September 13, 2017 Show with Thaddeus Williams on “Create: Mirroring the Artistic Genius of Jesus”

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This is Chris Arnton, your host of Happy Wednesday on this 13th day of September 2017. I'm delighted to have a returning guest who always impresses me beyond words every time we've had him on the program with his biblical knowledge and his very powerful gift to communicate that knowledge.

His name is Thaddeus Williams, and he is assistant professor of theology at Biola University in La Mirada, California. He's former teacher of literature at Saddleback College, jurisprudence at Trinity Law School, philosophy at Labrie Fellowship in Switzerland and Holland, and ethics for Blackstone Legal Fellowship and Federalist Society in Washington, D .C.

He's also the author of Love, Freedom, and Evil, Does Authentic Love Require Free Will?, and Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History. He's also a frequent speaker at churches and conferences.

Today we are going to be expanding on a chapter from the book I just mentioned, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History. And that chapter, which we touched on last time, I believe, but we are now expanding it into a full-blown interview on its own, and that's Create, Mirroring the Artistic Genius of Jesus.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron, Sharpens Iron, Thaddeus Williams. It is a joy to be back with you, Chris. How are you? I'm always doing better than I deserve, that's for sure.

And in the studio with me is my co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. And it's good to meet you. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA, and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

And we already in our programs passed at least one of them had you give your personal testimony of salvation. Let's just have you give a summary now for those of our listeners who have missed our previous interviews.

Tell us something about Biola University in La Mirada, California and the specific theology class that you are,.

Where you are the professor. So I've been at Biola University. I was a undergraduate there back in the early 1940s. Just kidding. Like how old is this guy? Not in the late 90s. And I got my undergraduate in biblical studies, went on to Talbot School of Theology, Biola's School of Theology, and got a master's in philosophy of religion and ethics, studying under J .P. Moreland, lively conversation on sovereignty and Molinism.

Yeah, Molinism, all those long, long conversations. And it was a great place to learn how to exegete scripture and also be schooled in the ways of analytical philosophy and know what's going on in some of those conversations so that you can actually bring them together in meaningful ways without budging an inch on biblical theology.

And it was a joy to be a part of it. So I've been on a number of theology classes, foundations of Christians of metaphysics and epistemology and ethics and how do we think in teaching. Those are my primary classes, foundations of Christians, world view, and theology one, theology two.

And then an evangelism class.

You just said our next topic. That's what our topic will be. That's the perfect topic. There you go, perfect. And I'm sorry I interrupted you, but I had to make sure I before that left my mind, I wanted to say that that.

Sounded like a perfect topic to address. Yeah, yeah, and the only other class I teach there is an elective looking at the great Calvinist statesman, theologian, philosopher, Kuyper, and how he, you know, his most famous claim of human existence over which Jesus, who is...

And let's, for our second interview after this, talk.

About Abraham Kuyper. Very important figure in history, and a controversial figure, because there are elements of his belief that many reformed people have a disagreement with him on. So it would be interesting, and also a fascinating testimony of him becoming a born-again believer after he was already a pastor, and having been evangelized by an elderly woman, I believe, in his congregation.

And the Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. Yeah, did I hear.

Somewhere in that bio that mentioned, was it Le Brie or... Le Brie in Switzerland, yes.

In Switzerland, yes. When were you there? I was there just a lecture on the creativity of Jesus, how to mirror his artistic genius. I was at the Dutch branch, which was great, it was the first time I was able to bring the whole family out and give them an experience of...

I went as a student of Le Brie in 2001. I came back to lecture in 2002, and so they had me back a year later, I guess to redeem myself, and yeah, I came back 2003 as a lecturer, again 2005, 2010, and just...

Well, yeah, since you.

Were totally leaving it up to our imagination. About your age, I wasn't sure.

If you were there with Francis Schaeffer or not. The sound of his voice, can't you easily tell he's a young person? I mean, when you speak, you could be a.

Hundred or so. Well, when he starts saying forties, you know, it just threw me way off. That was a joke. That was, I know, but he left no indication where he actually was.

Well, put it this way, I used to hang out with Abraham Kuyper.

A totally different Abraham Kuyper, it's a guy that runs a dry-cleaning business, right? Yeah, great guy, great guy, great name. And it might also interest our listeners to know that you have a connection with a very dear friend of mine, going back to 1995, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and has something to do with your former employment with the.

