April 25, 2017 Show with Ken Samples on “Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 25th day of April 2017.

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I'm delighted to have back on the program an old friend of mine going back to the late 1980s,

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Kenneth R. Samples, who is a philosopher, theologian, former senior research consultant and correspondence editor at the

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Christian Research Institute, also known as CRI. He's the former co -host of the

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Bible Answer Man radio broadcast, current senior research scholar at Reasons to Believe, author of a number of books including

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Christian Endgame, Seven Truths That Change the World, A World of Difference, and more.

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He's a leader of Reason to Believe's Straight Thinking podcast, host of the

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Reflections blog, and speaker at universities and churches worldwide.

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He's a frequent guest on radio programs such as the Frank Sontag Show, Issues, etc., and Stand to Reason, and also, of course,

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. He's an adjunct professor at Biola University and member of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and the

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Evangelical Theological Society and the International Society of Christian Apologetics.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. Kenneth R. Samples. Hello there,

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Chris. It's really a pleasure to be with you again, and I'm looking forward to your interview.

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I always enjoy interacting with you on so many different theological and philosophical issues, so thank you for having me on again.

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I consider it a real privilege. And let me repeat our email address for our listeners in the event that they'd like to join us on the air with questions of their own.

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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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And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And in studio with me is the Reverend Buzz Taylor co -hosting again. And it's good to be back.

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What's left of me anyway? Yeah, he can barely speak today. He's got something probably that I passed on to him.

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Well, at least we can tell the difference between you and me today. Yeah, that's right. Other than the stark contrast in intelligence.

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You'll catch up one day, don't worry. Well, today we are talking about one of Ken's books,

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Without a Doubt, answering the 20 toughest faith questions. And I know that you have this book broken up into three major parts, the questions that you consider to be the toughest faith questions.

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You have thinking through questions about faith in God, thinking through questions about faith in Jesus Christ, and thinking through objections to the

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Christian faith. And let me ask you, Ken, why did you think that this specific book was needed to be added to other books that are in a similar vein, seeking to ask difficult questions that your average person may have?

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What was missing in the literary world that you thought that this was a needed volume? Yeah, that's a terrific question,

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Chris. And I certainly agree there are some very good apologetics -oriented books out there.

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And if you read my book, Without a Doubt, you'll notice that I've been influenced by a variety of people, everybody from, you know,

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St. Augustine to Blaise Pascal to C .S. Lewis to people writing today. I think one thing, let me say, first of all, the reason

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I wrote the book, you know, I spent a lot of time teaching at colleges and universities, and I'd also spent some time on the

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Bible Answer Man, and I've been asked a lot of questions. And I thought, you know, a great way to respond to people is in the form of a question.

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And so I thought, you know, I want to write a book that will address what

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I think are some of the most challenging questions. I picked 20 of them. So the book really kind of came out of my teaching and my interacting with both

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Christians and non -Christians. I will tell you what I think is a unique feature of my book, and I think it's probably true of all the books that I've written.

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A lot of times apologetic books focus on a particular area. A lot of my friends are philosophers, and so they use philosophy as a means for defending

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Christianity, and that has a deep history. All the way back to the Middle Ages, there were thoughtful people within Christendom that used philosophy as a handmaid.

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Some people use science as a way of defending Christianity. Others use literature, like C .S.

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Lewis, J .R .R. Tolkien, people of that nature. I think one thing that I try to do, particularly in this book, without a doubt, and I do it in other books, is

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I try to bring together both apologetics and theology. I think a weakness sometimes in our apologetics focus is that we do not tie it carefully enough and closely enough to a sound biblical theology.

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So in Without a Doubt, you know, I deal with questions like the existence of God, and I deal with questions like the problem of evil, and a variety of other things.

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But I also address issues like Scripture, and the Trinity, and Christ's deity.

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And so what I try to do is to address apologetics and continue to draw people back to historic

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Christianity that is rooted in God's Word. And so I think

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Probably Without a Doubt has been my most successful book, and I guess what I mean by that, it probably is the best -selling book that I've written.

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But it's probably also been the one that's used most. A guy contacted me just last weekend.

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He's a Lutheran teacher, and he says, we use Without a Doubt at our Lutheran high school, and a thousand students have gone through the apologetics class, and we use your book.

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And I thought, wow, why would a Lutheran gravitate toward my book? Well, again, because it, you know,

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I have a chapter on the creeds, I try to bring it back to Scripture, so Lutherans, Reformed, Anglican, Baptists, I think would be attracted to that format.

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And you know, I will always do that. I don't want to get off on philosophy for philosophy's sake, or science, or even literature.

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It's always intended as a vehicle, as a tool to draw people to God and to what

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He has revealed in His sacred text. Yeah, well, this is quite a hefty book. It's nearly 260 pages, and that does not include the index or the footnotes.

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And this is quite an impressive book. And if you'd like to join us on the air, as I said, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Perhaps you have a tough question of your own. Reminds me of an interview

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I did with Dr. R .C. Sproul years ago on Tough Questions Christians Face, which was actually the theme of one of the

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Ligonier conferences that he was conducting when I conducted that interview with him.

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But obviously, these conversations, especially if we are sitting around in our living rooms or on a train or an airplane or a bus or something, in a waiting room somewhere, or having a conversation with an unbeliever, they may ask, how can anyone know that God exists?

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That is probably the most asked question by skeptics and unbelievers that you can possibly come up with.

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What is your response to that? Yeah, that's the very first question of my book, and I agree with you.

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I've taught enough philosophy to know that people want to know, well, is your belief in God just your own private belief, or do you actually have some, you know, foundational reasons for believing it?

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Let me say this, Chris, I have talked with a lot of really brilliant apologists in my time.

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I knew Dr. Greg Bonson, I know John Frame, who are both in the presuppositional camp of apologetics, but I also knew

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Walter Martin and John Warwick Montgomery, and they were, Gary Habermas is a friend there in the more evidentialist approach, and then

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I certainly have known Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig, who are more in the classical approach, and so I've been influenced by different schools of apologetics.

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I gravitate toward a school of apologetics that really is known in logic as an abductive approach, or what we might call a cumulative case, and that's how

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I answer the question, how do I know that God exists? I think a powerful way of answering that question is to say that belief in God, and not just belief in any general

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God, like the God of theism, but belief in the God of historic Christianity, the belief in the

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God of the Bible, is the best explanation for the most meaningful realities of our life, and we can take some of those realities, and that's what

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I do in the chapter. You know, you look at the universe, the universe is stunning, not just for its beauty and its fine tuning, but the best science indicates that the universe had a beginning.

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Well, how would we account for all matter, energy, space, and time coming into being from nothing, and how do we account for the fact that so much of the world has to be designed or fine -tuned to allow for human life?

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But we can also look at other areas. What about morality? Where does morality come from? Why do most of us feel that torturing children for the fun of it is wrong?

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Or we can look at other particular areas of logic.

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Why do the laws of logic work? Where do they come from? Why is it that mathematics is a reliable way of understanding the world?

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And then we can even move to some of the most powerful evidence, and that is the person of Jesus Christ.

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How do account for a person whose life was morally perfect?

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I mean, I know a lot of people, and none of them are perfect. And I know myself, and I know

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I'm not perfect. But everything I've been able to discover about Jesus is that according to the eyewitnesses who knew him well, he lived a perfect life.

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No one's death has ever been as extraordinary as the death of Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross at the hands of Pontius Pilate.

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And then the remarkable resurrection from the dead. How do we account for the person of Jesus?

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So the way I approach that question is, I say to the atheist, to the skeptic, to whomever may inquire, and even

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Christians have questions like, well, how can I actually know I have faith? But how does faith and reason work together?

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I think belief in the God of the Bible provides the best explanation for all of the meaningful realities that we encounter in life.

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And not only do each of these count as evidences, but in a legal case, you would make a cumulative case.

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All of these add up to even more evidence that God is the best explanation for these realities.

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Now what I like about that argument is that doesn't mean that other people can't make their case.

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I mean, an atheist can make a case, or a skeptic or an agnostic might make a case that nobody can know that God exists, or maybe a

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Mormon wants to make a case for the Mormon God or the Hindu God or whomever wants to make their case.

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But I can say, look, I think the best explanation is found in that the

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God of the provides this incredible justification and basis. And so in chapter one,

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I think I look at eight different particular areas that I think God does a remarkable job of explaining the nature of reality.

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Well, why don't you go through those eight reasons in summary form? Yeah, the first one is that God uniquely accounts for the physical universe's beginning.

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You know, this is based on the idea that scientists believe the universe had a singular beginning.

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This is rooted in the Christian idea of creation ex nihilo. The book of Genesis, I think in the very first verse, in the beginning,

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God created the heavens and the earth. That expression heavens and earth in Hebrew can be translated the totality of all things.

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So an ancient holy book would convey the idea that the universe had a beginning from nothing.

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I think that's what science indicates. A second one is that God uniquely accounts for the order, complexity, and design in the universe.

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The universe seems to be fine -tuned to allow for the emergence of intelligent life.

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God uniquely accounts for the reality of abstract, non -physical realities. I remember being a senior in college at Concordia University, a

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Lutheran college in Southern California, and I was taking a physics course, and I began to realize that physicists use mathematics as a means of understanding, explaining the world.

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And I thought to myself, how is it possible that a mathematical idea in the mind of Albert Einstein could actually match the very nature of reality?

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Well, why does math work? Why does logic work? Where do numbers come from?

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What about universal concepts? That is, you need to explain not only the world you can see, but you need to explain the world you can't see.

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I like to think of these abstract entities, numbers, logic, mathematics, as kind of the software.

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They are the ones that show how things work, and you can see this in some of the writings of reform scholars,

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Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bonson, John Frame. They talk about the transcendental argument that God grounds things like logic and math and science.

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Another one is that God uniquely accounts for the reality of objective ethical values. You know, thou shalt not murder.

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How about the idea that people have inherent dignity and moral worth? I mean, the sanctity of human life in Western civilization is rooted in the theological truth of the image of God.

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People are made in the image of God, and because they have the image of God, they have dignity.

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And if you attack, if you murder the image of God, that's not only taking the life of that innocent person, but it's an actual attack upon God.

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So the idea that it doesn't matter if it's a baby within the womb, or it's an aged person who is suffering from Alzheimer's, people have dignity, and they have value, and there are moral principles built into the world, and one of them is that human life is sacred.

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Another one is that God uniquely accounts for the meaning, purpose, and significance that human beings sense and yearn for.

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You know, I was thinking just today at lunch that I think the Trinity explains a lot.

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The Trinity means that God is relational. I mean, God doesn't have to create in order to get love or to get relationships.

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Allah, the God of Islam, he's alone in eternity. He has no one to love, so in one sense he has to create in order to, you know, create angels or humans to get relationships, but that's not so with the

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Trinity. The Father begets the Son from eternity. There is an eternal father -son relationship, and from that father -son relationship extends the

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Holy Spirit, and so God is a relational being. Analogously, and I'm using an analogy here,

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God's like a family, and so human beings yearn for, I mean, if I gave a poll and asked people, what is the most important thing to you in your life?

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I think a lot of people would say relationships. You know, they want to have a relationship that they can share themselves, and they can find fulfillment in.

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I believe all human beings are yearning, longing, desiring for love, for satisfaction, and fulfillment, and if everybody really wants a relationship, it could be that we're yearning for an eternal, a transcendent, an unchanging relationship that will never end, and that's our desire for God.

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So our internal longings, I think, are best explained by God. Another one is our sense of the divine.

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You know, John Calvin in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, he says we have what he called in Latin the sensus divinitatis, that God has made all of us with an awareness, a sense that there is a divine being who is our creator and who we are morally accountable to.

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The vast majority of people in the world are religious, at least 85 percent, and even those who say they're not religious, like skeptics and atheists, they act religious.

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I mean, the communists, they acted religious. The existentialists of the 20th century,

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Jean -Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, etc., they acted very religious. I think the best explanation for why human beings are so religious and value religiosity is that God made us that way.

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So that would be another point. I mentioned that God accounts for the enigma of man, and here

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I'm kind of pulling something from the great 17th -century scientist

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Blaise Pascal, who said that humans are an enigma, they're a riddle, they're a puzzle.

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They are great and wretched simultaneously, and Pascal was taking that from the Bible. He said we're great because we're made in the image of God.

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We have capabilities that extend beyond the animal, but at the same time we're wretched, we're fallen, we're broken, and I think that's an ideal picture and explanation of human beings.

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Human beings have extraordinary abilities in math, in science, in philosophy, in technology, and yet everybody

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I know is a broken human being. Everybody I know is morally flawed, and so I think the biblical explanation of humanity best explains.

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Another one, God uniquely accounts for the claims, character, and credentials of Jesus Christ. Jesus claimed to be

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God. He performed extraordinary miracles. He taught like virtually no man ever taught his ability to conquer death.

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I think the best explanation is that in fact there is a God, and Jesus is the

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Son of God. And then finally, kind of summing it all up, that God uniquely accounts for the meaningful realities of life.

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That is, I can go through eight individual arguments, but in the end I can say it's a cumulative case.

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The evidence really develops upon itself, and so I believe a powerful way of reasoning about God is to say that the

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Judeo -Christian perspective, the historic Christian view of the

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God of the Bible, does an extraordinary job of explaining reality, and that we have rational justification for believing that our faith and our trust in him is reasonable and correct and something we should embrace.

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You brought up Allah before, the fictitious

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God of the Muslim, and it's interesting how you said that their understanding of God is a

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God who has no loving relationship in eternity past.

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Well, it's interesting that he really does not, even according to their own theology in Islam, he does not have a loving parental relationship with his followers, meaning the

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Muslims or anybody that he would claim to, or they would claim to, have a following to Allah.

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He is not depicted that way, as a loving father. They don't use that kind of terminology.

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That's exactly right. The word father does not appear in the Qur 'an, and there is a logical tension here,

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Chris, because, you know, in the Qur 'an, Allah has given 99 names, and one of them is the loving.

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And in Arabic, it's not, you know, a narcissistic love where you admire yourself in the mirror, but it's a self -giving love.

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But here's the problem. Allah doesn't have anyone to love before he creates the angels and human beings, and yet the

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Qur 'an also says is that Allah is dependent upon nothing, but if he has no one to love, it appears that he is dependent upon creation to get love.

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So I think there is an inherent contradiction, and of course many others when it comes to the religion of Islam, but that again shows,

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I think, how important the Trinity is, that our view of God is so deep and sweeping.

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You know, God doesn't need us, but out of his love, he sheds his love upon us.

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He brings us into that loving community, and so the Trinity is so very rich.

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And I'll tell you, I have asked Muslims, I asked a couple Muslim apologists, and I asked a

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Jewish fellows as well. I said, who does Allah love in eternity before he created the world?

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And I asked a couple Jewish guys that, and they were stunned. I said, who did Yahweh, I said, you believe in a single solitary being, you know, you're not a

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Christian, so you don't believe in a one God and three persons. Well, who did Yahweh love in eternity before he created the world?

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And they were stunned by that question. I think the

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Trinity explains love, it explains relationships, and I think that's a very powerful way of reasoning for the truth of Christianity.

