June 20, 2022 Show with Kelly Carter on “A Plan for the Advancement of Biblical Trinitarian Doctrine in the Church of Christ”

The Program’s Focus on Trinity and the Church of Christ

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carwile, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 20th day of June 2022.

I would appreciate our listeners, if you could, say an extra prayer, a special prayer for me today. Today would have been my 31st wedding anniversary with my late wife Julie, my precious late wife who is now in glory with Christ for eternity for the last 10 or so years.

And I know that at some point today it's going to hit me like a ton of bricks, but I would appreciate your prayers for me that I may continue to find peace with God. And I really do appreciate that. Today is a very special program.

A lot of people listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, even those that have listened to it for many years going back to 2005 when we first started, may not be aware of my personal story of how the very first church outside of Roman Catholicism where I was raised, the very first church that God used to spark a deep interest in the Scriptures in me and began in my life a journey of deeper study, deeper love, and deeper admiration of the Scriptures.

The very first church that the Lord used to begin that journey with me after leaving Roman Catholicism was the Church of Christ, those that are known for no instrumentation in their music, a cappella.

And along with that, actually, a lot of people may be unaware, there's a lot of similarities that the Church of Christ actually has with Reformed Baptists. They are an autonomous group. They believe in the autonomy and independence of each local congregation and that there is no higher authority outside of that local congregation other than the Word of God and Jesus Christ himself, the only authority that exists within the local congregations of the Church of Christ, just like Reformed Baptists are the elders, and they do believe in the plurality of elders, just like Reformed Baptists do.

But we're going to be discussing something interesting. In fact, because of that history of mine, I feel an indebtedness to the Church of Christ and especially those specific individuals in my life that the Lord used to draw me into deeper study of the Scriptures.

Because of that, I always delight when I hear of, I think, wonderful things happening in that movement, things that are positive advancements and progressions. And that's exactly what we're going to be discussing today, especially in regard to the Trinity.

My guest today is Kelly Carter. He's a first-time guest with us. He is lead minister of the Calgary Church of Christ in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the author of The Trinity in the Stone-Campbell Movement, a book that I am about halfway through reading and finding quite fascinating.

And today we are going to be addressing a plan for the advancement of biblical Trinitarian doctrine in the Church of Christ. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Triple Zion Radio, Kelly Carter.

Well, thanks, Chris, very much. I appreciate that. I'm happy to be on the program.

Yes, I think the two groups of people that might be most angered by our discussion today, unfortunately, are Reformed Baptists and people in the Church of Christ. I hope that is not the case, but I just have a suspicion that that will likely be the story, or not even Reformed Baptists, but Calvinists in general, my fellow brethren who are Calvinists.

But first of all, let's start off with hearing something about the Calgary Church of Christ in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and what might be unique about this congregation where you serve as the lead minister.

Well, I'm completely fine with, as you put it,.

That you entertained the idea of using musical instruments in your worship service. I'd be very opposed to you entertaining entertainment in your worship service.

Well, you know, that's always been a concern in Church of Christ. It's one of our arguments, that we didn't want anything that resembled it to be perhaps entertaining, but not intentional.

And of course, even a cappella can be very entertaining.

Absolutely.

I mean, one of my favorite groups to this day is the group a cappella, and I continue to follow Keith Lancaster, the founder of that very, very talented group, in his new work where he goes to different churches, basically helping them to learn to sing, and it is always conducted a cappella.

And another thing that some of my listeners might not realize is that I actually prefer a cappella in worship. In fact, I even prefer exclusive a cappella worship, and I have to be very quick to insert here that this is not the view of the church where I'm a member, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which is a Reformed Baptist church, a confessional Reformed Baptist church.

They do not share that view, but Charles Spurgeon did. Charles Spurgeon was a strict adherent to exclusive a cappella worship, and he was not, as many Reformed churches who share that view are, he was not an exclusive psalmist.

He believed in hymn singing because he believed that the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in the New Testament were not different ways of describing the psalms. He believed in the extra-biblical, non-canonical hymns to be included in worship, but he was a strict adherent of a cappella worship.

And by the way, I've also, might interest a lot of people, especially perhaps even those in the a cappella church of Christ, it might interest you to go to my website, ironsharpensironradio .com, and if you go to Podcast Past Shows, and you click on that, and you type in the search engine, John Price, just like the Price is right, John Price.

I interviewed John three times on the theme Exclusive A Cappella Worship Defended, part one, part two, and part three. And John is the author, he's a Reformed Baptist, keep in mind, pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Rochester, New York.