Christian Research Institute. Yeah, I used to be a researcher, that was my first real full-time job back in the late 90s, a researcher for the Christian Research Institute. James would, maybe once or twice a year, written a tiny book called Is Your God Too Small?

That was an introduction to the doctrine. 19, 20 year old punk would say, would you give it a read and maybe endorse it? He fired me. He emailed me an endorsement, and was, and I quote, this book made Norman Geisler sick.

Did you say that James wrote.

That? Well, I hope that you realize that James White, before he met me, and he actually will say this very often in public, he was devoid of all humor until he met me. He was just a dry, dusty, nerdy theologian before he met me.

Then I began to corrupt his morals and all that. But yeah, that's always a shame when brilliant men like Norman Geisler can be so far off on an important issue like the doctrines of grace, and even on ecumenism with Rome, which he is very much a part of, famously saying that the Church of Rome is not a false church with some truth, it's a true church with some falsehood.

And that is, I don't think he could be farther from the truth on that. Yeah, I think Norm, I met him as.

A maybe 14-year-old, brand-new, just regenerate Christian. The Lord used him to turn me on to apologetics and theology. He gave a lecture on the problem of evil, and now I probably 80 of... But he was used through providence to really turn me on to studying deeper, taking my faith more seriously, and loving God with my mind.

But I have noticed, you know, his book Chosen but Free from, I guess that was over 10 years ago now, is a fascinating... in what happens in letting Scripture be our presupposition that goggles on, that you already have some presuppositions that you bring to the text.

Norm's case, but he presupposes a libertarian account of free will, and then wears that, undermines his sovereignty. And so I interact in my... and explain foreign to the text, I've been warping your theology.

Yeah, some of the folks who are.

Non-reformed and anti-reformed, and obviously Dr. Geisner would be in the anti-reformed category, even though he has categorized himself as a moderate Calvinist, which most, I think, non and anti-reformed people do, unless you're a real extremist who attempts to condemn all of it.

But there seems to be a lopsidedness between philosophy and theology, where for some reason the philosophical approach to understanding the Bible far outweighs the theological approach. Am I off base there?

I think you're spot-on, and let me let me take it.

Just beyond the free will debate for a second. You know, in the free will debate, if you assume, one case in point would be if you erase a creed a little bit last time when I was on the air, that if I tried to guarantee your love for me, and I snuck into your house and installed a computer chip that forced you to love me, so you wake up and like a robot, you know, of Thaddeus, it wouldn't be authentic.

If you project that same creaturely limitation into the sky, he was going to guarantee our love response. He's confined like we are. The only way he could conceivably do that is to only reduce us to a robot, if he's going to evoke a genuine love response.

And it's that kind of objecting our limitations as creatures onto the Creator. Arminianism seems very subtle the way it happens. You start with all kinds of unquestioned, unbiblical presuppositions, and those get projected into the sky.

Well, a more contemporary example that I was just thinking about this morning, I've been working on an article, and the article I've been working on all morning is exploring just this political moment we find ourselves in.

And one of the articles, by someone speaking about Biola to love the LGBTQ community, but it's not love because there's still Now, if you take just the headline there, you know, Christians are claiming to love, just peel away the layers of what's going on.

And by the way, the author for the identity, taking that at face value, it is unloving on that worldview foundation to call homosexuality a sin. If, on the other hand, you are starting with doesn't just say a typical love that says, we're broken, we need help, we need redemption, we need grace all together.

It's not, I'm content with you having, being who you are right now. It says, I love you, and because I love you so much, I am relentlessly committed to the creation of your deepest joy. And so, in other words, love isn't a neutral term.

We're going to dump all kinds of worldview baggage into that word, and it comes down to, you know, bringing Kuyper back into the lectures on Calvinism, has a very, what he calls, a normalist view of reality.

We find ourselves now with all of our desires as normal, but then he says in a biblical worldview, a biblical worldview is an abnormalist world, unquestioned, we're in need of redemption. And so that deeper worldview question, are we normalists or abnormalists about human nature?

Do we think we're perfect just the way we are? The answer to that fundamental question is now going to shape how you define love and what it means to actually love the LGBTQ community. And I'm all for that community getting radical expressions of love from the Christian community, but how we define love is going to have everything to do.

Yes, our.

Modern society has turned a song by Mr. Rogers into their gospel, which is, I like you as you are, I wouldn't want to change you, or even rearrange you, I like you as you are, I like you as you are, I like you like you as you are.

And is that a.

Love? It's a little pitchy the way you sing it, but yeah, you're right on point. And of.

Course, when when you find out that a precious loved one is a heroin addict, or a methamphetamine addict, or a drunkard, or doing something else like that, that hey, they think that that gives them pleasure.

If they're not hurting anybody else, why not just love them like that and let them make their own choices? Because to violate or try to redirect their choices or get them to totally reverse their choices and their actions is, oh, that's unloving.

And of course, nobody brings up the fact, or very few people, at least very few of the liberals or leftists bring up the fact, why doesn't that also go for the reverse as far as the homosexuals view of evangelical Christianity?

Why is that not hate, that they disagree with our theology and philosophy, and even might even equate it to the Nazis or something horrific, which is absolutely absurd and ridiculous, but they really are playing a double standard there.

Yeah, I mean, take.

Kerfield. Right. She had been convinced living in that her defined her core identity. Right. And it was through a neighbor who loved Jesus and his wife, loving her, opening their home to her, having her around their dinner table, and clarifying the gospel to her, it became apparent she had bought into a fundamental lie about who she was, which is a lie that's just rampant in our culture, that the lie that says, who I want to have sex with is a fundamental, core, immutable, and once a deeper identity, I am loved by, redeemed by, was died for by Jesus, that was a game-changer for her.

Now her happily married and has children and is thriving and flourishing, that story is today's dominant narrative. Right. It's hateful and bigoted by death. Consistent, we have to celebrate that narrative, too.

Mainstream narrative, she's, you know, branded as a heretic, you know, the same way a Salem witch would have been hunted back in the day. It's similar now under the news. If.

Anybody would like to listen to the interviews that I conducted with Rosaria Butterfield, you can go to the Iron Trip and Zion Radio website. I'm starting to talk like Elmer Fudd, I don't understand what's happening to me.

The Iron Sharpens Iron Radio website, ironsharpensironradio .com, ironsharpensironradio .com, and go to the archive in the top right corner of the page and you can type in Butterfield, it's spelt just like it sounds, Butterfield into this search engine and you will come up with, I believe I interviewed her twice, I definitely at least interviewed her twice, I can't remember right now if I interviewed her three times or not, but excellent interviews.

And the Reverend.

Buzz Taylor has something to say. Well, yeah, I just wanted to give a little verbal underscore because I believe that what we heard in the last five minutes was probably worth the price of the entire program, if I can put it that way, that we go from scripture...

All right, you can leave now, Buzz. Well, Chris, I didn't get to the second part of it yet, but we go from scripture to life and not the reverse, and I was gonna say everything in the last five minutes was was perfect.

Until Chris started singing. I think I made a valid point though, didn't I? But.

You know, you were mentioning just before that about, you know, how, I mean, I have really, I've talked to a lot of people about the doctrines of grace, as you can imagine, and that excuse that they give about, well, that would make me a robot, has been, like, the number one, way out ahead of all its rivals.

Going back to.

Norman Geisler, you mean? Was that his saying? I believe he had said a very.

Similar thing. Everybody says that, so, you know, I don't know who got originally credited for it, but here, see, this is the way my mind works. What did.

They say before robots were invented? It's a good question. I had a Roman Catholic friend of mine tell me during a, my friend, and perhaps he's listening, I hope he is, Robert Posh, who actually can be credited for being the spark that created the annual great debates that I conducted with James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries on Long Island between Protestants and Catholics, because Robert Posh, a Roman Catholic, used to invite people over his home, both Catholic and Protestant, purposely so that they would sit around, eat, drink, and argue.

He just really got off on that very much, and it was, I thought it was invigorating. I had a great time, and Bob and I were usually the only two left still going back and forth arguing over our religion, and Bob said to me, your religion, your Calvinistic religion, turns men into robots.

And I said, how? He said, well, if you don't have the freedom to either accept or reject Christ, you are a robot. So I said, okay, what is your greatest goal in life? He said, well, eventually to be in heaven.

I said, okay, can you reject Christ in heaven? Of course not. I said, so your greatest goal in life is to be a robot? And after pausing for a few moments, he actually said, maybe you can reject Christ in heaven.

Oh, rather than admit that he was in a corner. But even more, if you even more proving or telling that the that definition is false, what about God himself? Is God just a cosmic robot because he cannot sin?

Because he cannot violate his nature and character? Does that make him a robot? Yeah. But anyway, we're going to the first break of the day, and when we come back, we will start launching into Create, Mirroring the Artistic Genius of Jesus.

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You for many years to come. Welcome back. This is Chris Orrins, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is Thaddeus Williams. We are discussing the theme, Create, Mirroring the Artistic Genius of Jesus, which happens to be a chapter out of his book, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History.

If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisorrinson at gmail .com, chrisorrinson at gmail .com. And if you could give our listeners who missed the first two interviews we did on that book, Reflect, just so we could get a summary and an overview of that book so we know the context from which this chapter is being extracted for.

Our discussion today. Tell us about Reflect. The idea that everybody worships. You know, we tend to think, we build these categories. You have the theist, people who believe in God, and people... I begin the whole book questioning that and saying, well, when I look at Stalin's League of Militant Atheists, when you actually study that, they weren't really that atheistic because they just... from God to Lord Stalin.

Stalin became their new supreme deity, the one who demanded unquestioning obedience. When you look at trying to make a clean break with religion, these are the same guys who hired a 14-year-old actress named Mademoiselle Candet to dress up as the goddess of reason, and they marched her down the Seine River into Notre Dame Cathedral and sang hymns to their new goddess of reason.

And so there's this idea that we are of human nature to worship something bigger than yourself. Beyond that, to say not only are we all worshipers, not only are we all on our knees to something. You know, G .K. Chesterton said it well when he said, if you abolish God, the government becomes God.

You know, he's picking up on this theme that if you refuse the gospel of Jesus, you don't end up in some nebulous, you deify the government, you deify all on our knees to something. And so in Reflect, I'm exploring how those different deities, because if you look at Psalm 115 is a good case about ancient idolatry, become just as dumb as their idols.

They become just... not only are we all becoming like what all identity is wrapped up, become more childish. They slowly lack the romantic partner's unimaginative clone. And so I'm asking the claim to worship Jesus becoming more like him.

We should resemble Christ and not just claim the intellectual virtues of Jesus. If we're really worshiping Jesus and not just claiming to, how will that reshape our emotional lives, the stuff that gets our blood boiling, our imaginations?

How is it going to become like him? What does that mean for our.

Intellects, our emotions, our imagination? Well, thank you for that summary. And I am going to a question from a listener that is off our specific topic, but I will ask it nonetheless before we get into the heart of what we really intended to talk about.

Sure. Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania says, how would you respond to noted open theist author Greg Boyd's assertion that if God knows what a particular person is going to do in the future, then that person is not truly free to make self-determining choices.

God's foreknowledge is held to be at odds with human freedom. Yeah, great question. He commits exactly the same effect. He takes creaturely limitations and then projects them into the sky on God when he's and evoke are in the language of Ezekiel that beats for him.

If God will of what it would be like for him, Greg Boyd, a creature, a finite creature, a creation, logically guaranteed love response, nullify the relationship. It wouldn't be real love anymore. Like that is very tough.

His theology and his, his epistemology, his view of knowledge, he's defining the scope of what God can do based on the scope guarantee the love response of his wife without dehumanizing his wife. Therefore, God can't guarantee our love response without reducing us to his and Boyd's entire open theist system.

Starting again, not with he's his limitation upward onto God. So in a human context, it guarantee what you would do tomorrow. The only way I can guarantee what you do tomorrow is by kind of tyrant and controlling you again with the creation that the creature defines.

Then the only way God could know the future is if he reduces us to what he's projecting himself. You racist.

Well, thank you, Gordy. And guess what? You have won a free copy of the book reflect becoming yourself by mirroring the greatest person in history by our guests, Thaddeus Williams. And I know you live close by to Cumberland Valley Bible book service.

So you could pick that up at any time since Mechanicsburg is only about 10 minutes away, saving our friends, Todd and Patty Jennings of Cumberland Valley Bible book service, the shipping cost. So thanks a lot for contributing to today's program with your question.

And someone not so close to Cumberland Valley Bible book service, all the way in Slovenia. We have Joe in Slovenia who says thanks for having the brilliant brother Thaddeus. Almost lost my track here.

Thanks for having the brilliant brother Thaddeus back to back for this great topic. My question is, what if any relationship is there between the regulative principle of worship and mirroring Jesus's creative genius?

Would adherence to the regulative principle stifle legitimate creativity in worship? Should we even consider attempting creativity in worship? If so, what would be the proper limits of our creativity in worship?

In general, how would mirroring Jesus's creative genius relate to worship? That's a very good question because you're going to get different answers even from people who claim to all agree on the regulative principle.

But anyway, if you could, and perhaps you could define the regulative principle first and then respond to Joe in Slovenia's question.

Some of my theological heroes, like J .I. Packer, is the idea that not only that we should worship, but how the liturgical dance, flag dance, the local congregation, or some interpretive dance that is going to be an act of worship, then it raises the question, well, is my flag dancing and interpretive dancing commands us to worship?

Chris, help me out. Is that pretty close? Am I approximating the idea of the regulative principle? Don't go above and beyond scripture in your forms of worship because scripture is the standard. You want to stick to the forms spelled out explicitly in scripture.

Is there anything you would add to that?

Yes, that the Christians that would adhere to the regulative principle of worship would say that the New Testament typically is the blueprint for how we worship because, obviously, we are not to import things that were unique to the worship of the Israelites in the temple and so forth that are now to be done away with.

In fact, you would have many Reformed people who adhere to the regulative principle of worship denouncing as heresy if someone were to incorporate some of those items that are clearly fulfilled completely in Christ and not to be repeated in the New Testament.

So this would be strictly a New Testament use of the scripture, or the application of only the New Testament, not really the old.

So what I would say is, with the regulative principle, that that includes, Be Thou My Vision. Let's say that includes singing Fairest Lord Jesus. And I think that's in bounds. Singing hymns to the Lord commanded by Paul in Ephesians,.

It fits with the regulative principle. Actually, the exclusive psalmists would disagree with you on that. Okay. Those who agree, those who believe in the... We can have on another show.

I'm not sure how much of your listenership falls into that category.

We definitely have some. We definitely have some.

Modest point that you could sing Amazing Grace without being a damnable heretic. ...to the Lord, the resurrection of Jesus. One of the many things that the resurrection teaches us is that matter matters to God.

Matter matters to God. If matter didn't matter, if we were not fixed, then Jesus could have died, he could have been crucified, and then just stayed dead. His body could have decomposed in the tomb, and his spirit could have just floated off, he could have gone off to some spiritual dimension.

If you read Luke's account, they go to the tomb as empty. Aligned with the history of the Christian church on this, Jesus resurrected not as an idea, not as a holic, not as an inspirational ethic, but he was empty.

Now, one of the implications I draw from that in the book is that because Jesus resurrected not as a ghost, confirmation of what he said at the very beginning of scripture, making matter after forming the material world out of his creative genius, God, and that it is good.

In Slovenia, because matter matters to God, in a Christian worldview, that ought to be reflected in how we abide by the regulative principle. An acoustic rendition of... Physical components of worship, whether you're pounding on a pipe organ, or strumming a guitar, or...

It matters. Components of proven, not only by Genesis 1, more of what I'm arguing in the chapter is, if we're really worshiping and becoming like Jesus, matter will matter to us. It means there will be a higher...

...some of the universe, and you trivialize that God, you don't make matters of your matter. The bottom of every... immediately recognize the same Bach, who's the aim and final end of all what I'm arguing in the book, it's not so much a question of whether we apply them, how we apply...

Yes, and one other thing that I failed to add, I guess, to the definition, is that those who adhere to the regulative principle typically believe that silence in the New Testament is a... marks a prohibition, whereas many other Christians who do not adhere to the regulative principle view silence as a liberty, or as an open door for liberty, and more creativity, and personal opinion in regard to what is going on in the worship service.

As long as the things that are commanded aren't absent or violated, they would view the silence in the New Testament as giving more of a wide spectrum of possibilities. Right, and we are going to our midway break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

If you live outside of the USA, please only remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable. Don't go away. We're going to be right back at Welling right after these messages with Thaddeus J. Williams and our subject at hand, creativity.

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Lindbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lindbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century. Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service.

It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant. It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing.