March 16, 2017 Show with Michael Haykin on “Patrick of Ireland: His Life & Impact”

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Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest

of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this

16th day of March 2017, the day before St. Patrick's Day.

And I'm delighted to have back on the program one of my favorite guests, Dr. Michael Haken.

He is professor of church history and biblical spirituality and director of the Andrew Fuller

Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

And in honor of St. Patrick's Day, we are addressing his book, Patrick of Ireland, His Life

and Impact.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Michael Haken.

It's great to be with you, and especially on this day before St. Patrick's Day.

Yes, and I know that you are of Irish descent.

I don't know if you were born in Canada or in Ireland, but I know that at least there is some close connection to

Ireland.

If you could tell us something about your own ancestry and your own childhood and the religion of your

youth until you.

Came to Christ.

Yeah, I was born in England, but my mother was born just outside of Dublin, a seaside resort

called Bray.

And she came over to England to work in Cadbury's Chocolate Factory in Birmingham, or just outside Birmingham.

Probably the early 1950s, she met my dad there.

And my dad is Kurdish, but he embraced my mother's culture.

So I was really raised Irish Roman Catholic.

So even though I don't have a Catholic Irish father, that was the culture I was raised in, very much so.

So St. Patrick's Day was always a big day.

We would get stuff from Ireland.

My granny would send us stuff.

And so I grew up with all of that

kind of the Irish Catholicism, the Latin mass,

just to remember that.

And so I feel that I've had a good kind of, I've got a fairly good knowledge of.

Irish Roman Catholicism from within.

So what were the providential occurrences that came about in your life that actually led you to the true

biblical.

Gospel?

Well, coming to Canada, my father accepted a position to teach in

southern Ontario at a place called Hamilton, which is about 40 miles west of Toronto,

and at a university, McMaster University, which is a Baptist school.

He was a teacher, professor of electrical engineering, and so we emigrated.

And in the providence of God, I became pretty disenchanted with Roman Catholicism.

I went through a lot of what my generation went through, radical left -wing politics,

Eastern spirituality, before meeting the woman who became my

wife, but who also was a believer.

And I discovered she went to church, and I had no idea what I was getting

into.

After, if I could go to church with her, I thought, you know, this is one of the ways I could clean up my life.

And God did a lot more than simply clean up a few things, and I was converted there in the

spring of 1974.

Stanley Avenue Baptist Church, sent a call to vocational ministry,

which was in the.

Providence of God, becoming a church historian.

And you spent a great deal of your life living in Canada, and were at one time on the faculty at

Toronto Baptist Seminary, correct?

Correct, yes.

And how long have you been here in the.

States?

I've been teaching full -time at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary since 2008.

And I taught adjunctly before, but started full -time

in January.

2008.

Why don't you tell our listeners something about Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, for those of our listeners

who are unfamiliar with that school.

Well, it's the largest seminary in the world.

We have about 5 ,000 students, baccalaureate and master's level and PhD.

It's absolutely a tremendous school.

I'm very biased.

Dr. Moeller was appointed president at a very young age, in 1993,

and revolutionized the school.

When I was going through seminary, I would never have thought of going to Southern.

It was a liberal school, in my opinion, but that certainly is nowhere, not the case at all.

Dr. Moeller's leadership has been inspirational.

He's turned the school around.

It's a playful

to the ends of the earth, as well as

planting, revitalizing churches here in America.

And it's just an amazing privilege to teach there.

I still pinch myself that I'm actually on the faculty.

Somebody said to me quite a number of

years ago, when I first went there, that the school is like Princeton in the 19th

century.

And there was a long period of time when Princeton was the place where one could

find and receive the finest theological education, and I would argue that that is the case at

Southern.

The quality of the men, not academically, but also spiritually.

Well, I've had the.

Honor of interviewing your president, Dr. Al Moeller, and a number of the faculty there, and I always

look forward to more opportunities to have them back on, and I would love to have Dr. Moeller back

on the program, so put a bug in his ear for me, if you will.

And the subject that we are talking about today, unfortunately, when

people think of St. Patrick, they immediately think perhaps of

drunkenness, and parades, and foolish behavior, or they

may think of superstitious things.

They may think about legends they have heard about this figure, and may even view him as

a figure from fiction, or from fairy tales.

But this was actually a real figure from history, and in fact you include

him in the series that Christian Focus Publication

has published on the early church fathers.

So tell us something about Patrick, where he was born and raised.

I know that the names of nations have changed since those days, and I know that

he is not an Irishman, he was not born in what is known as Ardalan today,

but if you could tell us something about the land, and the culture, and the religion with which he

was surrounded when he was born and raised.

You're.

Right, Patrick was not Irish, and you're also right that for many people Patrick conjures up, you know, green beer,

drunkenness, shamrocks, and so on.

And one of the challenges with Patrick is that history has been very generous to him.

Of all the medieval saints' days in the medieval church,

about 150 to 200, only two are still maintained in the Western world, really.

St. Patrick's Day, which is tomorrow, and then St. Valentine's Day.

So in one sense, history has kind of really rewarded him, but in another sense, history has been very unfair to him,

because he's been completely forgotten.

And the real Patrick has been completely forgotten, almost, in a sea of legends,

etc.

Patrick was born probably somewhere between the year 390 and 430.

We probably can't be more precise than that.

He was born in the Roman province of Britannia, which would have occupied at that time

the southern part of Scotland, England, and Wales.

Again, there have been great debates, we didn't get into them here, about exactly where in that portion of the

British Isles was he born.

But he was a Romano -Brit.

He was a raised upper -class.

He talked about his father having a villa.

We know from a number of references in his... and then

a letter that he wrote to an Irish warlord, that he came from wealth.

He had the privilege of education until the age of 16.

And he would have been part of that, kind of,

that had embraced Roman rule, trained in Latin.

He would later regret that he didn't learn Latin the way that he should have, because his education was... but

it's quite a different picture than, you know, the Irish.

He's not Irish.

He will give his life for the Irish, as it were, but he was.

Not born in Ireland.

Now, was he a Druid, or what was he before becoming a.

Christian?

No.

Druidism had pretty well been wiped out in the Roman province of Britannia.

The Romans had never crossed the Irish Sea to what they called Hibernia, which is our

Ireland.

Why that is so is not easy to explain.

It certainly was within reach.

When Britannia was conquered in the 40s AD through the 80s AD,

the Roman Empire was still expanding.

And it could be the case that energies were placed elsewhere.

They were placed in Central Europe.

Romania is taken around the 100s.

And so it could be energies being placed elsewhere.

But Druidism was part of Ireland.

It had been part of the Celtic heritage in Britannia, but the

Romans had made a point of destroying Druidic centers, particularly the one that was found

on the Isle of Anglesey off the coast of Wales.

And so he would have been raised... he's raised in a Christian home.

There are debates about what the Christianity was of his father and his grandfather.

There are some who argue it was nominal, but he definitely talked about having heard the gospel, having heard the

Scriptures being read and preached, but.

He didn't pay any attention to them.

And this was in the 5th century, and he eventually, obviously,

was worn down by God, and he eventually was given a heart transplant by

our Lord, and he became a believer.

