October 28, 2020 Show with Dr. Lane Tipton & Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington on “Defending the Faith Biblically” (Day 3 of a 5-Day Tribute to Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen)

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Carlisle, 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 in 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 Wednesday on this 28th day of October 2020 and I'd appreciate prayer today.

Today is a bittersweet day for me because today happens to be the birthday of my dear precious late wife

Julie celebrating her birthday in eternity with Christ and of course

I rejoice that she is with Christ for eternity but it is still a very sad day for me nonetheless so please keep me in your prayers.

Today is another reason for rejoicing in the

Lord because we have another tribute during our five day tribute to the late

Dr. Greg L. Bonson a world renowned theologian, scholar, philosopher, apologist, and debater and Dr.

Greg L. Bonson has been the inspiration to countless millions of Christians I'm sure globally and especially in the realm of apologetics and today is as I said day number three of our five day tribute and we have some special guests to pay tribute to Dr.

Bonson. The first guest I will introduce to you now is a dear friend that I've known for quite a long time now and he has been interviewed on this program many times in fact if you listen to this program regularly you will know that Dr.

Jeff Waddington, Jeffrey C. Waddington is currently in the midst of a series on Romans on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I think

Jeff is while he's on the phone with us he must be washing dishes or cleaning out his study because there's a lot of racket going on in the background but it's great to have you back on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio author, scholar,

Jonathan Edwards expert Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington who is also pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Farn Grove, Pennsylvania.

It's great to have you back. It's good to be here brother. I apologize to keep the noise in the phone because it's quiet here in my study.

That's weird because every time you're on you can hear footsteps, you can hear clatter,

I don't know what's going on. Oh there may be angels walking around or something.

Or spirits from the other realm. And it's great to have you with us and we have for the very first time joining us on this program today

Dr. Lane Tipton. I'm so glad that we could have

Dr. Tipton on today. He is the pastor at Trinity Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Easton, Pennsylvania and a fellow of systematic and biblical theology for Reformed Forum.

He's the author of many articles and the co -editor of Revelation and Reason, new essays in Reformed apologetics, excuse me, and Resurrection and Eschatology, theology and service of the church, essays in honor of Richard B.

Gaffin, Jr. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, Dr.

Lane Tipton. It's wonderful to be here, so thankful for the opportunity and it will be a really good discussion

I'm sure, so thank you so much. Well, although our topic today is a tribute to the late

Dr. Greg L. Bonson, who was born in 1948 and went home to be with the

Lord for eternity in 1995, and specifically to pay tribute to him, our theme will be defending the faith biblically.

But before we do that, Lane, we have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio with first -time guests.

Jeff Waddington has already done this for us when he was on for the first time, so if you could provide for us a summary of your salvation testimony.

Oh, yeah, I was raised in a home where my mother was a

Christian and my father was not. In fact, the antithesis was as sharp as you could conceive it, because my mother was a wonderfully devoted, faithful Christian who took us to church regularly, and my father was not only absent from church, but would do everything he could do to keep me from darkening the doors.

I also had wonderful Christian grandparents on my mother's side, but no one on my father's side was converted to my knowledge.

And so I was raised in a Southern Baptist church. My mother would take us to church regularly.

When I would visit my grandparents in the summer, I would go to church with them, and I heard the gospel regularly.

I wasn't catechized, it wasn't Reformed theology per se, but I heard the gospel.

And so from about the time I was 13 until the time I was 19, I wasn't required to go to church.

My mom gave me the freedom to either go or not go, and right after my freshman year of college,

I played football out of high school at Eastern New Mexico State University, and when

I came home that summer, I picked up a Bible. Just because I was wanting to go into law,

I was in a pre -law program at Eastern, and I thought, you know, it would probably be a good idea to know Judeo -Christian law, so I picked up my

Bible, with really no interest in being converted at all, and read

Matthew 23, where Jesus condemns the Pharisees for being whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside, but on the inside full of dead men's bones, and I became quite convicted that that was a very apt description of me.

And I recognized that I was guilty before God and a sinner, was under conviction, and a few days later,

I turned on the television on a Sunday morning, and a televangelist, I might tell you who he is, but a televangelist was preaching a sermon, and it happened to be on Leviticus 16, and he spoke of the scapegoat, the high priest laying his hands on its head, confessing

Israel's sin over it, being led outside the camp to bear away vicariously the sin and guilt of Israel, and he said, that is a type of Christ.

And when he said that, I instantly saw my

Savior and my Lord bearing away my sin through that typico -symbolic revelation in the

Old Testament, fell as it were on my knees, just bowed before the

Lord, repented of my sin, asked the Lord to forgive me for my sin, trusted in Jesus Christ, and then went into the other room where my mother was and told her, and she just broke down in tears of joy.

She'd been praying for me for years. Praise God. I'd been converted. Yeah. So, it was just a wonderful thing, and I guess

I'll tell you who the televangelist was, because it was in 1987, and six months later, something quite noteworthy happened.

It was Jimmy Swagger, of all people. Well, it goes to show you that God is sovereign over all, and He even uses very, what's the best way to put this, very flawed humans, and even lost humans.

I don't know if Jimmy Swagger is lost or not for certain, but he even uses lost persons who are proclaiming the truth, for one reason or another, to bring his elect to himself and save them.

And I'm not saying, please don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying Billy Graham is lost, but I have a very hard time, not with his theology now, since he's in heaven, but when he became a global celebrity,

I had a very serious problem with his crusade practices, and his ecumenism even more than that, ecumenism with not only

Roman Catholics, but even people who reject Christ as Savior. And I know quite a number of people who came to Christ through the preaching and evangelism of Billy Graham, and a lot of people came to Christ through reading the late, great

Planet Earth, even though I entirely dismiss that book and its author as being trustworthy, but you never know what the

Lord is going to use. Amen. As I've said before, the Lord struck a very straight blow with a crooked stick, and I am so thankful, so thankful.

Well, praise God, and we are thankful as well, because we have been blessed in the

Body of Christ to have you amongst us as an ambassador for Christ, and the gifts that you bring to the table have been a blessing to innumerable

Christians, and the lost as well, so we thank you for your contribution to the

Body of Christ. And today we are going to be not only paying tribute to the late

Dr. Greg L. Bonson, but we're also going to be promoting the Bonson Project. Let me give you all the website of the

Bonson Project. It is www .bonsonproject .com, B -A -H -N -S -E -N, project .com.

And one thing we've got to do, Lane and Jeff, we've got to get on the case of the webmaster, because to my knowledge, unless I'm just doing something wrong, there is no page that actually gives a thorough biography, a biosketch of Greg Bonson on the website.

There's a big photograph of him, but we'll reach that point later on.

But, Dr. Lane Tipton, since you have not been on this program before today, why don't you let our listeners know how you came to discover

Dr. Greg L. Bonson and his teaching, and what kind of an impact it had on you personally?

Well, I will, Chris, I'll do my best to keep this as terse as possible, and then we can expand as we see fit.

But I was converted, like I said, in 1987, and David Brack, who soon became a pastor in Emerald, Texas, in the

OPC, he gave me a lot of really good Reformed literature, among which were some of the books of Van Till, and turned me to Westminster Discount Books Service with Mr.

Lee, Scarsdale, New York, and I bought a lot of Bonson's material. And about a year later,

I joined Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Abilene, Texas, and I was reading

Van Till and could not get enough of it. And a pastor named

Neil Lodge, who just went to Gloria recently, and we celebrated, by the way, the 50th anniversary of Covenant OPC just this past weekend, but he told me that among interpreters of Van Till, he thought

Bonson was unparalleled. And he let me know of a Southern California Center for Christian Studies.

You're able to get in contact with Bonson and begin to learn from him and take classes.

And so I began to listen to Bonson's lectures on Van Till, some of his debates with Gordon Stein and others, and I also read his

Deonymian Christian Ethics and a couple of other books, and found him to be,

I think, the most insightful, consistently most insightful interpreter of Van Till, and just began taking courses at the

Southern California Center for Christian Studies in the late 80s into the early 90s, and found him to be of immense value in understanding the worldview contours of Van Till's apologetic, the nature of the transcendental argument for the existence of God, and the thoroughgoing antithesis between belief and unbelief, and also found him to be of enormous help in helping me get a grasp on the history of Western philosophy and some of the main issues that you face in Western philosophical thought.

And so he was just of immense help in giving me an entree into Van Till through a number of lectures and classes that he was offering at the time.

Very, very useful. Well, Dr. Jeff Waddington, if you could also let our listeners know how you first became aware of Dr.

Greg Bonson's life, legacy, and teaching, and how it has specifically impacted your own life and ministry.

Well, thank you for asking. Unlike my good friend and brother

Lane, I did not know Dr. Bonson personally. I came into the

Reformed community in 1995, and in fact, a friend of mine who

Lane knows shared with me the newsletter that the Southern California Center for Christian Studies circulated at the time.

And he had found out that Dr. Bonson had died,

I believe, on the operating table or in the hospital related to heart surgery. And so we lost a great giant of the faith.

And it was at that point that because he had passed away, and I was familiar,

I was aware of who he was and his reputation in the broader evangelical community.

And so I started, my pastor lent me several of the cassette tape series.

One that stands out was, I think, Apologetics for the

Workplace. I think that's what it was called. It was a relatively short series of lectures, and you could boil down the secret of apologetics to asking the why question.

Right? Why do you think this? Why do you think that? And then he had a series also on Pentecost, the gifts of the

Holy Spirit, which I thought was really good. I would say to Lane, and maybe

Lane's familiar with this, but it's a thoroughly Gaffanian presentation. And then, of course, a series on the

Holy Spirit and on the history of Western philosophy is just outstanding.

Almost everything that Dr. Bonson did was top -notch.

His debate, which Lane has already made reference to with Gordon Stein. And most of these things

I got into once I came to Westminster Seminary in 1997.

And then, of course, reading various books that he had authored.

Probably the most significant in terms of my, from my perspective, is his big, what we like to call his big

Van Till book. That is Van Till's Apologetics, Readings and Analysis.

That book, thankfully, by the way, is back in print. Our publishing publishes it.

It had gone out of print. Yes, in fact, we have been giving a copy a day away to listeners who have questions.

Excellent. Yeah, so it's back in print. It's an excellent resource. It takes primary readings along with Dr.

Bonson's introduction and explanatory footnotes when you come across the reference to some thinker from the past who is not well -known.

Dr. Bonson will give a brief biographical sketch and introduce a summary of their teaching.

And so that's really helpful. But I just have to say, if you listen to the

Bonson -Stein debate, that is probably the epitome of his approach to defending the faith.

And it's one of those debates where the opponent of the

Christian is totally baffled by the way that Bonson approached the discussion of God's existence, ethics, laws of living, and so forth.

And logic, etc. It's a very fascinating debate.

Bonson was very much the premier scholar of Van Til and perpetuator of Van Til's approach to apologetics.

