Was Adam Created for Heaven?, Gnosticism, and Pastoral Restoration

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter Podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. I hope you are all having a good

January. I know mine has been somewhat eventful, especially the last two days. Lots going on.

I've been scheduling interviews for the 1607 Project. By the way, anyone out there, if you're a reenactor, if you like especially colonial reenactment, dressing up in colonial garb and maybe

Civil War reenactment or you're dressing up as a frontiersman, I would love to get in touch with you and see where you are and see if it's feasible to maybe get some

B -roll. That's one of the things I know I'll need for this project. You can go to 1607project .com

if you're interested to know more, and we do need money, so please contribute if this is something that interests you.

I'll talk more about it in the future. I've already talked about it, I know, before, but just came to my mind that I'm looking for that right now.

Also, I just got, I think it was yesterday, a template for a potential blog website that is going to be similar to the

Gospel Coalition, but conservative Orthodox. And one of the things I think TGC has in their formula that works so well is they will give you information that's bite -sized, it's simple, often, and it is about current events, questions that are currently being raised.

A movie comes out, well, here's an article. And most of the time, I don't care for their articles, but I don't know of anyone else doing that in the more

Orthodox, conservative, evangelical wing, if you wanna call it that. We don't have, we have discernment blogs,

I guess you could call them. We have exegetical blogs. We have good philosophy slash theology scholarly type of blogs, but getting something that's bite -sized, accessible for laymen on current issues that involve questions that are being raised in the here and now,

I don't know of really anything comparable. So anyway, looking at that, and in regards to personal life, though,

I'll tell you what. Yesterday, I went on a hike, and some of you saw

I was streaming last night with Apologetics Live. And I barely made it in time, and it was my fault, and I won't make this mistake again, but I ended up going up a mountain and in the

Catskill Range near me, and didn't take into account a few things. And one of the things was how deep the snow was going to be.

It slows you down a lot. So anyway, so I'm coming off fresh from that.

And then this morning, half of you aren't gonna wanna hear about this, but it's my podcast, so guess what?

You're gonna hear about it a little bit. My cat walks in, I know. Half of you just turned off the podcast, but my cat came in from being outside early in the morning, and I think a hawker, an owl, might've tried to get her.

So she had a deep wound. And I grew up in a house, we would never go to the vet for, well,

I shouldn't say never. There were times, I suppose, but it was rare. And we didn't have cats, we had dogs now and then.

But anyway, it's not in my nature. I always associated that more with people who would go to the vet for any little thing, city folks, right?

And today, I was wondering, am I a city person? Because my first instinct was, she was bleeding, and I'm like, well, we gotta just take her to the vet.

And so we get to the vet, and she calms down, she was crazy at first.

And the vet gives me an estimate, and the lower end of the estimate is $750. And in my mind, right then,

I said, John, you should never go to the vet. It's an animal. Fortunately, that bill was cut significantly, because I didn't make a stink, but I did say, look,

I don't think she needs, and I looked at the itemized bill and just listed some things I didn't think she needed.

And so, care for significantly cheaper. But my goodness, I did not realize,

I'm new to this, that it costs that much at the vet sometimes. Crazy stuff. Anyway, crazy stuff going on online, too.

And it's hard to know sometimes what to focus on. And I think through, what's the most helpful for you all?

And so today, I've decided to, once again, dabble in a very, right now

I guess controversial, but extremely specific theological issue that many of you probably haven't even considered.

But because of the way that this has been brought up online, it's gotten crazy, we'll just put it that way.

And so, if we have time, I'll go on to some other things as well. But I wanna start off with this.

So the whole issue starts, I think, here, with the theological issue we wanna talk about. There's an iceberg here, because before this is a whole bunch of stuff, and I'll just summarize it by saying,

James Lindsay and William Wolfe got into it on Twitter. And William Wolfe is pro -Christian nationalism,

James Lindsay is an atheist. And very against Christian nationalism and made all kinds of suggestions about them being used by Nazis or quasi -Nazi, and then there was all this foul language, and James Lindsay's an atheist, so I'm not surprised by that necessarily.

I am surprised by the way that some Christians have reacted to this whole thing, but James Lindsay doesn't surprise me.

And so, he's trying to go after William Wolfe, and he's trying to go after Christian nationalism, right?

And this is one of the things that he said. He asked

William, he says, "'Do you denounce the overt Gnosticism "'underlying Stephen Wolfe's case for Christian nationalism?'

"'Do you denounce the overt Gnosticism?' Overt, so it's obvious. No one can mistake that there's

Gnosticism, apparently. And he cites Neil Shenvey for supporting this, and it's in bold, a quote from Neil Shenvey.

And what Shenvey says is, "'Adam would have felt like a stranger on earth, "'even without the fall.'"

And then he goes on to quote a passage from the case for Christian nationalism. Now, I'm gonna read for you in a moment the longer passage here, but this is where James Lindsay's getting the information.

I don't know if James Lindsay's read the book, but he's quoting from Neil Shenvey's blog, not from the book directly.

And then James Lindsay, he doubles down on this. He says, "'This is literally Gnosticism, literally.

"'Textbook, textbook Gnosticism. "'The belief,' and I'll give you his summation, and then I'll, like I said, we'll get to the book.

"'The belief that man, as the descendant of Adam, "'is a dualistic being that feels alien in creation, "'even

Eden, and longs to escape it "'to its true spiritual destiny, "'which he at least vaguely knows "'is the first belief in Gnosticism.'"

That's his assertion, that's what Gnosticism is. He also said this, "'I think the passage,' that we're about to read, "'is

Gnostic because it posits man's alienation "'from his true self, and thus state,'

I guess he, "'a state of discontent with the world itself "'as a fundamental condition of being man, "'not even a consequence of sin.

"'That's the fundamental Gnostic orientation.'" So Adam is alienated, he doesn't really belong in Eden.

His true self is to be found somewhere else. It's in heaven, and that's Gnosticism. Well, let me read the passage for you first.

This is from Stephen Wolf's book, "'The Case for Christian Nationalism,' it's on page 196. And this is what he says, he says, "'In substance, the exile argument strikes me "'as deeply confused.'"

And the exile argument, for those who don't know, is that we are exiles here on earth, therefore we don't really need to be involved in getting political power and these kinds of, he's trying to argue against this sort of pietist strain.

So he says, "'This exile argument "'strikes me as deeply confused.'" And you find this at TGC, you find this in a lot of evangelical places.

"'Particularly,' he says, "'in its anthropology.'" It means the study of man. "'As I've said,' or your belief about who man is, "'what man is, man's purpose.

"'As I've said, the gospel does not only grant "'a title to eternal life apart from works, "'but it also restores humanity for works.

"'The restored man is reconciled to nature, "'and as such, he is set apart not from earthly life "'or from natural principles, "'but from the fallenness of the world.

"'He is a stranger to this world "'because he is reconciled to nature, "'not because grace has elevated him above nature.

"'He is restored to the true way, "'which runs contrary to the false way, "'and the principle of the true way "'are nothing but those original to Adam.

"'A Christian foreigner in relation to fallenness "'to a world in bondage to decay, "'but fallenness itself is foreign to nature.

"'Furthermore,' and this is where James Lindsay "'quotes a passage from, or Neal Shenvey quotes a passage "'that

James Lindsay then quotes, "'furthermore, the Christian feeling of foreignness "'is natural to restored man.

"'Even Adam, in the state of integrity "'as he grew in maturity, "'would have felt as if he were a stranger in this world, "'not because of any defect in creation, "'but because his ultimate end was always heaven, "'where he would find his true rest.

"'Thus we can imagine Adam and his progeny "'feeling out of place on earth, "'ready and eager for heavenly life, "'though without sin and apart from any fallenness, "'Adam, before the fall, was a sort of pilgrim, "'passing through to a higher life.

"'Since a Christian already has a title to eternal life, "'wouldn't we expect this world to feel foreign to him?

"'Both our possession of eternal life "'and the fallenness of the world "'intensify this natural feeling "'that this world is not our ultimate home, "'but that feeling does not undermine "'our work in this world.'"

So that's the quote that is in question right now. Now, if I could sum up what

Stephen Wolfe is trying to say, I would boil it down to this. Creation's perfect, there's no defect.

He says that. God had an intention, though, of bringing Adam into heavenly life.

So there was a test, there was the covenant of works, you shall not eat from the tree, and Adam was supposed to pass that test.

Of course, Jesus is the second Adam and did pass the test, Adam failed it. But even if Adam had potentially not eaten from the tree, let's say, and Adam and Eve were sinless, that they were eventually, the telos or purpose or their end state that they would be in would be heaven.

So you might be thinking, what Bible verse is this? And so there's two issues.

One is, is this biblical? The second is, is it gnostic, all right? James Lindsay is accusing him of gnosticism.

That's a charge that's pretty heavy. That's a heretical charge, and we'll get to that. But first, I wanna answer that first question.

Is it biblical? Or at least, I'll put it this way, I wanna give you some resources to help you answer that question as you think through this.

And I want you to think critically. For me, when I first saw this, I was like, this is very minute, but I knew it wasn't gnosticism.

And that's, I think, I'm settled on that. Now, whether or not Adam was made for heavenly life or not is another question, but I do tend to lean with, and I'm open,

I'm open for people to send me stuff, but I do tend to lean towards Stephen's position on this.

And I'm gonna give you some commentary from, and this isn't final authority stuff for those who say, well, what does the

Bible say? John Calvin's not the final authority. But I do wanna show you at least a few men who knew the

Bible very well and what they thought about Stephen's position here.

And then I wanna ask the question, why would these men think this? Because these men weren't Gnostics.

I mean, is John Calvin a Gnostic? I mean, if we're gonna say that Stephen's a Gnostic, I think we'd have to say that Luther and Calvin and perhaps others were also

Gnostics. So here's what John Calvin said. The earthly life, indeed, would have been temporal into heaven.

However, he would have mitigated, migrated, sorry, without destruction and uninjured.

And he's talking about man there. Man would have migrated without destruction and uninjured into heaven.

That the earthly life was just a temporary phase. Here's what Martin Luther said about this particular idea.

He said, men were not created with the design. So this is about creation, not the fall. This isn't post -fall.

So they were created with the design that they should live forever in the small weak portion of the universe, but that they should occupy the heaven, which in this life they so admire.

And in the study and contemplation of which they are continually engaged. Now, this is translated from German.

I don't know what German word the translators were translating weak from.

But when I read this, I don't think Luther, because Luther believed that it was perfect, that sin hadn't entered the world.

So the creation did not have some kind of an evil defect in it.

I think what he's talking about in that word weak is that there was an unfulfilled plan of God's intention for man that had yet to be accomplished.

And there was a state that existed, the state of the covenant of works where Adam and Eve are tested.

They are in the garden and they have this tree that they're not supposed to eat from.

And I think, another thing that came to my head is Adam's state before Eve.

He was created and then God saw that it was not good. That man needed a helpmate. So he created

Eve. Now you might think to yourself, but I thought there was no sin yet. Wasn't everything good?

Wasn't creation good? Well, there was on God's part an intention for there to be a period of time between Adam's creation and the giving of Eve.

And it wasn't a sinful thing. And so I think that's what Martin Luther is talking about here.

That same kind of concept when he uses the word weak. I don't think there's weakness in the sense of it's sin or it's because of any evil.

It's weakness because it's not come into the final fulfillment of everything that God intends.

But everything's on schedule. Everything is according to God's plan and it's not, there is no rebel force yet, we'll say.

So Genesis 2 says, sorry, the commentary Luther gives on Genesis 2 .16.

He says this, Adam was created by an immortal and spiritual life to which he would assuredly have been translated and conveyed without death after he had lived in Eden and other parts of the earth to his full satiety of life.

I think that just means fullness, yet without trouble or distress. So this is the same position that Stephen is advocating here.

Martin Luther's advocating the same thing. And maybe some of you are still asking yourself why though, and we'll get to that, why anyone would believe this or think this.

Thomas Watson, a famous Puritan said, in case man had stood, it is probable.

In other words, stood being he didn't, he fulfilled the covenant of works and did not eat from the tree.

So obeyed God, in case man had stood, it is probable he would not have died, but would have been translated into a better paradise.

So even Thomas Watson believes this. So where are they getting this, right? Francis Turretin, the received opinion among the

Orthodox. Okay, this is a big quote, the received opinion. He's saying this is the broad consensus. And this was written,

I have the book. This is Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology.

And in this particular work, you can find these quotes, but he says that this is the received opinion.

And it's written, I guess, I think the late 1600s, right? Because he died in like the 1680s. The received opinion among the

Orthodox is that the promise given to Adam was not only of a happy life to be continued in earthly paradise, but of a heavenly and eternal life.

So he's saying that was what people thought at the time. The Orthodox people thought this.

Although on earth Adam could in some measure give himself to be enjoyed, it is certain that the immediate and absolute fruition of God is not to be sought apart from the beatific vision, which can be looked for only in heaven.

So it's the same concept that Luther and Calvin seem to have here, that it's like a maturity almost.

It's not sinful to be young, right? Jesus grew in wisdom and knowledge. It wasn't sinful that he was young and needed to grow in wisdom and knowledge.

But as he lived, he did make a progression in that, in his human nature.

And so it's the same thing, I think, or at least a similar kind of idea here, that when

God created the world, he had intentions beyond just the world and Adam living forever in Eden.

That's what they're saying. Now here's an explanation for why they say this.

This is J .V. Fesco in a book, The Covenant of Works, page 127, if people want to look this up.

And he explains Turretin's argument. He says, and it's in six steps. He says, the law promises heavenly and eternal life.

The one who does these things shall live by them, okay? So if you obey the law, which none of us do, after the fall, right?

None of us can obey the law. But if we were able to, if Adam, if he obeyed the law, right, there is a promise of eternal life.

We have that same promise, but we are sinners and we fail, and that's why we need

Jesus. But Jesus is the second Adam. So being in Christ means we, it is to our advantage that Christ has fulfilled the law.

So it's not just that he died paying for our sins. He also gave us his righteousness, okay?

He knew no sin, and yet he gave us his righteousness. All right,

Christ confirmed, number two, this exegetical conclusion because he fulfilled what Adam failed to do, and Christ provides eternal life.

I just basically explained that. God threatened Adam with both temporal and eternal death.

Okay? If you accept these arguments, this is why you reach this conclusion, all right? Eternal life is the highest state of good.

Number five, man's dignity demands eternal life. And number six, the state of the way should differ from the state of the native country.

That is, Adam's reward should be greater than his original state in the garden. So let me boil it down. If Adam had obeyed

God, the reward for that obedience is life in the heavenly state, in a different state than that garden.

It doesn't mean the garden had a defect or there was evil there, but that this would have been the reward for that.

And in a similar way, those of us who are in Christ, because of him being the second

Adam, we have an eternal reward. And there's differences between... I don't think

I have anything on the slideshow pointing this out, but it's just coming to my head. There are differences between the garden, a lot of them actually,

I think, and the heavenly state. One of them being, in the heavenly state, we're not, we don't have this opportunity or this capacity for sin, right?

We are, we're perfect. Our tears are wiped away. We're with Christ and that's it.

And so that's a huge difference right there between the two. So I probably could think of a lot of other differences, but that alone is a huge difference.

Now, there were some people on Twitter who were trying to claim, argue that the confessions of the

Christian faith, some of the great confessions argue against Stephen's point. I want to bring your attention to the

Helvetic Confession, or the Helvetic Consensus, which was really more of a fine -tuning or it was a follow -up to the

Helvetic Confession to define it. And this was in 1675. And this is going to help make sense of why there were some who were trying to appeal to things like the

Westminster Confession and why Stephen's view differs from that. Or I should say the

Westminster, I don't know that it even necessarily clearly addresses this, but it certainly doesn't come down on the side of Stephen.

You can't find clear language that comes down on the side of Stephen on this issue. And I think the

Helvetic Consensus gives very clear language on this, but it's much later. And that gap in time, according to Fesco, who's a theologian and an apologist, explains why there was that difference.

So here's what the Helvetic Consensus says, and I'll only read a small portion. I have more on the screen. By the way, patrons, you get this slideshow, so you can access all this.

But Canon 8, Canon 8 of the

Helvetic Consensus says, "'Moreover, that promise connected to the covenant of works was not a continuation only of earthly life and happiness, but the possession, especially of eternal and celestial life, a life namely of both body and soul in heaven, if indeed man ran the course of perfect obedience with unspeakable joy and communion with God.'"

Again, it's linked to, it's rooted in this idea that, well, actually, I'll read for you the next sentence, because I'm just gonna summarize it.

I might as well read it for you. "'For not only did the tree of life prefigure this very thing unto Adam, but the power of the law, which being fulfilled by Christ, who went under it in our place, awards to us nothing other than celestial life and Christ, who kept the same righteousness of the law.'"

So in other words, Christ, when he died, and he was the second Adam, and he passed the test, and he gave us his righteousness, and paid the price of our sin, and now we're in him, and we're his brother, he doesn't reward us with, and now you get to return to Eden.

That's not what he does. Some might think that that's what the millennial reign is, perhaps, but that's not the final state.

Christ rewards us with mansions in heaven. Christ rewards us with dwelling with God directly.

Adam and Eve didn't even have that in the garden. God came, and they heard him, right? There was fellowship there, but not the same kind of fellowship that we will experience in heaven.

So Helvetic Consensus says that, it says also this, "'Wherefore, we cannot agree with the opinion of those who deny that a reward of heavenly bliss was offered to Adam on condition of obedience to God.'"

So who are they talking about here? Those who deny that a reward of heavenly bliss was offered to Adam on condition of obedience.

This might be the Westminster, I don't know. I don't know enough. Maybe someone else can put in the chat, but here's what

Fesco seems to say about this. He says, "'At the Westminster Assembly,' 1646," notice that's before 1675, "'the precise nature of Adam's reward was an issue of debate, and the divines decided to leave the issue undefined.'"

So Westminster Confession, and this is what I thought when I was reading statements from the Westminster Confession that some people thought addressed this.

I was like, I don't think they are addressing this, and that Fesco seems to agree with me that they're not. But, "'Which created confessional legitimacy,' he says, "'for the idea that Adam's reward was only extended temporal life in the garden.'"

So he says that they left it undefined, and because of that, the default position was that Adam's reward was only being in the garden.

His reward for obedience was staying in the garden, right? So, "'But by 1675, opinions changed, and there was now less tolerance for this idea.

By the late 17th century, the position was dominant.'" So when you go, and I showed you the quote earlier, and you read

Francis Turretin, and Turretin says, "'The received opinion among the Orthodox is that the promise given to Adam was not only of a happy life to be continued in earthly paradise, but of a heavenly life and eternal life.'"

He's writing in like the 1670s, somewhere in there. So this isn't at the same time, it's not even in the same place, but it's not at the same time that the

Westminster Assembly is gathering, which is much later, or so much earlier. Much later is when

Francis Turretin comes on the scene in the Helvetic Confession. So, this is why there's no...

Turretin's not lying, is what I'm saying. This is why, in that time period, when he was writing, he was telling the truth.

This was the predominant view. Now, apparently it's not anymore, and I don't know why that might be.

Maybe it is, maybe it's not. I don't think most people have thought about it, but this was something people used to think about.

People used to think about theology a lot more. It's amazing, even reading... Really, you could read the

Anglicans, you could read the Presbyterians, you could read the Puritans, you could read almost anyone who is high up in these

Protestant denominations from 200 years ago, 300 years ago, 400 years ago, and you're gonna be just astounded with how well they knew their

Bibles, how well they connected things logically. So different than today's elites, and I don't say that in a bad pejorative way.

I mean, just the people who have made it to the top of seminaries and that kind of thing. Well, Stephen Wolfe gives his argument for this, why he believes in this position.

I'll just give it to you. Brief arguments for the position that Adam, by obedience, would have received heavenly life, not perpetual life in paradise.

First, the question is not whether the final state is embodied or disembodied. This is very key, guys.

I'm gonna try to break this all down at the end and give you a cap, but what he's saying here relates to Lindsay's, the second question we're about to get to, where Lindsay's basically accusing him of Gnosticism.

Gnosticism, it would be relevant to make that accusation if you're saying that the material things are bad or wrong or evil and flawed and corrupt and that we need to escape the material.

That would be valid if you're saying, if someone said that, you would be valid to say,

I think that sounds Gnostic. But Stephen's saying here, that has nothing to do with it, and I didn't take it that way either.

The question is not whether the final state is embodied or disembodied, because heavenly life is an embodied existence.

Bingo. So Jesus has a body. We get new bodies in heaven.

It's not just a spiritual dimension with no bodily anything. We get bodies.

Now they're different, they're new. I'm excited, but that's much different than what the

Gnostics, the Gnostic dualists thought. And we'll get to that in a moment. But all right, so he says, the question is whether the happiness and life were to be passed in heaven or only upon the earth and in paradise.

I affirm the former. Brief response, he says, number one, in response to the question, what good thing shall

I do that I may have eternal life? Jesus said, if thou will enter into life, keep the commandments. The condition of eternal life is perfect obedience to the law.

And that didn't change. He doesn't say that, I'm putting that. Which is the same law under which

Adam was placed for life. Thus Adam's obedience to this law would result in eternal life.

This is a very simple argument. By Christ's obedience to the law, his fulfilling of righteousness, he gained for those who trust in him a title to heavenly life.

If that is he met the condition of the covenant of works on our behalf, thus the blessing of Adam's obedience would have been heavenly life.

Christ merited for us heavenly life by perfect obedience to the law. Therefore, Adam being under the same law and commandment to obey it would have obtained the same sort of life in his obedience.

Christ recovered for us what we lost in Adam. In Christ, we obtain heavenly life.

So in Adam, we would have obtained heavenly life. And this is another thing he says, he goes, and I agree with this.

The last thing on this, it's unfortunate that so many self -identified Reformed Protestants were led by an atheist to accuse a fellow

Protestant of Gnosticism and other things for holding a position that most Reformed theologians held until recently.

Something isn't right. And this is where I think, this is the reason I think I decided to do this podcast.

I haven't seen everything, but I've seen enough comments on Twitter from people claiming to be Christians that, and they'll go along with what

James Lindsay said, his characterization of Wolfe's position here. If you go along with it, the danger is you're gonna also have to go along with Turretin, Luther, Calvin, Watson, and there's others.

You have to say, well, I guess they're Gnostics. They're heretics. They're not really Orthodox Christians.

That undercuts the very foundation of our evangelical faith.

It undercuts it. If you disagree, that's fine.

And I've told a bunch of people that. I'm in a chat group with some guys who we talk about some of these things.

And there was a few who agreed or I said disagreed with Wolfe on this point.

That's fine. But to say it's Gnosticism, to say it's Gnosticism, this was a view that was held by many and still is held by many.

I'm pretty sure Fesco, I think, I mean, he can explain it. I think he probably holds it. Don't quote me on that.

Anyway, let's deal with the second question. And this is gonna be much easier. Let me give you a quote. This is from this book,

Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, because I had a whole section on Gnosticism and comparing social justice thinking, today's critical race theory, all that, to Gnosticism.

There are similarities. Here's one of the things I said. I said the imminent, his church historian, Philip Schaff, and by the way, he is the gold standard.

Schaff is, when it comes to church history, that's why I quoted Schaff, described ancient Gnostic heresies as attempts to unfold mysteries of an upper world, unfold mysteries of an upper world, while disdaining the trammels of reason and resorting to direct spiritual intuition.

He wrote that the highest source of knowledge with these heretics was a secret tradition. The goal of Gnostics was to escape the physical world of sense perception and reach a higher ideal world.

And some of you know of modern versions of this. The secret, I believe, that was promoted by Oprah Winfrey about a decade ago is

Gnostic. Today's social justice movement, I say, shares a similar epistemology or theory of truth with ancient

Gnosticism. However, instead of using secret traditions, social justice advocates seek knowledge through the perspectives of oppressed social locations in order to understand reality and escape oppression.

So there's a parallel here. There's a similar way they're approaching truth, but Gnosticism, especially in the context of talking about Gnosticism as it relates to deep

Christian theology, which is what both Neil Shenvey and James Lindsay were doing would be, you'd have to have a dualistic anthropology, a dualistic theology, secret knowledge.

All of these things would be part of that. And you don't find that with these men.

You don't find that with John Calvin. You don't find that with Turretin. You don't find that with Stephen Wolfe. You don't find that with Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism isn't predicated on Gnosticism. If it was predicated on Gnosticism, it would sound something more like this.

The world isn't real. The material world isn't really real. There's no truth you can find in this world.

You need some kind of a higher spiritual non -material truth. In fact, we hate the material world.

And the secret knowledge that we have is exclusive. It's a part of our little group and you need to go through all the initiations.

Now, does that sound like anything close to Christian nationalism, which if you read the rest of Stephen's book is all about, this is good for everyone.

Even if you're not a Christian, if Christianity is the true religion,

Christianity influencing the government choices, moral choices is good for everyone.

That would be in conflict because you're no longer saying that this is only accessible if you go through the secret rites.

What you're saying is this is accessible to everyone. Everyone can pick up a Bible. Everyone can use logic.

This stuff is not, there's no shield preventing people from accessing these things. So you wouldn't even have a

Christian nationalism. It's just, it's so contradictory. You'd have a little cult, I guess, of some kind.

But Gnostics, they don't have a way to, like a public theology of like, here's our mission to make sure that we control the government and control people and dictate the boundaries wherein they can live their lives.

You don't find any of that. So that's part of the problem. And let me read for you, if I may, this is just one, there's a lot of Gnostic writings,

Gospels out there. Let me read for you one of them, the Gospel of Thomas, okay? And this is the first line from the

Gospel of Thomas. These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke.

And Didymus, Judas Thomas wrote them down. And he said, he who shall find the interpretation of the words shall not taste of death.

Jesus said, he who seeks, let him not cease seeking until finds. And when he finds, he will be troubled.

And if he is troubled, he will be amazed and he will reign over all. Now we could go on, but listen to the language that I just read from three verses.

It's mysterious. It's something that takes much hard work to free yourself from the trammels of reason, well, of just the normal thing you'd expect immediately.

You can't go with that. And so there'd be, and this is why I think Gnosticism is attractive to some because it does give you an elevated position, like I've arrived.

I went through it and now I know. I've emancipated myself from this physical realm.

And so I see similarities with the social justice warriors in this because they use these oppressed perspectives to in the same way.

And they also have somewhat of a, there's a dualism that I've noticed at least with some of them where,

I mean, this is the whole idea that you have to understand what race really is, right?

Why is that so important? Remember when CRT started and you started hearing things like white privilege and you were like, what are they talking about?

And one of the first things they said to you is you have to understand race is a social construct. Now they say the same thing about gender, right?

Just a social construct. And you're like, what? And they turn it into this kind of abstraction.

Well, that's the first part. That's the first thing you have to do. You have to realize that to start emancipating yourself from the physical, the oppression that exists.

So I can see this sort of binary thing. You have to get woke and your eyes are open. You see the world as it really is in this overlaid existence that you didn't really see before and couldn't see before.

But now that you're woke, you have the capacity to see it. That's not Christian nationalism. So even if you want to say that's

Gnosticism, that's not even classical Gnosticism. That's not the kind of Gnosticism we talk about when we're talking about early church

Gnosticism where there's two beings, you have the Monad and the Demiurge and that there's a good being and a bad being.

And usually it would, in Christian circles, it would take the form of, and I'm saying

Christian loosely here, it would take the form of Jesus being the one who would emancipate us from the trammels of this flawed, sinful, horrible creation that another deity, so this would be the

Father in this case, set up to trap us in this physical world. So Jesus is the way that we emancipate ourselves from the physical world, right?

That's not even anything remotely Christian. And Stephen Wolfe says that, and so did all the men that believed Stephen's position on Adam's final state being the eternal state if he had fulfilled the law.

They don't believe that either. So there's just nothing resembling it. The only thing I could think of is that, well,

I'll go back to the initial take here from Lindsay. He says, the passage is

Gnostic because it posits man's alienation from his true self, and thus the state of discontent that the world itself has a fundamental condition of being man, not even a consequence of sin.

I mean, I don't know how, because the thing that makes it Gnostic I guess is, in his mind, is man's alienation from his true self.

But that's not even, that's a misrepresentation of what Stephen's even saying. It's not an alienation from his true self.

That is his true self. But just, was Jesus not his true self when he was growing in wisdom and stature?

No. So that's not even a fair take. But if Lindsay's understanding is that it's

Gnostic if, well, here's another one. He says, this might get us closer to it.

The belief that man as the descendant of Adam is a dualistic being that feels alien in Eden, in creation, and longs to escape is

Gnosticism, is the first belief in Gnosticism. So you can see, like, he's trying to make out physical bad, spiritual good, and we escape, but there's no secret knowledge here.

And here's the other thing. That would also apply to us now on the other side of the curse, would it not?

That we as believers believe that repentance and faith in Jesus Christ is required to go to heaven, to be with God, to dwell with him, to be in a right relationship.

So if that's, if Gnosticism is defined so loosely that it's just, well, we want to somehow go into a, progress to the point of being in a different state than the one we are in now, and we believe there's something that needs to be done in order to do that.

For Adam, it was obeying the covenant of works. For us, it's the covenant of grace, and it's

Christ's obedience. Then that would, I guess, be Gnosticism either way.

Christ would, I guess, have to be a Gnostic. It's, I don't know how you would escape that.

So that's my take on this, that this was just, this is someone who's an atheist, who doesn't necessarily understand

Christian theology, who's coming at this and having an idea of not, a very loose idea of Gnosticism in his mind, and now he's weaponizing it.

And then, like, again, for an atheist to do that, okay. For the Christians, though, who jump on this and want to leave the door open for, well, that could be a right interpretation,

I don't understand it. Maybe someone can explain it to me in the comments, because I have tried my best to understand this, and I, for the life of me, do not.

Disagree with the position, sure. Think it's Gnosticism? What do you think Gnosticism is?

So, anyway, that's my take on this. I hope that's helpful for some of you. Since we have just a little bit more time,

I will answer, I think, one more question. And this is related to a video.

This is a video that someone sent to me this morning. And it's from a professor at the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Southern Seminary put this out. And it's on whether,

I guess they wanted to know my take on whether or not a pastor is disqualified, or at what point are they disqualified?

By what standard? What's permanently disqualified, disqualifying?

And I would say this. Anything that is such a breach in a pastor's life that the knowledge of that sin becomes greater than the pastor's reputation and character.

So, most commonly, I get asked this about adultery. If a pastor commits adultery, can he ever serve as a pastor again?

I'm gonna give a nuanced answer here. I'm going to say probably not.

And that's a strange answer. But frankly, I think that you can never pastor so long as your sin is notorious, so long as it becomes the thing people know about you.

And only if you have walked the long, hard road of repentance so clearly, so transparently, and for so long a time, that your reputation as a repentant person dominates your reputation as a sinner.

And I don't know how long that is. I know it's a long time. But your repentance has to become more notorious than your sin.

Now, there's a lot of good things in that. I think I agree with the idea that the minimum needs to be a long process, long in that it can't be the pastor commits adultery on Tuesday, and by Sunday, he's back in the pulpit, right?

There has to be trust built again. And the passage

I think that should all come to our mind is 1 Timothy 3, verse seven. It says, moreover, he must, and this is the

King James Version, he must, meaning a pastor, have a good report of them which are without, meaning those who are outside the church, lest you fall into a reproach and the snare of the devil.

So there is in Scripture a principle that pastors, shepherds, teachers, elders,

I should say, are to, according to Titus and Timothy, have a good reputation with the people that know them.

Outside the church. If you are engaged in work, if you're bivocational, your boss should like your work, not suspect you of pilfering.

You should, if you're in a parent's group, the parents should, doesn't mean they like your personality, but you have a good reputation as someone who has character.

What's the point of that, John? Well, think about it. If you just go to church, and while you're at church, you behave, what are you like the rest of the time?

That's the point. You need to have character. And that's why he says, lest he fall into a reproach and the snare of the devil.

Well, he's gonna fall into sin. If, there's a lot of pressure. When you become a pastor, it's like a target's on your back.

The devil knows who you are. And if you get in that position, and you don't have the character for that position, you're gonna fail.

And one of the ways to see if you have that character is when the people who see you, who aren't determining your character for this position, they see you the rest of the time, people in your family, maybe, who aren't part of the church, what do they see in you?

Do they see a good character? That's why I've always taken this passage, and I think it's clear from the context. That's what it's about.

The thing that makes me uncomfortable with what you just heard from Professor York is it seems in my mind to put into the hands of non -Christians the power to determine whether or not someone has repented enough.

You don't find that in this passage. It reminds me a little bit of the saying that we heard so often at the

Southern Baptist Convention two years ago from J .D. Greer, the world is watching. You have to have this stellar reputation in the world.

And the difficulty of this is sometimes people can accuse you of false things and you have a terrible reputation.

What do you do then? You have a terrible reputation with people who don't, they don't even really know you necessarily.

Maybe they do, but they're outside the church and they just believe the hype. I mean, Jesus at certain points,

Paul at certain points, when he's running out of the town because they wanna stone him, he couldn't have taken a vote to say, hey, does

Paul have a good character? The people outside the church would have been like, no. So I don't think that's the point of this passage.

And that's what makes me nervous is are we as Christians going to give the world the power to determine whether or not there's a sufficient repentance there?

Now, when you're evaluating whether there's sufficient repentance, I think you should ask the people who know that person outside the church if he has a good character.

And to the people who are intimate with him, and whether that's business or other relationships, I mean, they're gonna show by their actions too.

If they trust him to take their kids on playdates with his kids, if they trust him to do good work for a job of some kind, if the family trusts him to be the one who heads up the family gatherings and he's the one they all look to.

I mean, these are the kinds of things that show, okay, he fell, he sinned, but he has now shown that he's built trust up again.

We just don't want to... Like the metric isn't though for whether repentance is authentic, what your reputation is, especially in a world now where we have social media smears and magazines when you check out at the shopping center that might even have preachers on them at times.

And it's, the scale is so different than it was in Paul's day. He's not, only he's talking about people who, someone in San Francisco who thinks you have a bad reputation because you can now have a bad reputation with some people just because that's the way it is.

And it's baked in and you'll never get rid of it even though you've repented, right? Does that make sense? Hopefully it does for everyone.

So I would be more comfortable with just going back to here's the scriptural qualifications at such a time that you meet these again.

And I know I probably disagree with some Orthodox pastors on this, but as such a time you meet these again, then sure.

I mean, I think David was restored to a position of being a king and he committed very egregious sins.

Do I think that can happen? I'm not making that normative by the way for, I understand the difference between the eras and the position that David was in, but I do think there's a principle there.

And I don't know of any Bible verse that specifically says, this is the sin that if you commit it, you can never be restored to ministry again.

I don't know of that. Certainly there are sins that would take a lot more time to build trust.

There are also sins that, and whether it's the length of time someone's engaged or how heinous they are, which might cause someone to wonder, you've made a profession of faith.

Is the spirit really at work in your life? Are you really repentant? And that's really the question. Are you really repentant?

What kinds of things are gonna indicate whether there's true repentance or not? I think there's a number of things, but I don't think it's going to be riding on whether or not your reputation has overcome the previous reputation.

So that's my two cents. There's a lot. I mean, look, this isn't like, let's go to the mat on issue in my mind.

I do think I have a sensitivity though, to let's let the world determine what we do and who our leaders are and what our agenda should be.

And the world's watching. And if you, in this world, you're gonna have a bad reputation for being a big meanie if you just read the

Bible verses, right? So I think that York is opening up himself to that kind of a criticism in this.

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