What were the circumstances when he truly bowed the knee to Christ and cried out for him

for mercy and.

Repentance and faith?

Well, he needs to be placed then in the latter part of the Roman Empire, when the

Roman Empire is in a state of collapse.

There were a number of major military defeats that the Roman Empire suffered in the late 4th.

Probably the most iconic being Rome being sacked by the Goths,

the Visigoths, in 410.

And before that, there had been a major event in which a large number of German barbarians

had crossed the Rhine River.

The Rhine River was used by the Romans as a frontier, and what they had never

would freeze, and that's why they used it as a frontier.

It was a fabulous frontier.

In the winter of 406, 407, the Rhine froze, and to such an

extent that large numbers, upwards of 200 ,000 German

barbarians, Vandals, Burgundians, Alans, Swabians, crossed, and there were three

Roman legions in Britain, Britannia, in an effort to repel

the invasion.

They never returned, and essentially from 406, 407 onwards, Britannia

is exposed, and Irish pirates began to raid

the western coast of what we call now England, Wales, and southern Scotland.

And in one of those raids, about having been taken captive and being taken to Ireland,

and the real story then of Patrick is a lot more, actually a lot more dramatic

than the silly legends that grew up in the Middle Ages.

And it was there, having been taken captive, and one can imagine the trauma of a young

man in his teens being wrenched out of all that he knew, suddenly now in the hands of

barbarian captors, as he would have regarded them, speaking a completely different language, unintelligible to

him initially, which is Old Irish.

They wouldn't have been speaking Latin, probably.

And it's in that context he tells us in his confession that God brought back to him

his own belief, and led him to cry out for salvation,

and that's where he says, I was converted of all my heart to the Lord my God.

And it's a tremendous story of how God will use events in

this world, difficult, catastrophic even, to bring his

people to.

Himself.

What kind of details do you know about his life of servitude when he was.

In captivity?

Yeah, he's a slave for seven years, he mentions the period of time, he

talks about keeping sheep, and most scholars believe that he probably

was taken captive somewhere towards northwestern, what is now northwestern Ireland,

so the county of Donegal usually comes in for mention.

He definitely talks about being near the Western Sea, which is the Atlantic, and he was a shepherd.

He was expected to keep sheep, bring them in, take them out, stay with them.

He talks about staying on the mountains through rain and snow.

He doesn't have the Scriptures with him, but God brings to his memory Scripture passages.

He talks about meditating on those passages.

It's very concrete terms.

He would say on one occasion, I prayed up to a hundred prayers a day, and he's talking about a life that is now nurtured

by what Paul calls unceasing prayer, and God uses these seven

years not only to bring him to faith, but also to nurture a deep trust in God,

and so it would have been a very difficult life.

He was a slave, and he escapes,

and if he was born around the year 390, his conversion would then come around 406, 407, which is

around the same time that the legions left Britannia, and he would have gone back to Britain

then around the year 413, 414, and he escapes and goes back to

his people, and his expectation, their expectation

probably would have been that he would settle back into the routines of life in this Roman province,.

But that was not to be.

And he actually had the courage, did he not, to return to the very captors who

enslaved him to bring them the.

Gospel.

Did he not?

Yes.

Again, one of the challenges with going through Patrick's confession is trying to

determine dates.

He really doesn't give us dates concretely.

He gives us stretches of time, and it's somewhere probably around the

year 430, so as much as 15 years later that he returns to Ireland.

In the meantime, he's had a number of events happen.

He talks about a dream where it's almost like Paul's dream where the man of

Macedonia comes and said to come over and help them, which he has in Troas in the Book of Acts.

He has something very similar where the Irish come and ask him to come back to Ireland.

He also has a deep growing sense by the work of the Holy Spirit in his heart

that he should go back to Ireland.

They don't know the gospel.

He does now.

He's been there.

He's learned the Old Irish to some degree, but most importantly, he's learning the scriptures.

He now has a copy of the scriptures.

In fact, the most striking thing about his confession and his letter to the Irish warlord,

writings of Patrick, is the only other book that we know that he read for certain is the Bible.

And he's a contemporary of people like Augustine, but there's no indication he read Augustine,

but he read the Bible.

And you can't read the scripture without being convicted that

God's purposes are not simply for one people group.

And he becomes, he begins to realize that God wants the gospel preached to every nation

under heaven to the end of the earth.

He has a very simple knowledge of geography, which is this, is that

Ireland is the end of the earth.

Yeah.

He has no knowledge of anything beyond Ireland.

And what's amazing is that he reads scriptures like Matthew 28, 19 and 20, Mark 16, you know,

to go and preach the gospel to every creature, etc. etc.

He becomes convinced that God's calling him to go to the very end of the earth, Ireland, and then the

Lord will return, because the gospel preached to the end of the earth, and then the Lord will return.

His geography's clearly, his chronology's

not right, but his heart is right.

Amen.

Well, obviously.

Roman Catholics have adopted St. Patrick as their own, and they will even

laugh at the notion that he was not Roman Catholic.

But isn't it true that in the 5th century, although we could rightly categorize

Christendom in that period as Catholic with a small c, a universal

Church, there was no really formal, full -blown Roman Catholic Church as we saw later

develop in the 16th century at the Council of Trent, leading up to what we have today.

This kind of a church didn't even exist in Patrick's day, did it?

No, not really.

I mean, the later Roman.

Catholic Church didn't spring out of nowhere, and so obviously there are seed pods or

developments that the later Roman Catholicism would,

there's been the development of the Hierarchy, which

goes back to the 2nd century.

But up until the middle of the 400s, there's really no one

who claims superiority over all the other bishops.

And that claim does come with Leo the Great in the lifetime of Patrick.

Patrick wouldn't have been aware of it.

And again, there's opposition, and it really doesn't take

hold until the rise of Islam in the 700s

and a number of other historical factors.

There's no worship of Mary in the latter Roman period.

The mass, as the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the very body and blood of Christ, is not there.

I've sometimes had Roman Catholics say to me, you know, how can I study the Fathers and not be a Catholic?

And my response, a bit of a naughty one, is, how can they study the Fathers and remain a Catholic?

Exactly.

All of the things that Roman Catholicism loves in the 20th century is

not there in the early Church.

So yes, so Patrick has been taken over as kind of the patron saint of the Irish Catholics.

In many ways, he's a problem in that regard, because the authentic documents we have

don't mention Mary, they don't mention the Pope, they don't mention the mass.

The very familiar things that become part of Irish Catholicism are not there.

And that.

Actually leads me to a question from a listener in Slovenia, and I know

that there are Baptists who also like to claim Patrick as their

own, because of something that our listener in Slovenia is quoting from Patrick here.

Joe in Slovenia says,.

Dear Brother Chris, please ask Dr. Hagen to go more in depth along the lines of a

quote in Patrick of Ireland, page 17 through 18.

Patrick is cited as saying, Go ye, teach meet, is the order of teaching,

before baptism.

But it cannot be that the body received the sacrament of baptism before the soul

receives the verity of faith.

Faith must precede baptism, Patrick taught.

What source does this come from?

Is the primary source documentation for this strong and reliable?

Thanks so much for helping us recover Patrick for Protestantism.

That was Joe in Slovenia.

Okay, so the quote there was, what was the quote again, sorry?

Well, yeah, it's Patrick is, well that's what he is saying, Patrick is cited

as saying, Go ye, teach, meet, is the order of teaching, before baptism.

For it cannot be that the body received the sacrament of baptism before the soul receives the

verity of faith.

In other words, he was, according to our listener, Patrick was teaching that

baptism must follow faith, not come before it as an infant baptism.

Yeah, I mean, there's no indication that Patrick.

Would have been baptizing, I mean, the standard kind of methodology of

baptism in the early 4th century, sorry, early 5th century, would still

have been believers much later.

All of the

baptist truths, for example, that we have in Britain uncovered, will all

are going there for the immersion of believers.

Yeah, I mean, Patrick would appear to follow that early kind of church model.

That baptism follows faith.

Now the listener was also asking if this source is

the primary source documentation for this strong and reliable, he's.

Asking.

To be honest, and I don't have my book in front of me, but I honestly don't recognize the quote,

and I mean, the thought of the quote is fine, and I'm actually trying to find the manuscript that

I sent, or I don't have the book in.

Front of me.

Well, I actually have the book in front of me.

Yeah, take a look at.

Pages 17 to 18, because I don't recall that being there.

What I'll do is I'll do.

That during a break, obviously, because we don't want a lot of dead air as I comb through this, but

I mean, there is obviously the possibility that our listener was quoting from another book called Patrick of Ireland,

but perhaps Joe in Slovenia, if you want to clarify that, we would

appreciate that.

You could send in another email with a clarification.

But by the way, Joe in Slovenia, you have won a copy of

Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact.

I don't know if you already have Dr. Hagen's version of that book, or if you

have another author's book of the same title, but if you already have this book, you

can give it to someone else.

You can give it as a gift to a Roman Catholic friend or someone, and I know

that Slovenia is steeped in Roman Catholicism, so perhaps you can share it with someone that you know and

love, or someone that you are evangelizing.

Thank you very much for the question.

We have a number of other listeners who have already written in with questions of their own, so if you'd like to join

them on the air with a question of your own, you can email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

Don't go away, we will be right back with Dr. Michael Hagen and more of our discussion of

Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact, right after these messages.

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Welcome back.

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

is Dr. Michael Haken, professor of church history and biblical spirituality and director of the Andrew Fuller

Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

We are discussing his book, Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact, and I urge everyone,

since tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, to make use of the recording on the Iron

Sharpens Iron website of this broadcast that should be on the archive

by tomorrow morning, and you can send, you know, you can copy and paste

that URL into emails you send around to your family, friends, and loved ones.

In fact, if you want to email me and request an mp3 of today's interview before

tomorrow, I can send you out an email with this mp3 of today's

interview so you can start spreading it immediately to all you know and love so that they

can learn about the true Patrick of history, the true Patrick of Ireland, his life

and impact.

Our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air, is ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

And by the way, I did look at page 17 and 18 and that quote is nowhere to be found in your book,

so Joe in Slovenia, I'm not sure which Patrick of Ireland you were reading, but if you could let us

know where you found that quote that would be helpful.

And thanks again, by the way, Joe in Slovenia, for providing an American address where we can send this free book

to you where your daughter lives in Georgia, and we will make sure that she gets it,

God willing, within the next week or so.

Compliments of Christian focused publications, and it will be shipped to her by our friends at Cumberland

Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service dot com,

CV BBS dot com.

We have a listener in Hilltop Lakes, Texas, Linda, who says, I've heard

that St. Patrick performed many miracles.

Would your guest, Dr. Haken, give any insight to your listeners about some of the.

Miracles?

That really is probably Roman Catholic legend.

In the confession that Patrick talks about about his life,

he doesn't talk about miracles at all.

For sure if he had performed some or God had enabled him to do

some, I'm pretty certain he would have mentioned them.

He does talk about suffering for the gospel, he talks about being imprisoned.

There are three or four dreams that he has, one of which precedes

his escape, one of which is instrumental in his going back to

Ireland.

But no miracles as we would describe them.

He talks about, as I said, in being in danger of death

a dozen times.

He talks about being imprisoned a number of times.

And this would be because in Ireland, as he, when he went to Ireland, the whole social situation was being completely different

from Britannia.

Britannia was ruled by the Romans.

There was a Roman governor in Britannia.

When he goes to Ireland, there's about a hundred and fifty warlords who would

control usually a small portion of land, having built a fort on a hill.

And when Patrick would go through their lands to preach or have it across

their lands, he'd have to arrange a safe passage, and sometimes he ended up being imprisoned by

these warlords.

But we know of no miracles from the confession.

Notice in the book, what I'm doing in the book is, and this is my whole approach to Patrick, I'm

using the primary source documents that we know are genuine.

Any of the talk about miracles, for instance, he's supposed to have kicked all the snakes out of Ireland, that's why there's no snakes, native snakes to Ireland.

I mean, all those things are like three, four, five, six, seven hundred years later, and they're all part of the world

that develops with the collapse of the Roman Empire and the growth of biblical literacy.

And into that world there moves a spirit, a deep spirit of

superstition.

And I'm not saying obviously that miracles can't happen, I believe they can because of the

scriptures, but we don't need to manufacture them when they're not there.

And I think if Patrick had been involved in the miraculous, as the

question is being asked, I think he would have told us.

He tells us nothing.

Yeah, I would.

Think that he would have told us, too.

By the way, thank you very much Linda in Hilltop Lake, Texas, and you have also won a free copy of Patrick of

Ireland, his life and impact, compliments of Christian focus publications, and compliments of

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping it out to you.

And keep your eye open in the mail for a package from CVBBS .com, and that stands for

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

We have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York,

who asks, when you mention Patrick and dreams, that may give

way for charismatics to adopt Patrick as their own.

How do you, as a Baptist who are typically cessationists, view these dreams

of Patrick?

Well, I think one.

Has to obviously be careful with these sorts of things, but actually, if you know, if you

don't mind me moving, say, from Patrick to another sphere of church history.

Sure.

In the history of Baptist life, beginning in the 16th and 17th century, running

through to, say, the 18th and 19th centuries, there are sometimes a number of extraordinary

things that take place.

For example, in around the 1670s in England, when Baptists were being heavily

persecuted by the State Church of Anglicanism, along with Presbyterians and Congregationalists who were being

imprisoned, a Baptist preacher, a very well -known Baptist preacher named Andrew Gifford, Sr.,

in Bristol, had a dream one Saturday night, and he was supposed to preach the following day,

and as he was sleeping, he dreamt, I mean, when he woke up on

the following day, which was a Sunday, the Lord's Day, as he went to the door, he found that there had been a heavy snowfall,

this is very rare in this part of England, up to his knees.

He went out, went to the place appointed to preach, which was an upstairs room above an inn,

and no sooner had he begun to preach than the door was kicked in, and two constables, whom he recognized

as constables from Bristol, came in to arrest him.

He woke, told his wife the dream, she cautioned him, maybe he shouldn't go, maybe it was a warning from God, he

goes to the door, and lo and behold, there was, she's now

more adamant that this was clearly a warning, he nonetheless insists, goes to the beating house,

and as he had dreamt, so it turned out, he was no sooner started to preach than the door was kicked in,

two constables, the very men he saw in the dream, came in and he was arrested.

What he took from that was that God is sovereign, in one

sense, all this was foreseen, that's a better word, and my point there

was, Gifford, we know of no other dreams that Gifford had like that, these are not the

food of the Christian life, but these things I think do happen, and I

don't think they fall within the orbit of those

extraordinary miraculous gifts that were given to the Apostles in those early days.

So I don't think that this is warrant for Charismatics to say, well,

Patrick's ours, I think it does indicate that down through the history of the Church, sometimes God has done,

he's not prevented from doing.

Extraordinary things.

Well guess what, Ronald, in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, you have also won a free copy of Patrick of

Ireland, His Life and Impact by Dr. Michael A .G. Haykin, and please give

us your full mailing address so we can have that shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service,

cvbbs .com.

And we have, let's see, we have B .B. in Cumberland

County, Pennsylvania, who says, I have heard that one of the proofs

that Patrick was not a Roman Catholic was that centuries later,

Rome had to send an army to Ireland to compel the bishops of Ireland

to convert to Rome, indicating that they were of a different branch of Christendom.

Could your guest comment on.

That?

Yeah, I don't, again, I've not read that.

Essentially what happens regarding the Church that Patrick found, we call it the Celtic

Church, by the time that he dies, somewhere around 460, he has probably

evangelized a large portion of the northern half of the island.

Not Northern Ireland as we know it today, which is only six counties, but the northern half.

If you take a line from Dublin, which is pretty well center on the eastern seaboard,

and stretch it across to the west, the northern half of Ireland he had probably evangelized.

And we know that from later literary records and also probably some archaeological discoveries.

Within two generations, the gospel had pretty well spread through a lot of Ireland.

And the Irish, who had hitherto, prior to Patrick's coming, been illiterate

by and large, become one of the most literate peoples in Europe.

In fact, probably the most literate.

The gospel is kept, is obviously preserved there in this Celtic Church.

They inherit a love for the scriptures, a love for mission.

They begin to evangelize other parts of the British Isles, which by this time had fallen under Anglo -Saxon

paganism, because the Anglo -Saxons have arrived in the wake of the

Romans leaving.

And the Irish evangelized Scotland.

Obviously the Anglo -Saxons would not have been there with the Scots and Picts, but they evangelized Scotland, Northern England,

and would eventually go on to evangelize other parts of Europe, Switzerland, France, and even coming

into contact with those who were the dreaded Vikings.

In the 700s, after about really a tremendous period of missionary advance,

Rome had sent missionaries to England.

Not an army, but missionaries.

St. Augustine of Canterbury lands in Kent and

begins a, basically, they were sent by the Bishop of Rome, Gregory the Great,

who has claims as a Pope.

And over the next couple of hundred years, the Celtic Church and the Roman Church in the British

Isles come into conflict, pretty serious conflict.

And the conflict deals with a number of issues, but who

ultimately should dictate about how the gospel is lived out,

how church is done.

And the Roman argument is that the Bishop of Rome should.

And a very important debate in 664 at a place called Whitby in Northern England, now

called the Synod of Whitby, the Roman Church really kind of wins that debate, and

then begins a slow but long process whereby the Roman Church kind of swallows up the Celtic

Church.

That process is not complete until well into the 700s, and so that

may be what your guest is thinking of.

There's no actual army that ever comes over to Ireland to conquer them and compel obedience to Rome.

Rather, it's a it's a series of

synods, the most important being the Synod of Whitby, and the Roman arguments based on

Matthew 18, that the heir of Peter has authority over all

the Church.

And over the course of time, that argument kind of wears down the Celtic Church.

And what had been distinctive about the Celtic Church, namely its independence from Rome, disappears.

Well even though our listener.

B .B. had heard some misinformation, obviously your story still is

harmonious in many respects to what she was saying, in that the Celtic Church was a separate entity

from what is known today as the Church of Rome.

Yes it is, yeah, and when.

That sort of history is discovered by the early reformers in Scotland, for example, and by Scottish

Presbyterians, this becomes a very important part of their kind of story, that the

original Church in Scotland, the Celtic Church, and then by Scots -Irish in Northern Ireland,

they kind of begin to argue for their roots going back to that.

But yeah, it's very important to recognize that the Celtic Church was independent of Rome.

Patrick's planting of it was completely independent of the papacy, it wasn't a papal mission, he never appealed to the

Pope.

In fact, he had every opportunity to do so, because at the end of his life,

in the Confession, charges were laid against him of using the

mission for money.

And the Confession, in part, not in whole, but in part, is written to refute that.

And Patrick never appeals to being sent by the Pope, which he could have done, and would

have done, to verify and authenticate his mission, if he had been sent by the Pope, but he's not.

In fact, when he goes to Ireland, there really is no Pope.

If the first claims for papal supremacy are based on Matthew 18, that really doesn't

come until Leo, and he.

Doesn't become Pope until 440.

Interesting.

Well guess what, B .B., you've also won a copy of Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact, by

Dr. Michael A .G. Haken, and that is compliments of Christian -focused publications,

and you'll be receiving that in the mail, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service,

cvbbs .com.

And we're going to go to a break right now, this is our elongated commercial break between the two

hours, to help our friends at Grace Life Radio,

90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, air our rebroadcast

tomorrow morning, during morning drive time, in an orderly fashion.

So please email us, while we're on break right now, with a question of your own, for Dr.

Michael A .G. Haken.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Perhaps you're a Roman Catholic and you're listening, you are getting upset, perhaps you take great

exception to what is being said, you disagree with Dr. Haken, or perhaps you wholeheartedly agree with him, or you

just don't know.

In fact, we welcome questions even from non -Christians, whether you're a Christian, a

Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, whether you're a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a

Swedish Borgianist, or perhaps an atheist or an agnostic.

We will welcome your questions at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And there are a couple of you still waiting to have your questions asked and answered by our guest, and we will get to you

as soon as we can.

So don't go away, we'll be right back, God willing, after this station break, with Dr. Michael Haken, in our

discussion of Patrick of Ireland.

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Welcome back.

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

Dr. Michael Haken, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of the Andrew

Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Since tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, we are addressing Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact, the

book that Dr. Haken wrote for Christian -focused publications.

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Now we're turning to our discussion of Patrick of Ireland.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York who asks the question, what do you know of

Patrick's breastplate?

Is this truly a prayer that he penned and would you say that this is an orthodox

prayer that Christians should pray today?

Yeah,.

Patrick's breastplate, the only other text that sometimes is taken as genuine is Patrick's

breastplate, which is a prayer that goes through, it

would be prayed at the beginning of the day where the believer thinks of the various things that he'll go through the

day and basically arms himself essentially with God's presence in every

sphere of his life, every area of his life, etc.

I think the evidence indicates that the prayer probably is later

than the period that we're talking about.

It probably is not original to Patrick.

It certainly belongs to an early stage of the Celtic Church.

Most scholars would date it 7th century, maybe a bit earlier, maybe 6th century.

In Patrick's genuine works, though, that have been hammered out

in the 20th century and in the present century, it normally doesn't find a place.

But it certainly is not the sort of thing that a believer couldn't pray.

It's got, it's a fabulous prayer that reminds the believer of

God's omnipresence, but more than his omnipresence, his care for.

His children.

Well thank you, RJ, and you have also won a copy of Patrick of Ireland, his Life and Impact Complements of Christian

Focus Publications, and that will be shipped out to you.

Complements of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

I'd like you to address one God in the Trinity of the Holy Name, the divine

foundation of Patrick's theology.

Yeah,.

One of the things that is very striking about Patrick, his confession,

is its Trinitarianism.

Earlier in the program I mentioned that Patrick, it's very clear that Patrick knows the Bible.

He doesn't appear to have read any other book.

He never quotes or alludes to any other author, but he does quote a statement of

faith.

In shape brought

the Arian crisis to an end by its declaration that Jesus, the Lord Jesus, is one in being with the Father,

and that the Holy Spirit is to be worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son, and therefore is to be understood as fully

God.

In other words, the formula of, we worship three persons, yet one God,

is part and parcel of the creedal definition that is issued at the Council of

Constantinople in 381.

That creedal statement has definitely shaped Patrick, and he quotes a

creed in the confession, which may well be the statement

of faith of the church in Britain, in Britannia, which he would have gotten to know after his return from

captivity in Ireland.

He may have been familiar with it before, but definitely after his return, and he has extensive calling to mission.

And that confession of faith is a very deeply Trinitarian

statement.

He has this very unique statement about one God in the Trinity of the Holy Name at the end,

but as I said, that Trinitarianism works through all of the confessions.

You could go through it and see the way he refers to it.

It's deeply Trinitarian.

He's very convinced that his mission is grounded in the Trinity.

Part of it is to proclaim the true God, which means teaching about the Trinity.

I think this is one area that can be very helpful.

I think one of the things that certainly Patrick is an encouragement to us is in mission.

But another area, and in the past few months we've had a bit of a

brouhaha in America regarding the doctrine of Trinity in evangelical circles, and I think some

of that brouhaha has arisen because there has not been explicit,

regular teaching about the God we serve, who is Triune.

And to me, I sometimes ask in my

church history survey courses whether or not, when did the students last hear

a sermon on the Trinity?

And you hear you've got people, maybe they've spent 20, 30 years in the church, and they never have

heard a sermon on the Trinity.

And Patrick, in his deep commitment to the Trinitarianism of the early church, I think

is a model for us on how important is the doctrine of.

Trinity is.

So you believe that Patrick had a very orthodox understanding of the Trinity?

It wasn't a...

Oh yes.

It wasn't modalist or anything of that nature?

No, not at.

All.

No, no.

There's no sense of collapsing the persons into one person.

There's no sense that, as the Arians would have argued, that somehow the Spirit and the Son are less than the Father.

There is a very clear understanding that the God we worship is three fully

equal persons who share one.

Being.

Amen, praise God for that.

And let me repeat our email address, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at

gmail .com, if you have any questions for our guest.

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York asks, why is it that secularists

like to turn St. Patrick's Day into an all -out day of sin

rather than focus on the evangelistic efforts of the man himself?

Well, obviously the lost world is not going to want to celebrate something true

about this man of God, and they do the same thing with Christmas.

They do the same thing with Resurrection Day and so on, but if you could comment if you have anything further to add with

Tyler's question.

Yeah, I think that, I think part of the.

Problem here is, I think as you've said, you know, the way in which secular culture is certainly not going to be celebrating

a gospel -minded man like Patrick, who in some ways, you know,

he partakes of the apostolic nature of the early church's mission to the lost,

but I think also there is just a significant degree of ignorance about Patrick.

Roman Catholics, you know, have long considered him a miracle worker

and a real man,

and I think that's contributing, and

I think again it's illustrative, you know, the, you know, Christmas, which was a celebration of the

Incarnation, as being robbed and simply become a time of gift -giving.

Easter, which is a celebration of God's victory over death, is a time to eat chocolate

and talk about bunnies.

That's the world.

That we live in, the refusal to deal with truth.

Well sorry Tyler, we do not have any more copies of Patrick of Ireland to give away, but if

you go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service's website, you can purchase a copy if you'd like.

It's a very, very reasonably priced book.

It's only about a hundred and two pages long, and

I'm sure that you would find that affordable if you go to CVBBS .com.

CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com, and also for our listeners in the UK,

you could go to the publisher's website for this book, ChristianFocus .com,

ChristianFocus .com, which is located in the United Kingdom, so it'll be much more

appropriate for you to order right from them if you live in that area.

Tell us something about the word and spirit

in Patrick's.

Piety.

Well, word would be the emphasis on Scripture.

As I said, it's very clear that Patrick knows the Bible, he knows it really well, and

in his, for instance, in his defense of missions, he basically produces a long list of biblical texts,

pretty well identical to the sort of thing that William Carey would use, or would argue from, why we need to

engage in cross -cultural worldwide mission.

And it's very evident that Patrick is part of that early Christian

experience, and in which there were various

ways in which the Scriptures were read, memorized.

It could very well be the case that Patrick had most of the Scriptures memorized.

Many of the leading figures in the third and fourth centuries in the Church would be

required, by virtue of their position and leadership, to have memorized large portions of Scripture.

And for instance, in Egypt in the fourth century, it was required of deacons that they have memorized

the Book of Psalms, one of the major prophets, and one of the Gospels.

And then if they became an elder, the ante would be up, they would have to memorize Paul's letters, and then a

bishop even more.

And so it's probably quite likely that in the 15 years between Patrick's coming back to Britannia and his going

back to Ireland as a missionary, so between around 414, 415, and when he escapes and

goes back to England, what is now England, and then he goes back to Ireland around 430, that he

probably had some degree of theological education.

We don't know any of the details in terms of where that might have been, but that almost definitely would have involved

learning how to interpret and learning how

to memorize the Scriptures.

And often books would be, you know, a congregation might have one copy,

and so it could be the case that when Patrick went over with a copy of the Scriptures, he

would leave it in one place, and if he was going around preaching, he might not take it with him, he'd have to

memorize the Word of God.

So that's the emphasis on Word.

The other emphasis on Spirit has to do with some of those striking events that I've already referred to,

but also the way in which the Holy Spirit is key in pushing him to mission.

And he talks about being bound by the Spirit, and he uses the passage that Paul uses in

Acts 20, Acts 22, or Acts 20, 21, I guess it is,

where Paul talks about being bound by the Spirit to go up to Jerusalem.

And the two times that Patrick uses it, he emphasizes that the Spirit has so

impressed him that he has to go to Ireland and never leave Ireland, that he has to die there.

And he does literally, he talks about giving his life and his freedom for the Irish, that they might inherit eternal life.

And if you ask him why, one of the reasons he would give is because the

Holy Spirit had called him to do this work.

And so I think one of things we see very clearly in Patrick is that one of the great works of the Spirit

is mission, and mission that takes the gospel to the ends of the earth.

So that's, that chapter that deals with Word and Spirit focuses on Patrick's biblicism, his

Word -centeredness, but also his obedience to the Spirit of God, as that,

as the Spirit of God had revealed his.

Intentions in the Scriptures.

We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who said, I heard you mention

earlier that Patrick was a believer in credo baptism, or

believer -only baptism.

Did he also believe that immersion in water was.

The mode?

Yeah, I mean, he doesn't talk about immersion per se, but he uses the

word that we translate by baptism, and that word means immerse.

And as I also said, all of the baptisteries that we've found that date from this

period in Western Europe are immersion tanks.

They're not little, you can actually trace the kind of

genealogy and archaeology of baptismal fonts from

the earliest period, where they're definitely to immerse somebody, to the

smaller fonts that would be used for pouring or sprinkling in the later Middle Ages.

And so that's not an issue that Patrick focuses on.

That's not a subject he gets immersed in.

No, yeah, very good.

It's not a subject he gets immersed in, but the logic is that,

like most of his contemporaries, he would have argued for.

Immersion of believers.

Now, what would be the difference, in your opinion?

You are a Baptist and a Baptist historian.

What would be the difference, the major differences, between

a Christian in the 5th century, like Patrick, who did practice

baptism as a Baptist would, but obviously there were no churches

formally named Baptist at that time.

But what would be the difference between a.

Church of that era?

I think the critical difference is this, is that what you don't

have in the 4th century, 5th century, are congregationalist churches where the

locus of authority is based on the congregation.

They're not congregationalist churches, and the emergence of

Baptist policy and theology in the 17th century out of Puritanism, before that

step is taken, there is the rediscovery of congregational church government.

That the church, a local church, is an autonomous body, and that it is not subject to the

authority of a presbytery, or especially not a bishop.

And the policy that Patrick would have been familiar with would have been Episcopal.

And now that gets changed in the Celtic Church.

The bishops of the Celtic Church do not have the sort of authority they have in the Roman Church.

But nonetheless, it's an Episcopal model, and that's very different

from the sort of congregationalism that is rediscovered in the wake of the Reformation.

So when.

You use the term...

Sorry?

No, go ahead.

Essentially, congregationalism as a.

Church model is probably pretty well gone by the end of the 2nd century.

But.

You do believe it is a biblical model, though.

Oh yes, yeah, most definitely.

I.

Mean, I know you can argue for a Presbyterian form of government from the Scriptures,

but I think that the balance tips in favor of congregationalism.

What I don't think you can find in the Scriptures is an Episcopal

model where a bishop is responsible for the ordination of

elders and deacons, and that he appoints them, rather than the Presbytery in a Presbyterian

model, or the congregation in a Congregationalist model.

Both of those models, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, are pretty well finished by the end of the

2nd century.

They've been basically taken over by an Episcopal model.

And so the key difference between Patrick's experience of church and ours would be that

his experience was grounded in probably an Episcopal, and not a Congregational,

definitely not a Congregational or a Presbyterian.

Well, we.

Have to go to our final break right now, and if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, now is

the time to do it, because we've only got about 25 minutes left of discussion

on the program.

So email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And we do have a couple of you still waiting to have your questions asked and answered, and we will get to you as soon as we can,

hopefully before the end of the program, God willing.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We will be back after these messages, God willing, with more of Dr. Michael Haykin and our

discussion of Patrick of Ireland.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzin.

If you just tuned us in, this is our final half hour of our two -hour program today with Michael Haken,

professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

We have been and will continue discussing Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact

as a way to prepare for more equipped evangelism tomorrow

on St. Patrick's Day.

To those you love, we want you to spread the mp3 of this interview far and wide

and we hope that many errors in the thinking of people regarding St.

Patrick, but perhaps even more importantly regarding the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a lot of these errors

are rectified by the grace of God and that lives are transformed and

new hearts are given and new lives in Christ are begun.

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

ChrisArnzin at gmail .com.

And by the way, Dr. Haken, there are a couple of listeners who are friends of yours who wanted to say hello.

We have Ray Rhodes who sends his greetings and Mike Abendroff.

And Mike Abendroff.

Mike Abendroff.

Thank you.

And by the way, I also want to thank one of our listeners all the way in

Australia who sent in some recommendations

regarding setting up a PayPal account on the

Iron Trip and Iron Radio website.

I thank Scott in Toomerong, New South Wales, Australia.

And I know that I probably mispronounced that.

Tomerong or Tomerong.

I don't know how to pronounce that.

I didn't even know there was a South, New South Wales in Australia.

But thanks Scott for your recommendations and I am already actually looking into those things with

my webmaster to have them established on the Iron Trip and Iron website.

Thanks for looking out for us and thinking of us and thanks for your pledge to start donating to Iron Trip and

Iron Radio when we have that in place on the website.

We have Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York

who says, I have heard from Roman Catholics as a proof that Patrick was

indeed a Roman Catholic as we know them today, is that he visited

monasteries.

What do you make of this claim?

Well Patrick was, certainly.

Would have been familiar with monasteries.

Monasteries aren't by themselves an evidence of Catholicism.

Monasticism began as a protest movement against the nominalization of Christianity in the fourth

century when Constantine basically embraced Christianity and the Roman Emperors claimed to be

Christian and Christians now began to rule and significant

numbers of pagans come into the church basically because that's the only way they're going to get ahead in society.

And the monastic movement is a protest movement.

It begins in Egypt and the Middle East, what we call the Middle East or the

ancient Near East Palestine, Syria and also in what is now Central Turkey,

in those days Cappadocia, and none of those areas are traditional Roman Catholic

areas at all.

It would spread to the West and the Celtic Church does

have monastic settlements, but the fact that Patrick is linked to monasticism,

and he does have some links, it's not as prominent as some later Celtic figures,

doesn't in its own self prove anything that he's a Roman Catholic.

Even after the Reformation took place within the Anglican Church there were contexts where

men would live together in a kind of a semi -monastic environment committed to

celibacy, simplicity of lifestyle,

and so on.

I'm but it's not in itself an indication of

Patrick's being a Roman Catholic.

Yes, I.

Think that those monks you speak of are also known as high school computer nerds,

but would you say that the

monasteries of that era were an unbiblical expression of

Christian piety, or were they anti -biblical?

I'm not saying that they were intentionally anti -biblical, but.

Would you?

No, actually I think the monasteries in the early days were, for instance, if you look at

the monastic settlements set up by Basil of Caesarea and Cappadocia in between 360

and 380, they were places where the scriptures were copied,

where his monasteries create the first hospitals.

There are no hospitals in the Roman world except for the Roman army on campaign.

If you are sick, well, if you didn't have access to a doctor, you are in trouble.

And Patrick sets up these hospitals to take care of lepers and the poor, the

ill.

We have the scriptures because the scriptures were copied in monastic scriptoria,

places where the scriptures were copied.

And for Patrick, what he hoped that the monasteries would do, he didn't expect everybody to become a monk.

Sorry, Basil.

What he hoped the monasteries would do would be a vehicle for reminding people that to be a Christian meant

a serious radical devotion to the Lord Jesus and to live the life that he had called.

He was very distressed by the enormous flooding in

of pagans into the church, so that now every Tom, Dick, and Harry wanted to be identified as a Christian.

In other words, there was a loss of the radical edge of Christianity that had

existed before Constantine.

And so the early monasteries, again without necessarily embracing all that they stood for, were an attempt

to remind Christians that the gospel is a call to die, to

self, and to live for Christ.

And this was lost.

This was being lost, rather, in the fourth century and succeeding centuries.

Now, the monasteries become quite different from what they had intended.

They become places of wealth, riches, power.

So the monasteries that the Reformers are speaking against a thousand years later, and it is a thousand years later,

are very different institutions than the ones that emerged at the end of the patristic period, or

the end of the Roman Empire.

I'm assuming as a Baptist you would agree that what the monasteries

became, where there is enforced celibacy, where men are prevented

or forbidden from being married, that this would be not only an unbiblical concept but

anti -biblical.

In fact, some might argue the doctrine of demons.

Yeah, I mean, again, there's a number of issues going on here.

One is the way in which some later Christian authors like Jerome, and even

Augustine, viewed marriage and the way that gets taken up

into the requirement that monks be celibate.

It creates all kinds of problems, and the whole idea that develops in the medieval

period is, this is long after Patrick, obviously, but develops in the medieval period is that there are really kind of two

levels of discipleship.

If you're really sold out for Jesus, you'll be a celibate monk or nun, and live in a monastery or

nunnery.

And then there's a second level which others who can't really follow Christ as

perfectly have to endure, which is marriage.

And the Reformation, as it comes, is a rediscovery of the spirituality of marriage.

It's a rediscovery of biblical marriage.

It's a rediscovery that for most men and women, the marriage is the school of sanctification that God expects them to

live through, or to be involved in, rather.

I think one of the things that we have done, though, as evangelicals, and I think the evangelical stress on the importance of

marriage is biblical, but we have forgotten that there are some whom God does call to a celibate lifestyle, a single

lifestyle.

And I think for single people in our midst, I think it's sometimes been difficult.

And one can think of a number of figures, you know, people like Charles Simeon, John Stott, in

more recent years, who've been single.

That's not the norm.

And I think when the norm is being enforced, you get the sort of scandals that have plagued the Roman Catholic Church,

plagued them at the time of the Reformation, where you had all these priests who were supposedly celibate.

Well, they were celibate, but they weren't chaste.

They weren't married, but they had women that they were living with, and having babies by.

And then the scandals that have plagued the Roman Catholic Church in the 20th century, the sex scandals.

And the fruit of this kind of elevation of celibacy to

really an unbiblical mode of Christian discipleship is being.

Horrific.

Yeah, obviously I didn't mean to disparage people who believe that they have a calling to be single, or even

a gift to be single, but I was speaking as you mentioned, enforced

celibacy.

And when I say celibacy, I'm not talking about that, I'm not giving the

indication that I believe Christians should have the freedom to have marital relations outside of marriage.

Celibacy is often used in our day and age just to speak of a

lack of sexual activity, but it's actually in regard

to a voluntary distancing from

being married themselves, to be, you know, a denial of partaking in

the marriage union.

So I'm not speaking of chastity, but anyway, obviously all Christians are to be chaste before

they're married, and when they're married they're supposed to be monogamous to their spouses.

But let's see, we have Linda again in

Hilltop Lake, Texas.

I usually don't take more than one question from listeners, but this is a good one.

Linda in Hilltop Lakes, Texas says, is there an approximate number of people

known to have come to Christ under Patrick's ministry?

Yes, well, yes in one.

Sense.

I mean Patrick talks about thousands, literally thousands.

Now Patrick tends to, I'm not, I don't think Patrick exaggerates, but he

tends to, like for instance, when he wants to emphasize that he spent a day,

you know, on ceasing prayer, he'll say, I said as many as a hundred prayers during

the night and in the day.

So he tends to think in concrete terms, but he does talk about

thousands converted, and that's very likely, because Ireland

moved from, when Patrick goes there in the first

third, he goes around 430, so when he goes in the beginning of the second third of the fifth century, within

two generations, so by the early 500s, it's a radically different place.

There is a literacy, there's a love of the Scriptures, there's a growing passion for mission.

It's quite remarkable, really, and so the numbers converted are.

Quite possible.

So yeah.

Well one of the things that I really would like you to lay out clearly for our listeners, especially since I'm hoping

that our listeners who are believers use this recording as

an evangelistic tool, is I want you to really lay out the gospel in a simple

way and demonstrate how that is, there's a chasm

of difference between the biblical gospel, the gospel that Patrick believed, and the

gospel of Rome.

And I do not mean this to be mean -spirited, nasty.

I'm not trying to be a bigot, and I don't believe I am being a bigot.

I just believe that these are very important issues, these are vital issues that cannot be swept under the rug,

they cannot be overlooked, especially if we truly care and love

our family members and friends and neighbors who are Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and

members of other religious systems.

There is a difference, in fact the Church of Rome made it clear there is a difference at the Council of

Trent when they anathematized the gospel declared by the Reformers and anyone who

would follow them.

So if you could clearly demonstrate the true biblical gospel in

contrast to the false.

Yeah, the.

Gospel is that because of our fallenness, what

later generations will call it depravity, and that the fact that that depravity has

touched every area of our life, our thought life, our emotions,

our heart's affections, and our deeds, we cannot

live a life that is flawless or perfect.

There is nothing in us that recommends us to God to save us, and

the whole idea that we can be saved by works then, biblically, or anything that we do think or

feel is really fundamentally flawed because

it fails to take into consideration the depth of the sin in our lives.

The only way then that we can be saved is by God saving us.

God has to actively save us.

We can't save ourselves.

He does that by sending his Son, the Lord Jesus, who becomes fully man

while yet being fully God, a mystery, and in his life he

completely fulfills the law, the Old Testament law where God laid down what

it is that we have to do to be saved.

No one could do it.

The law was designed to show us our inability to save ourselves, but the Lord Jesus fulfills

the law.

He never once has a wrong thought, never once has a wrong feeling.

He was tempted to sin, but never once sinned.

He then dies a horrific death on the cross, horrific

not simply in the physical elements of it, but horrific in terms of taking upon himself the sins

of his people, the sins of the world.

He dies for sinners, and so we have two things in the Lord Jesus.

We have, on the one hand, and then his death for sins.

He was raised from the dead so death could not hold him, and

the salvation in the biblical understanding is belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We believe that he died for our sins according to the Scriptures, which means that our sins are taken

by him.

He takes responsibility for them.

He doesn't, in essence, become a sinner, but he suffers the punishment that is due us,

but he also gives us his righteousness.

Second Corinthians 521, the Lord made him a new sin to become sin on our behalf that

we might become the righteousness of God in him.

And during the course of the Middle Ages, there are again a variety of reasons why this

happens, but that gospel is effectively lost.

There are some who adhere to it, really, in many respects,

and there needs to be a rediscovery of the gospel, which takes place at the time of the Reformation, which we're

celebrating this year, 500 years, the 95 BC, and Martin Luther

rediscovered that salvation is by faith in the

finished work and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Roman response to that was what we call the Council of Trent, in which it emphasized

that if anyone says that we are saved by faith alone, and not by faith and works, let him be

anathema.

And so Rome anathematized, really, the gospel, and that

anathema at the Council of Trent has never been repealed.

That's.

Right, not even by their very, very, very liberal Pope that is currently in the.

Vatican.

No, and so there is a chasm between the

gospel and what Rome has taught over the years.

And the Roman teaching, I think, confuses justification and

sanctification.

And the Reformers were very clear that our standing with God, our salvation, is grounded in God's great work in the

Lord Jesus Christ.

It cannot be grounded in His work and ours, because our work is flawed, even our Christian life.

And the Reformers, though, were insistent that where there has been justification,

there will also flow sanctification.

So Martin Luther, in his great work, The Freedom of a Christian, spends half of the book laying out what it is

that saves us, namely the finished work of the Lord Jesus and faith alone in that work, but then lays

out that faith is always accompanied by works, that we are not saved by works, but

we're not saved without them.

And the failure to make that distinction by the Roman Church means that there are many in the Roman Church who believe

that their good works will save them, or that their good works can save those who've gone before them in death,

that somehow we can do good works for those people who are supposedly in.

Purgatory.

And all of this is very unbiblical.

Amen, and I appreciate you doing that for us.

Well now I would like you to close out the program with a summary of what you most want etched in

the hearts and minds of our listeners in regard to Patrick of Ireland.

Well I think the thing that I would love for.

People to remember on St. Patrick's Day is that here is a man who, in the collapse

of the Roman world, the most impressive civilization

that the world had seen to that point in time, was in a state of utter collapse.

And the world was going to be plunged back into a period of

literary and spiritual darkness.

His main interest was not so much the preservation of Roman civilization,

and he went outside the bounds of that culture to take the

gospel to a people who were regarded as very violent at the time.

And he did so at the risk of his life, and he did so impelled by the Scriptures and by the Spirit of God.

And in many ways we're seeing a significant, we have, we face

significant challenges in Western culture.

And I think one of the dangers of, one of the dangers for us as

evangelicals, such blessing in the West, is

that we could confuse the gospel with Western culture.

And having grown up, my father is Kurdish, he came from the Middle East.

He made a point of not going back to the Middle East because of the freedoms and blessings of the West, and I know this

firsthand.

But my calling as a Christian historian is on the

gospel.

To recognize, yes, we have great blessings in the West, but in the midst of the challenges we face,

we don't have the time or the energy to put into trying to preserve all the

lineaments of Western culture.

We need to focus on the gospel, and if we, in God's time, if this is not,

you know, if he tarries, the Lord tarries,

foundations that are blessings

we have enjoyed in the West.

It's a matter of priorities, and I think what I love about Patrick, he's got his priorities right.

It's God, the gospel, it's the triune God, the gospel, the scriptures, mission,

and the salvation of sinners.

Those are things that have to be preeminent in our.

Hearts and minds.

Amen.

And you said something earlier that was very interesting to me.

You were talking about how Patrick was concerned, he was apprehensive, he was

cautious about all of the people flooding into the Christian

faith, allegedly, but who really knew nothing about this faith.

And that is really the hallmark of modern -day evangelicalism, isn't it?

That people are going forward at public invitations, at so

-called crusades and other events, but they are really very often

coming forward to embrace a faith they know nothing about, to embrace a Christ and a gospel they know nothing about,

to embrace false promises very often, and they are not being discipled,

and they are very often proven to be false converts.

I'm sure that Patrick's concern would probably be multiplied many times over

today in our day and age, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it's a challenge that faces the Church probably in every era, and especially when there's

success, when the gospel has made impact in a culture, and that's certainly been

true of the United States, and it's still true of various areas of the United States.

And the danger in those is that the faith, the Christianity is cultural.

You grow up in a context where you go to church, and you assume you're a Christian, but if you've

not put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and trusted Him and believed on Him and

personally appropriated that faith, you've embraced

simply a cultural form that has been passed down to you.

And one of the things about the early Christians is that they wanted their people to embrace the

gospel personally, and that's.

Absolutely vital.

Any final words about Patrick of Ireland through the lenses of an evangelical

as yourself, or even a Baptist?

Yeah, I think while there are areas I.

Would disagree with Patrick, you know, the whole area of monasticism, it's amazing

to see a man who anticipates, you know, somebody like William Carey, who we regard as iconic.

And in fact, when Carey wrote his great plea for missions, the Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians to

Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen, he cites Patrick as a model.

And I think one of the things that reading the early fathers and people like Patrick can be helpful

is that we may disagree with them in certain areas, but these men can be models for us.

And remembering, it's important for us as Christians to remember our history.

And I'm very thankful to you, Chris, for this time to be able to think together about

events that took place 1 ,500, 1 ,600 years ago, because we need to remember our past.

If we don't, we're like people with dementia.

We have no idea where we've come from, no idea what we're doing in the present, no idea where we're going.

And that can affect Christian communities, and what you've done here these past

two hours has been.

Very, very helpful.

Well I really appreciate that, and I am delighted and honored with the privilege that you have been my guest today.

And I want to let our listeners know that the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary website

is sbts .edu, that's S -B

for Southern Baptist, T -S for Theological Seminary, .edu, sbts

.edu.

If you'd like to purchase this book, Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact by Dr. Michael A .G.

Hagen, you can go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Services website, that's

cvbbs .com, C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for

BibleBookService .com.

If you live in the UK, you can order it through Christian Focus Publications, the publisher of the

book, their website is christianfocus .com,

christianfocus .com.

Do you have any further contact information that you care to give, Dr. Hagen?

Not, no, not, I think that's probably adequate, yep.

And you can also go to the faculty page on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary website and look

up more information about Dr. Hagen, and as I said, that website is

sbts, for Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, .edu.

I want to urge everyone listening to also tune in tomorrow, that's

Friday, March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, to hear my guest Stephen

Garrick.

He is a pastor at Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Georgetown, Texas, and he is going to be

addressing independent fundamentalist Baptists, their admirable traits and their

weaknesses, and one of their pastors' journey into Reformed Baptist theology and

ecclesiology.

We hope that you tune in for that very important discussion with Stephen

Garrick, who has never been on Iron Trip and Zion Radio before.

I'm delighted that he can actually be sitting with me in the studio tomorrow as he has been filling

the pulpit at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the congregation where I am a member

here in town.

I want to thank you again so much, Dr. Hagen, and I don't know if you can stay on the line after we go off the

air just for a minute or so, because I'd like to schedule you for another interview while I have my calendar right

here.

And I also want to thank all of you who listened to today's program.

I want to thank especially all of you who have taken the time to write in questions for us,

and we are so pleased that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be shipping out those

books to you.

Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact by our guest Dr. Michael Hagen, compliments of

Christian -focused publications, and as I said they will be shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

And just to give you some more highlights of upcoming interviews that we have right on

the horizon, next Tuesday the 21st of

March we have Dr. Carl Truman returning to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

He is going to be with us to discuss Martin Luther, theologian of the cross, and we

have quite a number of other guests on the horizon that I hope that you join us on

the program and send in your questions.

Well I want to thank again all of you for listening.

I want you to all have a blessed and safe and joyful remainder of the day, and I

hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives a very, very important truth

as beautifully uttered by the Puritan Christopher Love, Jesus Christ is a far

greater Savior than you are a sinner.

We look forward to hearing from you with your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

God bless.