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

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Dr. Michael Haykin Professor of Church History & Biblical Spirituality & Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY, who will address: “PATRICK of IRELAND: His Life & Impact”

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,
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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 16th day of March 2017, the day before St.
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Patrick's Day. And I'm delighted to have back on the program one of my favorite guests,
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Dr. Michael Haken. He is professor of church history and biblical spirituality and director of the
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Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
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And in honor of St. Patrick's Day, we are addressing his book, Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Yeah, I was born in England, but my mother was born just outside of Dublin, a seaside resort called
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Bray. And she came over to England to work in Cadbury's chocolate factory in Birmingham, or just outside Birmingham, a place called
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Bourneville. Around probably the early 1950s, she met my dad there.
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And my dad is Kurdish, but he embraced my mother's culture.
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So I was really raised Irish Roman Catholic. So even though I don't have a Catholic Irish father, that was the culture
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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.
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And so I grew up with all of that kind of ritual, religion of the
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Irish Catholicism. The Latin mass, this was before Vatican II, obviously,
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I can still remember that. And so I feel that I've had a good kind of,
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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?
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Well, coming to Canada, my father accepted a position to teach in Southern Ontario at a place called
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Hamilton, which is about 40 miles west of Toronto. And at a university,
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McMaster University, which is a Baptist school. He was a teacher, professor of electrical engineering.
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And so we emigrated and did Providence of God. I became pretty disenchanted with Roman Catholicism.
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I went through a lot of what my generation went through, radical left -wing politics,
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Eastern spirituality, before meeting the woman who became my wife, but who also was a believer.
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And I discovered she went to church, and I had no idea what
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I was getting into. After, if I could go to church with her, I thought, you know, this is one of the ways
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I could clean up my life. And God did a lot more than simply clean up a few things.
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And I was converted there in the spring of 1974, Stanley Avenue Baptist Church, sent a call to vocational ministry, which was in the
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Providence becoming a church historian. And you have spent a great deal of your life living in Canada, and were at one time on the faculty at Toronto Baptist Seminary, correct?
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Correct, yeah. And how long have you been here in the States? I've been teaching full -time at the
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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary since 2008. And I taught adjunctly before, but started full -time in January 2008.
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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?
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Well, it's the largest seminary in the world. We have about 5 ,000 students, baccalaureate and master's level and PhD.
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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.
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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.
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Dr. Moeller's leadership has been inspirational. He's turned the school around. We have prospered under God's hand through his leadership.
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It's a place where the gospel is taught, where there is a concern for taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, as well as planting revitalizing churches here in America.
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And it's just an amazing privilege to teach there.
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I still pinch myself that I'm actually on the faculty. Somebody said to me quite a number of years ago when
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I first went there that the school is like Princeton in the 19th century.
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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.
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The quality of the men, not academically but also spiritually, is really as remarkable.
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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
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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.
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Patrick, they immediately think perhaps of drunkenness and parades and foolish behavior, or they may think of superstitious things.
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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.
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And in fact, you include him in the series that Christian Focus Publication has published on the early church fathers.
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So tell us something about Patrick, where he was born and raised.
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I know that the names of nations have changed since those days, and I know that he is not an
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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.
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Amen. You're right, Patrick was not Irish, and you're also right that for many people,
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Patrick conjures up, you know, green beer, drunkenness, shamrocks, and so on.
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And one of the challenges with Patrick is that history has been very generous to him.
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Of all the medieval saints' days in the medieval church, about 150 to 200 are still maintained in the
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Western world, really. St. Patrick's Day, which is tomorrow, and then
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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
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Patrick has been completely forgotten almost in a sea of legends, etc.
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Patrick was born probably somewhere between the year 390 and 430.
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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.
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Again, there have been great debates. We didn't get into them here about exactly where in that portion of the
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British Isles was he born, but he was a Romano -Brit. He was a raised upper class.
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He talks about his father having a villa. We know from a number of references in his two authentic writings, his confession, and then a letter that he wrote to an
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Irish warlord that he came from wealth. He had the education until the age of 16, and he would have been part of that kind of British upper class that had embraced
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Roman rule. He was trained in Latin. He would later regret that he didn't learn
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Latin the way that he should have because his education was cut short, as we'll see, but it's quite a different picture than the
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Irish. He's not Irish. He will give his life for the Irish, as it were, but he was not born in Ireland.
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Now, was he a Druid or what was he before becoming a Christian? No. Druidism had pretty well been wiped out in the
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Roman province of Britannia. The Romans had never crossed the Irish Sea to what they called
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Hibernia, which is our Ireland. Why that is so is not easy to explain.
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It certainly was within reach. When Britannia was conquered in the 40s
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AD through the 80s AD, the Roman Empire was still expanding, and it could be the case that energies were placed elsewhere.
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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.
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It had been part of the Celtic heritage in Britannia, but the
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Romans had made a point of destroying Druidic centers, particularly one that was found on the
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Isle of Anglesey off the coast of Wales. And so he's raised in a
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Christian home. There are debates about how authentic the Christianity was of his father and his grandfather.
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There are some who argue it was nominal, but he definitely talked about having heard the gospel, having heard the
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Scriptures being read and preached, but he didn't pay any attention to them.
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And then 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
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Lord, and he became a believer. What were the circumstances when he truly bowed the knee to Christ and cried out for mercy and repentance and faith?
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Well, he needs to be placed in the latter part of the Roman Empire when the
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Roman Empire is in a state of collapse. There were a number of major military defeats that the
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Roman Empire suffered in the late 4th, early 5th century, probably the most iconic being
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Rome being sacked by the Goths, the
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Visigoths in 410. And before that, there had been a major event in which a large number of German barbarians had crossed the
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Rhine River. The Rhine River was used by the Romans as a frontier, and what they had never experienced was that the
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Rhine would freeze, and that's why they used it as a frontier. It was a fabulous frontier.
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There were no bridges across it, but in the winter of 406, 407, the Rhine froze, and to such an extent that large numbers, upwards of 200 ,000
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German barbarians, various tribes, Franks, Vandals, Burgundians, Alans, Swabians, crossed, and there were three
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Roman legions in Britain, Britannia, who went over to the continent in an effort to repel the invasion.
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They never returned, and essentially from 406, 407 onwards, Britannia is exposed to attack, and Irish pirates began to raid the western coast of what we call now
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England, Wales, and southern Scotland, and in one of those raids, Patrick talks about having been taken captive and being taken to England, and the real story then of Patrick is a lot more dramatic than the silly legends that grew up in the
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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
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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 unbelief and led him to cry out for salvation, and that's where he says,
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I was converted with all my heart to the Lord my God, and it's a tremendous story of how
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God will use events in this world we can see as difficult, catastrophic even, to bring his people to himself.
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What kind of details do you know about his life of servitude when he was in captivity?
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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
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Ireland, so the county of Donegal usually comes in for mention.
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He definitely talks about being near the Western Sea, which is the Atlantic, and he was a shepherd.
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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.
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He doesn't have the Scriptures with him, but God brings to his memory Scripture passages. He talks about meditating on those passages, praying.
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He uses 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
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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.
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And so it would have been a very difficult life. He was a slave, and he escapes.
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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
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Britannia. And he would have gone back to Britain then around the year 413, 414, and he escapes and goes back to his people.
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And his expectation, their expectation probably would have been that he would settle back into the routines of life in this
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Roman province, but that was not to be. And he actually had the courage, did he not, to return to the very captors,
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I should say, who enslaved him to bring them the Gospel. Did he not? Yes.
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Again, one of the challenges with going through Patrick's confession is trying to determine dates.
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He really doesn't give us dates concretely. He gives us stretches of time, and it's somewhere probably around the year 430.
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So as much as 15 years later that he returns to Ireland.
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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 says to come over and help them, which he has in Troas in the
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Book of Acts. There's something very similar where the Irish come and ask him to come back to Ireland.
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He also has a deep growing sense by the work of the Holy Spirit in his heart that he should go back to Ireland.
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They don't know the Gospel. He does now. He's been there. He's learned the
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Old Irish to some degree. But most importantly, he's learning the Scriptures.
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He now has a copy of the Scriptures. In fact, the most striking thing about his confession and his letter to the
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Irish warlord, which are the only authentic writings of Patrick, is the only other book that we know that he read for certain is the
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Bible. He's a contemporary of people like Augustine, but there's no indication he read
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Augustine, but he read the Bible. You can't read the Scriptures without being convicted that God's purposes are not simply for one people group.
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He begins to realize that God wants the Gospel preached to every nation and to heaven, to the ends of the earth.
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He has a very simple knowledge of geography, which is this, is that Ireland is the end of the earth.
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He has no knowledge of anything beyond Ireland, and what's amazing is as he reads
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Scriptures like Matthew 28, 19, and 20, Mark 16, you know, to go and preach the
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Gospel to every creature, etc., etc., he becomes convinced that God's calling him to go to the very end of the earth,
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Ireland, and then the Lord will return, because the Gospel preached to the ends of the earth, and then the
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Lord will return. His geography is screwy, his chronology is not right, but his heart is right with taking the
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Gospel to the Irish. Amen. Well, obviously, Roman Catholics have adopted
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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
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Christendom in that period as Catholic with a small c, a universal church, there was no really formal full -blown
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Roman Catholic church as we saw later develop in the 16th century at the Council of Trent, leading up to what we have today.
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This kind of a church didn't even exist in Patrick's day, did it? No, not really.
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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
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Roman Catholicism would come from. So, for instance, there's been the development of the hierarchy of bishops, a hierarchical church government with bishops, which goes back to the 2nd century.
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But up until the middle of the 400s, there's really no bishop such as the
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Bishop of Rome who claims superiority over all the other bishops, and that claim does come with Leo the
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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.
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There's no worship of Mary in the latter Roman period.
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The mass, the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the very body and blood of Christ is not there.
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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
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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.
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So, yes, so Patrick has been taken over as kind of the patron saint of the
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Irish Catholics. In many ways, he's a problem in that regard, because the authentic documents we have don't mention
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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.
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And that actually leads me to a question from a listener in Slovenia, and I know that there are
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Baptists who also like to claim Patrick as their own, because of something that our listener in Slovenia is quoting from Patrick here.
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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.
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Patrick is cited as saying, Go ye, teach meet, is the order of teaching, before baptism.
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But it cannot be that the body receive the sacrament of baptism before the soul receives the verity of faith.
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Faith must precede baptism, Patrick taught. What source does this come from? Is the primary source documentation for this strong and reliable?
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Thanks so much for helping us recover Patrick for Protestantism. That was Joe in Slovenia.
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Um, okay, so the quote there was, what was the quote again? Sorry, well, page 17 and 18.
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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.
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For it cannot be that the body receive the sacrament of baptism before the soul receives the verity of faith.
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In other words, he was, and according to our listener, Patrick was teaching that baptism must follow faith, not come before it as an infant baptism.
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Yeah, I mean, there's no indication that Patrick would have been baptizing.
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I mean, the standard kind of methodology of baptism in the early fourth century.
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Uh, sorry, early fifth century would still have been believers baptism. Um, Augustine changes that, but those changes would have come into Britain much later.
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Um, all of the baptistries, for example, that we have in Britain, uh, uncovered, we're all, they're all immersion pools.
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They're not places for sprinkling, therefore the immersion of believers. Um, so yeah,
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I mean, Patrick, uh, would appear to follow that early kind of church model, that baptism follows faith.
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Now, the, uh, listener was also, uh, asking is if this source is, uh, a, is the primary source documentation for this strong and reliable, he's asking.
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Yeah, I, to be honest, um, and I don't have my book in front of me, but I honestly don't recognize the quote.
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Um, and I mean, the thought of the quote is fine, and I'm actually trying to find the manuscript that I sent, or, um, uh,
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I don't have the book in front of me. Um, well, I actually have the book in front of me.
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Yeah, take a look at pages 17 to 18, because I don't recall that being there. What I'll do is
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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
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Patrick of Ireland. But, uh, perhaps Joe in Slovenia, if you want to clarify that, uh, uh, we would appreciate that.
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You can send in another email with a clarification. But, uh, by the way, uh, Joe in Slovenia, uh, you have won a copy of Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact.
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I don't know if you already have Dr. Hagen's, uh, version of that book, or you have, if you have another author's book of the same title, but if you already have this, uh, book, you can give it to someone else.
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You can give it as a gift to a Roman Catholic friend or someone. And, uh,
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I know that, uh, that Slovenia is steeped in Roman Catholicism. So perhaps you can share it with, uh, someone that you know and love or someone that you are evangelizing.
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Thank you very much for the question. We have a number of other listeners who have already written in with questions of their own.
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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.
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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
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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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This is Chris Orens. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is
35:40
Dr. Michael Haken, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of the
35:45
Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
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We are discussing his book, Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact. And I urge everyone, since tomorrow is
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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.
36:11
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.
36:20
In fact, if you want to email me and request an MP3 of today's interview before tomorrow,
36:27
I can send you out an email with this MP3 of today's interview so you could start spreading it immediately to all you know and love so that they can learn about the true
36:40
Patrick of history, the true Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact.
36:45
Our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air, is ChrisOrensen at gmail .com.
36:50
ChrisOrensen at gmail .com. By the way, I did look at page 17 and 18, and that quote is nowhere to be found in your book.
36:58
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.
37:07
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.
37:17
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 BibleBookService .com,
37:35
CVBBS .com. We have a listener in Hilltop Lakes, Texas, Linda, who says,
37:42
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?
37:52
Um, that really is probably Roman Catholic legend. In the confession that Patrick talks about, about his life, he does not talk about miracles at all.
38:06
For sure, if he had performed some or God had enabled him to do some, I'm pretty certain he would have mentioned them.
38:13
He does talk about suffering for the gospel. He talks about being imprisoned. Um, there are three or four dreams that he has, uh, one of which, uh, precedes his, uh, escape, one of which, um, uh, is instrumental in his going back to Ireland.
38:31
Uh, but no miracles as we would describe them. Um, uh, he talks about, as I said, uh, it being in danger of death a dozen times.
38:43
Um, he talks about being imprisoned, uh, a number of times. Uh, and this would be because in Ireland, as he, when he went to Ireland, the whole social situation was being completely different from Britannia.
38:54
Britannia was ruled by the Romans. Uh, there was a Roman governor in Britannia. Uh, when he goes to Ireland, there's about 150 warlords, uh, who would control usually a small portion of land, uh, having built a fort on a hill.
39:11
And when, uh, um, uh, Patrick would go through their lands to preach or have to cross their lands, he'd have to arrange a safe passage.
39:21
And sometimes he ended up being imprisoned by these warlords. But, uh, we know of no miracles from the, from the confession notice in the book, what
39:31
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.
39:39
Uh, 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.
39:47
I mean, all those things are like three, four, five, six, 700 years later. And they're all part of the world that develops with, with the collapse of the
39:57
Roman empire and the growth of biblical literacy. And, um, into that world, there moves the spirit, deep, a deep spirit of superstition.
40:09
And, um, uh, 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.
40:20
And I think if Patrick had been involved in the miraculous, as the question is being asked,
40:27
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,
40:34
Linda in Hilltop Lake, Texas. And you have also won a free copy of Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact compliments of Christian focused publications and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible book service.
40:46
We'll be shipping it out to you and keep your eye open in the mail for a package from CVBBS .com.
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And that stands for Cumberland Valley Bible book service. Uh, we have Ronald in, uh,
41:01
Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks when you mentioned
41:07
Patrick and dreams that may give way for charismatics to adopt
41:12
Patrick as their own. How do you, as a Baptist who are typically cessationists view these dreams of Patrick?
41:23
Well, I think, I think one has to obviously be careful with these sorts of things.
41:29
Um, but actually, if you know, if you don't mind me moving, say from Patrick to another sphere of church history, in the history of Baptist life, beginning in the 16th and 17th century, running through to say the 18th and 19th centuries, um, there are sometimes a number of extraordinary things that take place.
41:50
Uh, 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, um, a
42:03
Baptist preacher, a very well known Baptist preacher named Andrew Gifford senior, um, in Bristol had a dream one
42:11
Saturday night, and he was supposed to preach the following day. And, uh, he, uh, as he was sleeping, he dreamt,
42:21
I mean, when he woke up on the following day, which was a Sunday, the Lord's day, uh, as he went to the door, he found that there had been a heavy snowfall.
42:29
This is very rare in this part of England, uh, up to, up to his knees. Uh, he went out, went to the place appointed to preach, which was an upstairs room above a, an inn, uh, and no sooner had he begun to preach, then the door was kicked in and two constables whom he recognized as constables from Bristol came in to arrest him.
42:50
He woke, told his wife to dream. She cautioned him. Maybe he shouldn't go. Maybe it was a warning from God.
42:56
He goes to the door and lo and behold, there was a snowfall up to his knees. She's now more adamant that this was clearly a warning.
43:04
He nonetheless insists, goes to the beating house and as he had dreamt.
43:10
So it turned out he was no sooner started to preach and the door was kicked in two constables, the very men he saw in the dream came in and he was arrested.
43:19
What he took from that was that God is sovereign. All this was foretold, uh, in one sense, all this was foreseen that that's a better word.
43:28
And, um, my point there was Gifford. We know of no other dreams that Gifford had like that.
43:35
These are not the food of the Christian life, but these things I think do happen. And, um,
43:43
I don't think they fall, uh, within the, the, the orbit of those extraordinary miraculous gifts that were given to the apostles, uh, in those early days.
43:54
Um, so, um, I don't think that this is warrant for charismatics to, to say, well,
44:01
Patrick's hours. Um, I think it does indicate that down through the history of the church, sometimes God has done, uh, he's not limited.
44:09
He's not prevented from doing extraordinary things. Well, guess what? Ronald and Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island.
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You have also won a free copy of Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact by Dr. Michael A .G.
44:22
Haken. And, uh, please give us your full mailing address so we can have that shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.
44:32
And, um, we have, let's see, uh, we have Bibi in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says,
44:41
I have heard that one of the proofs that Patrick was not a
44:47
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.
45:03
Could your guest comment on that? Yeah, I, I don't,
45:09
I, again, I've not read that. Um, essentially what happens regarding the church that Patrick found, we call it the time that he died somewhere around four 60.
45:22
Um, he has probably evangelized a large portion of the Northern half of the Island, not Northern Island as we know it today, which is only six counties, but the
45:31
Northern half. If you take a line from Dublin and which is pretty well center on the
45:36
Eastern seaboard and stretch it across to the West, the Northern half of Ireland, he had probably evangelized.
45:42
And we know that from later literary records and also probably, uh, some archaeological discoveries.
45:49
Within two generations, uh, the gospel had pretty well spread through a lot of Ireland and, uh, the
45:56
Irish who had hitherto prior to Patrick coming being, uh, illiterate by and large become one of the most literate peoples in Europe.
46:04
In fact, probably the most literate. Um, the gospel is kept, is obviously preserved there in this
46:12
Celtic church. Uh, the, they inherit a love for the scriptures, a love for mission.
46:18
Uh, they begin to evangelize other parts of the British Isles, which by this time has fallen under Anglo -Saxon paganism, um, because the
46:26
Anglo -Saxons have arrived, uh, in the wake of the Roman leave Romans leaving. And, uh, the
46:33
Irish evangelized Scotland. Uh, obviously the Anglo -Saxons would not have been there with the
46:38
Scots and picks, but they evangelized Scotland, Northern England, um, and would eventually go on to evangelize other parts of Europe, Switzerland, France, and even coming into contact with those who are the dreaded
46:51
Vikings. In the 700s after about really a tremendous period of missionary advance, uh,
47:00
Rome had sent missionaries to England, not an army, but missionaries in Augustine of Canterbury lands in, uh, in, uh,
47:09
Kent. And, uh, begins a, basically the, they were sent by the
47:15
Bishop of Rome, Gregory the Great, um, who has claims as a Pope. And over the next couple of hundred years, the
47:23
Celtic church and the Roman church in the British Isles come into conflict, pretty serious conflict.
47:30
And the conflict deals with a number of issues, but at the heart of the conflict is authority.
47:35
Who ultimately should dictate about how the gospel is lived out, how church is done.
47:43
And the Roman, the Roman argument is that the Bishop of Rome should. Um, and a very important debate in 664 at a place called
47:51
Whitby, um, in Northern England now, uh, called the Synod of Whitby. Uh, the Roman church is really kind of wins that debate and, uh, then begins a slow but long process whereby the
48:05
Roman church kind of swallows up the Celtic church. That process is not complete until well into the 700s.
48:12
Um, and so that may be what your, your guest is thinking of. There's no actual army that ever comes over to Ireland to conquer them and compel obedience to Rome.
48:22
Rather, it's a, um, it's a series of, of, uh,
48:28
Senate, the most important being the Synod of Whitby. Uh, and the Roman arguments based on Matthew 18, that the heir of Peter has authority over all the church.
48:41
And, um, over the course of time, that argument kind of wears down the Celtic church and what had been distinctive about the
48:49
Celtic church, namely its independence from Rome, uh, disappears. Well, even though our listener
48:55
BB had heard some misinformation, obviously your story still, uh, is harmonious in many respects to what she was saying in that the
49:04
Celtic church was a separate entity from what is known today as the church of Rome.
49:11
Yes, it is. Yeah. And, um, when, when that sort of history is discovered by the early reformers in Scotland, for example, uh, and by Scottish Presbyterians, uh, this becomes a very important part of their kind of story that the original church in Scotland, the
49:29
Celtic church, and then by Scots Irish in Northern Ireland, uh, they kind of try to begin to argue for their roots going back to that.
49:38
But yeah, it's very important to recognize that the Celtic church was independent of Rome. Uh, Patrick's planting of it was completely independent of the papacy.
49:47
It wasn't a papal mission. He never appealed to the Pope. In fact, he had every week, every opportunity to do so, because at the end of his life, um, uh, in the confession charges were laid against him, um, of using the mission for money and, uh, the confession in part, not in whole, but in part is written to refute that.
50:10
And Patrick never appeals to being sent by the Pope, which he was, could have done and would have done, uh, to verify and authenticate his mission if he had been sent by the
50:20
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
50:34
Pope until 440. Interesting. Well, well, guess what, uh, BB? You've also won a copy of Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact by Dr.
50:43
Michael A .G. Haken. And that is compliments of Christian focused publications.
50:49
And you'll be receiving that in the mail compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.
50:58
And, uh, we're going to go to a, uh, break right now. This is our elongated commercial break between the two hours, uh, to help our friends at Grace Life Radio, 90 .1
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FM in Lake City, Florida air our rebroadcast tomorrow morning during morning drive time in an orderly fashion.
51:20
Uh, so, uh, please, uh, email us while we're on break right now with a question of your own for Dr.
51:27
Michael A .G. Hagen. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
51:35
Perhaps you're a Roman Catholic and you're listening. You are getting upset. Perhaps you, uh, take great exception to what is being said.
51:43
You disagree with Dr. Hagen, or perhaps you wholeheartedly agree with him, or you just don't know.
51:49
Uh, in fact, we welcome questions even from non -Christians, whether you're a
51:54
Christian, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, whether you're a
51:59
Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Swedish or perhaps an atheist or an agnostic.
52:06
We will welcome your questions at chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
52:12
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.
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So don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, after this station break with Dr. Michael Hagen in our discussion of Patrick of Ireland.
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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
01:04:37
Dr. Michael Haken, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of the
01:04:42
Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
01:04:49
Since tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, we are addressing Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact, a book that Dr.
01:04:56
Haken wrote for Christian -focused publications. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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Well, we look forward to hearing from you at chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Now returning to our discussion of Patrick of Ireland, we have
01:07:13
RJ in White Plains, New York who asks the question, what do you know of Patrick's breastplate?
01:07:20
Is this truly a prayer that he penned, and would you say that this is an orthodox prayer that Christians should pray today?
01:07:32
Yeah, Patrick's breastplate, the only other text that sometimes is taken as genuine is
01:07:37
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.
01:07:59
I think the evidence indicates that the prayer probably is later than the period that we're talking about.
01:08:09
It probably is not original to Patrick. It certainly belongs to an early stage of the
01:08:15
Celtic Church. Most scholars would date it 7th century, maybe a bit earlier, maybe 6th century.
01:08:24
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.
01:08:37
But it certainly is not the sort of thing that a believer couldn't pray.
01:08:43
It's a fabulous prayer that reminds the believer of God's omnipresence, but more than his omnipresence, his care for his children.
01:08:56
Well, thank you, R .J., and you have also won a copy of Patrick of Ireland, his Life and Impact Compliments of Christian Focus Publications, and that will be shipped out to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.
01:09:12
I'd like you to address one God in the Trinity of the Holy Name, the divine foundation of Patrick's theology.
01:09:22
Yeah, one of the things that is very striking about Patrick, his confession, is its trinitarianism.
01:09:33
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.
01:09:40
He never quotes or alludes to any other author. But he does quote a statement of faith, which has been shaped by the
01:09:51
Council of Constantine Opulum 381, which brought the Arian Crisis to an end by its declaration that Jesus, the
01:09:58
Lord Jesus, is one in being with the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is to be worshipped and glorified with the
01:10:04
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
01:10:12
God, is part and parcel of the creedal definition that is issued at the
01:10:19
Council of Constantine Opulum 381. That creedal statement has definitely shaped
01:10:25
Patrick, and he quotes a creed in the confession, which may well be the statement of faith of the church in Britain, in which he would have gotten to know after his return from captivity in Ireland.
01:10:40
He may have been familiar with it before, but definitely after his return, and he has extensive calling to mission.
01:10:49
And that confession of faith is a very deeply Trinitarian statement.
01:10:55
He has this very unique statement about one God and the Trinity of the Holy Name at the end. But as I said, that Trinitarianism works through all of the confessions.
01:11:06
You could go through it and see the way he refers to the Lord Jesus and refers to the Holy Spirit. Deeply Trinitarian.
01:11:14
He's very convinced that his mission is grounded in the Trinity. Part of it is to proclaim the true
01:11:21
God, which means teaching about the Trinity. I think this is one area that can be very helpful.
01:11:26
I think one of the things that certainly Patrick is an encouragement to us is in mission, but another area is the importance of the
01:11:33
Trinity. And in the past few months, we've had a bit of a brouhaha in America regarding the doctrine of Trinity in evangelical circles.
01:11:42
And I think some of that brouhaha has arisen because there has not been explicit, regular teaching about the
01:11:51
God we serve, who is Triune. And it's amazing to me.
01:11:57
I sometimes ask in my church history survey courses whether or not, when did the students last hear a sermon on the
01:12:07
Trinity? And here you've got people, maybe they've spent 20, 30 years in the church and they never have heard a sermon on the
01:12:16
Trinity. And Patrick, in his deep commitment to the Trinitarianism of the early church,
01:12:22
I think is a model for us on how important the doctrine of Trinity is. So, you believe that Patrick had a very orthodox understanding of the
01:12:34
Trinity. It wasn't a... Oh, yes. Wasn't modalist or anything of that nature? No, not at all.
01:12:40
No, no. There's no sense of collapsing the persons into one person.
01:12:46
There's no sense that, as the Arians would have argued, that somehow the Spirit and the Son are less than the
01:12:52
Father. There is a very clear understanding that the God we worship is three fully equal persons who share one being.
01:13:03
Amen. Praise God for that. And let me repeat our email address. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com,
01:13:11
chrisarnson at gmail .com if you have any questions for our guest.
01:13:17
Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York asks, Why is it that secularists like to turn
01:13:24
St. Patrick's Day into an all -out day of sin rather than focus on the evangelistic efforts of the man himself?
01:13:34
Well, obviously the lost world is not going to want to celebrate something true about this man of God.
01:13:41
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.
01:13:52
Yeah, I think part of the problem here is, I think as you've said, 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
01:14:12
Church's mission to the lost. But I think also there is just a significant degree of ignorance about Patrick.
01:14:21
And so Roman Catholics, you know, have long considered him a miracle worker. And there's just this failure to know the real man.
01:14:35
And I think that's contributed also to the problems that we face. And I think, again, it's illustrative of, you know,
01:14:43
Christmas, which is a celebration of the Incarnation, as being robbed and simply become a time of gift -giving.
01:14:54
Easter, which is a celebration of God's victory over death, is a time to eat chocolate and talk about bunnies.
01:15:01
No, that's the world that we live in, the refusal to deal with truth.
01:15:11
Well, sorry, Tyler, we do not have any more copies of Patrick of Ireland to give away.
01:15:17
But if you go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service's website, you can purchase a copy if you'd like.
01:15:24
It's a very, very reasonably priced book. It's only about 102 pages long.
01:15:34
And I'm sure that you would find that affordable if you go to cvbbs .com, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for Bible Book Service .com.
01:15:43
And also, for our listeners in the UK, you could go to the publisher's website for this book, christianfocus .com,
01:15:52
christianfocus .com, which is located in the United Kingdom. So it would be much more appropriate for you to order right from them if you live in that area.
01:16:04
Tell us something about the word and spirit in Patrick's piety.
01:16:14
Well, word would be the emphasis on scripture. As I said, it's very clear that Patrick knows the
01:16:21
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.
01:16:40
And it's very evident that Patrick is part of that early Christian experience, which is a word -centered focus and in which there were various ways in which the scriptures were read, memorized.
01:16:57
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.
01:17:16
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.
01:17:27
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.
01:17:35
And so it's probably quite likely that in the 15 years between Patrick's coming back to Britannia and he's going back to Ireland as a missionary.
01:17:42
So between around 414, 415, and when he escapes and goes back to England, what is now
01:17:49
England, and then he goes back to Ireland around 430, that he probably had some degree of theological education.
01:17:58
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 the scriptures, learning how to preach the scriptures, and learning how to memorize the scriptures.
01:18:14
Books were very precious. And often books would be, you know, a congregation might have one copy of the scriptures.
01:18:25
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.
01:18:32
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.
01:18:39
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
01:18:47
Holy Spirit is key in pushing him to mission. And he talks about being bound by the spirit.
01:18:56
And he uses the passage that Paul uses in Acts 20, Acts 22, Acts 20, 21,
01:19:03
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
01:19:17
Ireland, that he has to die there. And he does literally, he talks about giving his life and his freedom for the
01:19:24
Irish that they might inherit eternal life. Um, and, uh, if you ask him why he, one of the reasons he would give is because the
01:19:35
Holy Spirit had called him to do this work. And so I think one of the things we see very clearly in Patrick is that one of the great works of the spirit, um, is mission.
01:19:46
And, uh, mission that takes the gospel to the ends of the earth. So that's that chapter that deals word and spirit focuses on Patrick's biblicism, his word centeredness, but also his obedience to the spirit of God as that, uh, as the spirit of God had revealed his intentions in the scriptures.
01:20:06
We have, uh, CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who said,
01:20:12
I heard you mention earlier that Patrick was a believer in credo baptism or believer only baptism.
01:20:20
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.
01:20:40
And, uh, as I also said, all of the baptisteries that we've found that date from this period in Western Europe are immersion tanks.
01:20:51
They're, they're not little fonts. Uh, you can actually trace the kind of genealogy and archeology of, of, uh, baptismal fonts, uh, from the early, earliest period where they're definitely, uh, pools to immerse somebody to the smaller fonts that would be used for pouring or sprinkling, uh, in the later
01:21:14
Middle Ages. And so that's not an issue that Patrick gets, uh, focuses on.
01:21:21
That's not a subject he gets immersed in. No. Yeah. Very good. It's not a subject he gets immersed in, but the, the logic is that, uh, like most of his contemporaries, he would have argued for immersion of believers.
01:21:40
Now, what would be the difference in your opinion? You are a Baptist and a Baptist historian.
01:21:45
What would be, what would be the difference, uh, the major differences, uh, between a
01:21:52
Christian in the fifth century, like Patrick, who did practice baptism as a
01:21:59
Baptist would, uh, but, obviously there were no churches formally named
01:22:05
Baptist at that time. But, uh, what would be the difference, uh, between a church of that era?
01:22:10
I think the critical difference is this, is that, um, what you don't have in the fourth century, fifth century are congregationalist, uh, churches where the locus of authority is based on the congregation.
01:22:25
Uh, they're not, they're not congregationalist churches and the emergence of Baptist policy and theology in the 17th century out of Puritanism, uh, 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.
01:22:54
And, uh, the policy that Patrick would have been familiar with would have been an
01:22:59
Episcopal policy. And now that gets changed in the Celtic church, the bishops of the
01:23:05
Celtic church do not have the sort of authority they have in the Roman church, but nonetheless, there is, it's an Episcopal model.
01:23:12
And, uh, that's very different from the sort of congregationalism that is rediscovered in the wake of the
01:23:18
Reformation. So when you use the term... Go ahead.
01:23:25
Essentially, congregationalism as a church model is probably pretty well gone by the end of the second century.
01:23:31
But you do believe it is a biblical model though. Oh, yes. Yeah, most definitely.
01:23:37
I mean, I know you can argue for a Presbyterian form of government from the scriptures.
01:23:43
Um, but I would, I think that the balance tips in favor of congregationalism. What you can't, what
01:23:48
I don't think you can find in the scriptures is a, uh, an Episcopal model where a bishop is responsible for the ordination of, um, uh, elders and deacons and that he appoints them rather than the
01:24:05
Presbytery in a Presbyterian model or the congregation, the Congregationalist model. Both of those models,
01:24:11
Presbyterian, Congregationalist, are pretty well finished by the end of the second century.
01:24:16
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 a, probably an
01:24:29
Episcopal and not a Congregational, definitely not a Congregational or a Presbyterian. Well, we have to go to our final break right now.
01:24:37
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.
01:24:49
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,
01:25:01
God willing. chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.
01:25:07
Don't go away. We will be back after these messages, God willing, with more of Dr.
01:25:13
Michael Hakin and our discussion of Patrick of Ireland. Welcome back to Dr.
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Michael Hakin and our discussion of Patrick of Ireland. Welcome back to Dr.
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01:30:03
This is Chris Arnsin. 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
01:30:14
Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. We have been and will continue discussing
01:30:22
Patrick of Ireland, his life and impact as a way to prepare for more equipped evangelism tomorrow on St.
01:30:32
Patrick's Day. To those you love, we want you to spread the MP3 of this interview far and wide.
01:30:39
We hope that many errors in the thinking of people regarding St.
01:30:45
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.
01:31:01
If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnsin at gmail .com. ChrisArnsin at gmail .com.
01:31:09
And by the way, Dr. Haken, there are a couple of listeners who are friends of yours who wanted to say hello.
01:31:15
We have Ray Rhoads who sends his greetings and Mike Abendroff. And Mike Abendroff, Mike Abendroff.
01:31:22
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
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01:31:42
Scott in Toomerong, New South Wales, Australia.
01:31:48
And I know that I probably mispronounced that. Tomerong or Tomerong. I don't know how to pronounce that.
01:31:53
I didn't even know there was a New South Wales in Australia. But thanks, Scott, for your recommendations.
01:32:00
And I am already actually looking into those things with my webmaster to have them established on the
01:32:06
Iron Sherpins Iron website. Thanks for looking out for us and thinking of us. And thanks for your pledge to start donating to Iron Sherpins Iron Radio when we have that in place on the website.
01:32:18
We have Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York who says,
01:32:25
I have heard from Roman Catholics as a proof that Patrick was indeed a
01:32:32
Roman Catholic, as we know them today, is that he visited monasteries.
01:32:37
What do you make of this claim? Well, Patrick certainly would have been familiar with monasteries.
01:32:46
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
01:32:57
Constantine basically embraced Christianity and the Roman emperors claimed to be
01:33:02
Christian. And Christians now began to rule politically and significant numbers of pagans come into the church basically because that's the only way they're going to get ahead in society.
01:33:14
And the monastic movement is a protest movement. It begins in Egypt and the
01:33:20
Middle East, what we call the Middle East or the ancient Near East Palestine, Syria, and also in what is now central
01:33:28
Turkey in those days, Cappadocia. And none of those areas are traditional
01:33:34
Roman Catholic areas at all. It would spread to the West. And the
01:33:40
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
01:33:52
Celtic figures, doesn't in its own self prove anything that he's a
01:33:58
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, a simplicity of lifestyle, and so on.
01:34:16
I'm personally not enamored with that expression, but it's not in itself an indication of Patrick's being a
01:34:28
Roman Catholic. Yes, I think that those monks you speak of are also known as high school computer nerds.
01:34:36
Anyway, would you say that the monasteries of that era were an unbiblical expression of Christian piety?
01:34:54
Were they anti -biblical? I'm not saying that they were intentionally anti -biblical, but would you— No, actually,
01:35:00
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.
01:35:21
There are no hospitals in the Roman world, except for the Roman army, on campaign. If you were sick, well, if you didn't have access to a doctor, you were in trouble.
01:35:31
And Patrick sets up these hospitals to take care of lepers and the poor, the ill.
01:35:39
We have the scriptures, because the scriptures were copied in monastic scriptoria, places where the scriptures were copied.
01:35:47
And for Patrick, what he hoped that the monasteries would do—he didn't expect everybody to become a monk.
01:35:53
Sorry, Basil. What he hoped the monasteries would do would be a vehicle for reminding people that to be a
01:35:59
Christian meant a serious, radical devotion to the Lord Jesus and to live the life that he had called.
01:36:05
He was very distressed by the enormous flooding in of pagans into the
01:36:13
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.
01:36:26
And so the early monasteries, again, without necessarily embracing all that they stood for, were an attempt to remind
01:36:33
Christians that the gospel is a call to die, to self, and to live for Christ.
01:36:41
And this was lost. This was being lost, rather, in the fourth century and succeeding centuries.
01:36:46
Now, the monasteries become quite different from what they had intended. They become places of wealth, riches, power.
01:36:53
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 emerge at the end of the patristic period or the end of the
01:37:06
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.
01:37:26
In fact, some might argue the doctrine of demons. Yeah, I mean, the problem—I mean, again, there's a number of issues going on here.
01:37:36
One is the way in which some later Christian authors like Jerome, and even
01:37:42
Augustine, viewed marriage and the way that gets taken up into the requirement that monks be celibate.
01:37:51
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.
01:38:05
If you're really sold out for Jesus, you'll be a celibate monk or nun and live in a monastery or a nunnery.
01:38:12
And then there's the second level, which others who can't really follow Christ as perfectly have to endure, which is marriage.
01:38:21
And the Reformation, as it comes, is a rediscovery of the spirituality of marriage.
01:38:27
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.
01:38:41
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
01:38:50
God does call to a celibate lifestyle, a single lifestyle. And I think for single people in our midst,
01:38:57
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.
01:39:09
That's not the norm. And I think when the norm is being enforced, you get the sort of scandals that have plagued the
01:39:15
Roman Catholic Church, plagued them at the time of the Reformation, where you had all these priests who were supposedly celibate.
01:39:22
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.
01:39:30
And then the scandals that have plagued the Roman Catholic Church in the 20th century, the sex scandals.
01:39:37
And the fruit of this kind of elevation of celibacy to really an unbiblical mode of Christian discipleship is being horrific.
01:39:49
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, of enforced celibacy.
01:40:05
And when I say celibacy, I'm not talking about that. I'm not giving the indication that I believe
01:40:13
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 a denial of partaking in the marriage union.
01:40:46
So I'm not speaking of chastity. But anyway, obviously, all Christians are to be chaste before they're married.
01:40:53
And when they're married, they're supposed to be monogamous to their spouses. But let's see, we have
01:41:02
Linda again in Hilltop Lake, Texas. I usually don't take more than one question from listeners, but this is a good one.
01:41:10
Linda in Hilltop Lakes, Texas says, Is there an approximate number of people known to have come to Christ under Patrick's ministry?
01:41:21
Yes, well, yes, in one sense. I mean, Patrick talks about thousands, literally thousands.
01:41:29
Now, Patrick tends to, I'm not, 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 in unceasing prayer, he'll say,
01:41:43
I said as many as 100 prayers during the night and in the day. So he tends to think in concrete terms.
01:41:53
But he does talk about thousands converted. And that's very likely.
01:41:59
Because Ireland moves from when Patrick goes there in the, in the mid first third, he goes around 430.
01:42:08
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.
01:42:19
Um, there is a literacy, there's a love of the scriptures, there's a growing passion for mission.
01:42:26
It's quite remarkable, really. And so the numbers converted are quite possible.
01:42:34
Um, 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 a, as an evangelistic tool, is
01:42:52
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.
01:43:09
And I do not mean this to be mean spirited, nasty. I'm not trying to be a bigot.
01:43:15
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.
01:43:24
They cannot be overlooked, especially if we truly care and love our family members and friends and neighbors who are
01:43:33
Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and members of other religious systems.
01:43:39
There is a difference. In fact, the Church of Rome made it clear there is a difference at the
01:43:45
Council of Trent when they anathematized the gospel declared by the reformers and anyone who would follow them.
01:43:53
So if you could clearly demonstrate the true biblical gospel in contrast to the false.
01:44:01
Yeah, the gospel is that because of our fallenness, of 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.
01:44:32
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.
01:44:55
The only way then that we can be saved is by God saving us. God has to actively save us.
01:45:06
We can't save ourselves. He does that by sending his son, the Lord Jesus, who becomes fully man, while yet being fully
01:45:14
God, a mystery. And in his life, he completely fulfills the law, the
01:45:23
Old Testament law where God laid down what it is that we have to do to be saved. No one could do it.
01:45:30
The law was designed to show us our inability to save ourselves. But the
01:45:35
Lord Jesus fulfills the law. He never once has a wrong thought, never once has a wrong feeling.
01:45:42
He was tempted to sin, but never once sinned. He then dies a horrific death on the cross.
01:45:52
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.
01:46:04
He dies for sinners. And so we have two things in the Lord Jesus. We have, on the one hand, his complete fulfillment of the law, and then his death for sins.
01:46:14
He was raised from the dead, so death could not hold him. And the salvation in the biblical understanding is belief in the
01:46:25
Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that he died for our sins according to the scriptures, which means that our sins are taken by him.
01:46:33
He takes responsibility for them. He doesn't, in essence, become a sinner, but he suffers the punishment that is due us.
01:46:41
But he also gives us his righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5 .21, the
01:46:46
Lord made him an innocent to become sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And during the course of the
01:46:55
Middle Ages, there are, again, a variety of reasons why this happens, but that gospel is effectively lost.
01:47:03
There are some who adhere to it, but precious few, really, in many respects. And there needs to be a rediscovery of the gospel, which takes place at the time of the
01:47:15
Reformation, which we're celebrating this year, 500 years, the 95 Theses. And Martin Luther rediscovered that salvation is by faith in the finished work and righteousness of the
01:47:30
Lord Jesus Christ. The Roman response to that was what we call the
01:47:35
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.
01:47:45
And so Rome anathematized, really, the gospel, and that anathema at the
01:47:53
Council of Trent has never been repealed. That's right, not even by their very, very, very liberal pope that is currently in the
01:48:02
Vatican. No, no. And so there is a chasm between the gospel and what
01:48:12
Rome has taught over the years. And the Roman teaching, I think, confuses justification and sanctification.
01:48:22
And the Reformers were very clear that our standing with God, our salvation, is grounded in God's great work in the
01:48:28
Lord Jesus Christ. It cannot be grounded in His work and ours, because our work is flawed, even our
01:48:34
Christian life. And the Reformers, though, were insistent that where there has been justification, there will also flow sanctification.
01:48:45
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
01:48:54
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.
01:49:05
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.
01:49:23
And all of this is very unbiblical. Amen, and I appreciate you doing that for us.
01:49:29
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.
01:49:40
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
01:49:48
Roman world, when 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, urban, and spiritual darkness, his main interest was not so much the preservation of Roman civilization, but the gospel.
01:50:19
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.
01:50:28
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 face significant challenges in Western culture.
01:50:45
And I think one of the dangers for us as evangelicals who have enjoyed such blessing in the
01:50:55
West is that we could confuse the gospel with Western culture.
01:51:03
And having grown up, my father is Kurdish. He came from the Middle East. He made a point of not going back to the
01:51:11
Middle East because of the freedoms and blessings of the West. And I know this firsthand. But my calling as a
01:51:18
Christian historian is to focus on the gospel, to recognize, yes, we have great blessings in the
01:51:26
West, but in the midst of the challenges we face, uh, we don't have the time or the energy to put into trying to preserve all the lineaments of Western culture.
01:51:39
We need to focus on the gospel. And if we do that, then in God's time, if this is not, you know, if he tarries, the
01:51:47
Lord tarries, there will be cultural foundations that are rebuilt.
01:51:53
Because wherever the gospel flourishes, the sort of blessings we have enjoyed in the
01:51:58
West, follow. But it's a matter of priorities. And I think what
01:52:04
I love about Patrick, he's got his priorities right. It's God, the gospel, it's the triune
01:52:10
God, the gospel, the scriptures, mission, and the salvation of sinners.
01:52:17
And 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.
01:52:26
You were talking about how Patrick was concerned. He was apprehensive.
01:52:32
He was cautious about all of the people flooding into the
01:52:37
Christian faith, allegedly, but who really knew nothing about this faith.
01:52:44
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
01:53:05
Christ and a gospel they know nothing about, to embrace false promises very often.
01:53:13
And they are not being discipled, and they are very often proven to be false converts.
01:53:21
I'm sure that Patrick's concern would probably be multiplied many times over today in our day and age, wouldn't it?
01:53:29
Wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah, and 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.
01:53:40
And that's certainly been true of the United States, and it's still true of various areas of the United States.
01:53:47
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
01:53:57
Christian, but if you've not put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and trusted
01:54:02
Him, and believed on Him, and that personally appropriated that faith, you've embraced simply a cultural form that has been passed down to you.
01:54:16
And one of the things about the early Christians is that they wanted people to embrace the gospel personally, and that's absolutely vital.
01:54:26
Any final words about Patrick of Ireland through the lenses of an evangelical as yourself, or even a
01:54:35
Baptist? Yeah, I think while there are areas I would disagree with Patrick, you know, the whole area of monasticism, uh, it's amazing to see a man who anticipates, you know, somebody like William Carey, who we regard as iconic.
01:54:51
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
01:55:00
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.
01:55:14
And remembering, it's important for us as Christians to remember our history. And I'm very thankful to you,
01:55:22
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.
01:55:31
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.
01:55:39
And that can affect Christian communities. And what you've done here these past two hours has been very, very helpful.
01:55:47
Well, I really appreciate that, and I am delighted and honored with the privilege that you have been my guest today.
01:55:53
And I want to let our listeners know that the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary website is sbts .edu.
01:56:04
That's S -B for Southern Baptist, T -S for Theological Seminary, dot edu, sbts .edu.
01:56:12
If you'd like to purchase this book, Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact by Dr.
01:56:17
Michael A .G. Hakin, you can go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service's website.
01:56:23
That's cvbbs .com, C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com.
01:56:31
If you live in the U .K., you can order it through Christian Focus Publications, the publisher of the book.
01:56:38
Their website is christianfocus .com, christianfocus .com.
01:56:44
Do you have any further contact information that you care to give, Dr. Hakin? Not—no, not—I think that's probably adequate, yep.
01:56:53
And you could also go to the faculty page on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary website and look up more information about Dr.
01:57:02
Hakin. And as I said, that website is sbts, for Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, dot edu.
01:57:11
I want to urge everyone listening to also tune in tomorrow, that's
01:57:17
Friday, March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, to hear my guest
01:57:22
Stephen Garrick. He is a pastor at Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Georgetown, Texas.
01:57:29
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.
01:57:43
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.
01:57:52
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.
01:58:06
I want to thank you again so much, Dr. Hakin, 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.
01:58:20
And I also want to thank all of you who listened to today's program.
01:58:25
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.
01:58:39
Patrick of Ireland, His Life and Impact by our guest Dr. Michael Hakin, compliments of Christian -focused publications, and as I said, they will be shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.
01:58:51
And just to give you some more highlights of upcoming interviews that we have right on the horizon, next
01:59:01
Tuesday, the 21st of March, we have Dr. Carl Truman returning to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.
01:59:10
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.
01:59:25
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
01:59:42
Puritan Christopher Love, Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.
01:59:49
We look forward to hearing from you with your questions for our guest tomorrow on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio. God bless.