Banterin' with R. Scott Clark

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Sometimes I feel the weight of the world fall down on me, so heavy

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And I need a friendly voice with some good theology

00:18

Calvinistic speaking So I mix a manly drink Pepsi Chupacabra And I hit the

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YouTube link Don't say hit, that sounds violent And I feel my troubles all melt away

00:32

It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Barsky Beards and bow ties, laughs till sunrise

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It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Barsky He's not like most

00:57

Calvinists He's nice Your Calvinist Podcast is filmed before a live studio audience

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And hey everybody, welcome to Your Calvinist Podcast My name is Keith Barsky, and as always,

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I am your Calvinist And I'm glad to have you here on the show And I'm super excited to welcome my guest

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But before I do, I just have a few things I want to remind you One, this podcast is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church So if you're in the

01:25

Jacksonville area, come visit us At Sovereign Grace Family Church You can find us at sgfcjacks .org

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Also, we are a member of the Truth and Love Network And in a week and a half, I'm going to be with the guys in the network

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Doing our conference in Knoxville It's a free conference So if you're in the Knoxville area, come and visit us You can find it at Truth and Love Network Just Google that, and you'll find out all about it

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We're also sponsoring 1689 Cigars And 1689 Cigars is offering a discount for anyone

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Who wants to go and get great cigars And you use the discount code SUPERIORTHEOLOGY And you'll be able to get a discount on some great cigars

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Finally, go to KeithFoskey .com If you want to reach me, you can get anything you need

02:06

My videos, contact information, all that stuff Even a link to buy cool stuff like this shirt

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I'm wearing Which actually says Superior Theology And you can get it from our Teespring store Just by going to KeithFoskey .com

02:18

and looking for that link Well guys, I'm super excited to welcome my guest today

02:24

This is a man who probably needs very little introduction For most of you, especially in the

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Reform world But I'm going to introduce him anyway This is Dr. Professor and my new friend

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R. Scott Clark R. Scott Clark is a professor of History and Historical Theology He has taught at Wheaton Reform Theological Seminary Westminster Seminary, California As well as some other schools

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There are really too many to list I was looking through his bio He's an author, he's also a minister

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With the United Reform Church in North America And he's been a minister since 1998 He is a writer for the

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Heidel blog He does the podcast of that I forget the name of the podcast It's the

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Heidel something podcast He's going to tell us in a moment There it is

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My bad And his wife doesn't listen to anything he does That's true

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Dr. Clark, we were talking about that right beforehand How it's hard sometimes to get our wives to listen to our podcast and stuff

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But thank you for being on the show today, my friend Well, I'm happy to be here And I absolutely loved the intro to the podcast

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That was outstanding He's not like other Calvinists He's nice That was great

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You made me laugh out loud I was on mute, so nobody heard it

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But I was laughing out loud Which I guess makes it official laughing Yes, and I'm glad What's funny is that song was produced, written, and performed

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By Hans Feeney, a Lutheran That's great I think he really nailed it

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He's multi -talented Yes, he is And he did all the music

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He played the guitar His wife's in the background singing So it's a whole talented family

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Nice Well, I want to tell the story of what brought us together today This all came about because of a tweet

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Someone on Twitter posted a tweet that said I hate all the bantering that happens on podcasts

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I wish they would just get to the point And then you responded with something like I like the bantering

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I think it's fun Or something to that effect And I responded and said Anytime you want to come on my show

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We can banter for an hour about whatever you want to talk about And immediately you and I got connected

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And I was super excited I actually told my wife I said, listen, R. Scott Clark and I are going to have a conversation

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And she's like, okay, that sounds cool And I was like, it's really important for me Trust me, this is really

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That says something about your life Because this should not be that important But anyway

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I'm honored to be here I've enjoyed your videos very much You've made me laugh lots of times

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I have no idea how many times people have sent me the videos And said, oh, you have to see this

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This guy's fantastic And of course he is Well, I appreciate that very much

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And I'm thankful that God has used a little bit of humor To allow me to connect with people And again,

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I told you this before the show But I have read some of your stuff And I've been very blessed by it And I want to say, just thank you right offhand

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Right before we get into everything And everything we're going to talk about today We may disagree on a few things But ultimately,

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I appreciate you as a brother in Christ As a teacher in God's church And in His seminaries

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And so, if there is any disagreement It's going to be brotherly And in a way that is fun

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And hopefully, just like I do with everybody I hope to show you all the respect in the world

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Because I do respect you And appreciate all that you've done Yeah, no, I appreciate that Thank you And that's how

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I feel Can I correct you on one small factual thing? I was actually, I'm 10 years older than you made me

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I was actually ordained in 88 But I transferred into the URC's in 98

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So, I'm an old pastor So, I've been trying in one way or another

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To shepherd God's people for a long time So, I was in Kansas City as an associate pastor

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For a couple of years Then a solo pastor for four years And then, in the providence of God, mysteriously

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I ended up in academia So, I've been at Westminster since So, I've been at Westminster since 97

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Anyway So, that might be And that's awesome

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And that might be like The first thing we could spin off on real quick Because I think that's a very valuable thing

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That you have You've actually been in the trenches You've been in churches You've been a pastor Prior to being a professor

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I know some guys go straight from being students To being teachers And they don't have that in the trenches

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What would you say was the most valuable thing you learned While pastoring

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That you've carried into being a professor? Oh man Boy, that's a great question

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I think two things changed my preaching Or three

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One, learning As a young preacher You want to do too much in every sermon And you have to think of ministry

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More like a baseball game And you're going to be up again

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You have time You don't have to do it all now And you learn to simplify and clarify

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So, when we had kids That really changed my preaching Being in a congregation

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And developing a relationship with them And them coming to regard me

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As their under -shepherd And I coming to regard them as God's flock That really changes the way

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I preached And then I think, as I say Having kids really taught me

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Something about communication As a young preacher you think Well, I've said that And now they've heard it

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And I can go on and do other things No, it doesn't work that way Having children you learn

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No, you have to say a thing Probably a hundred times Before it starts to Certainly you have to say it three times

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Before it starts to Penetrate people's consciousness And probably a lot more than that I'd say the other thing that really

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Transformed my preaching Because it was a little talk That Mike Horton gave in 1998

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We had a preaching conference Which if we did it today Would probably be a big deal We had

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Jay Adams Tim Keller Mike Horton Bob Godfrey And I don't mean to leave people out

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We had a whole bunch of notable people All at one time Talking about preaching One day or so At the seminary

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In fact, back then We didn't even have a chapel In which to do this We did it in the student lunchroom

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Is where we did it And everybody got 20 minutes And Mike got up and gave a 20 minute talk

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On distinguishing law and gospel In preaching Absolutely revolutionized my preaching

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For 10 years I knew there was something wrong With my preaching And I would tell Barbara There's something wrong

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And she would say You mean just one thing? And so I couldn't figure it out

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In fact, it was so troublesome That I asked the elders If I could not preach in the evening And if we could turn that Into a

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Bible study Now those were good Bible studies And we learned And I benefited And they benefited

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But it wasn't the preaching of the word And it wasn't what we say Is the due use of ordinary means

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The way that God operates Is through the preached word To bring his elected new life And true faith

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So I regret doing that very much But it was a symptom Or an indicator

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Of the fact that I knew Something was wrong And when I heard Mike Horton Give that talk 10 years into my ministry

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I realized In the course of that talk This is what's been Affecting my preaching

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For 10 years I didn't know how to Distinguish law from gospel And so I would preach the gospel

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I remember preaching through Exodus And preaching the gospel You know, you have these Wonderful episodes in Exodus Where you can explain the gospel

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And it's wonderfully illustrated God sovereignly saving his people Out of Egypt and all of that But then at the end of the sermon

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I thought, well, I have to apply it But I didn't know what I was doing And I ended up putting them back

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Under the covenant of works And so because I wasn't Distinguishing the law

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As do this and live From the gospel Which is Christ has done And then preaching the text

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In light of that distinction So I was a practical legalist And I didn't want to be

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And I didn't know that I was And I didn't know how to fix it So I'd say that was Maybe the biggest turning point

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Because that revolutionized My preaching Then I knew what I'm doing I know how I'm looking At the scriptures

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And what questions Really what questions I'm asking How do law and gospel relate

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In this passage Which is a fundamental Reformation question

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That for whatever reason I had not learned yet to ask Wow, that's

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It's funny because when I I did put out a poll I said, what are some of the things You guys would want us to banter about And several people said

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The law gospel distinction So obviously this has affected you In such a way that That's sort of become Connected to you

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And your teaching I mean you've written on this Obviously you've talked about it And people have heard this

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If you were to give like to me You know, I'm I've been 18 years in the same church

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I've only pastored one church I actually pastored the church I grew up in It's a long, long story I've never been a member of another church

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Apparently a prophet can have Apparently a prophet can have honor In his hometown

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So yeah, go on, I'm sorry No, no, no That was my life verse for a while Because the first few years were really tough

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But God kept Yeah, God kept me through A lot of difficult times

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And even to see our church Reform from being We were, we were, we Our church,

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I grew up It was part of the disciples of Christ I mean it was far afield Like very left -leaning

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Theologically It was socially conservative Theologically liberal And, but God saved us out of that And is still reforming us

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I mean, He's still moving in our midst And I'm thankful for that But the thing that I was thinking about As you were saying that As, you know, as I preach

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And I still want to be a better preacher If you were going to give me a Just a short explanation of what you mean

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When you say the law gospel distinction And I know we could do a whole hour on this And I'm not I certainly don't want to do the whole thing on that But if you were going to say to somebody like me

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Or anyone, you know This is what I mean when I say that This is what I'm saying This is what your preaching should look like How would you do that?

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Well, what Martin Luther discovered As he became a Protestant In the years between 1513 and 1521

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Is that Augustine had hinted at this In a volume on the spirit and the letter

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He hadn't laid it out But he had made a categorical distinction In the early 5th century

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Between the law as one kind of speech And the gospel as a qualitatively

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Different kind of speech And, you know, as I say He didn't elaborate And he didn't have the same categories

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That Luther would have In the early 16th century And so, but Luther was reading

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Augustine And he read on the spirit and the letter At some point Later on, he said

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He was delighted to see that Augustine Had seen, in his view Essentially the same thing That he had come to discover

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And so, certainly by 1525 When he wrote on the bondage of the will He had learned that You know, when

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Scripture says For example, do this and live That's law So when

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Jesus said to the rich young man Do this and live He wasn't saying Now go and do this

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He was saying You don't know the greatness Of your sin and misery And I'm going to teach you

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The greatness of your sin and misery I'm going to make a demand of you That I know that you can't do And that's the first use of the law

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The pedagogical use of the law And that's the word from God Whereby we learn Of our need of a savior

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And our inability to save ourselves And we say That God uses that To drive people to Christ That's the first use of the law

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Then there's the civil use of the law Which, you know, we get into that What's the function of the moral law

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In civil life Fundamentally to restrain evil And then the third use of the law

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Is the use of the law As the norm of the Christian life But the law always remains law

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The law always says do The law is a cop A relentless cop

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Who never gives you a break And he doesn't help you to obey

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He just demands He just prosecutes He just insists And once you understand

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What the law is And the limits of the law Now you're in a position To understand the gospel

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Which is a different kind of a word A qualitatively different word Now they're both God's word

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And law and gospel Is all throughout the Holy Scriptures But the gospel word is good news

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And the good news is Christ came, Christ obeyed For sinners

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Christ suffered for sinners So he actively suffered all of his life He was put to death

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He was buried He was raised on the third day And he is ascended

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And 40 days later And is seated at the right hand of the Father And he's coming again That's the gospel

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That's good news And that's a different kind of word Than do this and live So you're always

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When you're reading Scripture Especially as William Perkins says You can't preach any passage

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Until you know how it relates to law And gospel Theodore Beza said

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The biggest problem Plaguing Christianity right now He said Is the inability or refusal of people

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To distinguish between law and gospel Martin Luther said The ability to distinguish law and gospel

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Makes you a theologian It's what distinguishes us From the Muslims And the

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Jews Because we have gospel We have good news So when you're working on a sermon

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You're asking What's the bad news here? What's the good news here? Or at least How do those two principles relate?

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And the thing that makes a sermon Distinctively Christian Is the proclamation of the good news

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R .B. Kuyper used to say That men If a Muslim or a

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Jew Could preach your sermon It was not a Christian sermon Right? It's not distinctively

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Christian Because anybody can figure Paul says that The pagans can figure out the law

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Everyone knows He says in Romans 1 and Romans 2 They know the basics of the law

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In their conscience And arguably in Colossians He calls these elemental principles

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Probably has not anything to do with physics He's talking about the natural knowledge Of the law that everyone has

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So you really don't even need To be a Christian To know what the law is But you need to be a

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Christian To appreciate fully What the gospel is Right?

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The law doesn't bring you to Christ Or it doesn't make you a Christian The gospel makes you a Christian That's the thing that we say

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For example By which the spirit ordinarily Brings his elect to new life

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And true faith Is the proclamation of that message Of good news Amen Amen Very good

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Thank you I appreciate that And because we are bantering I'm going to move to another topic

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But I mean again We could talk about that all night In fact 30 questions came to my mind While you were talking And I was like Well I have other things

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I want to talk about But maybe you would be so kind To come again And we could nail down A few of these things

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You mentioned something there You mentioned that And this is again This is a different topic

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But on the same idea You mentioned that When you listen to Dr. Horton He was It was a 20 minute message

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Recently I heard Recently I saw a person Write this He wrote a post

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Saying that you You know a sermon That's only 20 minutes Or 25 minutes Is not a real sermon It's got to be longer

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It's got to be deeper When you were preaching Because you mentioned about Communicating with your kids Right? And you mentioned about communication

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What was Do you think that's true? Do you think a 30 minute sermon

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Is not enough Or a 25 minute sermon What are your thoughts about that? Because you think That's an arbitrary thing

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That we sort of place on people? Because I preach long But I don't

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Condemn people who don't I was once invited to candidate For a congregation

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But one of their unbending rules Was a sermon could be No longer than 20 minutes And I knew immediately

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This call was not for me I've had I've done introductions to sermons That were 20 minutes

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So I'm sorry There's no way I mean I could work on a sermon all week And I couldn't get it down to 20 minutes

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I just knew that was impossible I mean Now our pastor Chris Gordon Who's a voice of Abounding Grace Radio He He He will go 45 minutes easily

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He's been known to go 50 minutes Now it's great stuff And I'm happy to listen to it

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Because he's such a fine preacher I try to stick to 30 minutes You know right around there 32, 33 minutes somewhere in there

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I have an internal clock That starts going off At about 29 minutes Wrap it up idiot You're not saying anything

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That's all that spectacular So Just quit while you're ahead Is kind of what goes off in my head

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So You know I once was challenged by a parishioner

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To preach a short sermon And I You know She didn't think I could do it I think I preached 23 minutes

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I've done it once Since 1987 When I actually started preaching in 88

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Since I was ordained I don't You know It's all about circumstances

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What the congregation can tolerate What's useful What's edifying Even the

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Westminster divines Warned preachers not to weary people And you know It was common in the 16th century

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To speak for an hour It was sort of expected That you'd preach for an hour People would be a little disappointed If you didn't preach for an hour

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And by the way That's how they got through the Heidelberg Catechism In 52

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Sundays Was you had You had 60 minutes to do each

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Lord's Day Bob Godfrey gets after us For not getting all the way through the Catechism Well it's a little harder when you have 30 minutes

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You could get Because we do Catechism sermons in the evening You see And you have like three questions

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For each Lord's Day So a little challenging But At any rate

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So that's If somebody says 20 minute sermon That's not a sermon Well I'd say

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Go listen to My friend Eric Landry Who actually took that call

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Right And he preaches those 20 minute sermons And those are fine sermons Right He can do that God's gifted him with that So I can't see making

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I agree with you You use the word arbitrary I think that's a good word Yeah Well let's get to the fun one

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I know this is going to be fun I know this is what people have been waiting on This was the most Most asked question

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And I'm going to preface this By saying Why do you hate

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Reformed Baptists? No I'm not going to say that Okay So The question

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I want to ask is What's your history with this? Because I have heard I did a

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Interview With several Presbyterian Pastors And When we were on there

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I asked them the question about Do you think a Baptist can be Reformed? And they were sort of like Well You know kind of And then one of the guys even said

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Well I'm not R. Scott Clark And he was just kidding But he was

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So it was apparent to me That okay You must have Been pretty vocal about that Question If that's the

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You know If that's sort of the bantering joke Right? Like I'm not R. Scott Clark Well what What got your goat

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On that question? What makes you More outspoken than others? How long has that been happening?

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How long has that been going on? Yeah that's an interesting question I never had So when

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I started in ministry This really wasn't an issue And It only became one

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Really with the rise Of the Young Restless And Reform Movement So there was a small

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Contingent of people Who called themselves Reformed Baptists And you know It wasn't that much of an issue I didn't even think about it

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You know frankly Until I got here In 97 We had the Institute For Reformed Baptist Studies We hosted them

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And You know Jim Renahan ran the Seminary and He was great

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You know he's a colleague I remember spending A couple of hours When I first got here With Jim And Earl Blackburn And really

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You know I have a lot of affection For them I don't talk to Jim as much

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Just out of Not for any reason in particular You know Earl Blackburn And I talk occasionally

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He's a wonderful guy He gave me I once said Earl I love that tie He took it off And gave it to me right then

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I wasn't asking for it That's just the kind of guy he is He's just a very sweet guy So I love teaching

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Baptist students Over the years But having the students around Sort of Forced me to Sharpen my thinking

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And to read And research And learn And You know over the years And then

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I Wrote a book called Recovering the Reformed Confession And I was working on that And just finishing it

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When Young Restless Colin Hansen's Young Restless And Reformed came out And I wrote a little epilogue

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Obviously I couldn't Address the book Because mine was done And so I just did a little epilogue

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Saying there's more to being reformed Than predestination But In the course of writing that book

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I realized That for a lot of people The operative Definition of reformed Was now

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No longer You know The kinds of things you find In the Heidelberg Catechism There we go There we go

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Right The kind of things you find In the Heidelberg Catechism It's just predestination Well That's a terrible

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Definition of reformed We confess An awful lot more than that You know

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We have a doctrine of God A doctrine of man You know We have a doctrine of salvation

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And A doctrine of scripture You know And church and sacraments

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All these Are part of what we are And I thought We're making a terrible deal In fact

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What I concluded was In the 1950s You know A group of guys

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Sort of You know I call them Neo -Puritan guys Kind of cut a deal And And I And the deal was

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We'll call you reformed If you'll call us Christians And You know We We were small

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Struggling You know In the post -World War II Era The conservative

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Presbyterian and reformed churches Had not fared very well You know We lost our

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We lost our buildings We lost our institutions We were in the wilderness

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Our schools were small And so There was this sort of Implicit deal that was made

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And Now As you get into the 1990s With the rise of the Young Restless and Reformed Movement And right around 2000

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If you search Google Ngram As I have You'll see there's a real spike In the usage of this phrase

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Reformed Baptist And It didn't really even exist The earliest usage I found so far

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And I didn't find it Somebody sent it to me Is in a North Carolina newspaper From 1983 There's no context

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I can't tell what it means You can find it being used In the 19th century I've looked at a lot of the uses

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And None of them really refer To an ecclesiastical body It's just Reformed and Baptist In conjunction

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But you'd start to see That expression spiking In the late 90s And right around 2000 And that's again

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To do with the Young Restless and Reformed Movement And all of that So That's how I got involved in this

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I I wanted to say No, I'm sorry You know You can't Say For example

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In the Belgian Confession We Uh Use the language of Detestable Uh We detest

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The The Anabaptist error We say And what is it? It's the rejection of infant baptism

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Well how can people Who hold what we say As a detestable error Be Reformed And yet Uh We the

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Reformed Confess That very thing How can that be? It doesn't make any sense

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So I So I started asking My Baptist friends Well can I be a Baptist? And they said No Well why not?

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I baptize Uh Adult converts Who are hitherto Unbaptized Yeah but you're not a Baptist Okay So you're a stickler

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When it comes to Defining Baptist But when it comes to Defining Reformed You are In effect

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Saying to me Well there's more of us Than there are of you We've redefined it Get over it And that's

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Effectively An argument from force It's not a Coherent argument So This is

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As much about What we are As it is What you are Um If we

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If we concede This definition We will Come to regret it Very much Because we will

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Have bought A A greatly Um Reduced Definition Of what it is

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To be Reformed And um I don't want to Give that up I think that's a Precious heritage I think words

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Mean something And um This word has Meant something Since the 15

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Well 1540s And 50s To be sure Right It was a little Fuzzy in the 20s

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Who was Reformed It got used Pretty loosely Of the Zwinglians And the

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Lutherans But by the 1540s and 50s You know It's pretty clear Who's Reformed And who's

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Lutheran And so forth And who's Anabaptist So I don't know why We would give this up And um

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So that's what this is about It's not personal It's a matter of principle And And um

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I I'm not Entirely sure Why people get so Um Irritated My And particularly

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Baptist folks Are very Very Some of them Are very unhappy With me Somebody used the word Nasty Uh You saw that In the

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You know On Twitter And I get that All the time Um And I don't think that I don't think of it

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That way at all I'm I'm sorry If people's feelings Are hurt But facts matter History matters

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Objective reality matters And I've been I've even pointed out There's a certain amount Of identity politics

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Going on here People are saying Well I identify As Reformed Um That's not going

30:07

Very well Right You're seeing How this goes And I I don't think

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That's That wouldn't be good For Baptists I mean Baptists have their own identity They have their own history

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Um And they have their own Language In the Early 17th

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Or in the 17 Early 1740s When the Particular Baptist Movement emerged

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Out of Anglicanism Out of Uh Some of the Congregational churches They called themselves

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Right They There were two kinds Of Baptists General Baptists And Particular Baptists That has

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To do with the Atonement And uh They didn't call Themselves Reformed Um So that's a

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That's a Relatively new thing It's a It's a very New thing As far as I know So I'm just trying

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To get people To um Recognize Historical reality Objective reality

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Facts Those kinds of Things Yeah And I want to Say Um And this

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This is not Going to win Me any Friends on My side I would say I agree With almost Everything you

31:12

Just said Um Especially This thing I I made This note Very recently

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To a Friend I said The term Reformed Baptist Is a New term And the

31:35

Calvinism Left The Baptist Movement In the In the Early part Of the 20th century

31:40

And then it Was beginning To be Rediscovered During the Mid and Later part Of the 20th century The people

31:46

Who were Rediscovering Hey we Have a Calvinistic Heritage In our Baptist Theology Wanted to Find a

31:53

Home Because they Weren't Finding a Home In so many Places And so it Seems to me

31:58

Like many Of those People Began to Look for Homes In other Places And as you Said they Went to RTS And they

32:04

Went to Other Seminaries And they Went and Got educated In Reform Theology But they Didn't want To Baptize Babies They Wanted to Remain Baptists But they

32:11

Wanted to Hold on To Some Kind Of Identity As Calvinistic Baptists And so I think The term Reform Baptist Is birthed

32:18

Out of That And maybe I'm Oversimplifying But even Men like Sam Waldron Talk about Going to The Seminaries And coming

32:28

Out And like You said Jim Renahan And others This term

32:33

Reform Baptist Is a Relatively New term In the Ecclesiastical Lexicon Of Churches I think

32:43

Your explanation Is very Good This is About a Need On the

32:49

Part of Baptists To find A home And so They've Invaded Mine And they

32:55

Resent Me For Calling The Cops On The Squatters I get

33:09

It Feel For You I'll Put Up A Tent But you Can't Have My House And I Love My Baptist Friends And I Feel Their Pain My Next Project Is to Take Back The Word Calvinist I'm Going To Hold On To That One Because I've Got A Lot Invested In Advertising Some Of This Is About Marketing And So Now You Have These Large Relatively Large Groups Within The SBC And Sort Of Orbiting Around The SBC Because From A Reform Point Of View The SBC Is Very Complicated Because It's A Denomination But It's A Collection Of Associations And You've Got People Who Are SBC And At One Time They Were ARBCA And Simultaneously And Anyway Anyway It's Complicated For Us But I Get That And I Do I Feel For My Friends Who Are Who Feel Somewhat Homeless I Get That Sense Too And I Often Tell My Students You Know One Of My Jobs As A Historian Is To Try To Make Them Feel As Uncomfortable With Late Modern Life As I Do And As Miserable As I Am Sometimes So I Get That I Feel Your Pain I Do Yeah Well Like Like You Know I I Would Say A Man Like James Pettigrew Boyce You Know The In His In His Abstract Asystemic Theology I Would Say That Probably Would Explain A Lot Of How I Understand The Scriptures And How I Understand Theology From You Know From His Time Period I Think He Did A Very Good Job Of Laying It Out And And And I And In That When People Say Well How Do You Identify I Say First I Identify As A Baptist I'm Not Southern Baptist In The Sense Because We've Never Been A Part Of The Southern Baptist Convention But I'm First A Baptist But I'm Also I Believe In The Five Points Of Calvinism I Believe I Can Hold To Those Five Points And Still Be A Baptist And Therefore I Do Identify Myself As A Calvinistic Baptist Some People Don't Like The Term Calvinist But I Just Say In That Sense If We're Limiting It And I Know The Five Points Of Calvinism Even That's Less Than 100

35:21

Years Old As Far As The Way We Describe The Tulip As It Is Today But It Still It Has A Meaning But I Don't Get Offended And Again Like I Said I'm Not Winning Any Friends On My Side I Don't Get Offended When Somebody Says You Can't Be Reformed I Say I Don't Care I'm A Baptist And I Believe In The Five Points Of Calvinism But I'm Also And This Is Going To Bring Us Into Another Conversation I Would Also Say Though That There Is A There Is A Stream Of Covenant Theology That Is That Is Baptistic I Don't I Don't Even Hold To It I Would And You're Going To You're Probably Going To Write Me Off When I Tell You Where I'm At On That I Would I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed

36:05

I Would Be Closer To Like A I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed

36:33

I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed

37:03

I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed I Would Be Closer Well -Informed I Would Be Closer Well -Informed I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed

37:17

I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed

37:27

I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed

37:33

I Would Be Closer I Would Be Closer I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed

37:39

I Would Be Closer To Like A I Would Be Closer To Like A Well -Informed

38:00

I Would Be Closer I'm trying to defend my friends here, because again,

38:06

I don't care. Our church is called Sovereign Grace Family Church. It doesn't even have

38:11

Baptist in the title, and we hold to the First London Confession. We don't even hold to the 1689. Our church holds to the

38:17

First Confession. Oh, interesting. Now that's a very interesting document, because I'm writing on that right now.

38:23

So if you look at the heidelblog .net, yeah, I'm doing a piece, well, not exactly on the

38:28

First London, but I'm working on that in that time period, because I'm working on a, leading up to a series on Featley's Dippers Dipped.

38:38

And so I'm - I'm very familiar with that, yeah. Part one is a sort of theological overview that ran today.

38:45

Next week will be just an introduction to Kiffin, William Kiffin, and his background and settings, so that readers will understand.

38:55

And then the third week, I'll do Featley. And then the fourth week, I'll start in on the actual debate that went on.

39:03

So, and I've done a surprising amount of writing about 1689 and the development of Baptist history, not academically, but mostly on the blog a little bit.

39:15

I did a piece on being reformed, or I did some work on Baptist history.

39:22

Well, I was gonna mention the Featley thing, because when we actually, our church actually holds to the 1646, and the reason why, the 44 immediately was responded to,

39:31

I think it was Featley with his Dippers Dipped, and there were things in the 44 confession that were not explained very well, or they needed to be updated.

39:40

So that 1689 is really not the second London confession. It's the, if you want to say it's the third, or even the fourth, depending on how you, yeah, because the 1646 is the addition of the 1644, which was, which changed a lot because of the response.

39:58

People read it and said, this is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. And so, yeah. And that's part of what I'm trying to do is to say, well, how did the reformed respond to the particular

40:11

Baptist movement when they actually met it? And that part of the story, I don't think has been fully appreciated.

40:18

I'm not, my point in the series isn't going to be to defend everything Featley says, but I just want people to get to know and feel a little bit.

40:28

So for example, the, you know, and so I don't mean anything by this, but the, if you translate the

40:35

Greek title, right, it's katabaptistoi, katapistoi is what the

40:43

Greek says. Well, he uses katabaptist, not even anabaptist. So katabaptist is just slight, is just a little bit more prejudicial, right?

40:53

Ana is again, and kata is against. So this is a word that Zwingli used,

41:00

Calvin used. It really depended. You can almost measure the temperature of how irate a reformed guy was in the period by whether they used ana or kata.

41:09

If they used kata, they were a little more irritated. So there's that. And then the adjective,

41:16

I guess, substantive katapistoi is on a monopoetic. And so the translation of dippers dipped is actually a little polite.

41:27

It's okay. It's a very loose paraphrase. It's strictly speaking, it's the opponents of baptized, of baptism, strictly, specifically infant baptism spat upon because katapistoi is on a monopoetic.

41:44

So it's katapistoi. In other words, the sound you'd make if you were spitting. So it's very interesting.

41:52

Again, I'm not defending that. I wouldn't speak that way necessarily, but I think people have been a little too glib in saying, well, of course we can be reformed because R .C.

42:08

Sproul accepted us or something. Well, okay, fine. R .C.'s entitled to his opinion. And I love

42:14

R .C. I mean, I benefited greatly from R .C.'s ministry, but what was the original reformed response?

42:23

And it's a very strongly worded, very heated response. So anyway, it'll be interesting to go through that.

42:30

Now, thank you for telling me about the 1646. I know about 44 and then 77, which becomes 89, but I'm not sure

42:38

I knew about 46. So thank you. I will look into that. Yeah, I actually have an article

42:44

I wrote on it. I'll send it to you. Please do. It's not nothing much, but when our church adopted it, we put it before the congregation and our, there were things in the 1689 that we did not want to affirm and we did not want to affirm a document that had to come automatically with asterisks.

43:03

We didn't want to have like, well, we don't affirm this or we don't affirm this. So we decided to go with a document that we could affirm.

43:09

And it's only 52 articles, which is great because it provides us one article a week that we can read in corporate. Yeah, we appreciate that, right?

43:17

The Heidelbergs and 52 Lord's days. So that's good pedagogy. So for the three

43:22

Cs, you know, it's true. Let's see, the first one was, what is it?

43:30

And so, and I've had this conversation where people say, well, we're confessional. And I say, well, that's true.

43:35

You are, but your confession is different. And this is one of the things I, so in the second piece,

43:41

I argue a little bit with Michael Hagen and Tom Nettles who want to align the early particular

43:47

Baptist with the reformed and sort of paper over some of the differences. And one of the things that I've been learning over the years is that the differences are actually, and the early reform knew this, were more profound than the sort of dominant narrative now allows.

44:06

And so you regularly see particular Baptist writers saying, well, we're, you know, we're, our confession, especially relative to the 1689 or 1677 is almost identical to the

44:17

Westminster. Well, that's not really true. There's a lot of formal similarities, but there are some pretty significant subterranean and even formal differences.

44:27

There's a really, there's a very different reading of redemptive history. And some of my

44:33

Baptist friends, well, that should, they say, well, that shouldn't matter. And our response is, or my response is, well, it does matter.

44:40

It matters a lot. You don't get to tell us that it shouldn't matter. That's like me telling you, why are you so sticky about believers only baptism?

44:51

Why is that such a sticking point? Well, you say, well, that's a conviction of mine. This is what the scriptures teach.

44:56

We really believe this. And okay, I accept that. Then why can't you accept the fact that we really believe in the continuity of the covenant of grace, in the one covenant of grace, multiple administrations.

45:09

And that's really, really important to us. And by the way, that debate goes back to the 1520s and 30s.

45:17

Zwingli was making these arguments in 1527. The arguments that I make in public against the modern

45:23

Baptist position are the exact same arguments that Zwingli was making against the Anabaptists, or as he called them,

45:30

Catabaptists in 1527. So, and again, that's a fact.

45:36

And my particular Baptist friends say, well, we're not Anabaptists. And I say, well, that's true in some ways, right?

45:42

You're not Anabaptist in Christology. You're not Anabaptist on the state. There are other ways you're not

45:50

Anabaptist. On property, right? I get that. And soteriology, that's really big. The Anabaptists by and large had a terrible soteriology.

45:57

So there's really important ways in which particular Baptists are not Anabaptists. But when it comes to the history of redemption and church and sacraments, you are

46:08

Anabaptist in significant ways, which is why when I argue with Baptists politely, there's always this ambivalence.

46:16

If I critique the Anabaptists, inevitably some Baptists will write to me. It's often a particular

46:21

Baptist, or a 1689er will say, how come you're so mean? And I want to say, well, wait, you just told me you're not an

46:28

Anabaptist. Why are you getting prickly when I criticize the Anabaptists? Well, it's because you have this ambivalent relationship with them.

46:35

You are indebted to them in important ways. And so, the particular Baptist identity is complicated.

46:42

I think it's more complicated than a lot of particular Baptists want to say. Because there were general

46:48

Baptists before there were particular Baptists. And the general Baptists wouldn't have become Baptists without the

46:53

Dutch Anabaptists when they fled to the Netherlands from England. And I learned that from at least a formerly

47:02

Baptist historian. So it's, you know, history is messy. And so, my job is to try to help people get to grips with all of it.

47:14

Go ahead. That's helpful, very helpful. No, I was just saying, I think that's very helpful.

47:20

And yeah, I mean, it is funny because our confessions, both the

47:25

First London and the Second London do try to make that separation.

47:31

You know, in fact, the confession we hold in the Anabaptist line, we're not Anabaptists.

47:37

But I think what they were trying to do, and again, from a historical perspective, I think they were trying to distinguish themselves from the radical nature, especially the

47:44

Munster Rebellion and those things that were happening that had brought real fear regarding Anabaptists.

47:51

Fear that this was a radical movement that would create, you know, a lawless movement and a dangerous movement.

47:57

People who are unwilling to submit to the, yeah, the authorities and everything.

48:04

And so I think at that point, the distinction is not, we don't believe in the same view of baptism.

48:11

The distinction is we don't behave like them. Like we have a different view. And like you said, other theological distinctions as well.

48:19

I mean, and so that's right. I mean, it was a rhetorical move, but it was always only partly true.

48:27

But it's become like an identifying mark. You know, when

48:32

I have this conversation, Baptists will say, but I'm not Anabaptist. Well, yes and no. You are in certain ways and you aren't.

48:39

And I always try to say, you know, the ways in which modern particular Baptists or confessional particular

48:46

Baptists, whether 1644, 46, 77, 89, whatever it may be, you know, they are not

48:55

Anabaptists in really important ways. And those are the ways where we have real communion.

49:00

And I recognize that. So I want people to know, I worship in a particular Baptist congregation regularly, not here in town, but when

49:09

I'm on the road, when I go back home, you know, my dear friend, Pat Avendroth always manages to have a believer's baptism every time

49:18

I'm there. So he says he has yet to get me in the splash zone.

49:23

We tend to sit in the back sort of, but the people are very kind and gracious and I love them.

49:32

And they've really accepted and received us. So I want people to know this isn't personal.

49:38

I don't have any animus. I've taught lots of particular Baptist students. I recommend, you know, particular

49:44

Baptist congregations. You know, because the reform movement is small and they're, you know, but in the plains where I'm from, right, after you go west of Kearney, there are no

49:58

NAPARC churches in Nebraska. And if you're in the Sandhills, I have dear friends who live in the Sandhills, they are four hours from any

50:04

NAPARC church, North American Presbyterian and Reform Council, OPC, URC, PCA, and those churches.

50:11

There aren't any. So, you know, we have to make friends in a variety of places, just as a matter of spiritual survival.

50:23

So you think, based on what you're saying, what it sounds like, you would say like a church, a

50:28

Baptist calling himself particular Baptist, that that's perfectly fine. That's a historic, yeah.

50:34

That's your heritage. You are, and you are confessional. You're not, it's not a Reformed confession as we understand it.

50:42

You know, you're covenantal, that's right. But there've been a lot of covenant theologies and yours is one of them.

50:48

It's not ours, but it is one. And Calvinistic, well, you're predestinarian.

50:55

And I think you agree with Calvin in, you know, justification, sanctification, and those are all really important.

51:01

I mean, really, really important. So, amen. But I always, you know, hesitate to try to remind people that no

51:11

Baptist could have, even in the 1640s, could have gone to Geneva and said, right, which is the home of Calvinism, and said, you know, can we come to the

51:22

Lord's table? And, you know, Kiffin, William Kiffin was among the leaders in condemning, criticizing

51:33

Bunyan for admitting those who only had baby baptism to communion, because they were convinced that unless you had a believer's baptism, you were not actually baptized.

51:46

And they said only baptized people can come to communion. And, you know, in principle, I agree with that, that only baptized people, we just define baptism differently, you know?

51:57

So I'm all for, you know, so what I say to my Baptist friends is, I want to make Baptists great again, right?

52:04

It's not as sexy as MAGA, but, you know, what is it? M -B -G -A?

52:11

I don't know how to pronounce that. It sounds like maybe like an African surname or something, but that's what

52:21

I'm trying to do. So, but I think

52:27

I have real fellowship with my confessional particular Baptist friends who are doing good work on the doctrine of God, you know, standing up for the, you know, ecumenical

52:41

Christology, you know, rejecting eternal subordination, Matt Barrett and Rich Barcellos, you know,

52:48

Rich did a nice little book on the Lord's Supper. I've been, Rich helped me on the

52:54

Trinity one time. I said something about three centers of self -consciousness and he rebuked me and he was exactly right about that.

53:02

I appreciate that very much. He actually helped me from making a fairly serious mistake. So actually wandering into heresy is what he did.

53:13

It's interesting. That leads me to something else. And I do want to be conscious of your time and I don't want to take you away from anything else or anything.

53:23

I know, you know, I could talk to you for hours, but as you mentioned about the

53:29

EFS thing, or I guess now it's called ERAS, right? Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission.

53:34

And that's the question. There's like three versions, ESS, EFS, ERAS. So anyway, yeah.

53:43

Yeah. So that brings me to a question. Another name that popped in when

53:49

I said, hey, what's something you want us to talk about? One that popped up a few times was Thomism. It was

53:55

St. Thomas Aquinas. What's your connection to that? Because I didn't know when people posted that, like, hey, ask him about this.

54:04

I didn't know where you stood on that. And was curious just like, you know, you don't have to give me a dissertation or anything, but why would they mention you in regard to that?

54:13

Is that regarding your Trinitarian question? Or is that? No, I think that's something else.

54:19

I did a piece for Credo on how my mind has changed regarding Thomas.

54:26

And so that may be that people are reflecting on that somehow. Did it change in a positive or a negative?

54:32

Was it related to all this stuff? Because I know in the Reformed Baptist, I gotta be careful.

54:38

Now, you're gonna reach through the screen at me. No, in the

54:44

Baptist circles in which I frequent, those which would identify themselves as particular and or reformed.

54:54

I'm absolved. Thank you. I appreciate it. There's a big, or at least, you know, within the last two years, there's been a lot of arguments and issues over those who would identify themselves as Thomistic and those who wouldn't.

55:10

I know James White's been a part of that. He's a friend of mine. I've had conversations with him about it. I've had other people who have brought other issues in.

55:18

I know things like eternal, not only eternal subordinationism, but also the issue of divine simplicity and impassibility.

55:27

These are questions that seem to revolve around the Thomistic question. So when you say your mind sort of changed, was it positive, negative?

55:36

And some people, I might've just left part of the audience like, what is he talking about? But I think you know what I'm talking about.

55:41

I do. Well, no. So things like divine simplicity, that's just ecumenical Christianity. So anybody who denies that God is one is not an ecumenical

55:51

Christian. That person is a heretic. So that has nothing to do with Thomas. Anybody who says the son is eternally subordinate to the father, that's a highly problematic thing to say.

56:07

I want to be careful of what I say because I don't know of any ecclesiastical body that's condemned that.

56:12

But if I had my druthers, our synod would condemn that doctrine that the son is eternally subordinate to the father.

56:24

I think that is outside the bounds of ecumenical orthodoxy. And it's the fruit of people like Wayne Grudem and others who are reading the

56:32

Bible without taking due account of the history of doctrine and the ecumenical creeds.

56:38

So the short way of putting it, it's the fruit of biblicism. And biblicism always leads to this kind of stuff.

56:46

Again, that has nothing to do with Thomas. That's just ecumenical Christianity. So I did the piece on Thomas because I teach medieval history and I lecture on Thomas.

56:57

And I do seminars with students. We do a medieval seminar. We have a degree in historical theology.

57:04

So our students read patristics and medieval and reformation, post -reformation and modern. And in their medieval seminar, which

57:10

I teach, we read Thomas. And so reading Thomas over the last 26, 27 years has changed my mind.

57:18

And I don't see him the way that I did. I was taught as a young reformed guy to think of Thomas as the enemy and Thomas as a source of evil and corruption.

57:29

And as I read him more and more, I began to see, well, no, Thomas is, I disagree with Thomas about some fairly important things, but he's a

57:37

Christian. And he's trying to help me understand the faith. He's trying to help me to understand the scriptures.

57:44

And he has some things to teach me. And so I've learned quite a bit.

57:50

I don't know that I would call myself a Thomist, but I appreciate

57:55

Thomas and I don't see him as an enemy anymore. And I think there's a certain strain of fundamentalists out there, both

58:02

Pato Baptist and Baptist, who don't know Thomas and have been taught directly or indirectly to think of him as a kind of a source of error and corruption and, you know, as they would have said in the old days, an accursed seducer, right?

58:19

And that's just wrong. It's a misreading of Thomas. And I'm happy to say it's ignorance of Thomas.

58:28

You can't actually sit down and read Thomas for yourself and come away with that view of Thomas.

58:35

And so there's a lot of fearful, I think fundamentalist ignorance of Thomas. I'm pretty confident it exists in Baptist circles, but I know it exists in my circles.

58:46

You would never get the impression from reading Francis Schaeffer that Thomas was a beneficial part of our tradition, the broader

58:55

Christian tradition. And frankly, you wouldn't get the sense from Van Til that would be, you know,

59:02

I think I have a friend who's arguing to me that Van Til really didn't know Thomas. He really knew a

59:08

Neo -Thomism from the 19th century. And that seems likely given Van Til's education and, you know,

59:13

Scott Oliphant recently did a book that was panned by people who actually know Thomas as a really very...

59:20

I'm glad it exists because I hold it up and I tell my students, this is exactly the kind of work

59:26

I don't want you to do. So if you want to know what not to do in terms of historical method, using reading sources, et cetera, this is the kind of work

59:37

I don't want you to do. So I want you to do the opposite. I want you to read sources in context.

59:43

I want you to read them sympathetically, carefully and so forth.

59:49

And, you know, the reviews, I'm not saying anything that, you know, the reviewers haven't already said.

59:54

You read Muller's review of that book. So, but there's a lot of people out there who've been taught that sort of hostile view of Thomas.

01:00:03

So I suspect that's what that's about. Hmm, okay.

01:00:08

You mentioned Van Til, just where did Van Til teach? I should know this, but it was...

01:00:17

He taught from 1929 or thereabouts, very early on in the history of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, until his retirement in Philadelphia.

01:00:27

So I think he retired in the mid to late 70s, if memory serves.

01:00:34

Okay. And you teach at Westminster, California. That's right. We were daughtered by Philadelphia in 1980.

01:00:44

Gotcha. So, and this is like a way departure, but just because you mentioned Van Til, it just brought in a question in my mind.

01:00:51

Are you personally more presuppositional when it comes to your apologetic, you're more classical? Where do you land on that particular question?

01:00:58

And I know that's a far field question from everything we've talked about, but it just Van Til struck a chord with my question box.

01:01:04

So I just wanted to throw that out there. And maybe I should know that, but I just don't know where you are on that.

01:01:11

You're breaking up really badly for me. And I only heard parts of that. I think you were asking about apologetic method, classical, presuppositional, and all that.

01:01:20

Was that what you were asking? Okay. Yes, sir. I'm a Van Tilian still.

01:01:26

I mean, I have some criticisms of Van Til now this late stage in my career.

01:01:31

I appreciate Van Til a lot. He helped me a great deal. And I still think as a matter of apologetics, he's essentially correct.

01:01:40

So I'm with Van Til, but I probably have more trouble with the Van Tilians because I don't think a lot of them are all that faithful to what

01:01:49

Van Til was actually about. I strongly recommend, if you want to get to know Van Til, obviously read

01:01:55

Van Til, you know, ad fontes. But if you want an introduction, read

01:02:00

John Meather's biography of Van Til. That's the single best introduction to Van Til.

01:02:07

I'm not satisfied with a lot of the introductions to Van Til because I think in some ways they remake him in their own image.

01:02:17

And what I love about what John did is that he lets Van Til be what he was, an immigrant, a

01:02:25

Dutchman, who ended up in a Presbyterian world and he was kind of a fish out of water and a guy who, in some ways, was never entirely comfortable with English.

01:02:36

And if you've read Van Til, you know that's true, that English just wasn't his, you know, in a sense, his native language.

01:02:45

He never became a very fluid, fluent writer of English. So he's very difficult to understand in that, he can be in that regard.

01:02:54

Plus he's a, you know, he was trained in philosophical idealism in the 19th century.

01:03:00

He's an amillennialist, you know, and so he's a complicated guy. He's deeply influenced by Gerhardus Vos, who was a great biblical theologian at Princeton in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, influenced by Bavink and the

01:03:16

Neo -Cyperian movement. And I think we've sort of developed over the years a sort of truncated picture of Van Til.

01:03:24

Anyway, so John Meather's biography of Van Til is a great intro to Van Til.

01:03:30

So I have a lot of affection for Van Til. I have criticisms. He said some things that were not helpful. Saying that God is one person in three persons was distinctly unhelpful and not to be repeated.

01:03:41

I tell my students, if you say that on the floor of classes, I will charge you. Right, I've filed charges against you if you say that in your ecclesiastical assemblies.

01:03:51

If you teach that, I will charge you because it's contrary to the word of God as we confess it.

01:03:58

And Van Til should have been, that should have been tested in the courts of the churches. But at any rate, it wasn't, and certainly not something to be defended now.

01:04:07

I know people are doing that, but it's a mistake, right? All our heroes have clay feet.

01:04:13

And that's part of what I try to do as a historian is to make these people human as best

01:04:19

I can. Well, that's a good thought. And I love that quote.

01:04:24

All our heroes have clay feet. That's great. So am I coming through clear again? Are you good hearing me well?

01:04:30

Yeah, yeah. If I could have you for just a couple more minutes,

01:04:35

I know we're over the hour mark now. And if you need to go, we can cut off. But I have one final thing I wanna bring up and hopefully it won't take another hour, but it is a pretty big question.

01:04:46

There was a whole raft of stuff that showed up on Twitter too. So you can pitch those and I'll hit them quickly.

01:04:54

Okay. Well, the question, and this is again like the Reformed Baptist question, this is obviously intended to be somewhat pointed.

01:05:04

The question is, why do you want pagans to rule us? That's the question. And I know that's the theonomy question.

01:05:10

Why do you want pagans to rule us? What's your thoughts? What's your issue with theonomy?

01:05:16

Yeah, hang on a second, we're, all right, can you hear me?

01:05:24

Yeah. Okay, we were breaking up a little bit. I don't, but I'm not a theocrat and I'm not a theonomist.

01:05:32

Theonomy is a Baptist and a Baptist mistake from the early 16th century. And the

01:05:37

Reformed rejected it. Lately, some people have been poking at me and said, what about Cartwright?

01:05:45

I've seen that allegation and I've seen some evidence that Cartwright, who's a 16th century

01:05:51

Presbyterian, was a theonomist. He could have been, and if he was, he was wrong. You know,

01:05:56

I'm not a tribalist. Greg Bonson was a Presbyterian and he was flat wrong. There's almost nothing right about theonomy and Christian ethics.

01:06:05

It's a series of fundamental mistakes, exegetical mistakes, theological mistakes, historical mistakes, categorical mistakes.

01:06:13

You know, but our guys, when they confronted theonomy in the person of Karlstadt, rejected it soundly as contrary to their understanding of the word of God.

01:06:26

The judicial laws expired with the state of that people.

01:06:31

And then the theonomist said, but well, general equity. Yes, general, we should salute general equity every time he comes by.

01:06:38

I say, that's a joke, son. General equity is a beautiful thing and it's just code for natural law.

01:06:53

If people would just read, go ahead. If people - I'm so glad you said that, because when somebody asked me to explain general equity,

01:07:03

I said, basically what you just said, that there is a law that demonstrates

01:07:09

God's moral nature or his righteousness, and it's demonstrated to us in the

01:07:17

Decalogue and we see it throughout the Old and New Testaments of God's moral nature. And this is the law that should be upheld by all men, that things like thieving, stealing and murder and these things are naturally wrong.

01:07:32

So when you mentioned natural law, I'm assuming we're talking in very similar terms there. Well, I mean,

01:07:37

Nero knew that theft was wrong. Nero didn't know the Old Testament from a hole in the ground, but he knew that murder was wrong.

01:07:45

He knew that theft was wrong. He didn't need the special revelation to know those things.

01:07:52

And Calvin wrote about, I learned my doctrine of natural law from John Calvin, that liberal who distinguished between the two spheres over which

01:08:03

God rules, right? That he's ordained in life, essentially the sacred and the secular, the temporal and the eternal is what he says.

01:08:10

God has a two -fold government, he says.

01:08:15

And he thought, he expected the magistrate to be able to look at natural law and determine, what crimes should be punished and how they should be punished.

01:08:28

Johannes Wallabius said, he was a Swiss theologian in the early 17th century.

01:08:34

He said that the Old Testament judicial laws are only binding today insofar as they agree with natural law, things that can be known from nature.

01:08:44

So that's traditional reform theology. And the theonomists are basically

01:08:49

Anabaptist radicals with an over -realized eschatology trying to redefine reform theology in their own image.

01:08:57

And they don't like me because I won't let them do it. I've been dealing with the theonomists literally now, this is 44 years or so, 43 years.

01:09:08

I met my first theonomist in 1980 or 81. And I've been talking to them and listening, reading ever since.

01:09:17

And it's a sectarian fundamentalist ideology. It's not a reformed ideology.

01:09:24

It's a cul -de -sac, it's a toll booth through which people pass, unfortunately, to get into the reformed world.

01:09:33

What do you think is gonna happen regarding the rise in theonomic thought right now?

01:09:40

I mean, do you have any, I know you're not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but do you have any words of warning or concern about what you think might be coming down the pike with the theonomy and all that?

01:09:52

Well, you know, so Christian nationalism is just the new face of theonomy. Now, that's a broad statement.

01:09:59

And I think there are forms of Christian nationalism that are not theonomic. But, you know, for example, if you look at Stephen Wolf's book, there's a lot in that book that should be very concerning to any

01:10:12

American who, you know, understands the founding, understands the, you know, the intent of the founders, the language of the constitution, you know,

01:10:22

Baptists, there are a lot of Baptists who are solidly behind him, including, you know, William Wolfe, but, you know, and the new organization that Wolfe is directing and Tom Askell's on the board.

01:10:33

And, you know, it's very strange to see Baptists, you know, supporting theocracy and quasi -theonomic ideas and a

01:10:45

Christian prince who has the authority to punish heretics. It makes me wonder if Baptists know their own history.

01:10:52

Do I have to teach Baptists their own history? What happens when you get that kind of authority?

01:11:00

I wanna say something about what you just said, because quite frankly, someone posted this, and I'm not gonna mention any names or anything because I'm not looking to get in any fights, but someone posted a picture of a

01:11:14

Baptist. It was a painting of a Baptist having his face shoved under the water. And it was after,

01:11:22

I mean, we know this happened. We know there were Baptists who were drowned for baptism. And I have said, and when they posted it, they posted it as if it were humorous.

01:11:33

Like, this is a joke. I said, this is not a joke to me because that man represents my theological heritage. That man is, to me, my spiritual ancestor.

01:11:41

And so I do have concerns in that regard to where, who is gonna be the one determining who the heretics are?

01:11:51

Who's gonna be the one determining who gets drowned? You know, doesn't anybody know the history of Christendom?

01:11:58

Does anybody know the bloody history of religious warfare in the 16th century and all through the 17th century, leading up to the 18th century?

01:12:07

The founders were not stupid. They knew what they were doing. And we have managed to have a country, you know, as crazy and loony as things are.

01:12:18

And, you know, just look out the window. I don't have to persuade anybody that if you don't think things are loony, then you're not paying attention.

01:12:26

But, you know, rejecting the founding is not the way forward.

01:12:32

That's the way backwards. That's a, and again, that's the product of a Baptist over -realized eschatology and a refusal to get to grips with nature.

01:12:45

You know, Baptists have always had trouble with distinguishing nature and grace.

01:12:50

Nature is one thing, grace is something else. Grace does not wipe out nature. We had this argument with the

01:12:57

Anabaptists, the Reform did in the 17th century, and we quoted Thomas Aquinas. Grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it.

01:13:05

And so when I see Reformed Orthodox people citing Thomas against the Anabaptists, and by the way, against the

01:13:11

Baptists, because they didn't distinguish, right? It's just really, they use the same language for both groups.

01:13:20

It tells me that they identified in the Baptist movement an over -realized eschatology, a desire for too much heaven now.

01:13:31

And so that's what's behind, I think what is behind this. People are scared, they wanna fix, they don't wanna take the time to be citizens, to do the things that need to be done.

01:13:42

I tell people, popple, pray, organize, persuade, legislate, litigate, popple, right?

01:13:52

Persuade, organize, pray, organize, persuade, legislate, litigate.

01:13:58

Those are the things that citizens do. And we haven't even really begun doing that.

01:14:03

And people wanna give up on the founding and hire some Christian prince to take care of our problems for us.

01:14:12

That's crazy. Doesn't anybody read the Bible? What did the prophet say?

01:14:18

You want a king? This is what's gonna happen. He's gonna take all your stuff. And people said, yeah, we want a king.

01:14:25

We want him to take all our stuff. It's just dumb. I'm sorry, it's just dumb.

01:14:30

Do you think that there is anything wrong with a person, a

01:14:38

Christian, that would say to the leaders in the government, you are wrong and you need to repent?

01:14:44

That's a thought that kind of comes to my mind because while - Absolutely, we should say that, right?

01:14:50

Absolutely, we should say that. Christians should engage the government.

01:14:56

We should speak our mind. We should defend our civil liberties. When people do wicked things, we should tell them, listen, what you're doing is wicked and you need to stop.

01:15:08

That's Christian citizenship. What you're doing is against nature, right? When you're promoting the trans ideology, that's against nature.

01:15:16

You're promoting gay marriage, that's against nature. You're letting criminals go free, that's against the nature of the function of the magistrate.

01:15:25

You're not putting murderers to death, that's against nature. We should say all those things.

01:15:33

So people assume that because I'm not a theocrat or a Christian nationalist, I must be some kind of leftist.

01:15:39

And that's just not true. If you put me in charge, I would clean up the streets very quickly.

01:15:50

Well, that's the thing, a few months ago, because I'm pretty well known as a non -millennialist only because eschatology matters, the whole king of the non -millennial joke.

01:16:04

But I was preaching and I posted a clip of my sermon, which I often do.

01:16:09

And in the sermon, I was talking about the need for the government to repent, the need for the, what you just said, they're violating

01:16:17

God's natural law, they're violating the very, does not the very nature of things show you these things are sinful, the things that you're doing.

01:16:25

And somebody said, you sound like a post -millennialist, you need to become a post -millennialist. I was like, no, as an non -millennialist,

01:16:30

I can still say those things. I can still stand and say, yes, if you are promoting abortion, that needs to end.

01:16:38

If you're promoting homosexuality, that needs to end. If you're promoting those things which go against the very nature of God and who he is and how he created us in his image, that you need to repent.

01:16:47

And I don't think I have to be a post -millennialist to say those things. And that's why I'm glad that we agreed.

01:16:52

You certainly don't. And now when Paul spoke to the magistrate, people have said to me, well,

01:16:58

Paul spoke to the magistrate as if Paul was making policy prescriptions. Well, go look and see what

01:17:06

Paul actually said when he spoke to the magistrate. He called those people to repent and to believe in Jesus.

01:17:12

Now, I think Christians should be good citizens and I've just given you the five things

01:17:19

I think Christians should be doing to try to be of use to their fellow citizens. But we have to,

01:17:26

I think, learn to participate in society without being in charge. And I'm not saying that we should run, we should serve, all of those things, but the idea seems to be, a lot of Christians seem to have the idea that, well, we can't participate in society because it's dirty unless we're in charge.

01:17:44

And I just think that betrays, again, a bad eschatology. You're a non -millennial, so am

01:17:50

I, and that tells me that we live in a fallen world. It's going to be difficult at times, and it's going to be a fallen world.

01:17:58

There's not gonna be an earthly glory age before Jesus returns. And a lot of American Christians are really looking forward to an earthly glory age, one way or another, whether they're

01:18:08

Kiliasts, premillennialists, or postmillennialists, they're looking for an earthly glory age.

01:18:14

And you just can't justify an earthly glory age before Jesus returns.

01:18:21

You can't. And postmillennialists really don't try very seriously. It's pretty half -hearted.

01:18:27

This is something they know, really, before they ever get to Scripture. And they spend a lot of time explaining why the passages that contradict them, well, that was fulfilled in AD 70.

01:18:38

That's not really for today. Well, then what about Jesus, who said, you know, if they slap you, turn the other cheek, well, that was for then, but that's not for now, or not when we're in charge.

01:18:50

And they start becoming functional dispensationalists, right, pretty radical dispensationalists.

01:18:55

Big chunks of the Bible really don't apply. Well, what about 1 Peter that says you're blessed when you suffer? Well, that's for then, but not when we're in charge.

01:19:04

Pretty soon you get the sense this isn't really an ethos and eschatology that is driven by Scripture.

01:19:12

This is driven by something else, I think. Well, brother,

01:19:19

I wanna just, first of all, I've really enjoyed the conversation. I'm thankful. I have a thousand other questions, but we're getting close to an hour and a half, and I don't wanna keep you.

01:19:31

But I have one last question. This one should be easy to answer, and I think it would be a very, very good way to end.

01:19:38

One of the people on Twitter asked, when is your two -volume set on the Heidelberg Confession coming out, or the

01:19:46

Heidelberg Catechism? I guess, I don't know, is it a? It's a catechism. When is your two -volume set, okay, when is your two -volume set coming out?

01:19:54

I don't know. It's at the publishers, and once you send it off to the publishers, it's, you know, who knows?

01:20:01

I got the sense from one conversation that they hope maybe to have the electronic version by the end of the year, but what will, you know, how soon the print version will be,

01:20:13

I haven't had any proofs or anything come back. So, you know, I have other things

01:20:19

I'm working on, and in fact, I'm in the middle of doing another book right now, and it's coming together actually nicely.

01:20:26

I'm about, in terms of the very first rough draft, I'm just about done. I've got about 4 5ths of the rough draft done, so that book will probably be out before the commentary.

01:20:39

It's a big work. It's a technical work. There's a lot of stuff that has to be done to get it right, but Lexham is a very good publisher, they're very professional.

01:20:48

They'll do a good job, and when it's out, then it will be, I hope, a book that will be useful and not one, you know, that's full of mistakes and things.

01:21:01

And that's the hope. What do you feel like, and this is the last thing, what do you feel like in that set, what do you feel like is your best contribution to the history of this catechism and what it means to the

01:21:14

Christian church? What are you most proud of? You know, well, again, so this goes back to the publisher, the original title was

01:21:25

Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude, a theological, historical, pastoral commentary on the

01:21:31

Heidelberg Catechism. And then they said, well, we don't want to use those words, guilt, grace, and gratitude, so what do

01:21:36

I know? They're just using the subtitle. Well, they're the experts, so I defer to them, but I think my big contribution is to help people to understand that there are three parts to the

01:21:48

Heidelberg Catechism. And I, you know, when I taught at Wheaton and wherever I get a chance to teach, I always say there are three parts to the

01:21:55

Christian faith, guilt, grace, and gratitude. And if you get that, guilt is law, grace is gospel, gratitude flows out of the gospel.

01:22:03

And if you get that basic structure of the Christian life, the Book of Romans, the Heidelberg Catechism, it's really transformational.

01:22:13

I love that, and I am now going to steal that, and I'm going to put that into practice, because I think that's great.

01:22:22

It's not original with me. You know, this is the second question of the, second or third question.

01:22:31

I don't know how I got to get this right. I'm going to get in trouble. You wrote a commentary you don't even know? Let me think. Yeah, second question.

01:22:37

How many things are necessary for you to know that in this comfort you may live and die happily? Three things. First, the greatness of my sin and misery.

01:22:44

Second, how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. And third, how I'm to be thankful to God for such redemption. So that's, we call that basic Reformed Christianity.

01:22:55

And I, so in that commentary, I tried to bring Ersinus and Olivianus and some of the early

01:23:02

Reformed writers back into the conversation to help us understand the Catechism in its original context.

01:23:07

So I spent a lot of time, particularly in the last part of the commentary, because by that time, you know,

01:23:15

Olivianus' commentaries sort of end at a certain point, but Ersinus went all the way through his lectures.

01:23:21

And so I ended up working closely with the Latin text of Ersinus to try to really get to grips with what he was doing.

01:23:31

And I tried to really mine that and make use of it and integrate it into the commentary. So I think that's a contribution that when you're,

01:23:39

I hope when you're reading this commentary, you'll get a sense that you're learning to read the commentary the way it was originally intended to be understood by the original framers, authors, editors, rather than, you know, there are lots of Reformed collections of sermons.

01:23:56

So in our tradition, we preach sermons that are somehow related to the Catechism on Sunday night.

01:24:02

And there are lots of those that have been collected and published. But we haven't had, other than one that was done 15, 20 years ago, we haven't had a sort of historical academic commentary on the

01:24:17

Catechism for a long time. So I tried to, you know, make Ersinus great again,

01:24:23

I guess. Well, that sounds wonderful. I look forward to it when it comes out, look forward to what it's going to mean in the sense of helping people to understand the

01:24:36

Catechism. And just what you just said has helped me tonight. So I want to thank you again for being a part of the show and being willing to come on and just banter about theology.

01:24:46

Boy, I could do this all night. So thank you so much. Well, thank you for having me,

01:24:52

Keith. And thank you for putting up with me. I appreciate it. You've been a kind, gracious, and gentle host.

01:24:59

And you were nice. Well, I have to be, the song says so.

01:25:08

Well, thank you, brother. And I want to thank you guys for being a part of the show today. Again, so grateful to have

01:25:14

Dr. Clark come on and so grateful to have you as the audience. Remember, if you have any questions or you have someone you'd like for me to interview in the future, you can reach me at keithfoskey .com.

01:25:24

Thank you for being a part of your Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey. And as always, I've been your