Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton. And with me are Michael Deere and Chris Giesler. We've got a couple of questions that we're going to try and answer with this episode, but we're gonna have one that we ask first and we'll answer it, and then we'll ask the second one after that because they may have some tangential points that we can coalesce at the end.

The first reads, can I fellowship with those who reject penal substitutionary atonement? Michael.

So some of those words may not be all that familiar, but the penal substitutionary, it's called the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement.

And it's not theory in terms of speculative thinking, but it's a way of talking about trying to coalesce the message of the scriptures regarding the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are in history, in the history of theology, various theories of the atonement.

Some of these are rather old as different writers in the early church began to try to make sense of the writings of the apostles and try to give some sort of cohesiveness to that, trying to do theology, trying to think

God's thoughts after him and trying to state it clearly, especially for people who may not understand

Christianity. And so they wanted to give a type of explanation for what does it mean to be saved?

What does it mean that Christ had died on the cross? Why is it important? And although many church fathers did a fine job, some came up with the ransom theory, the idea of God had to ransom us from the devil, which is not accurate given the expressions in the scriptures.

Other ideas emerge in which the idea has to do with, well, it's the victory,

Christus victor, this is not really about blood sacrifice as much as it is about God's victory being on display and our salvation is a matter of our sharing in this victory from whatever oppression, the governmental theory of the atonement by Grodius speaking to God, putting things in the proper order, reconciling all things through the death of Christ on the cross.

And so there's a lot of different theories of the atonement, the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement is trying to use these terms to get at what the language of scripture repeatedly, clearly demands, that it is a penal sacrifice, meaning it satisfies

God's demands. There is a punishment going on, that God has the right to punish sin.

So we're beginning with an idea about who God is in his holiness and his justice and that he has the right to punish his creatures whom he has made in his image and who have sinned against him, rebelled against him and that he has the absolute right to judge them as he said to Adam and Eve, in the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.

When they decided to play God and decide for themselves the knowledge of good and evil, what good and evil would be for them,

God punished them and they were exiled from the garden and God has always punished sin with death.

The wages of sin is death, is what the scriptures tell us. And so when we think of Christ's death upon the cross, the shedding of his blood, we see he who knew no sin,

God made sin on our behalf. So he bore our transgressions, he bore our sins in his body,

Peter says, I'm quoting from Isaiah, I'm quoting from Peter, quoting from Romans, from Corinthians, God reconciles us by the blood of Christ.

And we're talking about the blood of Christ, we're talking about the shed blood of Christ, the blood of the lamb in the Old Testament is the background to this.

It wasn't that the lamb bled a little bit and there was something magical about the blood, it was a picture of the lamb without blemish, without spot, dying, bleeding out as a substitutionary sacrifice because God demanded death because of his holiness and his opposition to sin.

And so the sacrifice died instead of the sinner. So it was satisfying the punishment that God had declared for sin.

And of course, since it was the sacrifice in the place of somebody else, that's the substitutionary word.

So penal substitutionary atonement, thanks to Tyndale, atonement, you can see the three words, the three syllables there, atonement, his way of talking about reconciliation, his way of saying what occurs through this act of propitiation, this act of redemption.

And so there's a satisfying sacrifice that is offered up to God, but it is satisfying to God and it is satisfying for those for whom it is given.

And so that there is one place where God and man may be reconciled,

Jesus Christ himself, the temple, who declared himself in his own body, his own ministry to be the temple, the place where God and man may meet.

To come to Christ is to come to Mount Zion, the mountain, the intersection between heaven and earth. He is the place of reconciliation.

He is the God -man. There is one mediator between God and man, man, Christ, Jesus, but how is he our mediator?

How does he bring us to God? Peter says, well, he died on the cross. That's what Paul says. That's what the gospels say.

That's what the prophets anticipated and what the covenants modeled and anticipated.

And so that's what penal substitutionary atonement is. There are a lot of really important passages that explain that, that show forgiveness of sins and fellowship with God through the

Holy Spirit comes through the death of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection.

He was raised from the dead because he had not sinned, because he was worthy, because by his life, he now represents us before God ascended to the right hand.

It's his righteousness that he pleads. He is our mediator. He is our high priest, our advocate before the father.

And so God, the just is satisfied to look on him, pardon us who believe in him.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful to the work of Christ just because of the work of Christ to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1, 9. In this is love not that we love God, but that God loved us and sent his son as a propitiation for our sins.

The Bible is just full of it. Anywhere you look, you're going to find the scriptures talking about some way, somehow, the framework for or the actual bringing about of or the results of the penal substitutionary atonement.

It was wild back in 2006, 2008. This theory of the atonement, penal substitutionary atonement came under so much fire.

It was weird. It was the thing to fight against.

It was the thing to defend. So many books were published to defend the penal substitutionary atonement of the

Bible. It was very helpful, but it was all the focus.

Are you, sorry, are you saying it like kind of the elite evangelical level?

Or like, would you say you saw fighting inside of churches about like between laymen and your local church fighting about this?

Where was it mostly? Where was that mostly at? Because I wasn't aware of the battle going on back then. Yeah, so it began in the, and we talked about this last episode, but it began in the church growth movement when they realized that singing songs about blood just did not click with the audience.

So that seemed to be a problem. And then it just sounded weird and off -putting to talk about the father pouring out his wrath upon his son.

And that sounded, and the people called it cosmic child abuse. Oh, okay, that's where the term comes from.

Okay, now this was, now we have to remember that the seeker -sensitive movement, the market -driven church, morphed into the emergent church because post -modernism and a post -modern approach to Christianity became all the rage.

And for post -moderns, they said, this whole thing, this penal substitute atonement just does not work.

One of the reasons why they said it doesn't work is because they kept on saying, they kept on having lines like, well, this is a

Western development of thought. And what they meant was that Martin Luther in his fight against Rome brought in all kinds of ideology that was foreign to the text in his fight against Rome.

And thus, this was a Western mindset trying to make sense of the gospel, but it was foreign to the genuine

Eastern background of the scriptures, which was much more organic and relational, and it wasn't about this forensic, meaning legal consideration of an atonement.

Like Eastern from which point in history, right? Right, and so this was all the rage to say until someone kind of points out, it's like, you know,

I think the Bible's pretty Eastern and it was full of blood sacrifice. And legal considerations, like, you know that Lamb of God is like, you know, a metaphor built off of the

Old Testament and the Old Testament was full of lambs getting slaughtered because of sin and satisfying

God. Like, you remember that part? So it was kind of hard to maintain that robustly, but it was because of the emergent church, which was a development of the secret sensitive movement to try to say, we don't want to talk about the bloody death of Jesus Christ, right?

Well, it seems like if you don't see the purpose of it, namely sin, if the church is not talking about sin and calling for repentance or anything, and you're, okay, then what is the sacrifice for even?

Then we don't need to be talking about it or singing about. Well, that was one of the questions. I mean, this is the new covenant in my blood, but I don't know, there's just seems like, it seems like when you have

Christ and the apostles referencing the old covenant and talk, and when they're referencing the old covenant and the newness of the new covenant, but still tying it to those old as metaphors to that, how do you get away from that in the house setup?

That's all I'm. So they began to talk about, and again, they were funneling in a lot of ideas from Protestant liberalism that they had noticed a hundred years prior that talking about a blood sacrifice on a cross on Calvary was, just didn't fly really well with the sophisticates, okay?

And again, you had to deal with, and miracles are icky things for your worldview, okay?

So they noticed this like a hundred years ago. This was nothing new, but it was coming now in a, like we can have this direct mystical spiritual experience of connection with God without all of this hard and fast two plus two equals four doctrine.

This one -to -one ratio sacrifice stuff is, this is very Western. This is not very authentic.

This isn't very genuine. God wouldn't demand something like this. This is ridiculous kind of a thing.

And so again, it's like what began by, hey, we're gonna have church and we're still gonna have

Jesus, but we're gonna make sure that everything you, everything possible will make you comfortable.

And then they find out that the gospel itself made you uncomfortable. Well, then we'll change that too. Yeah, like with the seeker sensitive, telling people you're a sinner is not very seeker sensitive.

So you remove all of that messaging and it's about betterment.

And then, cause I keep thinking of the ransom theory. So where's the debt owed?

The wages of sin is death. Well, in the seeker sensitive, there's no debt. There's no sin.

It's just the devil made me do it. I'm not really a bad person. It's this external force making me do bad things.

Whereas the Bible talks about, no, the heart is deceitfully wicked. So you have to deal with that issue.

If it's just an external force and I'm actually a good person, what's the need for this bloody sacrifice?

We don't need to talk about any of that type of stuff. That's a good observation. And that's why there was with a robust defense of the penal substitutionary dominant of Christ, there was also with that, a very large focus on the doctrine of sin and talking about a lot of it.

Cause if you weren't like dealing with sin, then why would you need this sacrifice, right?

Right, cause if there's no, so the wages of sin is death and Satan's an outside force, but the debt is owed to who?

Is God angry at sin or he's not angry about sin. He's just trying to save you from the devil.

Those are very different things. Yeah. So there was kind of, this was also around the same time as the young restless and reformed movement.

There was a resurgence of Calvinism and so on. Well, because Calvinism has a very robust doctrine of sin.

So a Mark theology that was always all the rage. We were very cool when you talked about sin.

And so there was a huge focus on that. I remember being early in seminary and I mean, everyone's reading

John Owen and just getting into the real grit and grime. Everyone realizing just how awful everyone was, which was funny because later the movement traded on that on an overleveraging, an overprivileging of just, how deeply embedded and how horrible you are as a sinner.

You don't even know. And then later that was traded on to - You don't even know how racist you are?

Exactly. Yeah. And so it was a natural fit. And that's where any particular focus in our lives as Christians, any overprivileging of any good doctrine even, we try to ascend any of that to the right hand.

We're going to get ourselves exposed. We're going to be in danger of all kinds of false teaching.

I think Herman Babbitt once said that every heresy in the church could be traced back to a wrong understanding of the

Trinity. And I'm not smart enough to, like he was, to figure that all out. To my mind, anytime we have anybody other than Christ at the right hand, all important to our thinking.

Anytime we have anything else than Christ our Savior, Christ our Shepherd, Christ our King at the right hand, overprivileging anything else is going to set us up for a lot of conflict, disunity, false teaching can sneak in, we can be led astray.

And that's where it took me a long time to figure out what was going on. And I was subject to a lot of,

I knew something wasn't right, but what was it? We were making so much of our sin, we forgot to make much of our

Savior. And boy, that's a cure -all. And it's scandalous. When you begin to exalt

Christ, all kinds of church people can, I think there's a lot of unity there, but some people can get kind of upset.

When you start talking about, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that I tell you, boy, people are gonna get upset with that.

Just to fly that flag and be happy about it, man, you're in for a rough ride.

But is some of that a reaction to the seeker -sensitive saying, there is no sin?

And on the flip side, you're saying, yes, there's sin, but there's no condemnation. So it sounds almost the same, like there's no condemnation, because there is no sin.

And you're saying, no, we have a great Savior who paid for that sin, so there's no condemnation.

Right, well, that's the thing, is you can easily, I am not a fan of easy -believism, say this prayer, live however you want, and say, nobody can say nothing about me, because I claim

Jesus. Not at all. But one part of the work of God in our lives as Christians is that we are changed, and things are different now, and one of those things that are different is that we don't live under gloom and doom of condemnation.

That's part of the joy of salvation. But mostly, at the time, in a great effort to defend the penal substitutionary atonement, this is how much we need to be forgiven, there was a really, really heavy emphasis,

I would say over -emphasis, on sin. The Puritans are great at that. And it was like all

Puritan 24 -7. The Puritan hard drive came out, Joel Beakey was the greatest guy on earth, Puritan, Puritan, Puritan, Paul Washer got real popular real fast, because he's like, you know, you guys are awful.

And everyone's like, yeah, amen, we're awful. And you just had this idea of, you know, what's, if it's a problem, if someone runs around saying, well,

I'm saved, so no one should say anything about any sin problem I have, you know, like no accountability, no sense of holiness, whatever, that's a problem.

What's also a problem is when someone says, I'm a Christian, and I am dirty, rotten, vile, evil.

That's a problem, too, because there should have been some change, brother. There should have been a

Roman six change here. But it's so the, you asked about it in academics.

I think you had mentioned 2006, 2008, there's a big kerfuffle over there. And I didn't know about it at the time.

But I know that in 2015, it had trickled down into like church levels because we were having disagreements,

NT wrong with being brought up in Sunday school. People were latching onto Christus Victor over penal substitutionary atonement.

Yes, that really paved the way for that, didn't it? Yeah, and so within talking about that, the question of can

I fellowship with someone who does not affirm that was something that I think a lot of people did have to struggle with because they're talking about what are you saying?

Of course, Christ is victorious, but in what way? What does the Bible? That was a bit of a false dichotomy.

It's like to say, well, if you affirm penal substitutionary atonement, then you deny that Christ is, he won his victory through this.

No, that's a false dilemma that you're putting on us. Because it's both and, right? Yeah, absolutely.

But it is something where for the followers of NT Wright and E .P.

Sanders, in new perspective on Paul, it was all about, again, your understanding of the scriptures is so westernized because of those big, bad reformers.

Luther, Calvin, they got it all wrong. And they didn't mean to, but they did. And so you've been getting it wrong all this time because of them, because you're just too

Western -minded. So what you gotta do is have my mindset, which where I have the secret knowledge, right,

Gnosticism, I have the secret knowledge of what was really going on in the minds of the apostles when they wrote these things.

And so until you understand the Bible like I understand it, you don't understand it. Mm -hmm. Okay, and then you get to be a part of that secret club that you're in the know versus not being in the know, and then you're superior to everybody.

Sells a lot of books, too. That it does. Now, it's not to say that NT Wright was wrong on everything. A lot of his work is helpful, but a lot of it, but again, when you take something too far, when you exalt something too high, where do you end up?

Nowhere good. And that's what he did. So whenever you read Wright, you gotta be ready for him to be wrong.

And that's just the way that goes. I mean, Karl Barth the same way. He said some good things, and then he just kept on pushing it farther and farther, and then he got really, really wrong because he was overreacting to some things and unwilling to submit himself to have the faith as a child.

And to believe the thing the Bible obviously said. So can I fellowship with those who reject penal substitutionary atonement law?

I think if someone rejects it, do they actually understand what they're rejecting? In other words,

I was gonna ask this because you have that Ligonier survey that comes out every year or whatever, right?

And so the people's understanding of the Trinity, or I think maybe even penal substitutionary atonement is on there as well, but it's like, it is so low, the understanding of any of these doctrines.

And I'm like, you might be fellowshipping with people who, and you don't know it, right? Like that's kind of one of these things that it might fall under that category.

I've pastored people who don't know what this is. And I don't even say, this is penal substitutionary atonement, right?

But just preaching from the scriptures, explaining it. I want them to see in the text.

Hey, look there, see that word? Hey, look there, see that phrase? Hey, look there. And then look over here, it says it over here too. And look over here, it says it over here too.

And then I do that. And then people afterwards like, I've been coming to church all my life and I've never heard that before. But it's true.

So those moments, like, okay. But if I had come up to them and said, are you a follower of the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement?

They're like, I don't know what you're saying. It sounds weird. I ain't never been to penitentiary. And so some people just don't understand.

And some people believe it, but they don't have those technical terms to describe it. Other people, like again, the state of theology survey will show percentages about who believes what.

And it can't be true. But it is true that people will believe polar opposite things. Like the percentages overlap where people are believing things that do not belong.

They're breaking the law of non -contradiction and they have no idea. So a lot of people's thinking is not orthodox because it's heterodox.

Not necessarily heretics, but they just, they don't know how it fits. That's okay. If they're willing to learn, someone may have been discipled and said, you know, you be careful about, you know, you're talking about blood sacrifice.

Yeah, I think even within the New Testament as it's developing.

And Paul asks people, who are you baptized under? And these are people that you look at them like they're

Christian, but they've never heard of the spirit. What are you talking about? Yeah.

And there's the understanding, but then there's the work that God does in a person's heart.

So again, are they rejecting it because they understand what they're rejecting?

No, that could be a problem. Usually if somebody knows enough about the penal substitutionary atonement to reject it, it means that they would be an advocate against it around others too.

So that means the question, like if somebody were, let me put it this way, when it says, can I fellowship with those? No, what do you mean by that?

Yeah. Couldn't be a church member here. So no fellowship as church members, right?

If you reject the gospel of Jesus Christ, having been given every opportunity to understand what it is, and if you reject it, like I don't believe

Jesus Christ died for my sins to satisfy the wrath of God. Like, okay, well, why are you a member here?

Or why do you wanna even be a member here? That doesn't make any sense. So fellowship, I mean, in terms of an official thing, right?

Now, so I think you should be very specific about that term.

Fellowship means what? Being a church member with them. Now, if you mean, can

I be at a picnic with them? Yeah, you can be a picnic with them. Yeah, you know, can

I be at the same job with them? Yeah, it's like, is it okay to be related to these people?

You know, they come to my family reunion, I have to be around them, is that okay? That's a whole different thing.

But it is a test of fellowship. Yeah, well, I think in the question, you nailed it, they reject.

Penal substitutionary atonement. That's actively like, I deny that,

I don't. That's not what I believe Jesus was doing. That's a pretty big issue.

Now, to be clear, a lot of the work done to defend penal substitutionary atonement was done by Calvinists, right?

So they're bringing the doctrines of grace, and they see a very logical step between penal substitutionary atonement and limited atonement.

Irresistible grace, unconditional election, everything else. So that was done a lot by the Calvinists.

Now, I will say that there are plenty of people who believe in the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement that don't believe in the idea of Christ died for the elect.

Now, the Bible says all, and we rejoice in the word all, that Christ died for all without distinction.

But they would say Christ died for all without exception. And so they have this idea of Christ making it possible to be saved, not for sure that he saved anybody, but that he saved, and I actually had a professor in my seminary said, just because Jesus Christ down on the cross doesn't mean anyone was gonna be saved.

And got some amens for it. Because he was talking about it in terms of pure potentiality, because to.

So that he would affirm Christ fulfilling the promises of God.

Yeah, and that if anybody is saved, it's because of the blood of Jesus, because Jesus Christ died on the cross. But he was trying to protect

God from being the author of evil by exalting the will of man, and so on.

And I don't understand what he was after, annoyed me. But he would believe in penal substitutionary atonement, but I would just consider it a heterodox move.

But I can still fellowship with him. I mean, okay, I can fellowship with you. That's not a problem with me.

Because again, I'm not Foskey's definition of hyper -Calvinist. Meaning unless you believe the doctrines of grace,

I think you're a heretic, right? That's, no, you can be in awe,

I'm a real Dean, or a three -pointer, or whatever. Like you don't have to, I can still fellowship with you, even though you're not a, you're a five -point

Calvinist. Yeah. So, can I fellowship with those who reject penal substitutionary atonement?

No, neither can I fellowship with those who deny the divinity of Christ. Right. Right, Paul says in Galatians, bring any other gospel, you're anathema.

And the gospel, particularly, is the person and work of Christ. Okay, so, straight on, the person and work of Christ, who he is, and his death.

Okay, so, being focused on that. I think there's like a follow -up question to this, unless you want.

Yeah, no, we can go ahead and hit that. The follow -up question to this, we think was probably asked in succession.

It says, what is your view of Eastern Orthodox and Catholicism? Can they be viewed as brothers, despite their official teachings?

Yeah, no, the official teachings, just to be clear, the official teachings is that Eastern Orthodox, which is a lot of different communions from the

Coptics to the Russian Orthodox, all that, Greek, they officially, officially, are not brothers with Roman Catholics, right?

There was a big schism, you know, way back over the Philokee controversy about the Apostles' Creed, and about whether you could, you know, can

I venerate 3D images or 2D images? You know, what kind of images can I bow down before?

You know, there was a big, big, big issue with that. And do you cross, do you do the cross with two fingers or three?

Big deal. They're officially not brothers. Now, despite what many leftist and communist and globalist type of leaders in Orthodoxy and Catholicism say, try to sound very much universalist, the official teachings are they're not brothers, and the official teachings are that all

Protestants are not brothers with them. So I sat down with a

Roman Catholic for two or three hours and talked about what do the councils say?

What does the Council of Trent say? Council of Trent says that if anybody believes that you're saved by grace alone, by the strength of faith alone in Christ alone, they are anathema cut off from God.

Okay, so if you believe the basics about the gospel, if you believe in penal substitutionary atonement, you are not a brother, you are not

Christian, you are cut off from God anathema according to the official teachings of Roman Catholicism.

And Vatican II did nothing to change any of that. No. Yeah. So if you just, so I would say, if you're gonna take up their official teachings, you just gotta read

Vatican II, read Vatican I, read the Council of Trent, get the highlights, look at the table of contents, go to the relevant passages, go look at the

Roman Catholic Catechism, go read what they say. And what you'll find is all manner of false gospel false worship, idolatry, an absolute obscuring of the gospel.

And in so many different ways, a denial of the person and work of Jesus Christ. This question is very much just the flip side.

Can I fellowship with someone who rejects a doctrine found in the

Bible versus can I fellowship with someone that accepts an official teaching of the church?

Yeah. I think Justin Peters just put out a bunch of stuff for Reformation Month on Roman Catholicism, talking about some of the basic issues and to get an interview with somebody as well.

And it's pretty helpful. He's very organized in his thinking. But there is a lot of information out there you can go access.

I know James Wyatt's done a bunch on Roman Catholicism and so on and just, hey, this is what they say. So are you gonna do with what they say or what?

What about someone who doesn't, is unaware of the official positions of the church and maybe they're attending

Eastern Orthodox or Catholic church. You're talking about like Oklahoma Catholics?

Cafeteria Catholics. They're kind of picking shoes and they're like, I don't necessarily get into all of that, but this is where I was raised.

Right. So this is another fruit of seeker -sensitive, market -driven church.

Why would you go to a big box church with the fog lights, lasers, the band and all of that?

For the experience. This is what the charismatic groups have to offer.

This will be an experience. What does a Roman Catholic church offer you?

If you don't even get three quarters of what they're actually saying and teaching you, and doing with all of this hullabaloo, why do you go there?

Usually the claims are tradition, longevity, historicity. You know, those types of things, that's what you usually get.

Their buildings are cooler. Acoustics are great. Acoustics are great. There's ceremony.

There's an experience that happens. The Greek Orthodox even more so, like they're swinging incense all over the place and there, you know, smells and bells.

You go for the high church experience because it's not like the other ones.

Like I'm tired of going to the big box experience. I'm tired of going to the traditional experience.

I want a different experience. It feels different. It feels like something actually happened and there is an attraction there.

So yeah, I can imagine that somebody, who doesn't really care much about the official teachings, the official doctrines of the church, are attracted to,

I want to have a better experience at church. It feels so dry and normal where I normally go.

This feels like it's real, like it's genuine, like it's ancient. It's like it's calling to me. And one of the things

I've noticed recently, there's a teammate of mine that I just had like a two or three hour conversation with that grew up in charismatic circles and then

Southern Baptist circles when he got into high school. And now he's in a Catholic church in Tulsa with his brother.

And one of the things that he emphasized was kind of a, still a, not just like an emphasis on it, but like families were allowed to be like family groups within the church kind of a thing where it wasn't, he really decried like kind of the, like we were talking about this forced segregation earlier that he found.

And evangelicalism. And where that emphasis on multigenerational faith and bringing like hordes of kids and just everybody lopping in together.

He really said like that's, that emphasis helped him to go ahead and start attending this

Catholic church in Tulsa. So I know that's some of it for specifically young men. That's an attraction as well.

Yeah. And so there could be a lot of reasons why. If somebody is reading the official teachings of the church and like this is really compelling, and they start talking about coming home and all these other things because they really like Thomas Aquinas and they've been very compelled to go that, and there's several lot of different seminaries that have so stressed certain

Romanist presuppositions. There are certain Presbyterian and Baptist seminaries that a lot of guys have gone completely

Catholic, Roman Catholic. So when they're doing that, they're doing so on the claims of what they're going to be teaching and propagating and pushing for.

And all the while they're saying, I'm not giving up the gospel, so on and so forth.

But when that is pushed, I've watched it.

I think James White is a good example that when you push that, it's like, okay, let's talk about Mary. Let's talk about the official teachings of the church.

Okay, let's talk about the perpetual sacrifice of Christ, the repeated sacrifice of Christ.

And let's talk about the mass. Let's talk about that. Let's just push this. Let's talk about prayers to the saints.

Let's push this. And just time and again, it's awful.

I mean, it is so pagan. And so, yeah.

Well, and because young men won't stop at like the, they won't stop at just like reading Aquinas, right?

And that's what you're seeing is you actually see the guys that they're teaching just straight off into all of that.

You're just saying they'll adopt all of it. Yeah, and so I remember, so again, I was sitting down with this

Roman Catholic and I was pointing out, it's like, here's what the Council of Trent says about me.

Anathema, cut off from God. And she was trying to inform me that we don't necessarily have to view the word anathema like that.

Like the people who wrote it had a meaning behind it.

And in that time, how was that word used? And she changed the subject. I said, but here we are, you and I sitting across the table and she had a background where she'd come out of a cult and then tried to learn the gospel and then she's ended up in this

Roman Catholic tradition. And I said, well, here we are. I said, your official teachings, your magisterium, your church council says,

I am damned to hell. And I am sitting across from you hoping that you really don't believe all the stuff that the

Roman Catholic Church teaches and you really do love Jesus and you're really saved. So I'm hoping to see you in heaven, but your church is saying

I'm going to hell, right? And I said that because she was about Karen's age and she wanted to be the one to be seen as the liberal, the free, the, we're the inclusive ones, we're the unified ones.

It's like, you know. But your church's position is not that. Yeah, exactly. So if she, you know, because she was insisting that she could believe differently than what the priest taught, believe differently than what the church says, and that's fine.

And a lot of that is going on in Catholicism right now. Like I get where she's sort of coming from just because that has been okay, like for what, for like the last 60 years or something like that.

Believe what you want and you still be Catholic. Yeah, and I mean, like the last Pope pushed a lot of that stuff, right? But when you've got, like, when you're talking to hardline traditional

Catholics these days, they're like, they're swallowing it all, right? And they're like, a lot of them are rejecting like Vatican II stuff.

Yeah, Vatican I, I mean, yeah. Yeah, and like, that's like, that's the direction that their growth is going in, right?

Like they're not growing in like the liberal side, they're growing in the hardline side, right? That seems, to me, it seems very similar to what happened with Mormons.

So you had the hardline Mormons who know the official teaching of the church and they're sticking with it and they go with it.

Then they sent their young ones to colleges, they got liberalized, and then it became very mushy.

So oftentimes when I was talking to Mormon missionaries, I almost had to teach them what

Mormonism taught. Like, you're not a Mormon, you're claiming it, but this is what your church teaches.

Do you believe that or not? Because you're saying things that they don't hold. I know that they hold these things.

You're trying to convert me to this church or this religion, but I know what it means.

I know what they're saying. And you don't seem to know that. You almost have to convert them to Mormonism to unconvert them.

Like, that's not where you are. You're not in that space. Yeah, and that's why it can be kind of a confusing conversation.

If someone says, I'm Roman Catholic, I say, well, what do you actually believe? Because they like the idea of being

Roman Catholic, but they may not ascribe to the things that they are taught. Or they may be like part of this group going back to back and back in one because they want the

Latin mass, which is where we get hocus pocus from. Yes, this is my body.

Yeah, the priests who didn't know Latin repeating the

Latin phrases, not knowing what they said and saying it so fast that it sounds like they're saying hocus pocus. I changed this corpus.

Yeah, I changed this from one thing to another, to hocus pocus. And the fact that they want to go back to that, again, this is all superstition.

This is all superstition, and they want the superstition. So with that, it would be something where it's like, no, we can't view people like that as brothers.

Why not? Well, this sounds so stingy. It sounds so unloving, so unkind, so narrow -minded, and so on.

What does that term brother mean? Where do we find that in Scripture? In what ways is it used?

It's used to describe those who are saved, and Paul's very clear about this in Galatians, those who are saved by faith alone, that they are the true sons of Abraham adopted into God's people as sons by the

Son, by His death on the cross. Our sonship is because of Christ's sonship, and it was

His death alone, and it was our faith in Him alone, and it's by the Spirit alone that we now can look at one another and say, brother, we are fellow heirs with Christ.

And so, no, I can't look at somebody who denies the person or the work of Christ and say, no, my salvation includes my works.

I can't look at them and say, brother, because the Bible particularly reserves that for people who are saved by grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone.

There's a meaning behind the term brother, just like there's a meaning behind the term fellowship, that fellowship is not just a word of being friendly or neighborly, that's not what fellowship means.

And viewing somebody as a brother is very specific biblical language. It doesn't mean that I can't be a friend to, or a good neighbor to, somebody who is a

Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox. I can do that. I could be a co -belligerent with them in politics even.

Right, right. But no, I'm not gonna call you a brother. Right. So I think that's the distinction to make.

Despite what Elvis says, Santa knows we're all God's children. Did not expect an

Elvis quote. I didn't either, that came out of nowhere. Well, and we'll wrap it up with that Elvis quote.

That's what we'll do. We'll get too much Christmas music on the monitor. Terry's right, yeah. So what do you recommend this week,

Michael? I'm recommending a classic by J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism.

So this was a book written about a hundred years ago, in which

Machen, who was part of the Presbyterian Church that is now called

PCUSA, began to push back against the liberalism that was showing up in Union Seminary in New York and other places, especially on the continent in Europe, and saying liberalism is not the same thing as Christianity.

So the title of his book is saying Christianity, that's one thing, and over here, there's liberalism.

So those who were still claiming to be Christian, but had rejected the authority of the scripture, rejected the miracles, rejected everything from the virgin birth to the resurrection of Christ, those who had rejected all these things, still calling themselves

Christians. He's saying, hang on a minute, no, you're not. You are not Christians.

Right, so what you're saying is liberal in the theological sense, not the political sense.

Right, so in the doctrinal, ecclesiastical, historical sense, liberalism had this idea of removing various doctrinal strictures and being liberated from that, being more free in what you believe and letting go of some things.

And so that was the, I mean, it was the name they kind of took for themselves and until the name began to stink, and then later on, they called themselves moderates.

And then later on, they called themselves progressive. And just whatever word works until it begins to rot.

Is it deconstruction now? Deconstructionist? I don't know. Tis the new spell? Yeah.

So anyway, it's a good work. So it has a historical value to kind of hear about what things were going on back then.

And then you could be kind of like, oh, wow, it's still happening. And then you can see the, it's an evergreen book in terms of here's what we stand for and we cannot, we cannot fail to stand for and let go.

We have to maintain these distinctions or we're not Christian, right? We're drawing a line in the sand. So he never took the name fundamentalist, he never took that title, though he was vital for the fundamentalists.

As they began to rally, he was a very major voice in stating you cannot give up on the fundamentals, everything from the inerrancy of scripture to the virgin birth to the resurrection of Jesus, miracles and so on.

Is it kind of ironic that Karl Truman wrote the forward or? A little bit, it's a little bit.

Yeah, the great third wayer wrote a forward to a non -third wayer.

Yeah, exactly. But I don't know, maybe when he wrote the forward, he wasn't -

He wasn't there yet, yeah. He wasn't so much in the third wayism as he is now. Well, Chris, what do you recommend?

So with Christmas coming upon us, I'm not doing a lot of reading as much as I have been.

And a lot of the reading that I'm doing is for myself, kind of examining some of the positions

I hold and I'm going back and reading a lot of like older stuff just for myself.

So my recommendation would be engaging with people or ideas that differ from you, getting outside of your comfort zone, obviously with the rock of the scripture, with Christ as the truth.

In our age where there's so much information, but not a lot of knowledge, not a lot of knowing happening, to just contemplate positions held just to try to work through it, but holding onto that rock.

So I'd encourage and recommend people to reach out to people around you who hold a different view and just talk about those things.

Get comfortable talking because it's going to be for the rest of our lives.

And at the very least, gain some sources from that too, right? Because that leads to other recommendations.

Usually if you're engaging with that, they've got stuff that they've either read or consumed. Right, and not just dismissing it out of hand, but they'll have things that they're reading that aren't within your circles.

Because I know for myself, I can get caught up in an echo chamber. It's like, well, we're all reading the same things and we like this, we didn't like, we disagreed here.

Well, what about these other sources that are saying things? I'm going to disagree with a lot more there probably.

But are there things that can sharpen my arguments or things that I need to tweak on my side?

Right. Well, my recommendation for this week is, like you mentioned, the

Christmas season. I'm hoping this one will be of practical use for people with families who enjoy celebrating or trying to implement celebrating

Advent. And I might've mentioned this last year, I cannot remember. But if I did, then you get the recommendation twice.

It is, As the Darkness Clears Away by Tom Askle. And it's a really, really short book with a couple pages for each day of Advent leading up to our celebration of Christmas and the birth of Christ, our

Lord. But it was really, really short to go through with my family as either a supplement for family worship or what we were using for family worship that night.

And we didn't get to hit it every night because we'll have like church nights where we're out till like nine or whatever.

We're getting back from Daryl's house or what have you. But when we got to do it, we walked through it up until Christmas.

And it was, like I was saying in the previous episode, my kids, for the most part, don't listen all the time.

But it was good for me to see that I could implement these things when

I want to start adding things or subtracting things to our liturgical schedule.

And this one was really, really helpful. It's Tom Askle's As the Darkness Clears Away. What are we thankful for this week,

Michael? I am very thankful for my family, thankful for the time we had on our vacation, thankful to be home, thankful for our six children, thankful for my wife, and that our life is very full.

And this is, you know, in the press of things, we're like, we don't have time for X, Y, and Z anymore.

That's okay. That's actually a good thing. It's a blessing. And so there's so much to rejoice in when you take a step back and see how blessed you are.

And then Chris. While we're recording this, as of this recording, the government shutdown has ceased.

During that time, I am thankful for the church, broadly, and then this specific one

I'm in, that just to see how people were very concerned and wanted to help each other, making sure that everyone was all right, everyone was taken care of, it was very touching to see that the way that church came together, even to make sure, not knowing that there were people in need, like, what can we do?

People that wanted to help if there was the need for it. So just to see the church kind of step up in that way was encouraging to me, and I'm very thankful for it.

Amen. Well, I'm thankful for, you were talking about earlier, getting different perspectives, having new information, changing views, this and that.

And as we do that, having and using Christ as our rock at all times, and I'm thankful that I've seen that happen, right?

And I've been able to experience that happening as either I change views or I've seen other people change views that don't necessarily add up to first -order issues, but are adiaphora and are able to, especially with the help of the local church, navigate certain things, navigate times and phases in life where these changes happen without doing the pendulum swing like we were talking about in the last couple episodes with any manner of issues.

And when you get there with a changed position, if you have been tempered by the wisdom of the

Word, normally you don't try to go full cage stage with these positions.

You're able to converse with people about these positions, but if they are culturally heterodox, you gotta be wise about these things, especially in an age where culturally heterodox positions have bearing on somebody's work life, a bearing on somebody's church life, a bearing on somebody's marriage.

Those things really have to be walked through wisely, and the way that you are able to do that is continued communion with Christ in the

Word, in prayer, and placing yourself underneath biblical authority in the church.

And I'm very thankful that He has given us those things as we walk through change in our life. And that wraps it up for today.

We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Happy Knot Red.