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When we return from the break, I'd like you to discuss another thing that comes up all the time when you are having conversations with skeptics and unbelievers, or perhaps even liberals who have a sub -biblical or anti -biblical concept of God or a divine being, and that's the theodicy, that enigmatic question on how possibly a

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God who is all good and all loving, who is in fact the very definition of love, can exist, can coexist simultaneously with evil in this world.

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And when we come back from the break, we'll have you address that. And we already have several listeners, more than several, waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

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So we hope to get to each and every one of you before the end of the program. And in the meantime, if anybody else would like to join us on the air as well, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. And remember to please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron radio blesses you for many years to come. Welcome back.

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This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

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Kenneth R. Samples, and we are discussing his book, Without a Doubt, Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions.

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If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

35:33

and please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

35:39

USA, and you may remain anonymous if it is about a personal and private matter that requires that you not identify yourself or at least that would make identifying yourself a much more uncomfortable situation.

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But Ken, before the break, I said that I wanted to have you discuss probably the second most asked question next to the very existence of God.

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The second question would involve the theodicy about how we could possibly defend that a

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God exists that is all good and all loving in the midst of this evil, wicked world that we live in, that's the kind of thing that you will hear

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Bill Maher continually regurgitate on his program, but if you could respond to that.

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Yeah, what a critical question, and you're exactly right. I mean, when people bring up objections and when people want to suggest that Christianity or belief in a personal

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God is not acceptable, usually they're going to go to the problem of evil, pain, and suffering.

36:54

You know, one way that this objection is raised is the following, that if God is good, if he's omnibenevolent, he's a good

37:03

God, then he would want to get rid of evil. And if God were all -powerful, if he were omnipotent, as we say, he would have the power to do so, but evil still exists.

37:15

So he's either not all good, or he's not all -powerful, or as many would suggest, an all -powerful, all -good

37:22

God just doesn't exist at all. But you know, you can take that same reasoning and adjust it and draw a valid conclusion as well.

37:33

You could say, for example, that if God were all -good, he would want to eliminate evil, and if he were all -powerful, he could, but since he hasn't done so yet, he may do so in the future.

37:47

And that's exactly what Christianity does say. Christianity says that God created the world, and it is a world in which there is pain and suffering and evil, but God has a purpose for that, and in the eschaton at the end of the ages,

38:07

God is going to eliminate all evil, and we are going to be ushered into the new creation.

38:15

I would argue, when it comes to this issue of evil,

38:22

I would want to make a couple points. One, I would say that, you know, when you say something is evil, and I agree, you know, what the

38:31

Nazis did to the Jews in the Holocaust was evil. What Mao did to millions of people was evil, and you know, you've got

38:41

Jeffrey Dahmer and all of these murderers, these are evil things.

38:47

But what's interesting is, it's true that evil pain and suffering raise questions in the mind of the believer, but I would return the favor to the atheist by saying, look, where did you get your idea of evil?

39:01

Evil can only exist if there is a standard of goodness. Evil is defined by a departure from or a breaking down of the nature of good.

39:14

I think in many respects that the atheist has to borrow the Christian worldview to make his objection against God.

39:22

It could be that atheists have the problem of the good. They have no ultimate standard of goodness by which they argue that God is failing.

39:32

I would also want to bring up in this kind of conversation that Scripture indicates that God has an adequate reason for allowing pain, suffering, and evil.

39:44

He hasn't told us all of the answers for that. God says to Job, the book of Job, one of the parts of the wisdom literature of the

39:52

Old Testament, when Job finally, after having so many devastating things happen to him and his family, he has a personal discussion with God, and I think

40:04

I could summarize what God says by saying that God says, you know, Job, where were you when

40:10

I made the universe? I think what God, I think what Yahweh was conveying at that point is that,

40:16

Job, I don't think that you have the moral, intellectual, or spiritual bandwidth, wherewithal, to even understand all of my purposes, but I want you to trust me.

40:30

So God says he has a purpose behind all of these things, and this kind of leads to the idea that is very popular in Christian theology, and that is the greater good argument.

40:44

That is that God allows evil, pain, and suffering because there are goods that come out of it.

40:51

Christians are often fond of saying that maybe the greatest evil in the history of the world is that God came in human flesh, came unto his own people to save them, and the leaders of the

41:06

Jewish community arrested him, tried him, turned him over to the Romans to be crucified.

41:12

It's hard to imagine more of an injustice than to hear Jesus, the perfect person, is put on trial, said to be a blasphemer, said to have committed all of these terrible things to be a false prophet, but out of this tremendous injustice comes what?

41:34

Salvation for all who believe. And so God has a way of bringing good out of evil, and I can tell you that the only way you can really develop character in life, the only way you can really develop virtue in life is often by going through real difficulties, and so God has a purpose for the evil and the suffering that happens in life, and the

42:04

Lord says that there's going to come a day when he's going to get rid of all evil.

42:11

He is going to, Satan and his minions, and all of the pain and suffering of the world, you know, will be eliminated.

42:21

So Christians believe there's real evil in the world, but we believe God has a purpose for it, and we believe there'll come a day when

42:28

God will get rid of it, and we believe also that if you have an objection to evil, then you need an explanation where moral goodness comes from, and I don't think the atheists have any good explanation for that.

42:42

So C .S. Lewis and Saint Augustine used to talk about evil being a severe mercy.

42:48

You know, sometimes pain... I went through a very serious health crisis about 14 years ago,

42:57

I contracted a bacterial infection, it went into my lung and spread to my brain, and I remember the doctor first thinking and telling me,

43:05

I think you might have brain cancer, and I thought, wow, here I am, 45 years old, and I may have brain cancer, but I can tell you that that suffering that I went through,

43:19

God used it remarkably to transform my life, and I think if God, you know,

43:25

I was talking with my son the other day, and I said, you know, Michael, if God took all pain and suffering out of the world, we might feel like we're independent and autonomous, and we have no need for God, but often suffering, it links us to God.

43:43

We know of our need for God, and so I think the major argument that Christians have made is that God has a greater good, and he tells us in the difficult circumstances.

43:55

So pain and suffering, you know, evil, in your case, Chris, losing your lovely wife at a very early age, suffering that people have, you know, sometimes people are incredibly depressed and struggle with mental health issues.

44:12

God says that he'll never leave us, he says that he's given us his own son, if God is for us, who can be against us, and then in Romans 828,

44:24

I've always been struck by that passage, that God is working all things together for good, for those who love him, those who are called according to his purpose, and when

44:33

I've looked at that, what is the all things that Paul means there? Most New Testament commentators say it's the most difficult things that God especially works for our good.

44:45

So yeah, evil is a difficult issue, pain and suffering is a challenging issue of life, but I think

44:51

Christian theism has the best explanation, and I think that the atheists often have to borrow elements of our worldview to then make a case against God, which is contradictory.

45:07

Oh yeah, they can't even determine that something is morally good or evil without borrowing from our worldview, because if they're atheists, every man has his own concept of what is the right thing to do, and what is improper, that no one else really has any grounds to oppose, in any kind of a moral sense anyway.

45:33

I mean, because if we are just evolved bags of protoplasm, then we may think that for our particular family or neighborhood or ethnicity or religion, for us to thrive and prosper on this earth is to murder everyone else.

45:57

Well, who's to say that's wrong if you're an atheist? I think that's exactly right,

46:03

Chris, and I think atheism, the naturalist worldview that stands behind atheism,

46:09

I think they have a very difficult time trying to explain rationality and reason, why you can trust your mind if it's the product of blind mechanistic evolutionary processes.

46:22

They have a hard time explaining objective morality, why murder is wrong, why being virtuous and generous and altruistic is morally right, and then

46:32

I think they have a whale of a hard time trying to find meaning and purpose and significance.