He is the author of Old Light on New Worship, Musical Instruments in the Worship of God, a Theological, Historical, and Psychological Study, which is, even though the word or the phrase Musical Instruments is in the title, it is actually a defense of exclusive a cappella worship.

So I wholeheartedly recommend that anybody interested in that subject look up those three interviews with John Price of Grace Baptist Church of Rochester, New York. One of the things that I want to do to clear the air immediately, because I do want most of our listener questions, and, in fact, I would hope that all of our listener questions would be involving the Trinity, which is our discussion today, the main theme of our discussion, a plan for the advancement of Biblical Trinitarian doctrine in the Church of Christ, to avoid a flood of questions that may come in on baptism, since that usually sets off the alarm bells and the minds of those outside of the Church of Christ.

And I'm speaking, of course, the Restoration Movement, also known as the Stone-Campbell Movement, because every Christian believes that there is a Church of Christ that they are a member of if they are a truly regenerate person.

But I'm speaking, of course, of the Restoration Movement, where people immediately may become aggressive, may become angry when they hear any mention of the Church of Christ in a positive fashion, because they immediately may remember a friend, a loved one, an acquaintance, a minister who is from a church with the name Church of Christ on the shingle, typically a small C for church, capital C for Christ.

They may have very negative memories of being told, no matter who they are, that they are not saved because they have not been baptized by immersion in the Church of Christ, by a Church of Christ member, with the same exact mindset that has become most typically associated with the Church of Christ.

I wanted the air to be cleared so we can focus our attention primarily on the Trinity. And I do want to read a part of the Calgary Church of Christ website, where this is actually under the non-negotiable beliefs.

And here it is. We believe salvation is God's free gift to us. There is an inability on our parts to save ourselves. We can never make up for our sin by self-improvement or good works. As a result, we need God's saving grace to end our alienation from God.

Salvation from sin and eternal life comes only through God's grace, as it is personally received by faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. And then the statement goes on to say, we believe every person believing in Jesus Christ is to repent of his or her sins, confess Jesus Christ as Lord, be baptized by immersion in water, and live a life committed to Jesus Christ, as outlined in the New Testament.

And when I read that on the Calgary Church of Christ website, I simply responded to myself, amen, because I would be very pleased if it was worded exactly in the same way in my own church's constitution.

Now, there are other differences that would separate myself from this congregation. As you go further and to explore the website, they are not theologically Reformed or Calvinistic, a .k .a. they are not Tulip followers.

But I also was very encouraged that although it is not your position as a church to identify as a group believing in unconditional election and the whole controversy over the freedom of the will and the fact that the will is bound and so on, those are part of debatable issues that you believe are proper amongst true, regenerate believers, that you recognize there are true believers who are nicknamed Calvinists, Reformed Christians, doctrines of sovereign grace.

But that is not the position that your church holds. But you do recognize the freedom that Christians have to believe in these things and to be involved in loving disagreement with one another. Am I correct on that?

Yeah, I'd say that's correct, Ren, but it doesn't mean that we are, as you know, completely out of line for me to say.

Praise God. Well, we have a tradition here. Yes, Christians do have traditions, as long as they don't make them authoritative. We have a tradition here where whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in, if any, and the kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And I would love to hear a summary of your story.

Kelly Carter’s Salvation Story and Early Exposure to the Church of Christ

Well, I negotiated my way through that. The way he's describing for me behind every... So I went to camp, and the first three or four days, I was going to Bible classes twice a day. I thought we would be canoeing, and we had about six of them.

And halfway through, I was thinking to myself, how could I possibly have hard-earned dollars to go to this Bible class? So I remember walking to them, what are we doing here? Like, this is not at all...

We're going and listening to sermons in the evening. I've got church every night. Excuse me, that was Wednesday. Thursday night, Chris.

Amen.

It's interesting. In Churches of Christ, it becomes the Churches of Christ because the people might be aware of that. That's been with me at all. And I'm sure part of that was just because I didn't come to Christ.

And so I was convinced that God loved me, that he loved me. I didn't even understand that I'd been a nominal Catholic 60 miles. If you take me back up to camp, I would love to be baptized. I told him what I wanted to do, and thank God.

I said, so who's that girl? You know, she's not for you. On the night of my baptism, I sat down on the log next to her. Her line was, so I'm going to be baptized tonight. And she looked at me, and she literally patted me on the leg and said...

It was totally her way of very kindly brushing me off and telling me to get lost. I'm sure she was interested in somebody else.

