SRR 95 Responding To Emails, Shout Outs, and Covenant Theology

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield exposing the air and combating the air.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said, woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
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As opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is on.
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We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. All right.
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I want to welcome everybody back to the podcast. This is Semper Riffamanda Radio and my name is
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Tim Shaughnessy. So it's been a while since we've done a podcast. Actually, maybe about a month or two and things have been pretty busy.
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But I am here today with my co -host Carlos Montijo.
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So, Carlos, let me just welcome you back to the podcast and say hello. Yeah, everyone.
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It's good to be back with you, Tim. I know we've been a little bit out of the loop with the podcast, but I know we've been busy.
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Got a lot of personal stuff going on. And I know you just had a baby and my youngest was born on April.
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And I've been very busy at work. And as you can hear, my child is coughing. We've had to deal with sickness and things like that.
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But it's good to be back on the show. Got a new microphone. I'm excited to test it out. Really, we have a lot of stuff to cover.
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And hopefully we can start dealing with some of these topics that we've been wanting to address for a while.
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We do. We do have a lot to cover. We're not going to cover all of the serious topics today. We are going to really have a light episode today.
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We're going to read through some emails. And yes, Carlos, you're right. My wife and I just had our fourth child.
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Owen Declan. That's what we decided on. I wanted Declan Owen and my wife, she wanted
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Owen Declan. He's doing great. He's been busy because my daughter just turned two and she's having a rough time adjusting.
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So I've really had to step in and just try to manage with her.
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But it's such a blessing. He's healthy. We're happy. We're busy, like you said.
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So today we want to get back to the podcast. Our goal for next year is to do the podcast more regularly.
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And right now what we want to do is we just want to go through some emails. Get everybody caught up to date with where Semper Reformanda Radio is at.
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Where Thorn Crown Ministries is at. Tell people a little bit about some things that we've got planned for the future that we're trying to work towards.
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So Carlos, where should we begin? I mean, you wrote the show notes for today's episode. So I'll let you take it away.
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Yeah, we can start with... Well, I guess we already started with the personal updates.
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And I think, given that it's the Saturday following Thanksgiving, we have a lot to be thankful for.
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I know we certainly have a lot to be thankful for. I'm grateful for you, Tim, and for being able to, you know, doing the majority of the grunt work with the podcast.
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And I'm really excited about Thorn Crown Ministries, where it's going. We've been moving a little slow.
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I know that we haven't been able to put out things and roll out updates the way that I would like to, at the pace that I would like.
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But we're slowly starting to get there. We have a lot of updates to announce, actually. So we can actually talk about that now,
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I guess. And kind of go through some of the...
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As we go through the e -mails, I'll be able to comment on them. So a lot of updates have been going on the website.
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We have... I'm starting to... I made some updates to it with respect to, like, the tagging and the categorizing and the tagging of the articles and the podcast episodes so that they're more relevant.
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So if you click on a tag, like, say, you know, a certain topic like justification or Piper or things like that, it'll show you all of the relevant posts and podcasts and articles relating to that topic.
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So I've been working on that. We've also... I'm also working on putting out our first newsletter.
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I know we've had a growing list of subscribers to our website, which I'm very excited about. I'm very grateful for you all who subscribed.
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And if you haven't already, you still can. Obviously, you can just go to thoracrowministries .com. You can sign up with your e -mail.
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And I'm working on the first newsletter. I was supposed to get it out, you know, a couple months ago, but I just got really busy at work with...
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got way behind on an account. I got pulled into an account that was like a year behind.
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And so I've been slammed at work and haven't been able to do much on the website.
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But I'm almost done with the newsletter. So be on the lookout for that soon. And we have a lot of really good articles and episodes coming out recently by basically everyone on our network.
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We've got lots of good stuff, lots of good content. I know Steve Matthews, he's been publishing some really good articles, dealing with a lot with the current events and, you know, the state of affairs in the
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U .S. and things like that. And Pastor Hines, we've been really thankful for him. He's been very consistently putting out really good stuff.
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And I finally finished part two of my John Piper critique.
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And that actually was finished like back in September, I think. And the newsletter was going to go out to kind of announce some of that stuff, some of those updates.
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So yeah, I finished part two of the critique. I know we've been wanting to do an episode on that, kind of cover some of the fatal flaws that John Piper's theology leads to.
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And so we've got a lot of that stuff coming up. We've also got tons of topics that we want to discuss.
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We just have a lot to talk about. It's just been piling up. But I know we need to get through emails first, and we're going to try to get caught up with emails on this episode.
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Well, before we get to the emails, I just want to give a big thanks to Pastor Hines.
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He is blowing up the network. I can't keep up with – well, you know, when
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I asked him to come on to the podcast and do a podcast and just formalize it, he was already doing this stuff.
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And if you go to Sermon Audio, he has over 600 sermons on different topics.
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I mean, he could literally put out three episodes a day, and he'd still be covered for a year.
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Now, my math isn't bad. I'm saying in a year, he's going to put out over 300 new episodes.
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And so I know there's 365 days in a year. With him coming on now, the stuff that he's putting out now, in addition to the stuff that he already has,
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I mean, he could blow up the network. And we love it. I mean, he's tackling so many issues that are so important.
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He tackled the Revoice conference. So, I mean, if you want to hear some good stuff on that, and his commentary on it was very well done, be sure to check that out.
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You know, Carlos, we're going to have to maybe get into this a little bit because he just did some episodes on infant baptism.
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And have you had a chance to listen to those yet? Not yet, but I definitely plan to look into that, especially given the recent episodes that we had with Patrick Hines himself and with Brandon Adams.
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We had a really good debate, you know, not too long ago. And that was one of our top episodes, actually. So it's still one of the top episodes on our website.
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And our follow -up interview with Brandon was also excellent. It was really eye -opening, learned a lot of things, and it kind of made me realize a lot of interesting issues in Presbyterian covenant theology.
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So I know we're very excited to talk about those things coming up right now.
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But before we get to that, I actually did want to mention some of the articles that I had specifically, some of the things that I wanted to mention.
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They're going to be part of the newsletter, if I can find it. Here it is. Yeah, and I think
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Kauffman was also starting a new series, right? The Diving Board? Yeah, so Kauffman is in the same boat that we are.
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He just got super busy at work, and I touched base with him. Basically, we're all in this for the long term.
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So I told him, I said, there's no need to feel the pressure to put something out every single week.
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You're in it for the long term, for the long haul. I mean, we love Tim Kauffman.
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We plan on partnering with him. Just for years to come.
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So as soon as he's not busy with work, he's going to get back to it.
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I mean, the same thing with Steve Matthews. Tim Kauffman, Steve Matthews, you, me, we all work secular jobs.
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Pastor Hines, he's a pastor, and so he might be able to address these topics and these things in a quicker manner.
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But Kauffman is doing great. He's going to get back to it whenever he can.
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And I really want him to get back to the eschatology stuff, man. That is really, really good.
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And one of the things I love about our network is we are all in agreement about the gospel and the essentials of the faith.
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But it's interesting. I think it'd be interesting to hear Pastor Hines talk about eschatology because he has a different take on it.
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And it'd be interesting to set up a conversation between Tim Kauffman and Pastor Hines on that.
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But I love the fact that we've got Reformed Baptists and we've got
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Presbyterians, and we can just disagree about certain issues and carry on.
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But I'll let you get to those articles. What articles did you want to highlight for us today?
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I'm really excited about the network that we've got going at Thorn Crown because we kind of cover the whole gamut of the entire sphere of intellectual thought society.
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I mean, we have Steve Matthews. So one of the articles, some of the newer articles from Steve Matthews, he talks about like the
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Bible, and actually de -platformed the tech left's attack on free speech and why
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Christians should object. So it covers a lot of current events, politics, economics, a lot of really fascinating stuff.
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And so Pastor Hines as well, given that he's a very well -established Presbyterian pastor, PCA pastor, and he's got excellent sermons and critiques of, like you mentioned, the
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Revoice conference and things like that. And so Tim Coffman, he's just been amazing with his awesome episodes and articles on eschatology, which has been fantastic.
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And I still need to go through those more carefully, and his critique of Catholicism.
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I think everybody needs to go through those more carefully. Those are episodes where you have to sit down and rewind and do study notes.
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I mean, they're intense. Yeah, so we suffer from an embarrassment of riches here.
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So there's so much here to equip the saints with and to empower people with sound doctrine and a proper view of the gospel.
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So I'm really excited about a lot of the content that we've been putting out. I'm really thankful for the brothers that we've partnered with and have partnered with us.
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So a big hearty shout out to them and a thank you to them for all that they're doing. And so this kind of ties to some of the future topics that we wanted to address, that we hope to address in the near future, regarding especially this whole race issue, the social justice warrior craze that's just been going on everywhere.
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I've had my blood boiling for a very long time, ever since I started listening to the entire
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MLK50 conference by the Gospel Coalition. And so I've got a loaded gun, and I'm ready to use it.
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So I'm really looking forward to talking about that and more than likely offending a lot of people.
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And it's going to be a very incendiary episode, but I think there's a lot of things that need to be said. So I'm looking forward to discussing that, giving sort of a capstone episode on the
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John Piper stuff, and kind of topping that off with discussing some of the fatal flaws that a lot of people don't seem to have addressed.
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Some people have criticized him, rightfully so, and expressed a lot of concern.
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Even James Wyatt is starting to jump on that bandwagon, which is a good thing, but people haven't really been pointing out some of the things that are kind of obvious in one sense, but then you just have to think about things sometimes in a different way to point them out.
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But yeah, so there's a lot of topics like that that we want to address in the near future.
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Also very excited to announce, hopefully, a debate that you and I will be having with Brian Harrison and a debating partner that he chooses at your church,
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Tim, at Horizon Christian Fellowship. I think we're thinking sometime in February, right? Yeah, so that's not a for sure thing on the location.
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I still need to talk to my pastor about it and ask him about it, but if he's not able to do it at that church, then we'll definitely let people know where it's going to take place.
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It would be you and me teaming up against Brian and whoever he picks to be his debate partner, and the topic would be something to do with morality.
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Can you have morality without God? Is God necessary for morality or something like that?
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We watched him debate with one of our friends named Justin, and I plan on interviewing
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Justin. He's a really upstanding guy, and I think they both did really well.
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One thing that I appreciated about Brian, who's an atheist, was that he stuck to the topic and that he was very respectful.
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And so I think it would be a good opportunity for us to debate him, and I think he would be arguing from a naturalist perspective, but whatever.
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We want to share the gospel. We want to really defend the
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Christian worldview over and against these other worldviews, and I think it's a great opportunity to do that.
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So I still need to talk to my pastor and see what he says. We need to come up with a format and set a date, but hopefully that would be in February, and it would give everybody enough time to prepare.
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So yeah, we're looking forward to that. Yeah, I think Brian is not a hard -nosed atheist.
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I think he's more of a sort of a soft naturalist. He says he's open to being convinced otherwise, but yeah, he's a very good person to debate with, because he likes to stick to the issue, and that's the most important thing, is sticking to the main issue and drawing that out.
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And you saw the debate with him live, right? Yeah, I went to the debate. He had a debate with Justin Kleist of Gospel West Ministries.
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You can check him out on Facebook, and I think he has a website too, gospelwestministries .com or gospelwest .com.
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Good brother. He's been doing some ministry locally in El Paso, and in conjunction with some of the local evangelism group that we do, kind of tied with my church, and Ryan Denton, whom you know.
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We've interviewed before. He's a local evangelist here. Yeah, he's a good brother, and so we've been talking to him about how to best deal with the naturalist arguments, and things like that, so looking forward to that.
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We're persuading him into Clarkianism, right? Yeah, and I think we've got some good, solid footing to work with, because he doesn't buy into some of the more extreme, or some of the more hard -nosed
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Vantelian positions, so I think we've got some good, promising allying with Justin.
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He's a good brother. So looking forward to working with him in the future on that. And I think we're probably going to interview him, and maybe even post up the debate that he had, so I'll be on the lookout for that.
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Tell me a little bit more about Brian. He has a radio show in Las Cruces, so obviously you and I are in El Paso, and Las Cruces is in New Mexico, it's about 50 miles away, and he has a radio show?
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Yeah, he has a segment, I think on a NPR type of channel,
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I guess. I don't know much about it, I just know that he has a segment, but unfortunately he doesn't record it, so you kind of just have to stream it while it's playing.
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So he doesn't have a whole lot of recorded stuff, just outside of the debate that he had with Justin. I guess he said he was still trying to get the other people who recorded his previous discussions, that he had, to share it with him.
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But yeah, it's nothing new. A lot of the stuff he says is just the same washed -up naturalist arguments.
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But yeah, looking forward to that. And so Justin and Brian are actually going to debate as well in February, and hopefully that will be at your church, right?
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Yeah, the plan is, I think so far, is that we're going to try to see if we can set up a debate, follow -up debate, because first they talked about epistemology, which worldview best accounts for reality, something like that, and the follow -up debate is going to be on morality at my church, the
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Old Past Christian Church in El Paso. So hopefully it's going to be
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Brian and Justin again, and so looking forward to that. So yeah, there's got some exciting lineups coming up.
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And in addition to that, in February as well, I'm going to, Lord willing, start teaching a historical theology class at my church.
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So I'm really excited. I really enjoy studying church history and historical theology, and right now we've been in the process of kind of selecting what text to use, so kind of leaning towards Bruce Shelley's Church History in Plain Language.
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It's a solid one -volume church history that I really like.
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It's so far from what I've heard. I just ordered it, and Pastor Hines actually recommended it in one of his episodes, and I got really excited about it, where he was critiquing secular humanism,
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I think, secularism, and so that's what kind of really drew me to that. Those episodes are so good.
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Yeah, those are outstanding, so if you haven't listened to those, make sure you check those out. They're very good. Excellent.
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And our goal is for you to record those and then put them on the podcast, right? Yes, yeah.
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Yeah, so I do plan to record the classes, the lectures, so that we can post them up on the podcast.
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So be on the lookout for that. So yeah, I guess now we can cover the emails.
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We have some emails that we've got to catch up on. So I want to see if I can start with here, back at, let's see.
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Yeah, so we got a – I don't know if we addressed this one.
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This one is from John, back in January 17th of 2017.
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He says, Tim, I appreciated your recent episode about your family. I will pray for you. Take care, John. I think that's the episode where you were kind of talking about your family background, being
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Roman Catholic. Yeah, man, I don't know if I did respond to John.
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Well, if not, let me respond to him here. I really appreciate that. Things got really bad with the family situation.
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And if you think about it, just pray about it because there's a lot of brokenness, and it's painful.
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My extended family, they're all Roman Catholics, and they absolutely do not appreciate what we're doing.
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Some of them obviously would be more upset than others. Man, I just – it's personal, and it's painful, and I would want my family to just know that I love them.
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I do love them, but just for the sake of being able to get through Christmas, I'm just not going to be able to say anything more.
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But yeah, there have been some major controversies in the family, a lot of hurt and a lot of pain.
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It's tough, but I'm not going to apologize for doing what we're doing.
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It's funny because I don't actually send these episodes out to my family.
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They go looking for it, and then they're offended. You know that we're doing this.
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If you want to listen, great. If you don't, then I'm not forcing it on anybody.
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Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate that a lot. Yeah, so thank you to John from Cartersville, Georgia.
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So that was encouraging. I think our next email here is from a gentleman by the name of Ken Miller.
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We were aware of this email before, and the plan was to address this email in a follow -up episode that I was hoping and planning to do regarding the
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Lordship Salvation controversy. If you all recall, we did
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I think a couple of episodes following the Peter Christian discussion slash debate we had that you guys had with him.
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I kind of followed up with some critiques of Lordship Salvation and things like that.
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That's another topic that we hope to address, especially diving as a springboard off of the
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Piper issue. There are some related problems that the Lordship Salvation and Piper's view of final salvation have some overlap there.
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So we do plan to address that in the near future as well. Well, I think the Lordship Salvation issue is what's keeping a lot of people from seeing
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Piper's error. I do want to get into this a little bit more when we do the Piper episode, because Fred Butler essentially made that claim that this is right in line with Lordship Salvation.
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The question is, is Piper really teaching Lordship Salvation, or is he teaching something else? In your article, you actually quoted
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MacArthur favorably, showing that he contradicts Piper. But I think that the
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Lordship Salvation issue, which mainly attempts to address antinomianism brought on by the easy -believism and the free -gracers and all those guys, they're trying to harp on the three -fold definition of faith, which is notitia, sensus, and fiducia.
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I think that a lot of them are just giving Piper the benefit of the doubt and think that that's exactly what
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Piper is saying. Because you do hear Piper say, we can't say you can live like the devil and then enter heaven.
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It's really unfortunate, and so we do need to dig into that a little bit more. We also need to just tackle that when we tackle the issues with Piper.
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I thought it was really interesting because one of the things that Fred said was that he's not going to say that Piper's teaching a false gospel, because Piper's not preaching a strictly
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Roman Catholic view of justification. I found that amazing, because the
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Roman Catholics don't teach a strictly Judaizer view of justification either. But they fall into the same camp as the
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Judaizers. So you can't just say, well, is this strictly Roman Catholic? Of course not.
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But it's essentially making the same error that the Judaizers made when you tack on works and you say that you don't get into heaven by faith alone.
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You get justified by faith alone. I've got a pretty good way to work that out and deal with that.
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We are going to cover that. Honestly, man, I hate talking about Piper.
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Truth be told, I really do. I feel like I'm telling people, your grandma's ugly.
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It's like I'm just insulting them because of the reactions that we get. It's a hard topic to talk about.
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This isn't a topic that people are really saying, hey, you did a great job. We really liked it.
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There's a few people that are saying that, but it's a difficult subject. I don't even want to talk about it in church anymore because it's almost like people weren't receptive to it initially.
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It's like, how do I approach this again without getting people upset? We're going to be in prayer about that when we do talk about it.
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I just wanted to throw that out there. It's a dividing line issue.
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It's definitely not a secondary matter. I'm actually very grateful for this controversy because I learned a lot from it.
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I thought I understood justification before. Going through this controversy helped me to realize just how deep the work of Christ and justification really goes throughout the entirety of salvation and the
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Bible. I've gotten a lot out of it. I know some of this stuff is not pleasant to a lot of people because they like Piper.
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They've been blessed by certain aspects of his ministry, blah, blah, blah. A lot of these people don't really know what
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Piper actually teaches. That's part of the irritation that I've experienced.
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These people act like they just got off the phone with Piper and they know him personally. Like, oh, he would never do or say that.
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They really don't know what he's teaching. That's why we provided extensive articles critiquing the entirety of his ministry for going back decades.
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This is nothing new for Piper. He's just becoming a lot more explicit now. We definitely are going to continue to hammer the point home that he is preaching a false gospel and it is a damnable heresy.
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We definitely will be talking about that more. You can already read the articles. We've talked about some of them already.
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You can check out part two of my critique on the Thorn Crown website.
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Also, relating to the Lordship issue, the Lordship Salvation guys are dangerously inconsistent.
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I would say they're maybe not as bad as Piper is, but they are dangerously inconsistent.
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I think part of the problem is that they try to... That system of salvation is probably the most consistent attempt to systematize the threefold view of faith, the notitia, census, and fiducia.
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Doing that actually leads to some serious problems. Some people might take issue with that,
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I know, but we can unpack that more in a future episode because I think it's very important to point that out and how helpful it is to understand
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Clark's view, the view that Clark taught of faith and that Augustine taught.
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That's been kind of lost with this whole threefold view of faith that has been emphasized, unfortunately, by even some prominent Reformed theologians.
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Well, let me just point out that I already did an episode on that by myself.
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I tackled the threefold Latin definition of faith.
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I was actually going to send this episode to Paul Flynn of Megiddo Radio, I believe it is, because I recently heard him talking about the threefold
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Latin definition of faith and notitia, census, and fiducia. Let me see if you want to go back and listen to it.
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It was Semper Reformanda Radio, episode number three, Doing the Will of My Father in Heaven and Demonic Faith.
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One of the things that I argued was that people butcher Matthew 7, 21 through 23, and they butcher
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James 2, verses 18 and 19, when it talks about even the demons believe in Shudder.
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I think you're right. John Robbins, Gordon Clark, they pointed out the mistake, which really,
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I think, is a wrong definition of faith. It's really interesting, because going back to the
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Lordship Salvation, it seems to me that the easy -believism guys, that they actually have a right definition of faith.
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It's belief, and that's what it is. But because they neglected the doctrine of regeneration, they allowed for antinomianism.
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And so the Lordship guys countered that with this threefold definition of faith, in which fiducia, or trust, becomes some sort of extra psychological element of faith, and it becomes extremely problematic.
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It leads them to butcher verses like Matthew 7, 21 through 23, or James 2, and they denigrate intellectual assent as faith.
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They denigrate, and they use these weasel words like mere intellectual assent. Consequently, they say things like,
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It's not enough to just believe. And then they say something else, and it's like, wait a minute, it is enough to believe.
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The problem is that they don't believe. If they really did believe, then there would be a change.
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You see this, and it's tragic. It's not enough to just merely believe. First of all, if you believe that is because of the regenerating work of the
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Holy Spirit, that is not just mere belief. Just think about it.
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Nobody's going to believe unless God regenerates them and gives them faith.
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It's tragic when they denigrate faith as mere intellectual assent.
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We define faith in the same way that Clark would, and that is intellectual assent to understood propositions.
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All saving faith is intellectual assent to propositions, but not all intellectual assent to propositions is saving faith.
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Obviously, if you don't believe in a six -day literal creation, well, sorry to say you're wrong, but you can still be a
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Christian. That's my take on that. We've talked a lot about that before.
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There are several episodes where we've already addressed that issue. We'll continue to. Specifically, I want to critique
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MacArthur's perspective as well, because we never finished that. I never got to finish that, so I'm hoping to finish that up as well.
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But yeah, part of the problem is that MacArthur very poorly distorts
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Matthew 7. But ironically, he has a very incredibly excellent commentary on Hebrews 12 .14,
35:36
which is the verse that says that the striving for holiness without which no one will see the
35:41
Lord. That's one of the main verses that Piper hammers on to justify his view of final salvation.
35:49
And MacArthur, interestingly enough, has actually a very good commentary on that verse, which is what I quoted in my critique of Piper.
35:58
They have their inconsistencies. I think Piper is more so inconsistent, dangerously so, heretically speaking.
36:06
The Lordship Salvation has a very dangerous... They have a lot of issues, and I don't think it's a stable view, biblical understanding of salvation and those issues that we've talked about.
36:19
Well, let me ask you a question about something you said a few minutes ago. You said that the
36:25
Lordship Salvation is dangerously... You used the word dangerously. I wanted to let you finish your thought, so I didn't interrupt you when you said it.
36:36
Can you repeat that, and can you explain that? Are you being... Is that an exaggeration, or what do you mean by that?
36:44
No, just that they're dangerously inconsistent. Dangerously inconsistent. So, what do you mean by dangerously?
36:52
Are you saying... Well, you're kind of touching on something that I was hoping to publish.
36:59
So, the Piper critique was actually meant to be part one of an extended series of critiques of other
37:06
Protestants who make similar errors, and I was going to address MacArthur in a future article regarding his view of...
37:16
the whole Lordship view, because he says things in his book,
37:22
The Gospel According to Apostles, for example, and in a lot of his preaching and sermons, he says that in Matthew 7, that the mark of the believer on the final judgment will be his obedience instead of his faith.
37:36
And so, we've already hammered the point home repeatedly at Thorncrown Ministries by several of our authors.
37:45
We've communicated to people that that is exactly what Christ condemned those religious hypocrites in Matthew 7 for.
37:55
They showed their works on the final judgment, and Christ said to them, Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, you practice lawlessness.
38:04
That is not what gets you into heaven. It is not your works. Your works don't confirm anything. They confirm your faith in a human sense, from a human perspective, but what gets you into heaven is faith alone and Christ alone.
38:17
Period. And so, MacArthur, unfortunately, makes that leap in Matthew 7, talking about obedience rather than faith.
38:26
And so, you know, it's just very dangerous, and he's gone... he's made serious errors before, and he's corrected them, but there's still a very dangerous propensity of Lordship salvation to go in the wrong direction.
38:40
So, yeah, there's some more detailed critiques that will be coming out in the future, hopefully, regarding that.
38:48
Yeah, thanks for explaining that. Yeah, so I want to give a thank you to Ken Miller.
38:54
He provided us some very detailed emails regarding his personal experience, I think, in a
39:01
Lordship church. I think he's a Lutheran pastor now. Yeah, and he was also grateful that we talked about some of our critiques and mentioning some of the really good articles on the
39:14
Trinity Foundation where they critique MacArthur's faulty view on things like faith and his view of salvation and things like Matthew 7 and things like that.
39:25
So, I want to give a thank you to Ken Miller for that. We are hopefully going to address some of those things that he mentions in a future episode.
39:38
So, going on to our next email, I think we have here
39:45
Adrian from Bristol, UK. He says, Thank you for your ministry. Greetings from the Spirit of Life Church in Bristol, UK.
39:52
So, thank you very much, Adrian, for your encouragement. That's pretty exciting that people from all across the world are listening to us.
40:01
So, that's very humbling. So, we've also got... I don't think we addressed this email.
40:08
We got an email from Christopher. He says, Hi, I came across this article from Ligonier Ministries implying that sainthood is attained through human effort and thought one of you might want to respond to it.
40:21
So, he posts an article from Ligonier.
40:28
And I don't think that's what they intended to say. I think it's called Attending the
40:33
School of God. It's by R .C. Sproul. It was published December 2, 2017. I don't think that's what they meant to say.
40:39
I think that what they meant to say is that sanctification involves work.
40:45
And we've talked about that as well. There's the issue of whether our works increase our sanctification.
40:53
I don't think that's the case. I think our good works are the fruit of our sanctification, that we are primarily sanctified by the truth of God's Word.
41:02
That's what Christ said, sanctify them in the truth. So, the primary means of our sanctification is the
41:07
Bible. It's the truth. And the secondary means would be those spiritual disciplines that are conducive unto godliness.
41:14
Because the Bible does say, I think in Timothy, to exercise yourself unto godliness. So, reading the
41:20
Bible, attending the public preaching of God's Word, corporate fellowship, all of those things increase your sanctification in a secondary sense.
41:28
Because they are means by which you receive the Word. So, any comment on that,
41:33
Tim? No, I would agree with that. I do remember seeing that.
41:39
I didn't have time to go back and look it up, what he was referring to. So, I'm glad that we're addressing it now.
41:45
I think Doug Dahmer had a good article on sanctification. So, I'll ask him about it, and hopefully we can talk about it again sometime.
41:57
Yeah, he was, they were basically, the point of the article was kind of to point out that we be, this issue of like a quick and dirty culture that has everything in five easy steps, and that sanctification is that simple.
42:12
It's just five easy steps. And it's obviously a struggle. I think that's what they were emphasizing, that sanctification is a struggle.
42:18
It's an ongoing struggle of mortifying the flesh and things like that. And so, the article actually wasn't that bad.
42:26
It's just maybe they took a, some of the wording may have been a little bit confusing. But it wasn't that bad.
42:33
But thank you. Thank you, Chris, for your email. Christopher. Yeah. Let me point people to Doug Dahmer's Place for Thoughts blog.
42:44
And he wrote an article called Sanctification, Clark, Robbins, and John Piper. And then he wrote another one on sanctification and its means.
42:52
I thought those articles were very helpful. So, just want to point people out to Doug.
42:58
And, you know, man, that's what we want to do. We want to point people to other writers and podcasters that we think are great, you know.
43:07
I think Doug's got some really good stuff. But, yeah. I'll give him a shout out in a little bit.
43:13
Let's go ahead and finish with the emails. Yeah, no, we actually talk about, I think
43:18
I actually quote, I talk about this issue in the Piper Critique because it's relevant to the whole issue of sanctification versus justification.
43:28
And I think I do refer to Doug's article in my critique as well. So, yeah, it's a good article that deals with some of this stuff.
43:40
And so, the next email comes from Phil Goodman. He was just basically thanking
43:47
Tim Coffman for, I'll just read it. It says, Hi Tim, I'm just so pleased with the answers given to my questions.
43:54
They were in -depth, clearly described, and well thought out. I'm very impressed with Tim Coffman, both in his presentation and the podcast on the
44:01
Catholic faith. You guys do a great job. God bless. Regards, Phil. So, yeah, we very highly encourage you all to, once again, check out
44:10
Tim Coffman's episodes and articles. They are outstanding. He's been thinking and writing over this, he's been thinking this stuff over for decades.
44:18
He's very well prepared. He's got a lot of great stuff there, so make sure you check him out on the website.
44:26
Let's see, so I think the next one, oh, yeah, so the next one, we got a really interesting email this year, back in May, from Adam.
44:37
He was saying, Hello, I am a long -time listener of SRR, that's Semper Art from on the radio, and I love the new website.
44:44
If you guys ever need anyone to transcribe your podcast, I'd be happy to offer my services. Thank you, and may God bless your ministry.
44:50
Regards, Adam. So, and this was really interesting. We kind of had an exchange with Adam. He seems like a really cool guy.
44:58
That would be awesome, if we could get somebody to transcribe our podcast, and we could put them up on the website.
45:05
That would be fantastic. So, I'm going to, hopefully, see if we can follow up with Adam about that.
45:11
That would be very exciting, a very nice addition to the website. So, hopefully, we can make that happen in the near future.
45:20
So, did you want to add to that, Tim? No, no, I just appreciate that.
45:25
Yeah. I just wanted to know that. Yeah, very encouraging. So, the next email is from Toni.
45:34
She's been putting out some pretty good critiques, I think, about this whole new Calvinism stuff with John Piper and Keller and things like that.
45:41
Right. She's got some good stuff, and she sent us a pretty interesting email as well.
45:49
She says, Dear Brothers in Christ, thank you for your faithfulness to the Scriptures with regard to false teacher John Piper. Dr. E .S.
45:55
Williams partnered with Enoch Burke in England recently to hand out warning flyers and warn conference goers of the
46:01
London Men's Convention in Westminster about the dangerous theology of John Piper. Piper was the keynote speaker at the 2018 conference, which draws pastors and churchmen from all over the world.
46:13
Dr. Williams is the elderly gentleman holding the yellow sign in the below photo.
46:19
Dr. Williams is an elder at the Metropolitan Tabernacle who has produced some great work warning about the
46:25
New Calvinists and Piper. Which, by the way, I think Metropolitan Tabernacle, that was Spurgeon's church.
46:31
So, that's an interesting note there.
46:37
So, then she says, His comrade at the conference has recently published a new book warning about John Piper.
46:44
It's called The Pied Piper. Is John Piper and the New Calvinism destroying the church? This is
46:50
December 2017 by Enoch Burke. Published by Burke Publishing.
46:56
So, that would be a very interesting read. I'd like to get my hands on that one. I hope you will share this information with your listeners the next time you are warning of Piper or the
47:06
New Calvinist movement. I emailed Dr. Williams when I saw this photo on social media and he said they passed out 700 flyers interacting with many of the conference goers directing them to the various videos and websites warning about John Piper.
47:18
Praise God for these men of God and for your faithful ministry. Blessings, Tony Brown. So, thank you very much,
47:24
Tony, for that encouraging email. Dr. E .S. Williams has some outstanding articles critiquing the whole gamut of New Calvinists and I think his website is newcalvinist .com
47:40
and I will try to put the link up on the show notes. We've quoted
47:45
Dr. Williams in some of our articles as well specifically the Tim Keller articles.
47:51
He has some excellent critiques of those guys so make sure you check out his website. Very grateful for him and for his work and maybe we can even get him on the show someday.
48:00
We'll have to see if we can reach out to him. That would be an honor. So, they were passing out 700 flyers and I'm trying to look at this email now.
48:09
Where were they at? It was at a conference? Yeah, I think in Westminster.
48:17
Was Piper one of the speakers there? He was the keynote speaker. Dude, I am so over conferences.
48:29
There's probably one or two conferences at most that I know of that would be decent or well worth your time but there are so many.
48:42
They seem to do more harm than good. Yeah, I really think that conferences are the way in which false teaching is infiltrating the church today.
48:51
It's like we want to partner with so -and -so because they've got a big name, they've got a big platform and what
48:58
I've noticed is I don't think John MacArthur really has a whole lot of time in his ministry to filter through Tim Keller's stuff and filter through John Piper's stuff.
49:12
So, they do these conferences and I don't think they're taking a very good look at who's in the conference and what they're teaching.
49:22
I think if you're a big -time pastor and you've got people asking you to do conferences,
49:29
I think that you need to put some people on your staff to look at some of the other teachers that are there because, frankly, when you invite some of these pastors and teachers to these big conferences,
49:44
I mean, we go back to John Piper being one of the speakers together for the gospel and it's like, well,
49:51
I mean, you all basically just affirm that Piper's solid on the gospel and he's not and it's tragic.
49:57
Well, we can even, right, and we can even, let's give a quintessential example of what we're talking about.
50:07
G3 conference coming up next year. You have an entire range of speakers that are considered sound, orthodox,
50:16
Protestant leaders and theologians and who's going to be one of the speakers there?
50:22
John Piper. John Piper. Yeah. So this is really dangerous stuff because, like you said, this is a perfect way to validate false teachers.
50:36
You get this lineup of sound men and then you plant this heretical guy or this guy who has really bad false teaching about a given topic and there he is being validated by all the other men around him.
50:50
So that's very dangerous. You know what's really interesting is that people who are hungry, people who are looking for material to read that want to dive into their faith, they are going to get caught up with these other teachers.
51:05
I'll give you a prime example. When I was interested in defending my faith, I was in college and I was taking a philosophy class.
51:16
I bought Dr. Jason Lyle's book. I was really sort of an evidentialist.
51:22
I would look for arguments about science and stuff like that. Well, I bought Dr. Jason Lyle's book.
51:29
In a footnote in his book, he talked about the great debate between Greg Bonson and I think it was
51:36
Gordon Stein. He just mentioned that in the debate between Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein that Gordon Stein couldn't account for logic and therefore couldn't account for the debate itself.
51:48
I was intrigued. So what did I do? I went and looked up Greg Bonson. I had never heard of him before, but it was in the footnote of this book.
51:57
I was like, okay, I need to look up this guy. I need to see what he has to say. Then from there, I learned about presuppositional apologetics.
52:05
Then from there, I learned about Gordon Clark. It's like people, when they affirm each other and when they talk about each other and when they reference each other, if these people are hungry for substance, they go and they look for stuff.
52:22
If you got John Piper at a conference, you're going to have people that are going to just go and eat up his stuff.
52:29
I think it's reckless. It's really funny because I really want to tackle this a little bit more, but I'm going to have to hold off for now because we're going to have to dedicate a whole episode to John Piper again.
52:45
Yeah, definitely. I really appreciate Tony writing us this.
52:51
I just wonder what reaction these people had when they were passing out these flyers.
53:00
I mean, people don't want to hear this. It's almost like they would rebuke
53:06
Paul for criticizing the Judaizers. You have to think, these Judaizers, they were people who were in the church who probably had status, and they were people who probably didn't want to hear what
53:19
Paul had to say. I appreciate Tony writing us and telling us about this.
53:25
Yeah, definitely. Thank you very much for that, Tony. I'm really excited about this next email as well.
53:33
We got a very encouraging email from a gentleman by the name of Dan Rubin.
53:40
He sent us this. He says, Good morning. Thank you for your hard work in exposing the error of John Piper's teaching on justification.
53:48
My senior pastor and I have a blog that we use to edify our church, and we're wondering if we might have permission to repost your articles there.
53:54
Blessings in Christ, Dan. So Dan reached out to us and asked to republish the first part of my article,
54:06
When Protestants Err on the Side of Rome, John Piper, Final Salvation, and the Decline and Fall of Sola Fide at the
54:12
Last Day. So I was very encouraged by that. I had to exchange some emails with him.
54:19
They have a really neat blog. It's called Athanasius Again, and that's
54:25
Athanasius Contramundum, the church father. Right. They have a church,
54:32
I think it's in Carson City, Nevada. So if you're in the Nevada area, in the
54:37
Carson City area, I would highly encourage you to check out their church. They look like they're very solid brothers.
54:47
Let me see if I can pull up the site. So the website here is, their website is fbccarson .com.
54:58
So their church is called, it's called Fellowship Bible Church, and they are in Carson City, Nevada.
55:07
It's 212 East Winnie Lane. So yeah, definitely, if you're in that area, they look like a very sound, very healthy church.
55:16
I'm very encouraged by their email and by their blog. They have some great stuff.
55:22
They have some really good articles. We may even, I even might want to ask them to republish some of their articles on our website.
55:32
So be on the lookout for those. They have some excellent stuff out there. So check out their blog. Their blog is, let me see if I can pull it up here.
55:40
Their blog is called athanasiusagain .wordpress .com. So you can check out. They have really good stuff, critiques of social justice and a lot of the topics that we cover that we've also discussed as well.
55:54
So I'm really encouraged by them, some fellow brothers in arms. So thank you very much, Dan. I think the lead pastor there is
56:01
Michael Butler. So I'm very grateful for those guys. Check them out if you're in the Carson City area.
56:07
Yeah. I'm really, man, that's exciting that they published it on their church website. That's good for them.
56:14
Yeah. Yeah. Very encouraging. So the next, let's see.
56:21
Oh, wow. I don't think I saw this one. We got an email from Bob on June 25th.
56:29
That's Dear Sir, I've listened to your show quite a while now and I wanted to thank you guys for your amazing content.
56:34
Your ministry is truly a blessing. I'm a former Catholic seminarian. I converted to Rome when I was 19 and spent 11 years in Rome, three of which in the seminary.
56:43
Timothy Kaufman does an excellent job of dissecting and refuting the Catholic positions. If you ever do more shows, I was wondering if you could perhaps do transubstantiation versus real presence and the papacy, history, primacy, and infallibility as these two topics form almost a lynchpin of Catholic apologetics.
57:02
Catholics typically abuse John 6 .35 -51 to get their foot in the door by saying Protestants ignore the plain teaching of Scripture then proceed to attack
57:10
Sola Scriptura by pushing the idea of the papacy, abusing Matthew 16 .18. In the case of the papacy, anyone whose watched debates will know hard topics like Purgatory and the
57:22
Marian dogmas, which can't be substantiated by Scripture, patristics, history, or even common sense always devolve into a debate of authority.
57:31
You know the Old Church says it is so. It must be true. No, I'm sorry. You know the
57:37
Old Church says it is so. It must be true argument. Your polemics ministry by Tim Shaughnessy really are a blessing not just for taking doctrines seriously but also by not kowtowing.
57:52
Popular preachers, like some of the other well -known polemicists do, sometimes feel like MacArthur is a
57:57
Reformed Pope. Steve Matthews from Lux Lucid Radio is also a breath of fresh air.
58:03
His views on geopolitical matters are also very informed and balanced. I live in Turkey and have traveled the
58:09
Middle East quite a bit, including sensitive countries, and his views on particularly Syria are very informed and I know openly stating them here and there in the
58:19
U .S. probably didn't make him any friends. God bless you guys and keep doing what you are doing. Bobby. So yeah, that's a very encouraging email from Bob.
58:27
Thank you very much for that email. And yeah, I pretty much agree with a lot of what he said.
58:33
Yeah, we got some great stuff from these brothers on our network. You know, it would be really great because he was talking about these issues that come up a lot of times in debates.
58:43
It would be really awesome if we could get Timothy Kaufman, and I think he's open to it, but just working out the logistics of it
58:50
I think would be difficult. But man, if we could get Tim Kaufman to actually debate a Roman Catholic apologist,
58:58
I think that would be great because I really believe that Timothy Kaufman is one of the leading
59:04
Definitely apologists against Roman Catholicism today. I mean, his work is just outstanding.
59:11
So yeah, and you know, the polemics of ministry, it's not just by me.
59:17
And Pastor Hines was very, very helpful with the John Piper issue. And you know,
59:25
Timothy Kaufman actually, I wrote one article against Tim Keller's book
59:32
The Prodigal God, but those episodes, man, they were all Tim Kaufman. If you go back and you listen to our episodes,
59:39
I think it was like episode number 12, 15, and then we even played Kaufman's sermon.
59:47
Yeah, I guess it was a sermon, but it's found on the Trinity Foundation and in which he
59:53
It was a lecture. Yeah, it was a presentation from a Trinity Foundation conference. Yeah, exactly. And we played that on our episode.
01:00:00
So all of that, all of that towards Tim Keller was from Tim Kaufman.
01:00:08
So I do appreciate that. But you know, it's such a, it's a group effort because it's not, it's not just me calling people out.
01:00:17
But I mean, man, I appreciate everything that he said. It's really encouraging. Yeah. Sadly, I never published my article, my critique of Keller.
01:00:26
And I'm hoping to do that as well. That's pretty high on my to do list.
01:00:32
So I'm hoping to get that out. You mean your book? Yeah, it's pretty unwieldy.
01:00:39
I have like 100 footnotes in there. It's ridiculous. But I am hoping to finish that up.
01:00:47
You know, I mean, when we first started calling out Tim Keller, like nobody was seeing what we were talking about.
01:00:54
And I'm grateful at the fact that so many other people are actually starting to see the problems with Tim Keller, his
01:01:01
Marxism. You know, Tim Kauffman pointed that out. And now we see a lot of other ministries actually pointing out that Tim Keller has got some issues.
01:01:11
So, I mean, take your time on that. I know that you've, you've got a lot in your plate. And there are other people that are seeing the problems.
01:01:20
Yeah. And there were, there were a handful of beacons of, that were calling him out.
01:01:26
Like the Trinity Foundation, you know, Tim Kauffman, Paul Elliott. He's, he had also criticized
01:01:32
Keller. I think even also Ken, I can't remember the name exactly.
01:01:37
I think it was Ken Follett of Uprising Ministries. They have a discernment blog. I think, and I think he passed away already, but they have some excellent critiques of Keller.
01:01:48
You know, what's his name? Warren, what's his name? The, the, the
01:01:53
Purpose Driven Life guy. Rick Warren. Rick Warren. Yeah. So that, you know, there were a handful of ministries out there that were calling, calling him out.
01:02:02
But yeah, he's, he's become a lot more overt. I heard that he's been making, you know, ties with the
01:02:10
Revoice guys and, you know, things like that. So he's, he's just kind of getting, getting worse.
01:02:16
And I'm, I'm glad, I'm glad that he's becoming more overt. I mean, the same thing with John Piper in, I think it was 2002,
01:02:23
John Robbins wrote an article and basically said that John Piper denies the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
01:02:30
And essentially, that's what he ends up doing because he cuts it off at initial justification. But, you know,
01:02:37
I'm, I'm grateful at the fact that, yeah, these guys are starting to show really what they, what they believe.
01:02:43
And they're starting to make themselves, they're starting to expose themselves more. Yeah. And, and that's why more people are starting to see it.
01:02:51
Yeah. Yeah. So, and, and now the comment regarding Steve Matthews, he has, he mentioned that his episode on Syria, you, if you haven't listened to his episode on Syria, you need to listen to that episode.
01:03:02
It is outstanding, brilliant stuff. He gives a very good analysis on the situation regarding Syria and how, you know, the media tends to choose the wrong side.
01:03:13
A lot of times, it just, they just choose the wrong side and they tend to distort things grossly.
01:03:20
definitely check out Steve Matthews' episode on Syria when you get the chance, on the
01:03:26
Lux Lucid, Radio Lux Lucid, Radio Lux Lucid podcast in Thorn Crown Ministries.
01:03:34
yeah, very encouraging email there. Our next email looks like it comes from, oh, here's another really, really exciting email.
01:03:47
This was a very, very encouraging email from Garrett Johnson. That name might sound familiar to you readers of the
01:03:55
Trinity Review. So he says, Dear Carlos, I recently joined your blog and was very encouraged by your new
01:04:01
Trinity Review on Protestants erring on the side of Rome, an excellent study on the current heresies plaguing the body of Christ today.
01:04:09
I too was raised Roman Catholic and was later saved in college by the grace of God alone. In the late 70s, I helped
01:04:14
John and Linda Robbins start the Trinity Foundation and wrote a few reviews early on.
01:04:21
I especially appreciate your references to the great Reformation authors on justification and the five solas. Warmest regards in Christ, Garrett P.
01:04:28
Johnson. So I was incredibly encouraged by that. I was shocked that, you know, a lot of these big names, these pretty well -known, you know, fairly well -known people have been reaching out to us as a result of us publishing these articles.
01:04:44
So I was very excited, very encouraged by that. And I think, yeah, he said he read it from the
01:04:50
Trinity Foundation because the Trinity Foundation published part one of my critique as well on the
01:04:55
Trinity Review. That was Tom Giuditis. He went ahead and published the first part of it.
01:05:01
So it's been making some inroads. And, yeah, I was really grateful for that email. I was going to read my response here.
01:05:09
I was just going to say, Dear Mr. Johnson, thank you for your kind words. It's very encouraging to know that someone of your caliber who also had a close friendship with the
01:05:17
Robins liked the article. I'm planning to publish part two soon, which uncovers other fatal flaws that haven't been, haven't really been addressed by others.
01:05:25
I was also saving college during my sophomore year and the Trinity Foundation has been one of the biggest blessings of my Christian walk.
01:05:31
I enjoyed your articles as well and actually plan to use The Myth of Common Grace for our future episodes in the
01:05:37
Clark Vanteo Controversy, which, that's an article, that's an excellent article by Garrett Johnson, The Myth of Common Grace, and I know he also recently did an interview with Steve Matthews in the
01:05:50
Trinity Foundation radio podcast about his other article, which is The Christ of History or The Christ from Experience.
01:05:57
I think that's what it's called. That was a great episode, so you can check that out as well on Trinity Foundation radio.
01:06:06
So we definitely plan to talk about the Clark Vanteo Controversy in the near future as well. That's a big topic that we haven't really given it the depth that we would like and we would also hopefully get
01:06:19
Doug Dalma to jump in on that and Sean Garrity as well. I really want to get Sean Garrity hopefully to jump on with us and talk about some of that stuff.
01:06:28
But yeah. Ed, do you have anything to add? No, I was just going to mention those two guys and say that we should have them on to talk about that.
01:06:38
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And maybe, and I just finished it up, we addressed some of the issues you raised in our interview with Doug Dalma, so I linked that.
01:06:48
If you haven't listened to that, that's a very good, we had a very good interview with Doug Dalma about his book
01:06:53
The Presbyterian Philosopher, which is about the life and theology of Gordon Clark. Excellent book, by the way.
01:06:59
I still need to publish the review of that. Hopefully we can get him on and discuss some of that stuff, some of that stuff in his book as well.
01:07:09
Yeah. And if you're interested, it would be a privilege and honor to interview you on the podcast. No worries if you can't, but one of our objectives at Semper Reformanda Radio is to promote
01:07:17
Gordon Clark and the Trinity Foundation to an audience that may not be familiar with them. Thank you again for reaching out in Christ Carlos.
01:07:24
So, thank you very much again. Mr. Johnson, that was a blessing to a very encouraging email.
01:07:30
And yeah, maybe we can even get him on the show one of these days to talk about some of this stuff.
01:07:38
So, some of the... for our next email, it looks like... Yeah, we've got some...
01:07:47
It looks like we're getting close to the end here. Concerning your article, didn't you also get an email by Dr.
01:07:54
Robert Morey? Yes. Yeah, I was looking for that. I'm trying to see where it is.
01:08:02
I think I skipped it, actually. Let me see if I can find it. It's not showing up.
01:08:13
Oh, you know why? That's because it was sent to my personal email. Oh, okay. That's why
01:08:19
I should have forwarded it. Yeah, I need to... I need to forward it.
01:08:25
Yeah, so we... Wait. Here we go.
01:08:34
Yeah, so I got another very encouraging email from Dr. Robert Morey.
01:08:42
He... Just a couple of days, I think, after I published the article, part one of my critique, he sent us an email saying,
01:08:54
I just read the article by Carlos Montijo. It was very good. In one of my latest books, The Bible, Natural Theology and Natural Law, Conflict or Compromise, I named the
01:09:03
Roman Catholic teachers in so -called reformed colleges and seminaries. I want to send you several copies of that book.
01:09:08
Once you have read it, get back to me so we can connect our ministries. May I place this article on my website?
01:09:15
I need your mailing address to send some books to you, Dr. Morey. So I was very grateful for Dr. Bob Morey, his email.
01:09:23
I got a hold of him because he left me his number. So I called him up and I had a really good talk with him.
01:09:29
Very encouraged by him. He was just kind of giving some of his experiences with Roman Catholics and debating them and things like that.
01:09:36
And he sent me a ton of really good stuff. Sent me some excellent books about the
01:09:42
Atonement, even about the Eastern Orthodox Church and also some periodicals.
01:09:48
I think he was publishing a newsletter or like a periodical.
01:09:54
Had some excellent articles in there. I even found some articles by Tim Kaufman. So some great stuff.
01:10:00
I'm hoping to start reading some of those books and maybe even reviewing some of them, putting them up on the website, recommending them, things like that.
01:10:10
Very grateful. He was very generous. And I know he's had some health problems recently. He's been in and out of the
01:10:17
ER and hospital and stuff. So we'll keep him in prayer and maybe we can interview him one day on the show if he's up for it.
01:10:25
Yeah, he was actually supposed to be a part of a conference that I think was put on by Sunny Hernandez.
01:10:37
And I think he had to back out of it because of his heart issues. Oh, that's right.
01:10:43
Every time I see what's going on on Facebook where he talks about that, I do stop and pray for him.
01:10:50
I've spoken to him on the phone and he's just a very kind individual. And I just really appreciate whatever it is he sent you.
01:11:00
He sent me some stuff as well. And so we're very grateful for that.
01:11:06
It's encouraging getting those emails. And if you would like to email us, you can email us at semper .refermanda
01:11:14
.radio at gmail .com. And hey, let's do this, man.
01:11:20
We want to give some shout -outs to some people. Who do you want to give a shout -out to first?
01:11:28
Well, we've already kind of touched on it. To start, I didn't list this, but I do want to give a big shout -out to Ryan Denton of Christ in the
01:11:37
Wild Ministries. I've been very grateful for that brother. He's one of the most generous brothers that I've met.
01:11:44
And I'm very grateful for him. He is largely responsible for making
01:11:49
Thorn Crown Ministries what it is today, financially speaking. So I'm very grateful to him and for just the partnership and the fellowship that we've had with him.
01:11:59
And looking forward to continuing to interact with him on the podcast. And actually today, there was a big
01:12:08
Festival of Lights kind of like a light festival in downtown
01:12:13
El Paso. And he kind of rallied some of the brothers from the evangelism group that we have here locally.
01:12:20
And they were witnessing and sharing the gospel. So he's just a very encouraging brother. Very grateful to him and his ministry.
01:12:28
And I think you can check him out at Christinthewild .com. I think that's the name of his website.
01:12:36
So very grateful to him. Hearty shout -out to Ryan. And the next person that I actually wanted to mention, we've been meaning to, you know, give these shout -outs for a while now.
01:12:52
Specifically with Doug Dahmer. So I know we've already talked about him, but I want to talk about, draw some attention to his recent undertaking, namely
01:13:05
Sola Appalachian Christian Retreat. And it looks like a very cool ministry that he's starting up there.
01:13:15
The website you can go to is DiscoverSola .com And it's basically like a
01:13:22
Christian retreat center. And let me just read the little paragraph here on his website. It says,
01:13:27
Sola's plan is to build a Christian ministry center serving primarily three groups. Number one, Appalachian trail hikers.
01:13:34
Two, Christian pastors and missionaries. And three, individuals interested in learning more about theology.
01:13:39
We are currently searching near the North Carolina section of the Appalachian Trail for potential sites.
01:13:45
Inspired by ministries like Francis Shapers Labrie, Sola plans to be available as a study center for Christian topics.
01:13:53
We will be building a library with many various Christian titles and inviting guest theologians to come speak and share discussions with visitors.
01:13:59
So that's a very exciting undertaking that Doug is planning there.
01:14:06
We hope the best for him and his project. If you want to support him, if you want to find out more about what he's doing,
01:14:13
DiscoverSola .com. He also has a blog. A lot of interesting stuff going on. And Tim, you've already mentioned his other blog,
01:14:20
The Place for Thoughts. So yeah, you can check him out. We're going to hopefully publish some of his articles on our website soon.
01:14:28
We would like to, other Clarkians, we would like to reach out to them and ask them if we could publish their articles because there's some good writers out there.
01:14:40
And if we can promote them and promote what they're doing, then that's exactly what we want to do.
01:14:46
Another individual is Hiram Diaz. And I asked him if I could publish his article like a week ago.
01:14:54
And I don't even know when this episode is going to be published. So I mean, hopefully, we can get his article up in a reasonable amount of time.
01:15:06
It takes a little bit of time to actually copy and paste the article to the website because we've got to make sure that all the footnotes are in order and good.
01:15:17
But his blog, I think, is Biblical Trinitarian. And he wrote on November 7th, he wrote an article titled,
01:15:26
Is Critical Race Theory Anti -Christian? Yes. And he's a
01:15:32
Reformed Baptist. He's a Clarkian. And I think he's got some really good stuff. I've read a couple of his articles.
01:15:39
And hopefully we can put his stuff out on our website as well. So that way people can go check him out and see what he's doing.
01:15:47
And then let me see who's next. Yeah, you know what? Yeah. We may even want to interview him when we talk about the race issues, the social justice issues.
01:15:58
We may even want to interview him regarding his article. It looks very good. I'll have to check it out. Yes, I do actually.
01:16:04
I'm glad that you said that because what I want to do is, next year we do,
01:16:10
I mean we're not going to be able to keep up with Pastor Hines, obviously. But next year what
01:16:15
I want to do is I want to sort of incorporate Steve Matthews' format for the
01:16:22
Trinity Foundation Radio Podcast into our podcast. And what I'd like to do is
01:16:27
I'd like to interview people who've written really great articles and just interview them about their article.
01:16:34
And that's what Steve Matthews is doing for the Trinity Foundation Radio Podcast. So I think it would make it a little bit easier on us to get some content out.
01:16:44
These guys have written about this. They know about this. And we can just ask them questions. So yeah, I'd love to have these guys on.
01:16:52
You know, Doug Dalma's got an open invitation. We just, you know, it's on us.
01:16:59
I mean, we're busy right now. We haven't had time to set it up. But hopefully starting, we're going to get through December and then hopefully next year we can sort of ramp things up a little bit.
01:17:12
But I also wanted to give a big thanks to Tom Giuditis. He mentioned us in the last
01:17:18
Trinity Foundation Radio Podcast. It's an interview with him. He talks about the very first article that was ever published on the
01:17:27
Trinity Foundation, which was by John Robbins. And he is the son -in -law to the late
01:17:33
John Robbins. And so he gives some really great insight into that article with Steve.
01:17:39
And it's really interesting. It's called the Trinity Manifesto, right? Yeah, yeah.
01:17:45
And listen to it. Here's a little bit of a teaser. They tackle what is the greatest,
01:17:52
I forgot how they put it, but what is the greatest threat or the greatest problem that we're facing today?
01:17:59
And most people would say something like, well, you know, big government or something like that.
01:18:05
Their answer is fascinating, the answer that they give. And so you definitely want to check that out.
01:18:13
But we're very grateful for Tom and all that he does in his ministry.
01:18:20
And I'd like to just, you know, we did a commercial for Tom and they were promoting the
01:18:27
Trinity Foundation essay contest. And we have the winners. They were announced on the 31st of October, Reformation Day.
01:18:38
Carlos, I'm sorry to say, man, you're not one of them. I know you wanted to be an essay contest winner a long time ago and you just never had the chance.
01:18:51
But the first place prize winner was Tabitha Pidgeon. The second place winner was,
01:18:57
I think there's an error in the name on the website.
01:19:04
I think it's Joan Lillard. So Joan, if we mispronounce your name,
01:19:11
I apologize. There's an error in the name. One of the characters didn't get put out correctly.
01:19:22
And then the third place prize winner is Matthew. How would you say his last name? Yeah, I think the second place was
01:19:29
Joni. It might be Joni Lillard. Joni, okay. And third place looks like it's
01:19:35
Matthew Kerner. Okay. Third place winner. So yeah, that's pretty cool. Congratulations to them.
01:19:41
Some young folks. It's exciting to see young people like that that are embracing and really grasping these ideas that are very, very powerful and will better our churches, both church and society.
01:19:59
Yeah. And you can go ahead and read their essays at the Trinity Foundation.
01:20:06
It was over the Emperor Has No Clothes, Richard B. Gaffin's Doctrine of Justification.
01:20:14
And so that's a big issue right now. You can go ahead and read their articles. And also check out the
01:20:22
Trinity Foundation radio podcast. Steve Matthews is doing a great job with that whenever he has time.
01:20:29
And, I mean, they're updating their articles. So, I mean, you know,
01:20:36
I haven't even read everything on this website. And the last article was by Doug Dahmer.
01:20:43
So be sure to check that out. And then I think we have one more shout out.
01:20:51
We want to give a big shout out to Thiala Dudes Podcast with Jonathan Vasquez and Joseph.
01:20:59
I think these guys are doing a great job. It was really neat, man, because they went to see
01:21:06
Jeff Durbin's church. I don't know what was going on there. I forgot. But they were driving through I -10, had to pass through El Paso.
01:21:14
And so these guys called us up and their whole group met up with us.
01:21:21
We took them to Chico's Tacos. And they were all kind of surprised that I don't speak
01:21:27
Spanish. They thought that I was Hispanic and I'm really not.
01:21:33
They thought you were Hispanic and that I was a gringo. Yeah, yeah. So that was a little funny.
01:21:40
But these guys are awesome. I really enjoy their podcast. They're Clarkians as well.
01:21:48
Maybe one of these days we can even play one of their episodes. I recently listened to their last one in which they talked about the, what was it called?
01:22:00
It was something about cults. I forgot the title of it. Like the marks of a cult or something like that.
01:22:07
But listen to these guys. They are, I mean, their last episode, it's really incredible to see how far they've come.
01:22:17
Their church, from what it sounds like, used to be a mess. They've shown a lot of humility in just walking this out.
01:22:25
And I know that they're now classifying themselves as a
01:22:30
Reformed Baptist. They are Clarkians. And so we're excited to see what these guys are going to be putting out.
01:22:37
They do a lot of campus ministries as well, a lot of work on campus. And I think they're starting a church.
01:22:47
But right now, it looks like a bunch of young people. So I think they need to go and evangelize some old people.
01:22:54
And they probably all need to get married and have kids. So that way they have more of a fuller church.
01:23:00
Because right now, it looks like a bunch of college kids. But man, we're so grateful for these guys.
01:23:07
And we really appreciate them. And so Theolodude's Podcast, check it out.
01:23:14
They also have a Facebook group. And you can check them out there. And big thanks to those guys for contacting us when they came into El Paso.
01:23:23
If you're ever in El Paso and you want to meet up with us, just send us a message on Facebook.
01:23:29
We'll try to meet up with you guys. Yeah, you can email us.
01:23:35
Or you can also, we're on Facebook like Tim said. We're all on Facebook. So you can reach out to us there.
01:23:42
And yeah, it was really, really cool to meet those brothers. They are really encouraging brothers.
01:23:50
And I was really excited to meet them. It's a small world in some sense.
01:23:57
But in another sense, it's hard to find people with similar convictions that are so closely similar in conviction.
01:24:04
So that was very exciting to get to meet them. Yeah, their latest episode was 32, The Psychology of a
01:24:09
Cult. Yeah, that was it. And that's where they talk about where they came from and stuff. Pretty crazy stuff.
01:24:16
But yeah, I actually listened to several of their episodes when I was working.
01:24:21
And I just kind of had them playing continually and got to listen to a good portion of their episodes.
01:24:29
So some very good stuff. I really appreciate their perspective on things. They have a very solid perspective on just a lot of the topics that they talk about.
01:24:39
I was very encouraged by that. And I wanted to highlight a specific one where they talk about, they kind of address the social justice issue with respect specifically to the
01:24:51
Hispanic culture. I thought that was excellent. And I think, I'm not sure if I, the feed is getting cut off here, but I'm trying to see if I remember what the number was.
01:25:03
But I think it was number 17, Thug Life Pilgrims. Yeah, it looks like it might have been that one because they talk about Thanksgiving.
01:25:14
That's very fitting given that Thanksgiving just passed. So if you get a chance, listen to that episode as well.
01:25:19
They have some really good critiques of this whole victimhood agenda, this racialism and social justice nonsense that's been getting so perpetuated in our media and culture.
01:25:34
So they have some really good stuff to say about that. Very encouraged by them. Yeah. Well, I think we covered everything that we were going to talk about today.
01:25:46
Hopefully... We were going to talk about the fatal flaw in Presbyterian covenant theology, but it looks like the emails ate up a lot of the time.
01:25:55
So yeah, we might... You know what, man? I'm down. Let's go through that. Because, man,
01:26:02
I don't know when I'm going to get to record with you again. You got a few minutes? Yeah, yeah, let's do it.
01:26:09
Okay. Okay. And we want to say that we're
01:26:15
Reformed Baptists. Pastor Hines can respond to this. And if we misrepresent the
01:26:25
Presbyterian view, we will happily take correction. But we are...
01:26:34
You know, if he has the opportunity to respond, we would love to hear what he has to say.
01:26:41
And I'll just leave it at that. And be sure to check out his latest two episodes on infant baptism.
01:26:49
Check those out. Yeah, I think... It looks like episode 38 of The Protestant Witness is called
01:26:57
Biblical Household and Infant Baptism. And episode 39 is Infant and Household Baptism Defended.
01:27:04
And episode 41 is Good Questions About Infant Baptism Answered.
01:27:10
So he kind of just rolled out a series of defending the
01:27:16
Presbyterian view of baptism and probably covenant theology as well. So, yeah, we're very grateful for Pastor Hines.
01:27:24
He's got some excellent stuff. And some people got confused, I think, about where we stand.
01:27:29
And yeah, as you said, we are Reformed Baptists. We are not... At least Tim and I are not
01:27:35
Presbyterians. But it seems like... I guess everybody else on the network is Presbyterian. Pastor Hines, Steve Matthews, who was a
01:27:43
Reformed Baptist. If you read his book, Imagining of Anything, he was a Reformed Baptist when he wrote the book.
01:27:48
But I guess he drank the Presbyterian Kool -Aid. Well, he's got to be...
01:27:57
He's got to hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith if he's going to be on the Trinity Foundation Board, which he is.
01:28:04
And I'm not saying that that's why he did that. I think he was... It's funny that you say he drank the
01:28:10
Kool -Aid because if you listen to... Oh, I forgot. I'm going to butcher it. But Pastor Hines has a great quote in his latest episodes where he says something to the effect of, if everybody just studied their
01:28:24
Bible and they'd all be Presbyterians, something like that.
01:28:30
And so, man, we love these guys. Yeah, I thought Steve Matthews was a Reformed Baptist when
01:28:36
I read his book. And then he's obviously not anymore. But you're going to change his mind right now, right,
01:28:44
Carlos? Exactly. And speaking of Matthews' book, we had done an interview with Steve Matthews about his book.
01:28:52
It was an excellent interview. Excellent book, by the way. You need to get a hold of that book. It's from the
01:28:58
Trinity Foundation. It's called Imagining a Vain Thing, The Decline and Fall of Knox Seminary. I think that's what it's called.
01:29:04
Great book. You will learn a lot of things in there. So that was a great book.
01:29:10
And I'm planning to interview Steve Matthews again because we had some audio quality with the episode.
01:29:17
So that's definitely at the top of my to -do list to follow up with him about that.
01:29:24
And it's funny because we got a funny comment regarding this from Nicholas Savastano.
01:29:32
He left a comment on my Piper critique. He said, Thank you, my
01:29:37
Presbyterian brothers. I hope I'm regarded as a brother. I adhere to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
01:29:43
This was a very cogent... Yeah, it was kind of funny that people were just assuming we were Presbyterian.
01:29:48
So this was a very cogent, well -thought -out critique on Piper's view of justification. I have not read his material on justification, but these critiques have informed a great deal on Piper's erroneous views, and I would say that he is walking a heretical tightrope.
01:30:03
I hope and pray that he will swallow his pride, be willing to be corrected through right teaching and recant his teachings.
01:30:10
So, yeah, thank you very much, Nicholas, for your comments. Yeah, you know, I don't think he's going to recant.
01:30:16
He's been doubling down. He's been doing nothing but double down. Ever since he published that article, especially back in September, last
01:30:24
September, I think, he's only getting worse. Yeah, I mean, it's still up there.
01:30:32
That error is so bad that you can't clarify it because it's absurd. And we're going to talk about that more.
01:30:41
But, you know, I just want to answer one question that somebody might have.
01:30:47
We're Reformed Baptists. Why are we partnering with a bunch of Presbyterians?
01:30:53
Yeah, right. If I die tomorrow, like, I want my kids to have the stuff that Pastor Hines is addressing.
01:31:04
He does a phenomenal job. I mean, talking about his most recent episodes,
01:31:09
I was listening to his episodes on young earth creationism and what the world has to say about that.
01:31:17
It's fantastic stuff. If we lived in Kingsport, we would probably go to his church.
01:31:23
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, it's like I would want my kids to be introduced to Steve Matthews, like the stuff that he's talking about.
01:31:35
You know, it's difficult to address all these issues. And these guys are doing it.
01:31:42
They're tackling it. And I want my kids to, you know, what should I think about immigration?
01:31:47
What should I think about these political issues? It's like I'm going to send my kids to the Trinity Foundation.
01:31:53
It's been a huge blessing for us. And so we have no problem saying, yeah, we disagree about this.
01:32:00
We can talk about it. But, you know, I would want my kids to be introduced to the stuff that's being put out by these guys.
01:32:09
You know, Timothy Kaufman, his stuff on Roman Catholicism, you know, it's so much deeper than I could have ever gone myself.
01:32:18
And it's like you said, he's been studying this for decades. So we are trying to put out some of the best content out there.
01:32:27
And really my motivation is like this is my legacy to my kids. If I die tomorrow in a fire, well,
01:32:34
I'm actually not working tomorrow, but the next shift, you know, it's like if I die in a fire, well, that's going to suck.
01:32:40
But I want my kids to have this material, and I want them to be introduced to these people.
01:32:48
So that's why we're here. That's why we're, you know, we have no problem. You know, we hold to the 1689
01:32:53
London Baptist Confession. You know, I like the Westminster Confession of Faith.
01:32:59
I like the way that they word some of the stuff better in that one.
01:33:04
And so, yeah, but we don't agree with infant baptism. And Carlos, we're going a little bit longer now, but you were going to give the fatal flaw of Presbyterianism.
01:33:18
And, you know, Pastor Hines, we would welcome a response from him.
01:33:24
I did want to give a shout out to Pastor Hines. His church, his website is
01:33:30
BridwellHeightsPCA .org. And if you're in the Kingsport area, the address of the church is 108
01:33:37
Bridwell Heights Road, Kingsport, Tennessee, 37664. So they, you know, honestly, and I should have qualified this,
01:33:47
I would definitely go to his church if he would let me. Because I don't know, you know, being
01:33:53
Baptist and all, you know, I don't know if he would, he probably wouldn't mind. But, yeah, we would probably baptize our kids somewhere else or something when they turn the proper age.
01:34:04
But, yeah, I've been very encouraged from Pastor Hines.
01:34:12
He's an extremely learned guy. I can't believe how much he knows. He's read an incredible amount of material.
01:34:19
I asked him for recommendations for historical theology books, and he just kept listing book after book after book.
01:34:27
And you can tell he's read them. It amazes me. We're very blessed to have him on our network.
01:34:36
But given, you know, like you said, we are Reformed Baptists by conviction.
01:34:41
And my convictions, at least, were very much solidified and strengthened after talking to Brandon Adams in our recent interview with him.
01:34:52
It really brought to light a lot of things that I hadn't realized regarding Presbyterian covenant theology.
01:34:59
So while we do obviously have very close fellowship with our fellow, you know,
01:35:05
Presbyterian brothers and sisters, because we have, like you said, we hold to the essentials of the faith, but not just the essentials of the faith.
01:35:14
We are Reformed. We are both Reformed. And I would consider Reformed Baptists Reformed. I just think there is a historical argument for Reformed.
01:35:23
The word Reformed historically means Presbyterians. I think it was associated with John Knox. So a little mini historical, you know, theology lesson there.
01:35:31
So yeah, Reformed is historically associated with Presbyterians.
01:35:37
But I think we can also own that label as Baptists, but we do have to qualify it. I don't think we can unqualifyingly use the word
01:35:44
Reformed. We probably shouldn't do that because that's referring to Presbyterians. But we can use the term, I believe, Reformed Baptists and qualify it with, you know, the
01:35:52
Baptists. But, you know, we have a lot in common.
01:35:59
We have a lot of the similar convictions. I was talking to Pastor Hines after he did the debate with Brandon.
01:36:07
We have a lot in common. A lot of our views are very similar. But there's something about Presbyterian covenant theology that Brandon brought to light that really kind of exposed a nerve there.
01:36:20
When I saw it, it just seemed like the whole system falls apart. I don't see how.
01:36:27
And just mainly in the sense that it can't be reconciled. I don't see how Presbyterians can reconcile this problem.
01:36:34
And specifically what I'm referring to is the issue of republication. And so,
01:36:41
I know, Tim, you're planning to publish the second part of our interview with Brandon.
01:36:47
You definitely want to check out, listen to that for everybody. Everybody needs to listen, especially if you're
01:36:53
Presbyterian, though. If you haven't thought about this issue, if you haven't thought this through, the issue of republication, you need to.
01:36:59
Because that is, I think, the fatal flaw of Presbyterian covenant theology.
01:37:06
And the reason I say that is because when we're dealing with issues of covenant theology, you have the covenant of grace, which is specifically in Reformed Baptist theology, that the covenant of grace is exclusively the new covenant.
01:37:20
And I know some other Baptist views, when you listen to the episode with Brandon, he kind of explains it. So there's a little bit of variation in the
01:37:28
Reformed Baptist because some hold to the Presbyterian, a closer view to the Presbyterians regarding the covenant of grace, that it includes the other covenants in the
01:37:37
Old Testament, including the Mosaic Covenant. But the big problem with republication is the fact that, how is it possible that the
01:37:50
Mosaic Covenant is a part of the covenant of grace? That's the problem.
01:37:56
And that's the big issue that I have, is the Mosaic Covenant being under the administration of the covenant of grace.
01:38:07
Yeah. Right. It just seems hugely problematic to me.
01:38:14
And I cannot wrap my brain around this. And it seems like it leads to a contradiction, an irreconcilable contradiction.
01:38:28
So when we were talking on the phone, I think you did a much better job explaining this. So I'll just let you continue.
01:38:35
Yeah. So this is going to be kind of a forward -running commentary on the part two of our interview with Brandon.
01:38:46
And because the problem, so the OPC also published a report about republication.
01:38:54
It's a fairly lengthy report. I think it's almost 100 pages. You can download it from the OPC website.
01:39:01
And you should definitely read that if you get the chance. So there's basically two sides to the story, and we kind of laid them out in the interview.
01:39:12
So just make sure you listen to the interview. And I'm not completely decided as to where this whole thing comes together.
01:39:22
Brandon is a lot more convinced because he's been studying this issue for years, several years. And so he's been very well prepared and very well studied on the matter.
01:39:30
But when it comes to regarding the Mosaic Covenant as part of the covenant of grace, you have a serious problem, because how is it possible that the
01:39:43
Mosaic Covenant, which was sealed, you know, the seal of that covenant was basically the Ten Commandments.
01:39:48
It's law. It's like all law. You know, it's law -based. It's like Leviticus 18 .5, do this and live, you know.
01:39:54
There's a works principle in the Mosaic Covenant that's simply undeniable.
01:40:00
It is just flat -out undeniable. You can't deny it. But what has happened in Presbyterianism, as I understand it, there's essentially been two schools of thought that have developed to try to reconcile that problem.
01:40:16
And one of the perspectives is essentially the view that the Mosaic Covenant is a covenant of grace, that it has no works principle tied to it.
01:40:27
And so that view, which I believe was also held by John Murray, and that view has basically led to the errors of Norman Shepard and the current justification controversy.
01:40:38
It led to a conflation of works and faith, because it was so dangerous and damaging to say that the
01:40:46
Mosaic Covenant is a covenant of grace, and that, you know, do this and live is essentially a grace principle, that it just totally confuses law and gospel.
01:40:56
It blurs everything together. And it just creates false teaching.
01:41:01
It leads to false teaching. And there's a very good article on the Trinity Foundation website written by Mark Karlberg. And Karlberg, I can't remember what it's called, but we talk about it in the part two of the interview.
01:41:15
But he kind of catalogs the history behind this and how it kind of led to the false teaching of Norman Shepard and all of the subsequent mess that happened at Westminster Seminary as a result of this view.
01:41:32
And so that view of reconciling the Mosaic Covenant with the covenant of grace created that serious of a problem.
01:41:43
Now, the other way to reconcile it has been essentially represented by Meredith Klein.
01:41:51
And so Meredith Klein, his view is basically the more biblical view. It's the more biblical view, but it still creates a problem because he held to the view that the
01:42:03
Mosaic Covenant is still part of the covenant of grace. So Brandon basically says that Meredith had to diverge on the original
01:42:15
Westminster Confession on certain parts because they held to a very rigid view of seeing the
01:42:27
Mosaic Covenant as a covenant of grace. And if you want more information on this topic, on Meredith Klein, there's a very good podcast dedicated to the theology of Meredith Klein.
01:42:39
I think it's called the Glory Cloud Podcast. It's by, I think, one of Meredith Klein's students.
01:42:48
I don't know if it was a direct student, but they're basically kind of like protégées of Klein.
01:42:57
And so was Karl Berg. Karl Berg is another one of the...
01:43:02
He was on Klein's side. He took Klein's view regarding this issue.
01:43:08
Because Klein, essentially, they tried to sort of explain that the
01:43:14
Mosaic Covenant is kind of a mixed covenant. That you have, yes, it has works tied to it.
01:43:21
There is a works principle in the Mosaic Covenant, but the underlying aspect, the underlying covenant, the underlying principle is that of grace.
01:43:30
And by that they mean that the Abrahamic Covenant underlies the Mosaic Covenant such that there are grace aspects even in the
01:43:40
Mosaic Law, like the sacrifices, the sacrifices were for forgiveness of sins and things like that. So they try to somehow reconcile this tension between it being a covenant of works but still being a part of the covenant of grace.
01:43:56
And so, to me, this doesn't actually solve the problem. I mean, I guess in some ways you could try to redefine the...
01:44:06
You would have to, I guess, modify or clarify the Westminster Confession.
01:44:11
And I believe that's what Karl Berg says. This is something that Presbyterians need to draw attention to and to reconcile because it hasn't been fully developed.
01:44:21
Now, Brandon has an interesting take on this because he says that it has been developed and that it basically leads to saying that the confessional view is that there is no...
01:44:35
that the original Westminster view was that there was no works principle tied to the
01:44:41
Mosaic Covenant, something like that. But the problem, again, is that it's so clearly works...
01:44:48
there's so clearly a works principle tied to that covenant. I mean, Leviticus 18 .5, again, it says, do this and live.
01:44:55
It's clearly law and works -based. And, by the way, R. Scott Clark is also on the
01:45:01
Meredith Klein side. He's more on the Kleinian side of this. So there's a controversy about this regarding specifically the history of Westminster federalism or covenant theology and what they originally intended.
01:45:15
And so it looks like there needs to be clarity on this issue, more drawn out, more developed, so that people don't end up on the wrong side of the fence like the
01:45:27
Murray, you know, the extreme view that says that there is no works principle at all in the
01:45:32
Mosaic Covenant. So it's just an... to me it's an irreconcilable contradiction because the
01:45:39
New Covenant is by grace through faith alone. The works principle does not...
01:45:47
you don't get in by works, you don't stay in by works, it's not by works, it's by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
01:45:53
And so, with that understanding in mind, and it's the covenant of grace, you know, it's supposed to be the grace.
01:46:02
And so how can it be grace if the Mosaic Covenant is so clearly talking repeatedly about conditions that if you follow the laws you will be blessed and if you don't you're going to be damned and cursed and so on and so forth.
01:46:16
So it's just such an incredible...
01:46:21
it really helped talking to Brandon through this and it brought a lot to light to me that I didn't... that I hadn't even really fully...
01:46:29
it hadn't fully hit me yet. And seeing that now I see why... how that is a serious problem.
01:46:37
I don't see... I just don't think it's a reconcil... I don't even think it's reconcilable. I just don't think you can reconcile the
01:46:42
Mosaic Covenant, somehow tie that into the covenant of grace. It's just... I don't see... I don't think it's possible. Not without...
01:46:48
not without some... you know, you would have to break it up into pieces and, you know, things... basically some of the stuff that Klein tried to do and R.
01:46:57
Scott Clarke and, you know, the... Carlberg, like they're trying to, I guess in some sense, develop and reform and sort of solidify this crucial aspect of Presbyterianism that just doesn't appear to be properly reconciled.
01:47:18
You know, ultimately I don't think they can do it. You know, they've tried and I don't think it's possible. I just think the
01:47:25
Reformed Baptist view is so much more consistent and solid with the sharp distinctions and contrasts between the
01:47:31
Old and the New Covenant and that I just... I think that it just... there's a huge gaping...
01:47:39
there just... it's just a huge contradiction there that I don't think... I don't think they can reconcile that, but...
01:47:47
Yeah, so definitely you'll want to listen to that episode. It's excellent stuff.
01:47:53
I hope we can get Brandon on again in the future. I know we get very busy, but we may have to also publish some of his articles on our website, but he has a lot of really good...
01:48:04
he's written a lot about this topic and I highly encourage everybody to seek his material out, read it, digest it.
01:48:14
I mean, it's a lot of good stuff. There's a lot to talk about here, you know, because there's different sides going on and it gets kind of heated in those
01:48:22
Presbyterian sides with respect to this and a lot of issues involved, but ultimately the problem is just...
01:48:29
to me, it just seems like an insuperable problem for Presbyterians. Yeah, I agree.
01:48:35
Well, I really don't have anything to add to that, but did you have anything more to say on that?
01:48:43
Just that we do plan to... I do hope to write about this topic.
01:48:49
You know, obviously we have very close fellowship with Presbyterians and I want to kind of solidify this in my own mind and write about this and also discuss it.
01:49:02
Once I finish reading... I haven't finished reading the OPC report on republication and from what
01:49:07
I've already seen, especially specifically in Karlberg's critique of the report, they do appear to misrepresent
01:49:13
Klein in certain areas, so you have to be careful with that, but you kind of need to read that.
01:49:19
That sets up a lot of the context for what the controversy is about. We are planning to talk more about this in the future, but yeah, there's just a lot of issues involved with this.
01:49:34
We're talking about big picture things, how you reconcile the whole Bible, basically.
01:49:40
The infant baptism stuff as well is obviously tied to this, but it's really a result of your view of the covenants and how closely you see them tied, specifically the old and the new covenants together.
01:49:51
So it just kind of really draws out the main issue, the main issue in Presbyterian covenant theology, and that really is the big problem, is how do you reconcile that, you know, that Mosaic covenant to the covenant of grace.
01:50:06
So definitely interesting stuff to look forward to in the future.
01:50:11
Yeah, and we both hope to read some more on this whenever we have time, but that's where we're at right now.
01:50:23
Yeah, and just a quick reference, if you want some good material, we'll try to list it in the show notes as well, but if you want some good material, a very good place to start for Reformed Baptist theology, like a primer, is
01:50:40
Pascal Denault's book, I think it's called
01:50:45
The Distinctiveness of 17th Century Baptist Covenant Theology. The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology, I think it's called.
01:50:55
It's really cheap on Kindle, I think it's like $4. You definitely want to get a hold of that book. It's an excellent book.
01:51:00
I've read through some of it already. I need to finish it still, but he does a great job outlining the differences and kind of comparing and contrasting the different covenants and how they view them.
01:51:10
So that's a great place to start for more on this topic. Yeah. Let me just look at one more thing, and then we will go ahead and close out.
01:51:23
I want to – let me see, let me see. Hold on. I thought the
01:51:33
Trinity Foundation was still doing their book sale. They are. Yeah, they have a sale going on for the rest of the year, a 2018 half -year resource sale, 50 % off list price of several titles, ranging from against the churches, several good stuff here,
01:51:53
Christian philosophy, Christian view of men and things. They have a lot of good titles, half -off, so take advantage of that.
01:51:59
A lot of good resources there. Yeah, definitely. These are quality books.
01:52:06
And so if they're being sold at half -off or even at a 25 % discount, then you definitely want to take advantage of that.
01:52:16
And I do want to say this. I wanted to say this earlier about the Trinity Foundation. Honestly, if you read the stuff on the
01:52:23
Trinity Foundation, their articles, their lectures, their books, you would get a ten times better seminary education than you would in basically any seminary in the country.
01:52:34
I mean, these guys are so outstanding that I really highly recommend that people, you know, dive into their material, their resources.
01:52:44
They just have outstanding stuff. Nobody else has that level of richness and just outstanding systematic development of sound doctrine that I have seen in any other ministry than the
01:53:02
Trinity Foundation. So I really heartily recommend them to our listeners, as you all probably have heard us say before.
01:53:10
And the other note I just wanted to mention, I kind of misread the verse in Leviticus 18 .5.
01:53:18
It doesn't say, do this and live. I think that was Christ that said that,
01:53:23
I think when he was talking to the rich young ruler. But the verse specifically says, You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules.
01:53:31
If a person does them, he shall live by them. I am the Lord. So yeah, that's the kind of, that verse is a key verse used in showing, illustrating how there's a works principle clearly tied to the
01:53:44
Mosaic Covenant. Right, and in the New Covenant it says, the righteous shall live by faith.
01:53:52
Exactly. So, alright, well let's go ahead and close it out. And we will check everybody next week.
01:54:00
I'm going to steal this from Steve Matthews' podcast, the Trinity Foundation Radio. Remember the