John Fesko Interview

No Compromise Radio

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:01

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

00:08

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

00:16

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

00:24

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

00:30

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

00:41

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

00:48

My name is Mike Abendroth, and as you know, we have a slogan, and that simple slogan is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

00:57

I want you to think about things biblically, and what does the Bible say? What does

01:02

God have to say about a subject? And on Wednesdays, I like to have guests, and so today is no different, and I'm really excited today.

01:11

We have Dr. John Fesco as a guest today on No Compromise Radio. Dr. Fesco, welcome to the show.

01:18

Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Now, Dr. Fesco, I know of your writings, and I have plenty of your books.

01:24

I have a few in front of me, the one on justification, and one that I just bought and have started, The Theology of the

01:30

Westminster Standards. But I also know you because you are my brother, Pat Abendroth's advisor for his doctoral work, so is there any inside scoop you want to give me on my brother,

01:40

Pat? Well, he writes a lot of good material, so it was a lot of fun to be able to read through that stuff, so it's really good, yeah, definitely.

01:49

Great. Well, Dr. Fesco is the academic dean and professor of systematic theology and historical theology at Westminster Seminary, California, or you might know it as Escondido.

02:02

And I noticed, Dr. Fesco, that you are looking at biblical theology and systematic theology, and maybe you could tell our listeners what those are, and then are they in competition with one another?

02:15

Can they be integrated? Can they help one another? There seems to be, in our day, maybe some people pitting these two together, and maybe you could just bring our listeners up to speed on systematic theology and biblical theology.

02:32

Sure, no, I'd be happy to. I think that sometimes terminology can be, you know, send us slightly in the wrong direction if we take it too literally.

02:41

So for example, with biblical theology, that has, you know, been called by Gerhardtus Voss the history of special revelation, and I really think that that's helpful in that.

02:53

What we're doing with biblical theology is we are tracing the unfolding story of redemption from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation, and so it's really helpful to say, you know, we could put that in simpler terms to say, when we're reading a passage of Scripture, what time is it?

03:13

Is it before Christ has come? Is it after Christ has come? Are we living in the last days now with Christ's ministry, or is it, you know, before he inaugurates those last days?

03:27

And then systematic theology, and this is where the unfortunate nature of the terminology comes in mind, gives the impression that it's not as biblical as biblical theology, because it doesn't have that word in it.

03:38

But no, systematic theology is just as biblical as biblical theology, and that it takes the same exegetical data, the same information that we draw from the

03:49

Scriptures, and it tests it for logical consistency, and it puts it together in an orderly fashion.

03:57

So that, for example, historically, we've looked at the doctrines of the doctrine of God, the doctrine of Scripture, and then from there, man, doctrine of Christ, doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of the

04:13

Church, and then the doctrine of the last things. There's typically what they call the loci, or the places, the common places of theology, that we put all of these things together.

04:24

And we want to say that both are necessary, and that we want to understand systematically, what does the

04:31

Bible say, for example, about man? Who is man? Whose image is he created?

04:37

You know, what is his status? Is he fallen? Is he an unfallen creature? You know, are we looking at Adam in the garden?

04:43

Are we looking at a sinful man in a fallen world? And so we put those two together, but we always need to put the two together in terms of biblical theology and systematic theology, because they both interact with one another.

04:57

We want our story to be consistent, which means that it's logically coherent, and that's what systematic theology helps us to do.

05:06

But we also want our systematic theology to be enmeshed in the unfolding story of redemption, so that we're not taking passages of Scripture out of context, or misusing them in that way.

05:19

I think it was B .B. Warfield who likened biblical theology and its relationship to exegesis to an army.

05:28

If exegesis is the foot soldier, then you have biblical theology that masses the various battalions together, and then you have systematic theology that takes and masses those battalions together and puts them together into divisions, into armies.

05:46

And I think that that's kind of helpful in that respect. So I hope that that answers that question. Yes, Dr.

05:52

Fesco, and I recently received the four -volume Voss Systematic Theology books, and certainly when we think of Voss, we might default to biblical theology, but he was not against systematic theology in any way, shape, or form.

06:06

No, yeah. He taught systematic theology when he was at what is now

06:12

Calvin Theological Seminary. Taught that for a number of years. And at least in terms of page counts, and page counts can be a little bit misleading depending upon how big the text is, etc.

06:25

But as I've looked at the early 20th century published version of his lectures in systematic theology, he's written as much systematic theology as he has biblical theology, but because it was written in Dutch and untranslated, we haven't had access to it.

06:45

But now, as you said, it's really interesting to be able to see both sides of the coin and how he eventually holds them together, and so I think it's really helpful.

06:57

And what I love about his systematic theology is that it's really traditional Reform theology, so that for anybody who might think that somehow there's a two -stage

07:08

Voss, where Voss has the systematic theological stage, and as the rocket launches into the atmosphere, he sheds that stage like a booster to go into the superior realm of the supposedly more biblical, biblical theology.

07:24

I think that that's simply not true. When you hold these two together, I think you see that they're like a hand in a glove and that they work hand -in -hand.

07:32

It's just that in the latter part of his career, he spent more time talking about and writing about biblical theology, but I don't think he ever forsook the former.

07:42

Dr. Fesko, why do you think biblical theology is so popular now?

07:47

I have a certain, I have a few theories of my own, but I'd like to know what your insight might be, as there seems to be a renaissance of biblical theology now.

07:55

Certainly some of that's very good, but is there an explanation for that? Yes, I think there is, and that, you know, the complex answer is that in the 19th century, there was a school of historiography that assumed that Greek philosophy had been too influential in the church, and you see this with Adolf von

08:18

Harnack, for example, a German church historian, and he wanted to purge the teachings of Greek philosophy or the perceived teachings of Greek philosophy from theology, and he believed that, in many respects,

08:35

Reformed theology through what we call Reformed scholasticism, the theology of the schools embodied, for example, in, say,

08:43

Francis Turretin, or at least a more recent version, as we were just talking about, Voss, in many respects, embodies that tradition in his systematic theology that's being translated.

08:54

But they wanted to purge it of all of these supposed foreign elements, and they wanted to get to a more pristine understanding, supposedly a purer understanding of what the

09:05

Bible teaches, and this is where you got the development in the late 18th century, and then it's flowering in the 19th century, of biblical theology.

09:14

And this is what they called it, I think, biblical theology, because of the assumption that this is closer to the text, this is purer, this does not have artificial structures superimposed upon it, as you find in systematic theology.

09:29

But if what I said is true in terms of the initial explanation of the relationship between systematic and biblical theology, then systematic theology is just as close to the text as biblical theology is, it's just asking a slightly different question.

09:46

How does it systematically cohere, rather than how does it historically unfold? But in this respect, we can still bring as many false assumptions to the endeavor of biblical theology as we can to systematic theology.

10:04

So there's no sense in which biblical theology is superior to systematic theology.

10:10

We need them both, but one is not superior to the other. It's like saying, I tell my students, what's more important, your heart or your lungs?

10:17

Well, I think I need both, and I can't live without one or the other. And so in that sense, though,

10:25

Voss, I think, was always very helpful, in that he says with biblical theology, you draw a straight line as you're unfolding the plan of redemption.

10:35

But with systematic theology, you take that same line, and instead, you draw a circle to show how it coheres systematically.

10:44

And so that's the complex answer, is I think people go to biblical theology because they assume that systematic theology artificially foists structures upon the text that is not there.

11:00

You know, say, for example, how predestination may connect to other points of doctrine.

11:06

Well, that's a false imposition upon the text. No, it's not. We're simply noting all of these different places where predestination appears in the

11:13

Bible. I think the simple answer to the question is, is they just think biblical theology is more biblical.

11:21

I don't want to be a systematic theologian. I don't want to engage in ideas. I want to engage in exegesis.

11:27

But if we're doing these things well, then the systematician is engaging in good exegesis, and the biblical theologian is engaging in good systematic theology, because the biblical theologian will do systematic theology either consciously or unconsciously.

11:44

So it's not a question of doing it or not doing it, but whether he or she will do it well. Talking to John Fesco today, academic dean at Westminster Seminary in Escondido.

11:55

Dr. Fesco, I'm sure you know about the school that is changing their systematic theology department or the name of that class to missional theology.

12:04

I can imagine what you think of that. What's your response when you hear a seminary saying, well, we're not going to call it systematic theology anymore.

12:13

It'll be missional theology. To me, it seems to reek of neo -orthodoxy, but I'm just a layperson.

12:20

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's two sides to the coin, I suppose. I mean, as I reflect upon it, you know, in that a rose by any other name is still a rose.

12:31

So are they still teaching the same subjects? But if they've shifted the curriculum to where they place greater emphasis upon certain doctrines over others, you know, perhaps the lay version of this is, are they just trying to talk more about Jesus and be less specific about their doctrine?

12:56

Then I would have, as you would have noted, I would have grave concerns, and the name change would certainly reveal that.

13:06

Now, I have to say, I have to claim ignorance. I'm not sure what we're talking about. That's why I have to talk about it vaguely. But, you know, at least dealing with the general phenomenon is that, you know, for lay people to say, why do we have to talk about doctrine?

13:20

Can't we just talk about Jesus? Well, as I'm sure you've heard it said, well, when we begin to ask, who is

13:26

Jesus? You begin to ask about doctrine, and when you say, what has Jesus done?

13:32

Once again, you're talking about doctrine. And the imagery that I like to invoke is, doing good doctrine, doing good theology, is like performing surgery.

13:44

You don't do it with a chainsaw, you do it with a scalpel, and you have to be very biblically precise, not only with your use of the

13:52

Bible in terms of your exegesis, drawing out of Scripture what it teaches, but also in terms of the terminology that you use.

14:01

And why I like the term systematic theology, and I don't think we should scuttle it, is that, you know, it's saying that the study of God, what theos,

14:11

God, logos, study of, the study of God is systematic, which means that it conveys the idea that the canon of Scripture is a systemic whole.

14:23

It's an organic body of doctrine. It's inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore will have doctrinal and truth consistency from Genesis to Revelation, so that you don't speak of theologies of the

14:36

Bible, but rather we speak of a theology of the Bible. And so therefore we want to study it in an orderly fashion, so that we can understand what the whole

14:47

Scripture teaches about Christ, what the whole of Scripture teaches about God, or about salvation.

14:53

So that's why I think, you know, I love the term, and I think we should stick with it. Dr. Fesco, along those lines, seeing

15:00

Scripture as an organic whole, I'd like to tell our listeners about your book,

15:06

Songs of a Suffering King, the Grand Christ -Hymn of Psalms 1 -8.

15:13

And I particularly went to Psalm 8 because I'm preaching through Hebrews verse by verse, and of course in chapter 2, as the writer loves to say, it's been testified somewhere, what is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him, and he goes on to quote some more of Psalm 8.

15:33

Help our listeners, and maybe you could just describe what you do in the book on Psalm 8 in terms of what you say on page 108.

15:41

What these psalms say about David is ultimately what they're saying of his greater son, Jesus.

15:47

How can we interpret this psalm rightly, but then we've got to make sure we look at Hebrews 2, because Hebrews 2 is using it of Christ.

15:57

Just give us a few things to watch out for as we look at Old Testament, New Testament, and specifically

16:04

Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2. Yeah, I think that it's important that in terms of the big picture, we recognize that the

16:12

Old Testament, or I'll quote St. Augustine, where St. Augustine said, "...what is hidden in the old is revealed in the new, and what is revealed in the new is hidden in the old."

16:22

And it was his way of recognizing, as you just mentioned before, the organic, connected nature of the canon of Scripture.

16:30

So one of the things that I used to do when I was a pastor is, if I was preaching from a

16:35

New Testament passage, I would have an Old Testament reading that talked about the same idea, or that if it was an

16:43

Old Testament passage that was quoted in the New Testament, then I would, you know, read that Old Testament passage so that my congregation could see that there was a connection, an organic connection between them, and that the

16:58

New Testament writer was quoting the Old Testament. So I wanted them to understand, okay, why is the

17:05

New Testament author quoting the Old Testament? And second on that point is that we want to recognize that Christ is what the

17:15

Reformers used to call the scope of Scripture. In other words, everything in some shape or form or fashion points to Christ.

17:24

When Christ was on the road to Emmaus, talking with his disciples that Luke gives us in Luke chapter 24, it says that he began to explain from the

17:34

Scriptures, from the Law, and from the Psalms and the Prophets, which are the three major subdivisions of the

17:42

Hebrew Old Testament, so that he was basically saying, hey, I'm going to show you on all of the

17:48

Old Testament how it all points to me. When he was talking about Abraham, you know, when

17:53

Abraham looked from afar and saw my day, he rejoiced in that he was looking to his faith in Christ.

17:59

Or when he told the Pharisees, you know, Moses wrote about me. So that it's all about Christ.

18:05

So that when we look at the Psalms, we want to recognize that the psalmist, as we get now here to the more narrow issue of Psalm 2, that the psalmist isn't just talking about human beings when he reflects about what is the

18:19

Son of Man that you are mindful of him, you know, or the Son of Man that you care for him.

18:24

When he says those things, he's not just writing about human beings, though certainly that's a reference in the text.

18:31

But rather, when we consider the fact that ultimately, David, the Messiah, with a small m, he was the anointed

18:39

King of Israel, he was foreshadowing the person and work of Christ.

18:45

He was foreshadowing his greater Son's forthcoming work, THE Messiah, with a capital

18:51

M, Jesus. And so I think as you say, as you draw upon this, and you make the connection to Hebrews chapter 2, you know, where the author says, for it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking, it has been testified somewhere, what is man that you are mindful of him, or the

19:10

Son of Man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels, you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.

19:17

Here the author of Hebrews says that ultimately the psalmist, in this case

19:23

David, connects Psalm 8 with Christ. And so that it's not just a reflection upon the creation, though it certainly alludes back to it, but ultimately it is looking forward to, the psalmist was looking forward to,

19:41

Jesus. So that these are words ultimately and prophetically written about Jesus.

19:46

I think it was Edmund Clowney who said, there aren't some Christological psalms, all of the psalms are

19:54

Christological in some fashion. And so in this sense, the psalm 8 is a prophecy. And it should be no surprise to us then, when we consider the fact that the favorite title that Jesus used, it was his most used title for himself in the

20:09

Gospels, is the Son of Man. Which is another way of saying the second

20:14

Adam, or one like Adam. But here, obviously, it's raised an octave, if you will, in that it's not a fallible, faithless, you know, rebellious

20:26

Adam. It is a faithful, obedient, and worthy

20:34

Adam, as in the last Adam, as Paul calls him in 1 Corinthians 15. So that the psalmist is ultimately foreshadowing the person and work of Christ.

20:44

And that's why the author of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 2, invokes and quotes Psalm 8.

20:50

Talking to Dr. Fesco today. Dr. Fesco, I don't know if you have considered this, but the great theologians,

20:58

B .B. Warfield, A .A. Hodge, R .L. Dabney, J .G. Machen, R .C.

21:04

Sproul, J .V. Fesco. See how that works? Dr.

21:09

Fesco Maybe. Pete Alright, we've just got a few minutes left, and so I know it's going to be hard for you to do, but I'm going to give you a question.

21:16

I've got some folks from our social media people. They've asked questions because I told them I was going to interview you today.

21:22

And if you could give me an answer in a minute or less, it could be shorter than that, but a minute or less, that'd be great. I have three of them.

21:29

Number one. Can you give a quick scriptural defense of the active obedience of Christ?

21:35

Dr. Fesco Yes. Very quickly, I would want to draw upon a couple of texts. First of all, we can identify the passive obedience of Christ, which is his lifelong suffering of the curse for sin, which he does throughout his life and culminates in the suffering of the cross.

21:52

You see that in Leviticus chapter 16 and the Day of Atonement. But in addition to that, you see his active obedience, which is his active fulfillment of the law on our behalf.

22:04

You also see that in Leviticus 16. The high priest, for example, scrupulously had to follow the law in performing the sacrifice, because if he didn't, as we know from Leviticus 10 with Nadab and Abihu, he would bring judgment upon himself, and not only judgment, but he would also bring condemnation potentially upon the nation, because the sacrifice would have been rejected, thereby leaving the people of Israel in their sins.

22:33

So both active and passive obedience figure prominently there in Leviticus 16.

22:39

There are other texts to which I could point, you know, Romans chapter 5, for example, or Matthew 5 .17,

22:47

I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. So that's the quick answer to the question.

22:53

Okay, great. Question number two from social media. Could Dr. Fesko comment on Beeson's Peter Lethart calling for the death of Protestantism?

23:04

Yes. You know, I think that as we come upon the 500th year anniversary of the start, or at least the formal start of the

23:10

Reformation, I think we're going to probably hear more of this. I know that Mark Noll wrote a book,

23:16

Is the Reformation Over?, and his short answer is yes. But in the end,

23:21

I think that what calls for the death of Protestantism amount to is the underlying assumption that Protestantism and Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy really have more in common than they have in difference.

23:39

And I think I would want to invoke G. K. Chesterton's statement, saying that that's like saying that the ceremony of knighting somebody and beheading them is the same thing because they both involve a sword.

23:55

You know, I think that Roman Catholicism stands in many respects in continuity with the

24:01

Protestant Reformation. I think I always remind my students that we are Reformed Catholics.

24:06

Many things that we didn't change about our common doctrine that we hold in common with the

24:11

Roman Catholics, but there are some significant and egregious differences.

24:19

And most notably, for example, in the doctrine of justification, there has been no change there. And so I would say no,

24:25

I don't think we need to sound off and agree that Protestantism is dead.

24:31

We press on. Great. And one last question. But before I ask that question, I'd like our listeners to pick up your book,

24:37

Justification, Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine. And I think you'll see great insights by Dr.

24:44

Fesko. What does the Bible teach? What have the Reformed Confessions taught? How can we measure it up against federal vision and to write these kind of issues?

24:54

It'd be really good for those of you that can't get through Buchanan's Doctrine of Justification, go to Dr.

24:59

Fesko because he really lays it out in a way that laypeople can understand and pastors can benefit from.

25:06

So our last question, it's actually a real question from someone who asked me, and by the way, this man's name is

25:13

R. Scott Clark. I said to Dr. Clark yesterday, give me a question to ask

25:19

Fesko. How did we lose the pactum salutis, and why is it important?

25:26

That's a great question. Yeah. First of all, what is the pactum salutis? It sounds like a dental term.

25:33

You know, I've got an impacted tooth. The pactum salutis is otherwise known as the covenant of redemption, which is the intra -Trinitarian, pre -temporal covenant among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to plan and execute redemption of the

25:53

Bride of Christ. That's a very simple definition. In time, it's not the covenant with Adam.

26:00

It's not the covenant with the elect in terms of the covenant of grace. This is the pre -temporal, eternal covenant among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

26:09

And so the question is, if you haven't heard of it, then the question is certainly warranted, how did we lose it?

26:16

I think that the short answer is that a lot of people looked at it in the past and thought, as they reflected upon it, this seems speculative.

26:26

How can we know what the triune God was doing before the creation of the world?

26:33

It invokes something of the similar answer that Augustine gave when people would ask him what was God doing before he created the world, to which he would respond, creating hell for people with inquiring questions like that.

26:45

And so we think that it seems speculative. How do we know what these things are going on? And I would agree it would be completely speculative to assume or to guess as to what the triune

26:55

God was doing prior to creation, unless the scriptures reveal it. And I can't go into a huge defense of it other than to say,

27:04

I point people to—I've written two books on the subject. One is called The Covenant of Redemption, Origins, Development, and Reception.

27:12

And then the other book is called The Trinity and The Covenant of Redemption. But the most scriptural point

27:21

I would say here that always sticks in my mind is Luke 22 -29, which you have to read in the original

27:27

Greek because the English translations get it wrong. Jesus says in the

27:33

English translation, and I appoint to you a kingdom as my father appointed to me a kingdom. And the

27:39

Greek term there is diatithe me, which is the Greek term for covenant. And numerous theologians throughout the years, especially in the 16th, 17th centuries, picked up on the idea that Jesus says, and I covenant to you a kingdom as my father covenanted to me a kingdom.

27:57

And if that translation is accurate, it all of a sudden, you know, puts the question forward, when did

28:04

God covenant to Christ a kingdom? And that's where it opens up the question.

28:09

And so I think that it's, you know, the short answer is, is people think it's speculative, but there is a wealth of biblical information out there that would say, no, it's not speculative.

28:18

It's bedrock teaching of scripture. Well, thank you, Dr. Fesco, for being on No Compromise Radio.

28:24

I personally could just sit and ask you questions for hours and get some insight. That would be great.

28:30

But we only have a short amount of time. For those that want to get more information, it'd be easy to just go to Amazon and type in John Fesco, and you could see all his books.

28:40

And I think another useful resource, if you're just getting into some of these doctrines, if you go to Ligonier Ministries and type in John Fesco for articles, wonderful articles, introductory articles on union with Christ in Paul's epistles, faith alone, a new perspective on Paul, and more.

28:59

So, Dr. Fesco, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio. May the Lord bless you. Hey, have a good day, and thanks so much for having me, and God willing,

29:06

I look forward to being with you again in the future. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

29:17

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

29:26

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

29:34

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

29:42

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.