At least you didn't tell her, what's a girl like you doing on a log like this?

Well, there's more to the story. I'd been married for 43 years.

Praise God.

And so I met a wonderful woman. And from then on, you know, I met a volunteer named Bob. And we had a just wonderful and wonderful way of getting to know God and by that church. It was an incredible blessing.

And from there, just one thing, I read the Bible and was going to Bible classes every Sunday and learning. Wednesday nights. By the time I got to the Green Bible, because I just fell in love with it. I've been here 16 years.

By the way, here's a bit of trivia that you may not even be aware of. But I don't know if you're familiar with the heavyweight boxer who was the cause of Howard Cosell, the renowned sportscaster on ABC, the boxer that caused Howard Cosell to resign from covering the sport of professional boxing.

Randall Craig Cobb was a graduate of Ampling Christian University. He was also well known as the crazed biker in the movie Raising Arizona. And he was taking a pummeling from Larry Holmes and never was knocked down.

And because of the fact that he really didn't, after a while, he was not returning any blows to Holmes and was really standing there like a human punching bag. Howard Cosell was disgusted that they didn't call the fight.

And he was so angry because Randy Cobb was a bloody sack of meat at that point. He was just so furious that something serious and permanent could happen to Randall Cobb that he resigned from or refused to cover fighting again, boxing.

But I just thought I'd throw that little bit of trivia in there.

In response to that, I'll tell you that when I was in Abilene...

Very cool. He also was a champion kickboxer before he entered into the traditional boxing ring. And I can remember when he was asked, after Holmes beat him, he was asked by a reporter, Randy, will you fight Larry Holmes again?

And his reply instantly was, only if I can kick him. Well, we have to go to our first break right now. If you have questions for Kelly Carter, please try to ask about the Trinity, which will be the primary theme through the remainder of our program.

Send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give this your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

There's two things I'm hoping will be accomplished by today's interview, that Churches of Christ will see more of a need to delve into, discover, fall in love with, and worship the Trinity, according to the biblical Trinitarian doctrine.

And also, churches everywhere that claim to be Christian and even Trinitarian, who, as my friend James White has said in a book that he wrote on the subject, there is a forgotten Trinity, even by Trinitarians, that seem to put that glorious doctrine on a bottom shelf somewhere, rarely to be discussed, other than in some kind of formal creedal pronunciations.

But it is not a part of the life and worship of many Christians. In fact, there are many, according to Dr. White, over the years he has interviewed, I don't mean in formal interviews, but in conversation, he has had many discussions with professed Trinitarian Christians who give an unbiblical and ahistorical response to his asking for a definition of the Trinity.

Modalism is typically what he has heard from professingly Trinitarian Christians, which is a heretical understanding of the Trinity. And I'm not saying that they would consciously describe the Trinity in a modalist fashion, but they would unconsciously do so.

So I think that's one of the reasons that I want to come as a result of this interview, is for the Trinity to be exalted and discovered and worshipped. And also, I hope that today's program will teach a lesson to many of my listeners outside of the Church of Christ who pigeonhole or who attempt to pigeonhole every member and every congregation that identifies itself as being a part of the Church of Christ, because they're very difficult to pigeonhole today, especially in the 21st century, even though they've always had in-house debates, collegiate friendly disagreements, and even heated animosity and divisions.

They've always had that throughout their history, but there have been many who have tried to pigeonhole them, and that is nearly impossible in the 21st century. And our guest is one reason that he's making evident that you cannot just lump the Calvary Church of Christ in a category along with others, because as I said before, they do agree with Baptists on the independence and autonomy of each local congregation.

There's no headquarters, there's no hierarchy outside the local congregation that lays down doctrine and teaching as essentials to be believed that every minister and every congregation must follow in lockstep with some hierarchical structure.

So you will find differences among them, and I hope that this program will reveal that to our listeners today. If you have a question, as I said, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We'll be right back, so don't go away.

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The Need for Explicit Trinitarian Doctrine

Welcome back. This is Chris Orenson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is Kelly Carter, lead minister of the Calgary Church of Christ in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We are discussing a plan for the advancement of biblical Trinitarian doctrine in the Church of Christ.

And our email address is chrisorenson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. And before I take any listener questions that have already come in, I'd like to hear from you when did this craving on your part to learn more about the Trinity as it has been accurately believed historically and biblically, and perhaps at the same time you may have been experiencing an acknowledgement that there was something amiss in what you saw and heard in your average Church of Christ congregation in regard to this precious doctrine of the Trinity.