And he was a blessing. See, the most important thing, I think, we want to stress, especially as we think about the

Bonson project and the fact that almost, I think it is somewhere between 1 ,800 and 2 ,000 audio files are now being brought from behind a paywall to be free.

And Chris, you didn't mention this, but I believe the files will eventually be accessible through sermon audio.

I'm sure there will be links at the Bonson project page, but it's sermon audio that will be the place where those things are available, at least initially.

We also hope to harvest the ongoing benefits of these things.

In other words, to write articles and perhaps even publish books and host conferences on the work of Dr.

Bonson, which of course is an extension of the work of Dr. Van Til.

And at the end of the day, and I think Lane would agree with me, none of that makes any difference if the approach of presuppositional apologetics is not, in fact, a biblical approach.

I would argue that it is. It is not only the biblical approach, it is the most consistent with a

Reformed confessional. And I would go even further to say a redemptive historical approach to the understanding of God's Word.

Well, today we are specifically going to be addressing the theme, as I mentioned before, under the umbrella theme of a tribute to the late

Dr. Greg L. Bonson, day number three. We are going to be specifically addressing defending the faith biblically, which is something

Dr. Bonson was most known to champion. Now, would you agree, and we'll have

Dr. Tipton chime in right now, would you agree that there is quite a lot of significance in this theme, defending the faith biblically, because, although it might not have caught the attention of your average evangelical who is not paying attention, but it seems to me that many of the most prolific authors, best -selling authors especially, most well -known and most popular televangelists, and basically the most popular and beloved celebrities, if you will, within modern evangelicalism, seek to defend the faith without using the

Bible as their emphasis or their source. They tend to appeal to emotion and many other things that are not rooted in Scripture.

Do you agree with what I just said, Dr. Tipton? Yes, I do. You definitely find the trend in evangelical apologetical methods.

You find, I would call it, an eclectic approach, seeking to use, perhaps, certain features of natural theological reasoning, certain appeals to evidence, certain appeals to emotion that are not rooted in the revelation of God as He's made

Himself known in the Scriptures, not rooted in the self -communication of God, the self -revelation of God in nature and history and conscience.

And, sadly, there's no organic relationship between the apologetical method and the theology that you're seeking to defend.

And so that rupture, that disjunction between theology and apologetics, that's something that Cornelius Van Til sought to remedy by calling our attention to the fact that we are first and foremost, as Christians, defending the triune

God as He has revealed Himself in what Van Til called one covenantal scheme, one grand covenantal scheme of revelation in nature and in Scripture, in word and in deed.

And Bonson, as an interpreter of Van Til, picked up on that and in his

Van Til's reading, the Van Til reader analysis and reflection on that, the book you're giving away,

Bonson really does turn attention almost immediately to the concern that we defend the

Christian faith in terms of the Christian faith. Not borrowing from eclectic, foreign, alien sources per se, but engaging them in terms of the presuppositional substructures that are rooted in God's revelation and summarized in the teaching of Scripture, set forth in Scripture.

And so, yes, Van Til was quite a remedy on that point. And Bonson, in the 20th century,

I think, was the most thoroughgoing expounder of that call to return to the

Scriptures as the source and norm, the ultimate authority in terms of which we defend the faith.

And Dr. Jeff Waddington, what do you think drives Christians to skip over the

Bible in order to make their presentations and declarations and sermons and evangelism efforts to the lost?

What is it that compels them? They're supposed to be in love with the Bible. They're supposed to be basing their lives on the

Bible. They have allegedly come to faith themselves through the hearing of preaching of the

Bible or the reading of the Bible. Why do you think there's such a compelling desire that draws many

Christians to skip it when trying to explain and declare the faith to the lost?

Well, that's a big question and an excellent question. And before I answer that,

I did want to note that Dr. Bonson wrote a book that actually provides the biblical foundation for presuppositional apologetics, and that is called

Always Ready. I believe it's available on Amazon and most other outlets.

Always Ready. It is, in my opinion, the best book if you're looking for the scriptural basis for how you defend the faith.

To answer your question, why is the Bible often, or usually, bypassed,

I mean, that can vary from person to person, but I would imagine a couple of things.

One would be that a person either did not come to faith in Christ through an explicit reliance upon the

Word of God or the Holy Spirit speaking through the Word of God, to be more particular, or they were not aware of it.

And so they haven't thought through the issues. A second possibility is that they don't think you can do apologetics relying upon the

Bible because it's the Bible that has to be defended. It's the

Word of God that has to be demonstrated to be a reliable historic document, etc.,

things like that. I remember when I worked for Salem Media, one of the, in fact it is the largest

Christian radio network in the world, there was a talk show host who will remain nameless, and one thing that he insisted upon, that not only he, or anybody who happened to fill in as a guest host if he was on vacation or sick or something, and also what he insisted upon from the listeners, is when they called in, it was a live call -in show, when they called in to give a comment or to ask a question, they were not to quote scripture.

And this hosts moronic reasoning for that, and that's moronic for a

Christian, a professing evangelical Christian to make such a requirement, in my opinion, was that if we start quoting the

Bible all the time, the world will think we are too stupid to put things into our own words.

I mean, that to me, isn't that, for a Christian to even come up with that concept, wouldn't you say that's pretty horrific?

I would say, the other answer to your question,

Chris, is because of the history of apologetics, often apologetics has been done in a purely rationalistic or neutral philosophical way in order to provide a foundation upon which the

Word of God rests, instead of the Word of God itself being the foundation upon which we stand.

