job they did today.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you

are a sinner.