46:38

But the Christian worldview, I think, really scores high in being able to explain all of those things, and so I like to say the

46:48

Christian worldview is the best explanation for all of these challenging issues. Yes, and as we read in Ecclesiastes 7 -2, it is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting.

47:08

And it is interesting that this just goes hand in hand with what you were saying about Romans 8 -28, that it is specifically intended by Paul that the trials and the tragedies that we go through will work together for the good.

47:26

Now, I don't mean to get all sectarian here, but I cannot help but to apply something about the

47:35

Reformed faith in this area, in this question, in contrast to the

47:42

Arminian or non -Calvinist or anti -Calvinist realm of even the

47:48

Christian faith. In many ways, an Arminian or non -Calvinist, if he's consistent, is reduced to tragedy on this earth being purposeless.

48:03

And you were just speaking before about God's purpose in the evil of this world and in the tragedies and trials that we go through, because you have amongst

48:13

Arminians, and of course you can't broad brush them, there are all different varieties, you will have some who are even of the extreme heretical version of the

48:23

Word of Faith movement, where God has nothing to do with your child being hit by a car and killed, or your wife developing cancer, terminal incurable cancer, or any of these vast numbers of tragedies and trials that we go through.

48:45

As if God is sitting back in his throne waiting for us to do something that merits his attention, that makes us worthy of him interacting or something.

49:00

These are things that the devil is doing here, and yet you wonder, is God that impotent, that the devil is having his way over the will of God over and over and over again?

49:10

It doesn't even make sense if you believe in a God that is all -powerful. Yeah, absolutely.

49:18

I mean, what I like to call the Augustinian Reformed perspective, which has had a deep and abiding influence throughout

49:28

Church history. I mean, any of the things that Calvin picked up on, Augustine picked on them before.

49:36

I think the idea of God's sovereignty is a very critical biblical teaching, that God is in control, that God is a ruler, he is a king.

49:49

And I think that, you know, what's amazing is that when you go through pain and suffering and difficulty, when you have loss, when you go through the valleys, you know, the deep difficulties of life, it's critically important to know that God is in control, that he has a purpose in all of this.

50:13

I remember reading a book by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was an Austrian Jew who was captured in the

50:20

Holocaust. His wife was murdered with their unborn child. He lost his parents,

50:26

I think a sibling. He survived Auschwitz. And coming out of the

50:31

Holocaust, he said that when Jews gave up, when the

50:38

Jews in the camps gave up hope, they'd fall over dead. They were being starved to death, and they were being forced to do heavy manual labor.

50:48

When they gave up hope that God would rescue them, or that the Allies would rescue them. I mean, Anne Frank died two weeks before her camp was liberated.

50:59

You know, they'd fall over dead. And Frankl says that despair equals suffering without meaning.

51:08

What I think is great about the sovereignty of God, I mean, you know, God might decide to let some suffering come my way.

51:15

He may let a lot of suffering come my way. God might rough me up. But I know there's a purpose.

51:22

I know there's meaning. I know that he's not only a king, he's also a loving father.

51:28

And you know, a lot of Christians, I think, give the devil way too much credit. I don't major in the devil.

51:34

I major in the triune God. But I say this about the devil. The devil is a creature.

51:40

And if God were to remove his providential hand, the devil would tumble into non -existence.

51:47

Now, that's not to say the devil is not powerful. It is not to say that he will not and has not caused a great deal of havoc in the world.

51:57

But let's be clear, the devil is not a rival for God. And I think that, amazingly, the sovereignty of God, which is deeply influenced and emphasized by people in the

52:10

Reformed tradition, is a great source of encouragement when people are going through difficult suffering.

52:17

I can suffer. I can put up with a lot of trouble if I know that there's purpose in it, and that God is working it for my good.

52:27

And so, you know, this is where theology and biblical doctrine really have practical application in helping people work through the difficult times of their life.

52:38

And so Bible study and discussion of theology can be a great resource and is very practical.

52:47

And so, you know, God's sovereignty is something that I hold on to, because, you know,

52:56

I mean, what if God were to say, you know, I'm trying to make the world better,

53:02

I'm trying to deal with the devil, and I'm trying to accomplish all these things, but I need you to help me, or I'm not going to be able to accomplish it.

53:11

Now, that would bother me. If I had brain lesions thinking that God was doing his best but wasn't able to pull it off, no,

53:20

I have a theology of sovereignty, and I derive that theology of sovereignty from Scripture itself.

53:28

And it was true of Calvin, but Luther had a very similar view, Augustine, even the

53:33

Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas affirmed much of that idea. So you're right, a big view of God.

53:43

Makes a big difference in our daily lives. And we have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

53:50

And hold on to your thought, Buzz Taylor, and let us know what that is when we return from the break.

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01:03:59

that's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back this is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in our guest today for the full two hours is

01:04:07

Kenneth R. Samples. We are discussing his book Without a Doubt, answering the 20 toughest faith questions.

01:04:14

If you'd like to join us on the air our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

01:04:20

Before I return to our discussion I have some announcements to make. This weekend the

01:04:26

Reverend Buzz Taylor and I are attending, God willing, the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology where Iron Sharpens Iron intends to have an exhibitor's booth.

01:04:37

That will be held April 28th through the 30th at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

01:04:46

The theme of the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology this year is Reformation, Recovering the

01:04:52

Essence of the Gospel and speakers include Carl Truman, Richard Phillips and Daniel Doriani.

01:04:59

For more details go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

01:05:05

click on events and then click on the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology.

01:05:10

Although the early registration discounts are closed they are welcoming walk -in registrations so you can feel free to show up on the 28th and come to the conference.

01:05:25

You'll just have to pay a higher registration fee than normal and we hope to see you there at the

01:05:30

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. For those of you living on Long Island, New York or nearby, my friends at the ministry known as New York Apologetics, they are having their

01:05:44

Dare to Defend conference, the same dates or at least overlapping ones, Friday the 28th of April 7 to 9 p .m.

01:05:52

and Saturday the 29th of April 9 a .m. to 4 p .m. The theme of that conference is

01:05:59

Will You Survive the Culture? and the speakers include

01:06:04

Greg Kochel, Frank Turek and Mary Jo Sharp. If you'd like more details on that conference go to newyorkapologetics .com,

01:06:13

newyorkapologetics .com and we hope to hear good reports from those of you who went to that conference.

01:06:21

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio will have an exhibitors booth there as well but it will be manned by my friend

01:06:27

Pastor Josh Fryman of Community Baptist Church in Riverhead, Long Island, New York and I thank him for doing that.

01:06:34

And last but not least, the 2017 U .S. Ministers' Conference being conducted by the

01:06:41

Banner of Truth is being held Tuesday May 30 through June 1 and I thank

01:06:47

Pat Daly and the folks at the Banner of Truth for inviting me to participate in this event even though I am not an ordained minister and I am looking forward to this event.

01:06:58

These speakers include Joel Beeky, Jeff Thomas, William Vandewaard, Mark Johnston, Jonathan Master, Colton Wynn and Ian Hamilton.

01:07:13

Most of those men have been guests on this program and I have enjoyed interviewing them very much.

01:07:19

The theme of this conference is the Living and Enduring Word. For details go to BannerofTruth .org,

01:07:26

BannerofTruth .org, click on Events and then click on U .S. Ministers' Conference.

01:07:32

Of course if you live in the United Kingdom, and I know that we do have many listeners in the United Kingdom, in the

01:07:38

Iron Sharpens Iron audience, you can click on UK Ministers' Conference and there are several of them that you have to choose from.

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So that's BannerofTruth .org and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the

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U .S. Ministers' Conference and this is exclusively for men in leadership in the church, pastors, elders, deacons and other men in leadership positions.

01:08:04

So we thank Banner of Truth for conducting this conference. Last but not least, please remember that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is in urgent need of your donations and your advertising dollars if you care to sponsor the program.

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01:09:04

We are now returning to our discussion with Ken Samples. Before the break, my co -host the

01:09:10

Reverend Buzz Taylor either had a question or comment that he wanted to introduce into the discussion.

01:09:16

Well I think I can make it both a question and a comment but you mentioned a name that I haven't heard in probably decades now and that's

01:09:23

Victor Franco and I think that it attests to the mark on a man of God's image just the way he was able to take the fact that he was stripped down to nothing that gives meaning in life and was able to turn it into a study on human behavior like he did.

01:09:41

It was just amazing but didn't he say also that some of the people that survived their only motivation was to hopefully get revenge even on some of the guards and the officers that they just wanted to live for that reason alone and it worked?

01:10:00

Yeah you know Franco is a fascinating figure. I mean he

01:10:06

I think was somewhat skeptical early in his life but when he survived

01:10:13

Auschwitz he came out and departed from you know Freud and Jung in terms of his view of psychology and said that what people really need in life is hope and purpose and meaning.

01:10:26

I developed what he called logotherapy and you know that's your other point that was a very powerful one.

01:10:34

I mean people need a reason you know to make their way and I think it's extraordinary that he was able to to live through one of the worst events in the history of humanity and yet was able to you know to try to reach out to people and give them hope and meaning and purpose and you know whether you like it or not revenge can drive people and some people of course wanted revenge for what was done against them.

01:11:07

If you'd like to read a remarkable book it's Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning.

01:11:14

It's one of the amazing books about the holocaust and about the meaning and purpose in life.

01:11:22

And Buzz did you have a question? That was it. Okay and it's interesting you were talking earlier about what a terrifying thing it would be to be having brain surgery and having a god who was impotent and being able to successfully guide a surgeon through that operation or to heal you or whatever the case is if that was according to his will but he could not do it.

01:11:49

What a horrible concept of god. It reminded me of Rabbi Kushner. A lot of people may have forgotten who he is or a lot of younger people may have no clue who he was or is but he wrote the book

01:12:05

Why Bad Things Happen to Good People and his answer to that question was that god is a very good and very loving god but he is not omnipotent.

01:12:19

He is not almighty or all -powerful. Things are beyond his control. What a horrible god to believe in and I don't mean to beat up on my

01:12:28

Arminian friends but I can't help but see that very often there is a correlation between that way of thinking and many

01:12:38

Arminians or non -Calvinists who although they would never say that god is not all -powerful, their logic would lead one to wonder if that was their belief because they often will say well god allows evil in this world because he needs to preserve the free will of man.

01:13:03

It's almost like an idol. Perhaps it's not even almost. I think free will is an idol that has been erected that is such a vital idol that even god will not dare do anything to infringe upon that will so therefore all of the evil that is currently taking place and has always took place on this earth must continue to take place because all we cannot dare impugn or intrude into the almighty free will of man and the sad thing is that it's not even a real concept.

01:13:44

Although men freely choose evil all the time, they cannot in their state of deadness and sin freely please god by choosing him in a saving manner with an unregenerate heart.

01:14:00

Am I right on this? You know what I think is interesting in this context

01:14:06

Chris is that you know I work in a in a world where I encounter a lot of evangelical

01:14:12

Christians and some of them are Calvinists, a lot of them lean toward a more

01:14:18

Wesleyan Armenian context but I think the point you're making here is it's not just important in terms of you know dealing with you know is god in control of the world and does that give us confidence in the living of our lives?

01:14:34

But I want to also make the comment that a lot of times evangelical

01:14:39

Christians kind of look at theology in a very narrow way, that is they don't think about things like doctrinal theology, systematic theology, they also kind of don't recognize that Christians have been studying theology for a long time and have developed various schools of thought about these issues and you know

01:15:03

I think it's important for evangelicals to appreciate that Christians have been debating these issues for a long time and they do come to different positions and I believe some positions are much better than other positions and you know

01:15:22

I will say again I remember having a conversation with a surgeon when

01:15:27

I was very ill, this is November, December of 2003 and a surgeon came in and I was kind of foggy because I had brain lesions and they were pumping with a lot of medications but I asked him,

01:15:42

I said what can you do with these lesions? And he said well we could drill holes in your head and I thought you know

01:15:50

I said to him I said you know I'm a philosopher, can we hold off on that until the last? Now fortunately it was bacteria so when they discovered they were able to give me antibiotics,

01:16:04

I took antibiotics, 20 antibiotic pills for six months and it finally knocked out the bacteria but you know

01:16:13

I want a big god when I think you know my brain may be you know filled with disease and I think that that is that's a critical point that God's sovereignty, that he is a ruler, that he is a king, that he is in control of all things, that he is also a loving father, that this you know theology is practical, theology is important and I think that there are theologies that don't give

01:16:47

God the kind of glory and honor that you know he deserves.

01:16:53

Armenians certainly believe that God is all -powerful, they believe that God is all good, but they look at things very differently as you said in terms of the freedom of human beings and issues like that and maybe the

01:17:08

Lord allows the differences in the schools of theology because as your very show says, iron sharpens iron and we can learn and challenge each other to have a greater biblical theology.

01:17:22

And thank God that our non -Calvinist, non -reformed, and even anti -reformed

01:17:31

Christian brethren will very often unconsciously adopt our worldview and our theology and our soteriology and our understanding of God's sovereignty even if it is not truly well thought out or logically concluded or embraced because they realize the consistency of this train of thought within the realm of the sovereignty of God but very often you will hear the non -Calvinist at a funeral say, well it was his time, that was the time that God had chosen to call him home or you could go on and on and on when perhaps when crippled on a sickbed or all kinds of scenarios where the

01:18:18

Armenian will say this was God's will and it's just amazing because very often it is in stark contrast to their own theology in print anyway.

01:18:31

We are going to now, we better go to some of our listener questions before we run out of time here and let me just one more time announce our email address it's chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:18:46

chrisarnson at gmail .com we have Casey originally from the

01:18:54

Philippines now living in Kannapolis, North Carolina and Casey says and I have to enlarge

01:19:01

Casey's font on his email, hello again Mr. Samples this is

01:19:07

Casey I wanted to share an observation with you and then ask you a question. It seems clear to me that America will never change for the better until the church of Jesus Christ goes through a biblical apologetics reformation at the grassroots and this spreads outwards into the culture at the grassroots.

01:19:26

The majority determine laws and policy in the USA and if the majority are restored to a biblical worldview that is defended, that is defended then

01:19:37

America as a whole will return back to God. What can we do to spread more biblical doctrine and apologetics training and education in the lives of pastors and lay people?

01:19:47

It sounds like Casey has been listening to Buzz Taylor our post -millennialist participant in this program but if you could comment on that.

01:19:59

Well I can tell you I really like those post -millennial optimistic guys. They lift me up and I hope they're right.

01:20:09

I know Casey, Casey is a Facebook friend and a thoughtful young man and I appreciate his comments.

01:20:18

I concur you know I think back to the first great awakening here in America that was largely a movement within the

01:20:28

New England part of the world. Jonathan Edwards and others were some of the great preachers and teachers and authors of that period in which the

01:20:41

Lord uniquely I think used to draw people to faith.

01:20:47

I think that it is very easy to begin to think that politics can change the world when in reality the enduring change in people's lives begins in their souls, a reconciliation to God, a transformation of their moral life.

01:21:07

So we need a new time of spiritual renew, reformation, a return to the great teachings of Scripture and of course this is the 500th anniversary of the

01:21:22

Protestant Reformation. I would say Casey that our churches are really important.

01:21:29

I'll give you a quote again that I gave last time I was with Chris. Yaroslav Pelikan, who was a

01:21:36

Christian historian at Yale said, the church is always more than a school but the church cannot be less than a school.

01:21:44

I think our churches hold the promise of great renewal and transformation but they need to be churches that are teaching and preaching and instructing people in God's Word, in Scripture, caring for people, living out

01:22:01

Christian values. I know there are times where churches seem crippled, they seem impotent, and then sometimes they believe false doctrines like health, wealth, and prosperity teaching and things of that nature.

01:22:16

But I do believe that apologetics and evangelism need to go together. We live at a time where there are a lot of secularists, especially in the academy, especially in the universities within our country.

01:22:29

Western Europe and North America have lots of skepticism. I think it's important for people to hear the truth about Jesus's life, death, and resurrection and that there are good reasons to believe that it is true, that Christians have strong views about science, about logic, about history.

01:22:53

And so I think apologetics really is necessary in our time and we need to tie it to a good, strong biblical theology.

01:23:02

And, you know, we need to pray and we need to have confidence that the

01:23:09

Lord cares about His people. And so I want to encourage

01:23:14

Casey and those listening to keep studying, to keep praying and asking the Lord what place

01:23:20

God would have you in His service. Well, Casey, guess what?

01:23:26

You've won a free copy of Without a Doubt, answering the 20 toughest faith questions.

01:23:33

So make sure that we have your mailing address and we'll have that shipped out to you, compliments of Reasons to Believe and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com.

01:23:48

Keep your eye open for a package in the mail from CVBBS .com.

01:23:54

We have a listener in West Ice Slip, Long Island, New York, Tom, who's a Missouri Synod Lutheran who says, this is just a comment,

01:24:02

I guess I'm more Calvinist than I thought. That's good to hear.

01:24:11

We have Daniel from Bakersfield, California, who says, my question for Ken Samples is, what do you say to a skeptic who claims that faith is blind or illogical?

01:24:28

These can be seen or tested through scientific observation. Well, at least they may claim that.

01:24:35

Obviously, they often do the opposite, but Ken, if you could. Yeah, that's a very important question.

01:24:42

A lot of skeptics think that faith is believing things you know isn't so, that faith is anti -evidence, it's anti -facts, it's not logical.

01:24:55

But if you open up pages of the New Testament and you look at the Greek words for faith, pistis is the noun faith, pistou is the

01:25:04

Greek word for believe. I think a very common biblical and theological definition of faith is that faith is trust in a reliable source.

01:25:20

You know, in the dative case of the Greek, not to get too much into the biblical languages, but we often talk about putting our faith in someone.

01:25:29

So in the New Testament, we put our faith into the Lord Jesus Christ, or we trust in God.

01:25:37

Now, if faith is confident trust, and that's the root of that word pistou, trust, it's confident trust in a reliable source.

01:25:46

That really brings together faith and reason. I don't put my faith in just anything or anyone, it's got to be reliable, it's got to be trustworthy.

01:25:57

I guess if you wanted to wax philosophical, you would say it has to be a reasonable source.

01:26:05

And so I think from a biblical point of view, faith involves a reason and a analysis of what can

01:26:16

I confidently believe in. So from a biblical point of view, we don't have blind faith.

01:26:24

We don't engage in irrationality. We believe that reason and rationality come from God.

01:26:32

Human beings are made in God's image. We believe that reason is

01:26:38

God's good gift to human beings, and we believe ultimately that faith and reason are compatible.

01:26:45

You see that in Saint Augustine, you see that in Thomas Aquinas, you see that in many

01:26:50

Christian thinkers through the centuries, that, you know, why was it that the

01:26:56

Christian worldview birthed and nurtured and that science flourished within Christian Europe?

01:27:02

Because Christianity believes there's a real world, that humans have the capacity to reason, and that doing science is honorable before the

01:27:12

Creator. So, you know, the idea that Christianity is anti -reason or that faith is illogical, that's not historically accurate and is really nonsense.

01:27:29

Christians have always believed that faith and reason are compatible because we put our trust into God, and He is the most reasonable and reliable source.

01:27:39

Amen. And very often the things that the atheist will think is scientifically proven has no scientific basis at all, so they make a lot of claims that aren't even true.

01:27:54

And you know what, Chris? I teach a logic class at Biola University, and I use a book called

01:28:02

A Concise Introduction to Logic by Pat Hurley, and in that book he has little biographies on 10 logicians who've made great contributions to logic.

01:28:12

Guess what? Six of them are Christian. If logic is so incompatible with Christianity, why have some of the great contributions in the field of logic come from Christian thinkers?

01:28:24

Because Christians value reason and logic as a good gift from God Almighty. Yes, and of course there is an element of faith, however.

01:28:37

For instance, the classic text in 1

01:28:44

Corinthians 1 -23, we preach Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness.

01:28:53

We do put our faith in things that the world views as foolishness is unbelievable.

01:29:01

In fact, to a degree, there is a sense that we are believing in things that ordinarily might be unbelievable, and which is why we sing

01:29:10

Amazing Grace, because of the fact that if we have an understanding, a correct biblical understanding of who we are, we know that it defies our imaginations that a

01:29:24

God who is all -pure and all -holy and all -good and all -just and all -righteous would actually reach down to wicked, disgusting, deplorable humans like us and save us through the death of his own son and through his pouring his own wrath upon his own son in our place.

01:29:53

Those things do really defy our imagination, which is why also the scriptures teach that God's ways are not our ways.

01:30:01

That's an important point. I mean, as a logic teacher, I always want to emphasize that Christians believe in faith and reason, that we hold a faith that is reasonable based on facts and evidence, but you bring up a very important point.

01:30:18

We also believe that there are elements of Christianity that are mysterious, that we have limitations and boundaries.

01:30:26

I mean, how can Jesus be a single person with both a divine and human nature? How is it that God is one in essence but three in person?

01:30:35

These are deep issues that the human mind cannot fully comprehend, we cannot fully fathom, and so there are times where it appears that Christians might believe things that seem strange or at odds with people, and as a logician, as a teacher of logic,

01:30:59

I realize there's a lot about God that I can't fully comprehend, and so faith and reason go together.

01:31:07

And we are going to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:31:16

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

01:31:24

USA. And by the way, Daniel in Bakersfield, California, you have also won a free copy of Without a

01:31:29

Doubt, answering the 20 toughest faith questions. Thank you very much for participating in today's show with your question.

01:31:36

God willing, we'll be right back with Ken Samples after these messages, so don't go away. One sure way all

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01:35:58

Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you've just tuned us in, our guest has been for the last 90 minutes and will be for the next half hour to come,

01:36:06

Ken Samples, and we are discussing his book, Without a Doubt, answering the 20 toughest faith questions.

01:36:14

And I already know we obviously have to have you back probably about 10 more times to get to all the actual 20 questions in the book,

01:36:22

Ken. And if anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:36:29

and we're running out of time, so I would advise that you do so quickly if you would like to join us on the air with a question.

01:36:36

Before I go to any more of our listener questions, Ken, we were talking about faith before, and faith is actually, in the 21st century, in fact it probably has been for quite some time, a very popular idea and concept.

01:36:53

But the thing is, it's a false faith. There are people who think it's a virtue to have faith in faith, that there is no object, especially not

01:37:05

God, not Christ and his shed blood, not in the inerrant word of God.

01:37:12

It's some kind of undescribed, undefined, unexplained optimism or something like that.

01:37:18

You've got to have faith, as the late George Michael, the pop star, once sang a song, you've got to have faith.

01:37:26

And people seem to all agree, or at least optimistic people or people who believe you should be optimistic, will have some kind of a concept.

01:37:35

Well, that's a good thing to have faith in, and very much akin to those who gather around their

01:37:42

Thanksgiving dinner tables year after year, and they're thankful, but not thankful to God, not thankful to any supreme being.

01:37:51

They're just thankful because they know that they should, for some reason, be thankful, and there's no real entity that they're actually extending that thanks to.

01:38:02

They're just saying, we're thankful that we have food on our table and a roof over our heads, and that we have children who are gathered around us, and so on.

01:38:10

But if you could, comment. Yeah, yeah, very important point, Chris. I mean, there are intellectual virtues mentioned in Scripture, you know, that were to be discerning.

01:38:20

John says, don't believe every spirit, but put them to the test. You know, we're taught to,

01:38:26

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5 .21, test all things and hold fast to the truth.

01:38:33

The context of that is prophecy. You know, in the book of Acts, Paul said, let the prophets speak, but then evaluate everything they say.

01:38:44

You know, these are intellectual virtues, and you're right. I mean, there are plenty of people in the New Age movement.

01:38:50

There are plenty of people, you know, who believe in optimism and self -help, and they believe in all kinds of, you know, kind of a faith without a reliable context for it.

01:39:06

And so, you know, you're right. I mean, people are optimistic and have faith in all kinds of things, but the life of Jesus can be investigated historically.

01:39:17

There is evidence of his resurrection. There are truth claims made in the

01:39:23

Bible that can be evaluated, and I think of one example in the book of Acts, where Luke says the

01:39:32

Bereans are more noble than the Thessalonians. Why? Because the Bereans, they listened to Paul's preaching, but they opened up the

01:39:39

Hebrew Bible to see if what Paul was saying, you know, jived with the Old Testament. We're to be people who check sources and evaluate, and there's nothing wrong with testing and discerning things.

01:39:53

That's very, very important. And we do have a listener, our listener that has joined us a number of times with excellent questions, all the way in Slovenia.

01:40:09

Joe says, thanks for having, brother, samples back. One of the most difficult questions that I regularly face with both unbelievers and professed

01:40:18

Christians alike is the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. It seems very difficult to give clear, concise evidences that are received as compelling for limiting our authority in all matters of faith and practice to the scriptures of the

01:40:33

Old and New Testaments. What are your most convincing arguments for rejecting other sources of extra -biblical religious authority and establishing the sufficiency of the

01:40:43

Christian scriptures as the basis for polemics and apologetics? Thank you for helping us know, love, and serve our

01:40:50

Lord today. You know, that's a great question, and Joe always does ask really good questions.

01:40:57

I remember, Chris, back in 1997,

01:41:03

I had a dialogue debate with Mitchell Pacwa, who is a Jesuit theologian, a real gentleman, a scholar, and he presented the

01:41:13

Catholic view of authority, and I defended the Protestant position of Sola Scriptura.

01:41:20

And the position I took in that debate with Mitch was, I believe that Jesus believed in Sola Scriptura.

01:41:30

That is, when you look through the things that Jesus says in the Gospels, you know, he says that Scripture is this authority that cannot be, you know, set aside.

01:41:45

It seems to me that Jesus himself, in his teaching, takes the position that the truth of God's Word is the final authority for the individual

01:41:58

Christian and for the Church itself. Now, you can hear that debate.

01:42:03

Reasons .org has our dialogue debate with Mitch Pacwa all those years ago,

01:42:09

I think it was at Southern Methodist University, but I lay out the passages and I argue vigorously that I think one of the strongest arguments in favor of Scripture as the supreme authority is the very way in which

01:42:24

Jesus talks about the authority of God's Word. And don't you think that a key text in this is 2

01:42:33

Timothy 3, going to verse 16, and this is one of those times when

01:42:40

I think the NIV has the most powerful translation of this, is, "...all

01:42:46

Scripture is God -breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

01:43:01

First of all, there is no other source of authority, or any other source that claims to have authority over us, that is

01:43:10

God -breathed. Not even our Roman Catholic friends believe that their tradition is

01:43:17

God -breathed, even though they elevate it to a level of authority equal with the

01:43:22

Scripture, or even superior to Scripture. And the Scriptures equip us thoroughly for every single good work.

01:43:32

Isn't that like the most powerful reason that you would believe in Sola Scriptura, right there? I think that is a great passage, and I think what's critical there is that we're complete in our beliefs, and we're complete in our values, and our behaviors, and our work.

01:43:51

And I think that that is a very powerful passage, and you know, I value tradition,

01:43:57

I think it's important to know about councils,

01:44:03

I think it's important to take into account what Church Fathers said, but even

01:44:08

Tom Oden, in his book looking at the authority of Scripture, argued that the

01:44:16

Church Fathers saw Scripture as a defining authority, and so absolutely,

01:44:24

I think maybe the critical, you know, it's hard to know what is the most important elements that come out of the

01:44:33

Reformation, but along with salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, certainly the view that Scripture is the supreme authority.

01:44:44

Tradition has value, and it's important, and it carries authority, but not the clenching authority.

01:44:52

And that's what I see from Jesus in the Gospels. He speaks of Scripture as it has the final clenching authority on all matters in dispute.

01:45:02

Well, this is slightly off topic, but I'm going to have you answer it anyway, because it's a first -time listener, or at least a first -time questioner.

01:45:11

Hardy, H -A -R -D -Y, in Auburn Hills, Michigan, says, what is one primary strategy you would use if a

01:45:21

Mormon or Jehovah's Witness came to your door? Interesting questions, because those two cults are really, in many respects, polar opposites of one another, one being monotheistic to the point of Arianism, and the other being polytheistic, although they would never call themselves polytheistic.

01:45:40

You can't escape, that's what they are, the Mormons. But if you could. Yes, well,

01:45:46

Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses do knock on my door, and they have for a very long time, and I've had many opportunities to talk with them.

01:45:55

One thing that I do, Hardy, with Mormons is, I'll set it up where we have 90 minutes to talk, and I say, look,

01:46:03

I'll let you talk for 30 minutes, I won't interrupt you, then let me talk for 30 minutes, and then the final 30 minutes we'll ask each other questions.

01:46:12

In my time, I say to them, look, I'm going to start describing a religion, and I want you to tell me what religion it is.

01:46:20

Now, this religion says that the Bible has been corrupted, and that God has need of a prophet to bring another book that can bring the truth out of the

01:46:33

Bible, and I begin to lay out these issues, and I ask them, now, what religion am I talking about?

01:46:39

And they'll say, well, you're talking about, you know, the Latter -day Saints, you're talking about Mormonism, and I say, no, I'm talking about Islam.

01:46:45

I say, your religion has incredible parallels with the religion of Islam.

01:46:52

A prophet, a corrupted book, New Revelation, many wives, that jolts them.

01:46:59

And I say, now, why is there the parallel there? With Jehovah's Witnesses, I say, look,

01:47:06

I do the same thing. Now, let's talk 90 minutes. You get the first 30, and I won't interrupt you.

01:47:12

Let me talk, and then we'll ask each other questions. I often will take things from the

01:47:19

Old Testament, where it says that things are true of Yahweh, that they're only true of Yahweh, that, you know,

01:47:27

He is the Lord, and He is the Savior. And then I point out passages in the

01:47:33

New Testament where the things that are said to be only true of Yahweh are actually true of Jesus, and I say,

01:47:41

Jesus must be Yahweh. I have found that those two approaches, now, no approach ever works in every case.

01:47:50

Evangelism, particularly, you know, evangelism with new religious movements, it's never easy.

01:47:56

People ask you difficult questions, you know, you get off track. I've had all kinds of issues over my 40 years of talking with people on, you know, at the front door, but I have found that these are ways to get them to think, and I hope to kind of jar them a little bit and give them something to think about, and then

01:48:17

I say, look, you know, bring back, you know, your Mormon guy, and we'll talk further, or go talk with people at the

01:48:25

Watchtower and see what they say, and then we can talk again. And I can't say that I've known a lot of people that have left the

01:48:34

Watchtower or Mormonism, but I do know some, and when I worked at the Christian Research Institute, I met a number of people who had rejected the theology of the

01:48:47

Watchtower, rejected the theology of Mormonism, and it had embraced Christianity.

01:48:53

And every time I was with Walter Martin, Mormons and witnesses would come out of the woodwork and say, they'd just hug

01:48:59

Walter and say, thank you for telling me the truth about, you know, the

01:49:04

Christian gospel. So, you know, that's the thing about cult evangelism. You don't have to go anywhere.

01:49:10

You can just sit in your apartment or your house, and they'll come knocking at your door, and they want to hear, and so that's a great opportunity for us to talk about Christ.

01:49:20

If you get my book, Without a Doubt, there are a lot of good things in the chapter on the

01:49:25

Trinity, on the chapter on the Incarnation, the chapter on salvation, that can help you kind of present an apologetic and an evangelistic point of view to both

01:49:36

Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Thank you, Hardy, and you are not only receiving a free copy of Ken Sample's book,

01:49:45

Without a Doubt, but since you are a first -time questioner, you're also getting a free copy of the

01:49:51

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, and please continue sending in good questions like that to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:50:01

Keep your eye open in the mail for a package from CVBBS, that's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service dot com,

01:50:09

CVBBS dot com. We have a Scott in Bryan, Ohio, who asks, the

01:50:19

Bible is often scrutinized for accuracy. Some suggest that the authors were dictated to by a spirit of word -for -word what to write in their books or letters, while others will say that the entire

01:50:33

Bible is open to conjecture due to the author's fallible human nature.

01:50:39

How does your guest suggest we answer such claims as these? Yeah, those are very important questions, and I think one thing that clearly stands in the favor of the integrity and authenticity of Scripture is that the

01:50:55

Gospels and the Epistles, the New Testament, has been examined over hundreds of years.

01:51:04

I mean, higher criticism has reigned in academic circles for several hundred years, so no book in the history of humankind has been scrutinized the way the

01:51:18

New Testament has, and I guess as well the Old Testament. And amazingly, the

01:51:25

Bible has stood up well to these challenges. I think that it is important to explore the issue of the inspiration of Scripture.

01:51:38

You know, there have been varying views about how to think about the inspiration of Scripture.

01:51:46

Clearly we're taught that it is the Holy Spirit that came upon the writers, upon the

01:51:53

Apostle Paul, upon Luke, John, the various New Testament authors.

01:51:59

Clearly they use their own language, their own writing abilities.

01:52:07

I remember when I first began studying the New Testament in Greek, I began to see that Paul's vocabulary was more sophisticated and academic than John's, and that the book of Hebrews is a very high -browed book of writing.

01:52:24

But what we generally believe when it comes to the inspiration of Scripture is that, yeah, the

01:52:30

Spirit of God used the vocabulary, the writing style of the various Apostles and authors of Scripture, but He ensured that their teachings would always retain truth, and so when we talk about biblical inerrancy, we believe that whatever

01:52:50

Scripture speaks to a topic, it speaks authentically, it speaks truthfully.

01:52:57

You know, the dictation theory that, you know, the Apostle sits down and kind of goes into a state where they're dictated upon,

01:53:09

I don't know any serious evangelical scholar who believes that, nor do we believe the liberal theories, where maybe the

01:53:16

Bible gets the moral truth right, but it, you know, mixes up a lot of the scientific and factual elements.

01:53:24

I think the last hundreds of years have indicated that the

01:53:29

Bible is the most scrutinized book in history, and it's held up, and that we can have good confidence that the portrait we have of God, of Christ, and of salvation is one we can put our confidence in.

01:53:43

I have a chapter in Without a Doubt on the question of inspiration and revelation, and I look at all of the passages, and I think it would be very helpful to Scott.

01:53:56

Yes, and let's not forget what we just said about 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, that all

01:54:04

Scripture is God -breathed, and from what I hear from my friends who are knowledgeable of New Testament Greek, that really the

01:54:13

Theanostas there, the original Greek language, means

01:54:18

God -breathed. Some of the other translations say inspired, but it really should say expired, but because of the fact when people hear expire, they think of death, so it doesn't connect with the modern

01:54:33

English mind, but it is God -breathed, so even though these were men who were fallible when they were writing

01:54:44

Scripture or having Scripture written by Immanuensis, it was directly from the

01:54:53

Spirit of God using that person's own unique personality and gifts, wouldn't you say?

01:55:01

Very good, yes, absolutely. The Holy Spirit supervised the whole process by which even though, as you say, these were fallible human beings, the

01:55:13

Spirit of God ensured that what they wrote was accurate and truthful, and Theopneustos, a very important term there, breathed out by God.

01:55:23

Amen, and I'd like you, before we go off the air, oh by the way,

01:55:28

Scott, you've also won a free copy of Without a Doubt, Answering the 20

01:55:34

Toughest Faith Questions by Kenneth Richard Samples. You won our last copy, as a matter of fact, and keep your eye open for a package from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

01:55:46

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com, and we thank

01:55:51

Patti and Todd Jennings, who own cvbbs, for shipping all of our winners in our audience their free

01:56:02

Bibles and books and other things they win by submitting questions. We also thank Reasons to Believe for providing the books.

01:56:10

I want you to have like three minutes to conclude the program with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of listeners today.

01:56:17

Yeah, thank you, Chris. Again, I want to say how honored I am to be on with you and Buzz, and I consider it real generous for you to have me on for the whole two hours and give me the opportunity to talk about my various books, so thank you for that.

01:56:35

It means a lot to me. You know, I wrote this book, Without a Doubt, for the very purpose of helping people who have questions, who need answers.

01:56:47

Some of these questions are difficult and they're challenging. I have spent most of my adult life reading and thinking and reflecting and debating and, you know, engaging with people about these kinds of things, and so if you are a person who has deep questions about the truth of Christianity, I think that this is a book that can be helpful.

01:57:14

I also think that it's pretty readable. I tried to write it as clear as I could, so it's a book you could give maybe to young people who are struggling with various issues, and I think a distinct feature of the book is that I try to tie my apologetic reasoning to the great truths of historic

01:57:34

Christianity. I think it's important that when we engage in evangelism and apologetics, we try to help a person arrive at a place where they can have confident trust that God's Word is truth.

01:57:51

So I offer this to your listening audience. I appreciate Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:57:58

I've known my friend Chris for a very long time. I miss his lovely wife, who was his better half,

01:58:05

I can tell you that. She sure was. And I want

01:58:10

Buzz to convince me to become a post -millennialist. I'm working on it still. Yeah, I don't know if you heard him through his near -death voice.

01:58:19

I'm still working on the book. I got a lot more done this morning. Good. Well, brother,

01:58:28

I want to make sure that our listeners have your website for reasons to believe.

01:58:37

That is reasons .org, and also anybody who wants to purchase any books by Kenneth R.

01:58:46

Samples, you can not only go to reasons .org, but you can also go to our sponsors at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at cvbbs .com,

01:58:59

and just ask them to give you a list of everything they have in stock by Kenneth R.

01:59:05

Samples, or they can order anything that is in print by Ken. And Ken, I look forward to having you back on the program.

01:59:12

I know we already have some dates scheduled for you, so our listeners should keep their eye open for announcements for you returning.

01:59:20

And I also, certainly we need to return to this same book as well, because we just scratched the surface of these 20 questions here.

01:59:30

We only got to probably three or so. Well, thank you, Chris. It's been great being with you, and again, thank you for your very generous time.

01:59:39

And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:44

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.