So, yeah, it's a common, you know, I don't honestly know off the top of my head the percentage of folk who embrace one way of defending the faith as over against another, but Elaine and I both would really stress that the biblical way of doing it is the method that Dr.

Van Til formulated, and that Dr. Ponson instantiated in his own life and ministry, and continues to do through the influence of the recordings of lectures and the

PDFs of articles, et cetera, that will soon be available for free.

It sounded like, Dr. Tipton, you wanted to chime in on what I had said as well. Well, I was going to ask if that's okay,

I don't want to just jump in. Oh, in fact, you know something, I just looked at the clock, so we're going to have you chime in when we come back from our first station break.

Wonderful. And if anybody would like to join us on the air, actually I was going to invite you to join us with questions, but we already have enough questions that were left over from yesterday that could not be read on the air, we didn't have time to read them on the air yesterday, so those folks are going to be blessed because we're going to read your question for our guest today, because they continue to be very relevant since we are in day number three of our tribute to the late

Dr. Greg L. Bonson. So I hope that you continue to enjoy this program, don't go away, we're going to be right back with Dr.

Lane Tipton and Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's PTLBibleRebinding .com. Welcome back. This is

Chris Arms. I'm your host of Iron Shop and Zion Radio. Today is day number three of our tribute to the late

Dr. Greg L. Bonson and our promotion of the Bonson Project. Our guests today are

Dr. Lane Tipton and Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington. Before you comment,

Dr. Tipton, as you were just about to do before the break, I'd like you to explain to our listeners what the

Reformed Forum is. I forgot to do that earlier because I know that you and Dr. Waddington are both a part of that wonderful ministry.

Yes, Reformed Forum is... You can go to ReformedForum .org

and you can check out the website. We have numerous podcasts. We're developing a

Reformed Academy and some classes, especially right now, devoted to the theology and apologetics of Cornelius Van Til.

A host of resources are there. I don't really do a good job at advertising it.

I simply try to serve and engage in the teaching and the podcasts that we do.

Jeff might want to add... I think he's a little better at making it known than I am, but it's just a wonderful resource, and Camden Busey and Jim Cassidy, Glenn Cleary, Jeff Waddington, and a number of others serve that ministry, and it's just a joy to serve alongside those brothers.

Well, Dr. Waddington? Sure. Lane did a pretty good job.

We are obviously a Reformed Christian. We call it a Christian education theological ministry that does audio, video, and text -based articles and things like that.

The centerpiece podcast has been for 12 years now,

Christ the Center, with a new episode dropping every Friday.

I don't believe we've missed a Friday in those 12 years. I could be wrong on that. I don't think so.

Yeah, and then there are other and have been other podcasts that have grown out of that,

Proclaiming Christ, which is centered on the preaching ministry.

There has been, in the past, the Feast of Eden, the

Biblical and Systematic Theology of Jonathan Edwards. There is now a really good, popular podcast called

Theology Simple and Profound, otherwise known as the Rob and Bob Show, because it's

Rob McKenzie and Bob Tarullo. Bob is the pastor of Westminster OPC out in the

Chicago area, and Rob is one of his ruling elders, and they have a fine show.

So there are various resources that are available, and as Lane has already mentioned, the newest venture is the

Reformed Academy, where we're producing a series, a teaching series, in video format.

Lane has done an eight -part series on the theology of Ben Thel. He's also done a series on the history of heaven, and we also have a series, a

Jim Cassidy on the first eight questions of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Camden Busey, who is the executive director of the

Reformed Forum, has done a series on an introduction to covenant theology.

And we'll be adding new courses as we go along.

So that's something that we're excited about, and of course we have the other ongoing podcasts as well.

That's a pretty... We now have, for instance, the

Reformed Academy, the last I heard, had something like 1 ,900 students representing 50 countries around the world.

Wow. Yeah, and I forget what the latest monthly download figure is, but the last

I heard it was something like 33 ,000 downloads a month. So it's a pretty busy place.

And it's reformedforum .org. Yes. Great. Well, I hope that you folks get blessed by that and make use of it.

I know that at least one of my pastors, possibly both, I just know that in the conversation that one of them,

John Miller, at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a Reformed Baptist congregation, he loves the

Reformed Forum. So thank you for blessing the body of Christ. So, Dr.

Tipton, you were going to respond to my comment that a talk show host on a major Christian network that I worked for, this was a syndicated host that was on Nationwide, had a rule where neither he nor a fill -in guest host nor the listeners could quote

Scripture when bringing up an issue, asking a question, or giving a comment, because he thought that that made

Christians look stupid to the world because the nonbeliever would think that we were not intelligent enough to formulate things in our own words.

And if you could comment whatever you were going to say before the break. Oh, sure.

And I'll be brief. The question about the

Word of God, Scripture as the Word of God, rests on the question of its character.

The identity of the Word of God rests upon its character, and what the Word of God is is something breathed out by the

Spirit of God, and is a word revelation that interprets the deed revelation from creation, fall, redemption, all the way to its climactic expression in Christ into the consummation.

And so it's quite a shame to treat the Scriptures in that way, as though the

Scriptures are somehow a problem, an impediment, something we have to get beyond in order to sound more intelligent, because the entire point about appealing to the

Scriptures is that what you think about the Scriptures is going to depend on what you think about their nature, and what you think about the nature of the

Scriptures of the Old and New Testament is organically related to the nature of the God who speaks by that Scripture and interprets the sum total of the deed revelation from creation to consummation.

And so it's just a real tragedy for the Scriptures to be treated that way, because in treating the

Scriptures that way, by extension, you treat God in that same way.

And that just brings me great sorrow to hear someone doing that sort of thing.

And going back to our major theme, which under the umbrella of paying tribute to Dr.

Bonson is defending the faith biblically, first of all, we'll go back to Dr.

Waddington, when you are defending the faith biblically to a lost person, another reason, and I don't think it's a good reason, but another reason that some of these more popular

Christian authors and personalities, TV evangelists and so on, they skip the

Bible when defending the faith, or they think they're defending the faith, is because you're going to be speaking gobbledygook to the lost person, why are you quoting the

Bible from them when they don't know the Bible, they don't have any respect for the Bible, they could care less about the

Bible, they're either indifferent to it, or hostile to it, so why even bother quoting it?

But if you could pick up from there. Sure. That operates on a faulty assumption that the

Word of God is dependent upon the intellectual capacities of the people that you're talking to.

Now, of course, in one sense that's exactly true, that the

Word of God comes to us who are sinful, fallen human beings.

However, in the typical situation, we are created in the image of God, Chris, and we live in the world that was created by God, and we live in the world that is continuing to exist under the divine providence and governorship of God, and He has revealed

Himself in both nature, including our own human nature, and He has revealed

Himself in Scripture. Those two modes of revelation are actually one revelation in two modes, not two different kinds of revelation, and they're meant to work together in mutually reinforcing.

The assumption of the folk as you described it is that the

Word of God cannot get through you. In other words, remember that the

Holy Spirit who inspired the human authors to write the

Word of God is exactly what God wanted to be said. That same

Holy Spirit speaks now through the Word, and the Word of God is effective whether a person is familiar with the whole storyline or not.

Not everyone that we come into contact with and have a prophetic encounter with is going to know the

Word of God. That's already granted, right, and the question is, is it vast? But it's not dependent upon that.

Now, neither Lane nor I would argue that it's good for people to be ignorant of subject matter and content and storyline of the

Bible, but it's another thing to argue that the Word of God cannot be effective until someone has everything downloaded into their brain.

That's just not true. It's baloney. That's nonsense. The Word of God, the effectiveness of the

Word of God is always percent. We're going to our midway break right now, and it's the longer -than -normal break, folks, so please be patient with us.

We have to do a longer -than -normal break because Grace Life Radio and 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida is required by the

FCC to have a longer break in the middle of our show because they have to air public service announcements and other things local to Lake City, Florida, and therefore, while they do that, we air our globally heard commercials.

So, please use the best, make best use, I should say, of this time, and please write down as much of the information as you possibly can provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and more successfully patronize our advertisers, which will mean we will remain on the air for a longer future because our advertisers will continue to support us financially, which we need to survive.

Always remember, folks, we need these ads in order to remain on the air. So try to make our advertisers happy.

Also, use this time to send in a question to our guests, Dr. Lane Tipton and Dr. Jeffrey C.

Waddington, on the late Dr. Greg L. Bonson, and also on our sub -theme,

Defending the Bible Defending the Bible Biblically. So don't go away.

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Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line, and we'll try to help you find a church as soon as possible.

It's also the email address to send in a question to our guests, Dr. Lane Tipton and Dr. Jeffrey Waddington, on our tribute to the late

Dr. Greg L. Bonson. This is day number three of a five -day tribute, and we are specifically addressing defending the faith biblically.

Dr. Waddington, I had to cut you off mid -sentence, I believe. If you could pick up where you left off,

I was discussing how some people, some professing

Christians, avoid using the Bible when they evangelize or when they preach or when they write, because they think, well, my audience that I want to reach the most, the lost, could care less about the

Bible or is totally ignorant of the Bible or hates the Bible, so why bother quoting from it excessively or extensively or even at all?

So, I forget if it was Lane or Jeff, but whoever I cut off to get to the midway break, if you could pick up where we left off.

Well, one thing I can add to what was already said, and that is the idea that the word of God is not effective is against the teaching of the word of God itself.

More sufficient. I believe in Isaiah 55, that the word of God, God says, speaking through the prophet

Isaiah, that my word goes forth and will achieve its purpose. Or, I think the

King James says, is not void. In other words, whenever the word of God proceeds out into the world, it achieves its purpose.

Now, its purpose may be either redemption or it may be judgment, but it achieves its purpose one way or the other.

And a related note, that is, that one's theology obviously affects how one comes at this question, right?

In other words, as a Reformed Christian, I don't believe that the effectiveness of an evangelistic or apologetic encounter, or that the word of God's effectiveness is dependent upon the ability, my ability to plain defend it, nor is it dependent upon receptiveness of individual.

In other words, I do believe in what is typically referred to as the five points of Calvinism, which of course are not the only things that Calvinists believe.

But I do believe in a grace that can overcome the obstacles of unbelief.

Right? So, God is not in a box.

God is not hampered. He is not in handcuffs, as it were.

He is not gay. His word will achieve its purpose, even in the most hostile environments,

I believe. And so, with that in mind, I understand why someone would think that the word of God would not get a hearing, and if it were up to the unbelieving individuals that we're trying to interact with, that would be true.

But the fact of the matter is that it's a God who is sovereign over all things, who has condescended to involve us in the process of sharing the gospel, defending the faith, commending the

Lord Jesus Christ, answering sicks, etc. All of those things, like preaching of the word in worship on Sunday, is something that is backed by the power of the

Holy Spirit, and therefore it can conquer and subdue all those who are unbelievers.

Now, God in His sovereignty and providence chooses different people at different places and times to draw them to the

Lord Jesus Christ. And it may be that we're the ones who are to plant the seed, or we are the ones who are to water.