So what I was familiar, I wasn't hearing anything. I mean, I heard to be some there was reading, but it just received. I just thought that was kind of strange. I thought, well, this is something I need to look into.

Do you think that that phenomenon exists because of an actual conscious anti-Trinitarian viewpoint or ignorance of it because one of the hallmarks of the Church of Christ, and I think that it is really an indefensible view, if you believe that a minister should get up from the pulpit and actually exegete the Bible, he's using his own words.

Therefore, to say that you can never use words that are not in the Bible without being in error, I don't think that's a defensible point of view unless a church, and I don't know of any that does, has their minister or a person ascend into the pulpit and just read the Bible and then sit down, and then the service is over.

But is it because more of the fact that the very strict, it seems, approach, not by all, as we already said, we can't pigeonhole the Church of Christ and the congregations in it, but is it because of an ignorance, because of a disconnect with church history due to a refusal to use a non-biblical term like Trinity?

Not that the concept is unbiblical, obviously, since you and I both love the Trinity, but because of the fact that the Churches of Christ have an intentional avoidance of using unbiblical terms or terms not found in the Bible, they may have gradually become more and more disconnected from historical orthodoxy.

Yeah, I think the way you describe that is probably a humanitarian doctrine expression. Not to say, and unfortunately...

In fact, you say in your book that Thomas Campbell, Alexander's father, who was at some point for a significant portion of his Christian life and training was a theologically reformed Christian, a Calvinist and a Presbyterian, who held tenaciously at one point to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism and clearly revealed that he believed in the Trinity even after his participation in the restoration movement that sought to remove man-made creeds.

And by the way, I'd just like to interject here that I don't think anybody is truly non-creedal. Even the statement, I believe in no creed but the Scriptures, is a creedal statement. Once you begin writing things down about what you believe, like what you would find in every Church of Christ bulletin or pamphlet that you would find in the foyer or the narthex of the church, that would be a creedal statement because it lists bullet points of things that you must believe to be a Christian.

But if you could explain this strong adherence and belief and love of the doctrine of the Trinity that Thomas revealed, Thomas Campbell, and how this progressed into being such a non-essential teaching in the minds of many in the Church of Christ.

Yeah, well, again, I don't think that, and that had to do with the language outside the Bible. Both Campbell's language had foundations that were from the beginning. And he took a similar, but the thing that, unfortunately, was foundational.

Now, can you mark a point in Thomas's life when, much to my dismay, perhaps not to yours, he ceased to be a Calvinist? You mention in the book that he strongly adhered to the Westminster standards and really strongly proclaimed the Trinitarian doctrines found in those standards.

But, obviously, there was a point, at least to my understanding, perhaps not, where the actual teachings of Calvinism began to fade, if not abruptly end, in his thinking.

Yeah, I don't think he came to the United States in 1991 or so. Not so much moving away from thought. One of the things that his son says in the memoirs of Thomas Campbell, and talking about the end of his life, he actually says, my father was anybody I've ever known.

Yeah, I did read that. And, in fact, I want you to pick up right where you left off there, because we have to go to our midway break. So don't forget where you left off there about the Westminster Confession.

This is the longer the normal break, folks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires a longer break from us because the FCC requires them to localize geographically this program and all of their programming to Lake City, Florida, and they do so with their own public service announcements.

So please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information as possible that our advertisers provide so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to them. And remember, when you can't do anything that involves money with our advertisers, if you're in a position where you can't do anything in a responsive way that is financially involved, then please at least respond to our advertisers by thanking them for sponsoring this program if, indeed, you are grateful that there are those who share some of God's money with us to keep us on the air.

And send in your questions to Kelly Carter at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back. Don't go away.

More on Thomas Campbell, Calvinism, and Creeds

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All his work is done by hand from the cutting to the pleating of corners to the perimeter stitching. Jeffrey uses the finest and buttery soft imported leathers in a wide variety of gorgeous colors, like the turquoise goatskin tanned in Italy used for my Nestle All in 28th edition with a navy blue goatskin inside liner and the electric blue goatskin from a French tannery used to rebind a Reformation study Bible I used as a gift.

The silver gilding he added on the page edges has a stunning mirror finish resembling highly polished chrome. Jeffrey will customize your rebinding to your specifications and even emboss your logo into the leather, making whatever he rebinds a one-of-a-kind work of art.

For more details on Post Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding, go to PTLBibleRebinding .com. That's PTLBibleRebinding .com.

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. We're a diverse family of all ages.

Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ.