Dan Borvan Interview (Part 1)

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

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

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

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

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

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

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My name is Mike Abendroth. And for those of you who have been listening over the years, you know the program.

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The program Monday is one of my sermons that I�ve been preaching, and I�ve been preaching through Hebrews, and we�re up to Hebrews 4, verse about eight or so, and so that�s on Mondays.

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Tuesdays, I talk to Pastor Steve, and we deal with issues in the local church, ecclesiology issues and such.

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Thursdays, I just talk about some doctrine, right? What I have in front of me is divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

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And then Fridays, we call that �Woodshed Friday.� We usually talk about Ellen G. White or some other kind of kook theologically.

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But on Wednesdays, I like to interview people, famous people, authors, theologians, students.

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You know, the celebrities of Christianity are usually for Wednesdays. And today, driving all the way from England, I mean, from Oxford, England.

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That is amazing. I don�t know how you do that. It�s up over Greenland. Dan Borvin, welcome to No Compromise Radio.

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Thanks for having me. Dan, you and I have met before. Before we hear that story, tell me about the ministry that you have here in New England.

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I am a pastoral intern at Merrimack Valley Orthodox Presbyterian Church in North Andover, Massachusetts, about 30 miles north of Boston.

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And I�ve been there for about a year and a half. All right. What�s that? Had you been in Boston before you moved to this?

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Not permanently. My wife and I spent two summers in Boston when I was in seminary studying in the summer.

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And we�ve been married in Boston. We were married in Boston when my wife came up to do an internship her last semester of college and I was so forlorn by her absence that I followed her.

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We got married and lived there for about six months before moving back to Chicago. So we�ve kind of been in and around Boston for years.

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We�ve known Boston. I was always a fan of the Boston Red Sox because I grew up in Chicago as a

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Chicago Cubs fan. And of course, until 2016, we were the lovable losers. So I thought if I have an

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American League team, I should have the losers in the American League. So I was always a Red Sox fan, but 2004 ruined that when they actually won and the

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Cubs were left on their own as the losers. But thankfully we�ve remedied that. That is amazing. Tell me where you got married, some

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Unitarian church. We got married on the beach in South Boston. When South Boston was kind of still

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South Boston, now it�s, you know, a yuppie neighborhood. But it wasn�t quite Goodwill hunting when we were there, but it was closer to Goodwill hunting than what it is now.

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Now was it, you know, did you have flowers and stuff that you would throw along the beach? Was it kind of hippie -ish or no?

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It was kind of... Were you barefoot? That�s what I really want to know. We were barefoot only because we didn�t have any money for shoes. It wasn�t hippie by intention.

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It was hippie by economics. We only had about 15, 20 people at our wedding, so super small, guerrilla style, we had no permit or anything.

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Oh really? Okay. Yeah. It took 15 minutes. So are you technically married? I think so. At least in this state.

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So we�re fine now. That�s why you had to move back. Right. Another pastoral scandal. So tell me about your background.

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Did you grow up Methodist, Lutheran? What was that all about? I grew up in a legalistic

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Baptist church, very fundamentalist, King James only, you know, white shirt, starch, heavy starch, pulpit pounding, red face, the whole stereotype was our weekly experience.

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And then when I was in high school and just after high school, I was thinking of coming to kind of the end of that, thinking if all you're going to do at church is yell at me, why do

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I want to go? I can get that at home from daddy. Exactly. Yeah. So I kind of looked further into Christianity and ended up kind of in the seeker movement for a while.

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I've done just about everything in evangelicalism in the past 20 years, up until 10 years ago when

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I became Reformed. So I've been seeker -driven, I've been emergent for a while.

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So you've got the look, you could pull that off, maybe. You all in Radioland can't see Dan, but he's got the chiseled kind of face, and he's got the gruff kind of voice, you know, perfect.

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This is perfect emergent, I think. Yeah, so from fundamentalism to seeker -sensitive to emergent to kind of a broad evangelical megachurch after that, and then into kind of a

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Calvinistic dispensationalist theology before I became Presbyterian.

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And then what's left? Greek Orthodoxy. Yeah, exactly. I've always said, you know, we've had—sadly, in the

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Reformed world, we've had a lot of high -profile apostasies in recent years. And I've always said, if I was going to go apostate, it would be

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Greek Orthodox, only for the food. They have the best food, Greek food. And if you remain in the clergy, you have that great beard.

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You can grow your beard down to your belly button. Those black robes. Comfortable clothes. Yes, uh -huh.

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Yeah, so why would you cross the Tiber and become a Catholic when you could be Greek Orthodox and have all the benefits of that?

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Dan, before you go any farther with what's going on in your background in life and testimony, I want to stop there because I might forget.

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Maybe I'm just the only one who thinks this way. I don't think so. My desire is, and I think most of our listeners desire, is that we want to study the

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Word of God, and whatever it says, we want to believe. And if that pushes us into a certain system or category or an ism, okay, so be it.

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Right? We didn't write the Bible. We are creatures, and we are finite, and we are fallen at that. Whatever the text says, that's where we'll go.

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And I know that's what you believe as well. But what do you think explains someone, like a Hank Hanegraaff or someone else, going into Greek Orthodoxy or going over even into Roman Catholicism, someone else, is there a psychological reason?

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I mean, is it a theological reason? It's not, I'm going to study the text because it's obviously not found in the text.

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I think for some people that I've spoken to, one category is those coming up in kind of a broad evangelical background, and kind of the mega -church, you know, low -church, happy -clappy kind of stuff, and they have this desire for something with depth, something more serious.

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Shouldn't worship be serious? Why are we acting like juveniles here every

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Lord's Day? So they begin looking outside of the mega -church, broad evangelical circles, and they see the seriousness, the depth, the tradition, the history of Rome or Greek Orthodox.

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And they're drawn to that. Now, sadly, I wish they would be drawn to Geneva instead of Rome or Constantinople, because we do have depth and history and seriousness and all of that, only it's from the

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Bible, not from man's tradition. I think one of the other motivations for some is almost an epistemological crisis.

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The hyper -individualistic emphasis in some of evangelicalism leaves people confused and with anxiety, because if it's just my

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Bible and me under a tree, and I have to interpret this solely by myself and discern everything and know all the arguments and come to my own conclusions, well, who's worthy of that?

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And so you end up in, well, where do I turn for knowledge? Where do I turn for certainty? And again, rather than turning to Geneva, turning to the historic confessions of the church, reading the

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Bible with the history of the church as one body of Christ.

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We read together. You have many dead theologians in your library. We read the

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Bible together. They inform our interpretation. Sadly, many reject that and instead fall on the certainty of Mother Church of Rome, who says, we are the only infallible church and we have the only infallible interpretation of Scripture.

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Nobody knows where that infallible interpretation is. It hasn't been published. We keep waiting.

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You've had 2 ,000 years for this infallible interpretation. Could you please publish it? I'm sure the

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Vatican could print many copies if they would like. But it's a fool's trade because you're giving up assurance of salvation, which you cannot have in the

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Roman Catholic Church, and you're trying to gain assurance of knowledge, epistemological certainty, and you can't get that either.

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So it's a tragedy that people would give that up and then they're just lost.

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Dan, very insightful. When people want the certainty of, well, this is the real church and there are 30 ,000 denominations, so we want certainty with the church.

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Then what they lose, as you just said, is a certainty, am I right with God? Exactly. I think

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I'll take the certainty of there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, full stop.

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And, well, there are some denominations and fascinating. Well, and then when you peel back the curtain, it's not as if Rome is perfectly unified on everything.

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They blast us for 30 ,000 denominations. There are 30 ,000 different interpretations in the Roman Catholic Church.

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I think the current Pope has 30 ,000 different interpretations of his own theology. So the idea that, oh, we're all united because it's true, we're all on the same page.

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No, there is great division within the Roman Catholic Church. Now, they remain institutionally united, but with ideas, with theology, there is tremendous variance.

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Now, before the show, we were talking about Hebrews and this great book's extolling the supremacy of Christ. Hebrews 4 .12,

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for the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two -edged, probably literally, surgeon's scalpel.

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We were talking about the Word of God and its importance and how it's a critic and it judges people.

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Dan, talk a little bit about, okay, on one end of the spectrum of the pendulum, you've got solo scripturo, kind of the solus, you know, the

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Bible. Would you say the Bible and me under a tree? Yeah. Kind of just alone. And then on the other side, you've got this mother church and she will help you understand everything.

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What's solo scriptura? And I don't think many of our listeners realize, although I've talked about it lately, that there is a good tradition.

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There is a good foundation that we can build upon. I think Van Hooser calls it tradition one is the good stuff.

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Tradition two is the extraneous stuff. What is solo scriptura and how can that guard us from swinging over from one degree over to the other side?

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Yeah. So solo scriptura is the belief that Scripture is our only infallible authority and it's our primary authority.

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But that doesn't mean we don't have secondary authorities. It's not exclusive. The only thing we look to, of course, it is the primary thing we look to, but we look to other things to help us understand

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Scripture. So we have secondary authorities, which are basically just summaries of Scripture.

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Many people who despise the confessions want to say, oh, you're adding to Scripture or this is alongside of Scripture unnecessarily.

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Well, no, it's just a summary of the Bible's teaching. Everyone has a confession, as Carl Truman often says.

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You have a confession. It's just whether yours is written down or not and whether it was tested by a church and approved ecclesiastically.

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So we all have a confession. And so the thing is, is it just my confession or is it the received confession of Christians throughout the centuries?

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And this actually props up sola Scriptura. It doesn't undermine it. But just going back to that, as you mentioned, the two pendulums,

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I don't like the fact that I can't have mathematical certainty of my interpretation of the text.

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I wish that were not the case. I would love to fall on an infallible interpretation of the church.

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Sadly, they don't have it. But this is the era of walking by faith and not by sight.

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So it's not the radical subjectivism, it's not the radical objectivism of falling on Mother Church, it's reading the

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Bible in communication with the church in all times and all places, and walking by faith, trusting that God will lead us into His truth.

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Talking to Dan Borvin today on No Compromise Radio. Now a fellow New Englander. New England.

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Are you a Patriots fan at all? I am now. One reason, because I'm a Chicago Bears fan originally, so I'll abandon the losers and go with the winners.

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I'm studying Hebrews chapter four. As I said earlier, verse 14 of chapter four. Since then we have present tense, a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,

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Jesus. That's his name, his human name, of course, the Son of God. Let us hold fast.

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Now the ESV and the NAS say, our confession, I just was reading the Greek text this morning, Dan, it says, the confession.

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So I think, is that the Westminster they're talking about there? Or the Sixth? I wish. But that is true.

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We have basically confessional statements recorded in Scripture. Even, many have argued that almost catechetical statements in the

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New Testament. So there is biblical basis for the idea of a summary of God's teaching that is encapsulated, that's memorized, that's taught to children, and that we can pass on.

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Absolutely. I'm thinking about 1 Corinthians chapter, excuse me, 1 Timothy chapter three.

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I was making light of the one in Hebrews. That wouldn't be proper to say, but here, great indeed, 1

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Timothy 3 .16. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness.

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He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in glory, in the world, excuse me, taken up in glory.

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In front of me, I've got the Reformed Confessions harmonized by Beakey and Ferguson. Tell our listeners a little bit about the similarities in the

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Reformed Confessions. In spite of time, continents, and languages, and how that should give us assurance that 90 %...well,

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I'm leading you into the answer that I want, so I'll just stop there. Yeah, so for those who might be unaware, most

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Presbyterians have as their confessional standards, the

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Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Westminster Larger Catechism, and the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

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We call those the Westminster Standards. And that's for the standards, the standards,

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Westminster, kid. And then what has become known as the

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Continental Reformed Tradition would have the three forms of unity, the Belgic Confession, the

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Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of the Synod of Dortch. Our friend Scott Clark likes to call the

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Westminster Standards and the three forms of unity, the six forms of unity, because they are truly united.

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And he actually says that from an informed position, because as a professor at Westminster Seminary in California, he has to subscribe both standards, the

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Westminster Standards and the three forms of unity. And he doesn't do that with his fingers crossed. He can do that in good conscience, because exactly as you said, there is so much cohesiveness in all of the

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Reformed confessions and a unity of thought in the interpretation of Scripture, again, from the early 1530s, as we see some

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Reformed confessions, catechisms being written, all the way to the 1640s with Westminster, that unity of thought continues.

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And again, they weren't saying anything new. So you talk about, how did they come to the same conclusions?

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How are the confessions so similar? It's not as if it was novel. So if you're coming up with something new, yeah, it might be hard to be on the same page with others, but they were looking back, of course, to Scripture primarily, but then also

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Scripture as interpreted by the early fathers of the Church. So the Reformed saw themselves as the true heirs of the patristic fathers, the early

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Church fathers, and that had been lost in the medieval period, and they just picked that up again during the

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Reformation. So I would think Augustine, if he were around today,

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I would like to think he would not have to cross his fingers if he signed the

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Westminster Standards, because it is Augustinian. Not in every jot and tittle, of course—theology has developed since Augustine—but the same content of faith is there.

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Well, this is a fascinating discussion to me, and I have that app on my phone that I'd encourage people to get,

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Reformed Creeds and Confessions, and you can pull up whichever ones you want and you read through, and for those who think that this will be dry and sterile and academic only—when

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I read the Belgic Confession, for instance, and the mediatorial work of Christ, his intercessory work,

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I'm encouraged. A Final Judgment section—I'm encouraged because of what Christ has done, and I think the same thing happens,

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Dan, in my mind when people—oh, Calvin is intellectual and he's dry. Well, he's talking a lot about piety.

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He's not just talking about, you know—this is just not a summary of theology like Aquinas might write.

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This is talking about, well, as Clark would say, piety in practice. What's the thing?

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Piety in practice? Theology, piety, practice. Yeah, that's right. We're talking about practice. And he's writing as a pastor. He's not writing as an ivory tower theologian.

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No, you're exactly right. There is a warmth to the Confession that many of those who, like, you know, who snipe from outside, those who haven't read it, like, they don't—they're not aware of it.

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The Confessions have—all of them have a warm pastoral tone running through them.

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I was just talking to someone the other day about the canons of the

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Synod of the Church, 1618. We're celebrating that this year, and I was struck, coming from an

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Arminian background, first coming to the canons, how pastoral they are.

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When my—the first Reformed church that I was a member of in Oceanside, California, a

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United Reformed church, our pastor there, in the Continental Reformed tradition, they have the practice of catechetical preaching.

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So, again, critics like to say, well, you're preaching from the catechism, but not the

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Bible—no, rather, you're preaching from the Bible as informed by the catechism.

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So basically, the points on your outline will come from the catechism for your sermon.

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And the pastor there was preaching through the canons of the Synod of Dwarves. And again, people would think, well, this is the most sterile document in history, and it's only a screed against the

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Arminian remonstrance. How in the world could you preach this and it would be beneficial to people?

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The exact opposite is true. The pastoral tone that rings through the entire canons and the concern for the souls of people.

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They weren't there to bash the Arminians. They're there to care for the souls of their people and to protect them from this serious error.

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So anyone, if you read any of the Six Forms of Unity, you'll see the warmth, the depth, and the pastoral nature of all of our confessional documents.

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Dan, as you know, living in New England now, this is a place populated by Roman Catholics. And I think the percentages, the latest data that I've read, 80 % profess to be

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Roman Catholic. They might not practice, but if you ask them at a funeral, you know, how do you want your mom to be buried?

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Yes, in a Catholic church with a Catholic funeral mass, et cetera. Tell our listeners who are Roman Catholic, or rather have a

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Roman Catholic background, that catechisms aren't always bad, because what I found here in the last 21 years, catechism, oh yeah, that makes me think of Roman Catholicism.

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What's a catechism? It's not by definition only Romish, right? No, not at all.

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Yeah. Catechism just means teaching. So it's a summary, again, of Scripture distilled down to be taught to the simple.

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They were written for children, which is ironic now that, you know, many adults can't memorize the shorter catechism, when it was written for children.

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And you're able to digest these deep concepts from Scripture in a very palatable way that even children can understand.

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And we cannot downplay the importance of that, sowing those seeds of Scripture in the hearts of the young.

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A friend of mine is a pastor in California, and he had a woman in his congregation who left her husband one day, runs off with some other man.

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They can't find her. Finally, after a couple of weeks, they track her down. She calls home. She says, I want to come home.

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And she said, I'm repenting of my sin because I could not get the

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Heidelberg Catechism out of my mind. She'd been catechized as a young girl.

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As she was trying to run from God, the words of Scripture chased her down through the catechism and brought her back to the faith.

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So these are crucial documents for the Church to instruct all of our people in the truths of God's Word in a very easily accessible way.

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If you go online, you can pull up Westminster, Shorter Catechism, very easy to digest, very simple.

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And as Dan said, even kids could memorize those. They were meant for kids. It reminds me, Dan, of the book that I have, and it's called

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Bible Doctrines Simply Explained. And it would have a chapter on justification or regeneration.

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But there's a subtitle to the book behind the front cover, and it's

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Doctrines for Children. That was the original title. And now we have to say, oh yeah, people in the

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Church don't even know these simple doctrines. And I believe it was William Plummer who said, when you're in a very difficult trial, you need solid doctrines to try to fortify and to give you some rebar for your soul.

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If you've got a problem with health, or you're child sick, a little ditty theology isn't going to help.

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You need to know the sovereignty of God and what God has declared in His Son. And that's what's so important, because we all will run into these massively crushing trials in this fallen world, and we're going to have to fall either on the sword, fall on the problems, fall on ourselves, or rest in the promises of God.

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Yeah. As we were talking before we came on air, not only do we experience personal trials, but even in the

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Church with, sadly today, there's a trial over justification, how many are abandoning the biblical doctrine of justification.

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But I think, I believe it's Westminster Larger Catechism 73, I've gone on record and said, this is the greatest non -inspired paragraph ever written.

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It is impossible to improve upon this statement of justification. If anyone thinks he's worthy of that task,

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I would encourage him to try, but you cannot improve on this wonderful summary of the doctrine of justification.

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What'd you say, is it Larger 73? Larger 73, I believe it is. Okay, you don't have it memorized? I should. If you're going to memorize anything, then that would probably be it.

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What else, Dan, if the Church, the listeners want to get a hold of you, or pull up the website of the

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Church that you're serving at, what would they do? Yeah, our website is mvpc -church .org.

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One helpful thing that our pastor does every week, for every day of the week, he calls it the worship blog, so the congregation can prepare for that Sunday sermon, so you read the passage ahead of time, he gives little notes, maybe a clip of a commentary or something, and it's a great thing to do for your family devotions, even if you don't attend our church, it's a readily accessible, all you have to do is pull it up, you can go through it as your family devotions, and it's wonderful, you get scripture, he'll include a song you can sing together, what to pray for, a very beneficial ministry that he does on the website.

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So that's the worship blog of Merrimack Valley Presbyterian Church. I concur, because when I looked up the worship song the other day, my family and I really loved to sing the

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Climbing, Climbing Jacob's Ladder together, that was excellent. Just kidding.

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Larger Catechism, 73. How doth faith justify a sinner in the sight of God?

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Answer, faith justifies a sinner in the sight of God, not because of those other graces which do not always accompany it, or of good works that are the fruits of it, nor as if the grace of faith, or any act thereof, were imputed to him for his justification, but only as it is an instrument by which he receiveth and applyeth

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Christ and his righteousness. You can't improve on any word. By the way, when I was reading that,

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I tried my very best not to mess up one word. Yeah, it's as perfect as we could get, humanly speaking.

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Dan, thanks for being on the show. We're going to have you back, well, you're going to stay here, and we're going to record another show for tomorrow.

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And then I want to hear about your journey, your faith journey, and how you got to where you are.

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Don't stop believing, baby. The other day I was preaching in Hebrews, and that's one of the themes there in three and four, keep believing.

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You've trusted in Christ, keep on believing, because this short -term faith, the spurious faith, it's not when you believed, it's are you believing right now, and keep on believing.

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And I said, you know, you know I don't like the bad journey, but it's all going through your mind, so I might as well just say it so we can just move past it.

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Don't stop. So Dan, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio.

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We'll tell the listeners, we'll learn more about you tomorrow. Thank you. You can find me at bbcchurch .org