But as the apostle Paul told the Corinthian church, it is God who gives the increase.

And, of course, we can't forget 2 Timothy 3 .16. All scripture is inspired of God, or by God, I should say.

And inspired is more accurately translated God -breathed. All scripture is

God -breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

So we can't forget that one as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Good observation,

Chris. Again, using the scriptures as the foundation upon, you know, the way we go about interacting with unbelievers.

Elaine, you may have something to add to that. Just to bring it to Bantam, in Section 4 of Always Ready, he has a wonderful five -chapter summary of the conditions necessary for apologetic success.

And he talks about the way that the nature of unbelief is such that preaching is foolish.

Why? Because those to whom the gospel comes are antithetically opposed to the gospel because the natural man,

Romans 8, 7, and 8, not only doesn't submit to God's law and doesn't please

God, but cannot do so. And so Bantam is very helpful in pointing out that in our apologetics, we are in the same position we are in evangelism.

That is, we present the scriptures, which are just foolishness to the unbeliever, and the ultimate condition for the success of the apologetical encounter is identical to the condition for success in the preaching of the gospel, which is that the

Spirit takes that gospel, makes it intrinsically relevant to the one who hears it by granting faith and repentance, turning the sinner away from sin and to Christ, uniting the sinner to Christ in effectual calling, enlightening the mind, renewing the whole man after the image of God, and making the person willing and able freely to embrace

Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture. And so Bantam's very helpful in that manual you referenced earlier,

Jeff, the Always Ready Directions for Defending the Faith. Very helpful in addressing that specific issue, and I think our readers would be rewarded by looking into that section.

Very useful. Indeed. Several of Dr. Monson's publications are available through the

Logos software program, so if you're using Logos and you do a lot of work in that program, in other words, you read on the computer or your tablet or phone, you can get several of these works through the

Logos program. They would be integrated into your library. A good way to do that.

Or you can get them in hard copies, the old -fashioned way. If you're like me and you like to have a book in your hands, you like to smell the paper and all that kind of stuff.

And Dr. Monson had a clarity. I would say that he had the writing style and speaking style, clarity of speaking style, to rival

B .B. Warfield and J. Gressom Machen. And if you're familiar, if our listeners are familiar with those two theologians, you know that Monson is a clear communicator.

He really was. And we can be thankful that though he has gone to be with the

Lord, we have access to all of these lectures as well as the books and articles.

And you can see that clarity. And, of course, it's clarity based upon the gifts of God, both in terms of his natural gifts and in view of the supernatural endowment that he had as a minister of the

Word and an effective communicator and apologist. Yeah, it's amazing.

Well, one thing that I know for certain, Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, is that I'm never loaning you a book again because I'd rather not loan you a book knowing that your nostrils are being pressed against the pages, especially in this time of the

COVID pandemic. But anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good point there. All right.

We had, as I said earlier, some questions that came in from listeners yesterday that we did not have time to read yesterday to our guests.

But since we are basically on the same major theme of presuppositional apologetics, of paying tribute to Dr.

Monson, these questions are still relevant. So I wanted to read at least a couple of them.

First of all, we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania.

And Arnie says, Do you think that because of the paranoia we who are

Reformed typically tend to have about the charismatic movement and Pentecostalism and our desire never to be falsely accused or assumed that we are a part of that camp or those camps, that sometimes we underplay the miraculous?

And that includes the declaration of the Bible itself. There is something uniquely miraculous about reading the

Word of God and preaching the Word of God and evangelizing from the Word of God that is used by God Himself to bring about the miracle of regeneration in His elect who are lost.

I'm not saying that these words from the Bible are like a magical spell or a cantation of sorts.

I'm just saying that it is obvious from the Scriptures that there is something supernatural and miraculous going on when souls are saved from hell and their sin when we read from the

Bible itself. And if you could comment, perhaps we'll let Dr. Tipton start this time. Oh, sure.

I'm not certain about the reference to some sustained paranoia that certain

Reformed might be experiencing. That could be the case. There could be some quarters where people are paranoid or have some concern that to talk about supernaturalism would commit one to some kind of charismatic theology.

I would just tell the listener there's no reason for that to be the case.

For instance, when B .B. Warfield sets forth Calvinism, he begins with a naturalistic view of Pelagianism, 4th century, so Sinianism, 16th century,

Modernism or Liberalism, 16th century, and he sets it categorically over against supernatural

Christianity. And when he does that, it's supernaturalism, the idea that God saves sinners by sovereign grace, versus naturalism, that grace is wholly unnecessary for salvation.

And then he begins to make distinctions between sacerdotalism, which is a

Roman Catholic view. He shows it's error. Protestantism or evangelicalism.

I like Protestantism better as a term. And then within Protestantism, you have universalism and particularism.

Universalism would be Arminianism and a few other views. And then particularism would be Calvinism. And the whole point, if you understand

Warfield, is that the most consistently supernaturalistic expression of the

Christian faith is Calvinism or Reformed theology. And so I think if you don't, if you're not concerned about the quote -unquote charismatic chaos, to pull an old title from John MacArthur, and you think more historically,

Calvinism is the most thoroughgoing and consistent expression of biblical supernaturalism.

And so when Machen critiqued liberalism, his fundamental critique is that liberalism is a different religion precisely because it eschews at every point the thoroughgoing supernaturalism of the

Scripture. I think the real issue with the charismatics, of course, isn't supernaturalism versus anti -supernaturalism, but precisely what gifts are designed to function only during the apostolic era, and what gifts are more perennial and continue throughout the inter -advental age.

So I appreciate the direction of that question, and I think you can kind of turn it around and say that when it's most properly understood,

Calvinism is the most consistent expression of biblical supernaturalism, according to the works of someone like Warfield.

Oh yeah, I agree with you 100%, but I think the point that our listener, Arnie, was making is valid, because I have met and known and shared fellowship with men of God, not only pastors, but your average ordinary pew sitter who is

Reformed, who in a strange, and they might not even be conscious of this, but a paranoia not only about the charismatic movement, or appearing charismatic, but even appearing

Arminian, that sometimes even actual texts of the

Scripture are avoided. I'll give you an example, and of course, what

I'm about to talk about is a cage -stage Calvinist example. But I can remember one of my pastors, at the conclusion of a sermon, quoted right from the

Bible, Choose this day whom you will serve, or whom you may serve.

And after the service was over, a couple of the members of the church, who were fairly recent converts to the

Reformed faith, they were furious that he said that. What do you mean choose? We can't choose?

And on and on and on, and like, we're commanded to choose, but we are enabled to choose in a way that pleases

God, by the Holy Spirit. We cannot choose to please God before our regeneration, but we are commanded to.

We're commanded to choose the right way every day, and we're commanded to be obedient to God, and so on.

Am I making sense here? Yeah. Go ahead,

Lane, sorry. Oh, I'll just be real brief. Yeah, I was just saying that the question was,

I think, it's in one way, if you're taking aberrant expressions of small segments of, you know, quote -unquote

Reformed people who believe this, that's one thing. But what I'm saying is that the mainstream of Reformed theology would lead you directly in the direction you're going,

Chris. Amen. Would check those views, which strangely wouldn't, as far as I can hear them, wouldn't really cohere with the best of Reformed theology.

Jeff, go ahead. Didn't mean to cut in. No, I was going to say, I think, and you've already said it,

Chris, that these folk have to reckon with the fact that the

Scriptures call all men everywhere to repent. And we know that the only ones who are going to repent are those who have been chosen from before the foundations of the universe.

So, I mean, we don't, and we're not Arminian when we call upon people to repent, right?

We're biblical. The Scriptures call upon us to do this.

But we don't assume that human beings by nature have the ability to do this.

Right? It's an ability that is enabled by the working of the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit enables us to respond to the preaching of the gospel by enlightening our minds and renewing our wills, as the

Westminster Divines put it. By the way, that's a very supernatural activity.

We're not afraid of the supernaturalness of the Christian faith. That is, in fact, what creates part of the antithesis that Dr.

Van Til and Dr. Bonson were so concerned to stress.

The fact that Christianity is a supernatural religion. None of us is a

Christian. None of us are Christians by virtue of the normal operations of our human minds.

We are Christians because the Holy Spirit enabled us to believe through the operations of the

God -created mind and heart and will, but still overcoming the effects of the fall on our mind and heart and will.

It is, in fact, a very supernatural understanding of the

Christian faith. What we eschew, that is, what we do not agree with, are some of the wild or crazy or chaotic phenomena that often occur in a charismatic setting.

The same kinds of things that apparently occurred in the First Great Awakening. Things that are not essential to the

Christian faith and are not essential to the supernatural aspects of the Christian faith.

Another way this is found, and by the way, let me first say from what you have both said, we who are

Reformed really out -charismatic the Charismatics and out -Pentecostal the Pentecostals when it comes to the necessity of the

Holy Spirit and the miraculous, because we believe that our own wills can't bring us to Christ.

We need a miracle in our heart. We need a heart transplant before we can even please

God by choosing to serve Him. Correct. That's absolutely right.

Dr. Bonson, I mentioned earlier, he had a series, and I don't know if this is in the materials that the

Bonson Project is working to bring to the web as free resources, but he had a series on Pentecost that was very helpful,

I think, in this regard, to work out some of the caricatures of a

Reformed reaction to the Charismatic movement and pointing out, as others have, as we have here on the program, that we all,

I think, in seeking to be biblical and not experiential in an autonomous way, our experience is not self -interpreting.

You know, our experience must be interpreted by the Scriptures, the

Scriptures of the final authority. The Scriptures are supernatural. The coming to faith in Christ is a supernatural work of the

Holy Spirit. The maintenance of our Christian walk is a supernatural activity of the

Holy Spirit. It is supernatural from beginning to end. Is it chaotic?

No. And that may be one of the rubs that we have with the

Pentecostal or Charismatic tradition. We are not chaotic.

Not as a God of order, as the Apostle Paul has told the Corinthian church and us.

What I was about to say, also, is that one of the ways this is manifest, as far as perhaps even an unconscious paranoia of Reformed folk to appear to be charismatic or to be misunderstood, is our downplay of the role and reality of the demonic realm.

Sometimes, I can only guess, but sometimes I think that Reformed people so want to emphasize the truth.

And keep in mind, I am saying this is a vital biblical truth. But the truth of total depravity, that man is basically so evil, he really doesn't need a devil to force him to sin.

Flip Wilson was totally heretical when he said, the devil made me do it, when he was doing his

Geraldine imitation. I don't know if I'm dating myself too much, because most of the listeners we have probably don't even know what

I'm talking about. I'm old enough, Chris, to know exactly who you're talking about. But at the same time,

I think that we do undermine the reality of the fact that there is a demonic realm among us.

Am I missing something here, or am I overstating something? Perhaps, Dr. Tipton, you could respond first.

No, I think that we definitely need to maintain that the antithesis is not only an antithesis between believers and unbelievers, but that when the

Gospel, Bonson makes this point well, that the Gospel in its first iteration, in Genesis 3 .15,

there is an antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. So that the champion seed that is set in antithetical relation to the coming

Christ is the serpent himself. Revelation 12 .9 -10 speaks of that serpent, that ancient serpent, as Satan, the devil.

And so when we are reasoning with unbelievers, we have to recognize that we're not wrestling exclusively against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and rulers who are fundamentally demonic and of an order that cannot be seen directly.

And so I think it's very important for us to remember that. And that helps us.

And this is something Bonson hints at, but it's really developed more by people like Gerhard Swass and Meredith Klein.

It helps us recognize that underlying this epistemological antithesis is an antithetical philosophy of history between the

Christian and the non -Christian. And that philosophy of history includes not only those who can be seen, who are antithetical to Christ and his

Gospel, but to the demonic host led, as it were, by Satan, who cannot be seen.

And it is against both that we are wrestling. And what that really helps us remember is the great need, then, that we have for Christ, who is the overcomer in whom the

Church overcomes. And we do so by depending upon Him, relying on His Spirit, and proclaiming and holding steadfastly to His inerrant and infallible

Word. I'm so glad you quoted or cited Meredith Klein, because I have to say that Meredith Klein and Lorraine Bettner are my two favorite female theologians.

There are listeners in our audience rolling their eyes saying, how many times are you going to tell that joke,

Chris? Just for your information, folks, they were not females.

I just wanted to make that clear. We are going to our final break right now.

It's going to be a lot more brief than the last two. But we hope you don't go away, because we've got some more to talk about with our guests in tribute to the late

Dr. Greg Bonson. So don't go away. We'll be right back. And world provides clarity to the news stories that really matter.

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And I wanted to mention to Arnie of Perry County, Pennsylvania, by virtue of the fact that you sent in a question that we read on the air, an excellent question

I might add, you have won a free copy of Against All Opposition, Defending the

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Well basically right now I want each of you, before I take any other listener question,

I want each of you to have a couple of minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners when it comes to the legacy and teaching of Dr.

Greg L. Bonson and defending the word biblically. Let's start with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington.

Well, whenever we look to any of God's teachers that he's given to his church, the thing that we're looking at is whether someone is biblical.

And I have to say there are differences that I have with Dr. Bonson.

He was very much a key figure in the theonomic movement, and I'm not a theonomist.

Lane can share with you about his background in that regard. Never been one, but I still greatly appreciate

Dr. Bonson's apologetic and philosophical acumen and always showing the biblical antithesis and showing and making that clear.

So at the end of the day, the thing I want people to take away is Dr. Bonson was seeking to be biblical and apologetic, not merely philosophical or historical or anything like that, but seeking to bring the word of God bear upon any issue in culture.

Well, Dr. Tipton? I found Bonson to be of great help in matters of apologetics and philosophy.

I would say to the listeners that Van Til's apologetic readings and analysis and his always -ready volume, as well as the newer presuppositional apologetics, that's some of the finest exposition of Van Til's thought as applied to apologetics and the defense of the faith that you're going to find.

He did a wonderful job. I'll tell you the limitation of Bonson, and I want to situate this in the context of deep appreciation for him, is that he, due to his commitments to post -millennialism and theonomy, he never really got his mind around the biblical theology of Gerhardus Voss, and that was a fundamental oversight.

It's what moved him in the direction, I think, of theonomy and post -millennialism. If he didn't understand the covenant theology and thoroughgoing amillennialism of Gerhardus Voss and Van Til, Bonson doesn't develop this as much as he could by any stretch.

Van Til's favorite theologian, favorite professor, was Gerhardus Voss, and it's in the work of Voss, especially his biblical theology and his

Pauline eschatology, it's there that you find the philosophy of history that Van Til was promoting, which doesn't accord with the philosophy of history and the theonomic ethic that Dr.

Bonson was promoting. So I'd just warn our listeners that that's not the place to follow

Bonson in ethics and eschatology, but to round out on the positive side, I think as far as it goes in the 20th century,

Bonson stands out head and shoulders above the other Van Tilians in expounding and applying

Van Til's apologetic to other apologetical methods and to the history of Western philosophy.

He was really unparalleled, and I have, as much as I have reservations and deep concerns about his theonomy and Christian ethics,

I have to give him just the highest praise as an apologist and philosopher and someone seeking to apply

Van Til and a reformed understanding of the scriptures to unbelief.

Had he lived longer and, Lord willing, been exposed more to Voss, Ritterboss, Gaffen, and Klein, I think that would have only enriched him, and,

Lord willing, he would have moved away from that theonomy and that postmillennialism into a fuller embrace of Van Til himself.

But even though that didn't happen, we don't want to marginalize the wonderful contributions he's made in apologetics and philosophy that are enduring and helping us even today, even though he's been gone since 1995.

And I do want to add that although I am not a theonomist, I have many very close friends who are and have interviewed many theonomists and Christian Reconstructionists on this program, so I don't want anyone to get the idea that we're bashing theonomists or anything like that.

But people can feel free... I'm sorry? Yes, absolutely no personal bashing, just a good solid warning.

Okay. Well, I'm going to save another question that I was just about to ask, a listener question, for tomorrow, because we've run out of time.

But I know that you are both with the reformedforum .org, the reformedforum .org,

and I want to make sure that the Bonson Project is repeated again, that is bonsonproject .com,

bonsonproject .com, B -A -H -N -S -E -N, project .com.

And I hope that many of you will take advantage of that resource and support it financially. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater