July 17, 2018 Show with Dr. Stephen J. Wellum on “God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all happy. What is today? Today is Tuesday. It's been a long day and I forgot what day it was but I know it's Tuesday, July 17th now and I am so delighted to have for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Dr. Stephen J. Wellam and I actually, although I already was aware of Dr. Wellam and his work and his ministry, I was so delighted to hear from a listener, a faithful listener in Cork, Ireland, Mary, who highly recommended that I interview Dr. Wellam because Mary is actually a student of Dr. Wellam's in Ireland.

Dr. Wellam, first of all, it is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Well, it's.

Great to be with you Chris and thank you for allowing me to come and talk today. Yeah, and.

Let me give a little bit more background to our listeners. Dr. Wellam, who received his PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is a professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, or should I rephrase that because I know that some people get upset if it's phrased that way, it's THE Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

He's also an editor of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology and today we are going to be discussing Dr. Wellam's book, God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ, and Dr. Wellam, if you could tell us how a listener of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Cork, Ireland became familiar with you and became a student of yours.

Well, sure, I'd be delighted to.

Therefore, for a number of years one of my colleagues here at the seminary, Dr. Michael.

Haken. Yes, I've had Dr. Haken on the program a number of times. Yeah, so he's all over the world.

And particularly he has a love for Ireland because of his family roots. I think it's on his mother's side. And there were a number of five, six churches in the southern part of the Republic of Ireland in the Cork area in the province of Munster, Baptist churches that are faithfully proclaiming the gospel in a very, very spiritually dark land.

And they said we need some extra theological training and ministry and so they started Munster Bible College and I've had the teaching some of the theology courses and Mary, who recommended me, is part of the churches there in the Cork area and also a student in the classes.

So that's how I got to know her and it's great to see what the Lord is doing in Ireland. Pray for that country, but the churches there are doing a great job and they're being faithful and that's always good to see.

Yes,.

In fact, I highly recommend among everything else that Dr. Haken, who you mentioned earlier, among everything else that he has written, I highly recommend all of it, but one in particular, since we're talking about Ireland, is his book on St. Patrick.

Yes, that's right. And if you could now tell us something, tell our listeners something about the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where you serve on the faculty. Well, yes, I'd be happy to.

It's.

A great privilege to be here at Southern. I've been here since 1999 and they let me come here as a foreigner because I originally grew up like Dr. Haken in Canada, in the Toronto area, and then even though I did my studies at Trinity Divinity School in Chicago area, but I've been here since 1999.

Southern is the flagship of the Southern Baptist Convention. There's six institutions in the Southern Baptist Convention, Southern being the first, and it went through a big change in the 1990s, 80s, 90s, with the conservative resurgence and recovering the truth of scripture and the foundational issues of the gospel, and so it's been a privilege to be here since 99 teaching theology and trying to be faithful in raising up a new generation to proclaim the glories of the gospel and Christ in our local churches.

Amen. By the way, I'm going.

To give our listeners our email address if they have questions. The email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and I could see possibly that being the case, even though our subject is of a theological nature.

If you perhaps are in a religion or church that denies that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, or you're from a church that has some radically different position, or any different position, from what we are discussing today, I can understand that you might want to remain anonymous, but if it's not personal and private, though, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

What we usually do, Dr. Wellum, when we have a first-time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, is we have them give a summary of their personal testimony of salvation, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, they were raised in, and what were the providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to him, and how specifically they came to embrace Jesus Christ as their Lord, God, Savior, and King, and came to trust solely upon his finished work on Calvary as their only hope of.

Salvation. Yeah, they weren't happy to do so. I had the privilege of being raised in a Christian home, and that's not true for everyone, but in my case it was. As I mentioned, I was raised in Canada, born there in the, we'll just say roughly the Toronto area, technically it's Burlington, Ontario, but out in the larger Toronto area.

And I, by the time I was the fourth of four boys, and then we had a little girl that we adopted after myself, and my parents were converted in the 1950s or so,. Influence of their background, but also Billy Graham and others like that, involved in evangelical churches, and then in the late 60s, early 70s, really wanted to be instructed more in the truths of God's word, and they went and started a church with a man named.

Bill Payne, or William Payne, from England. Yes, I had the privilege, it's funny that you mentioned William Payne's name, I'm sorry to interrupt you here. Yeah, no problem. But William Payne, what a powerful preacher he was, and I know that he is with the Lord for eternity now.

As soon as you mentioned William Payne, I happened to glance upon an endorsement for your book, where it was written by my friend Fred G. Zaspel, who I've known, I've known him since the late 1980s, and I used to attend a conference that no longer is taking place, but it took place for a number of years.

I used to attend this conference called the Bunyan Conference, named after John Bunyan, that Fred Zaspel and John Riesinger would orchestrate, and William Payne was at least one year one of the speakers on the roster, and he totally blew me away when he spoke.

Well, he was my, I had the privilege of having him as my home pastor, so you know, I was about six years old or so when Trinity Baptist in Burlington, Ontario started, and you know, I heard him faithfully expound scripture, my parents taught me God's Word, but it was around 16 that really I came to know the Lord myself.

You can't, you're not a Christian because you're raised in a Christian home, or you sit under the preaching of God's Word, you have to own it yourself, and through a variety of circumstances with my brother and Pastor Payne and a man named Bertie Crooks, a Presbyterian minister who was up in the Northland in Ontario cottage country, hearing him when we were away on vacation, the Lord brought me to himself and opened my eyes to see my sin before him and the need for the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus, and calling out to him, and I was converted at 16 and then from there was baptized and wanted, sent a surreal call to Christian ministry, whatever that would look like, whether pastoral or teaching, and Bill Payne was helpful in giving advice and counsel, and so I went from there to eventually university or college in Upper State, New York at Robert's Wesleyan College, and then Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and then into the ministry and pastoring and teaching and so on.

Great. Well, I want to.

Read three endorsements for your book because they're so powerful, and I've had all three of these individuals on my radio program, and not only does Fred Zaspel go back many years with me and my own Christian life, but also Michael Horton, who actually preached at the church where I was a member back in 1995, and I actually couldn't be there because it was the same night that my mother's funeral was being conducted.

But Mike Horton, I've known him so long, believe it or not. He was a single man when I first knew him, and he used to ask me to help him find a girlfriend. Interesting. But I've interviewed him many times, and he is also a dear brother.

Well, first I'm going to start with Fred Zaspel's endorsement, and Fred Zaspel writes of your book, which is also the theme today, God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ. Fred says, Wellum's treatment of this glorious subject is comprehensive in scope and is marked by precision, clarity, biblical fidelity, and a close acquaintance with the centuries of discussions surrounding it.

It is the most helpful book on Christology I've read, and it is a pleasure to commend it to you. That's Fred Zaspel, pastor at Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia, Pennsylvania, and author of The Theology of B .B. Warfield, A Systematic Summary and Warfield on the Christian Life Living in the Light of the Gospel.

And I've interviewed Fred on his book on B .B. Warfield, his biography. Michael Horton, who we just mentioned earlier, says, Exploring our Lord's person and work from a variety of angles, Wellum engages a wide range of issues and conversation partners, consolidating the gains of evangelical Christological reflection.

This volume makes gains of its own, particularly by wrestling clearly and carefully with contemporary trends in biblical studies, as well as philosophical, systematic, and historical theology. That's Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary, California, and host of the White Horse Inn radio program.

And David Wells, who I've had on the program several times, he says, This is a clear, comprehensive, and compelling study. It shows Christology to be like a fabric made up of many threads, all tightly woven together, a doctrine with presuppositions, connections, and consequences for the age in which we live.

This doctrine is here seen in its wholeness, and that is what makes this study so theologically wholesome. It is fresh and excellent. David F. Wells, Distinguished Senior Research Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and author of The Courage to be Protestant, Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergence in the Postmodern World.

Well, those are very powerful commendations for this book. And if you could, Dr. Wellum, as you know, the topic of God the Son Incarnate, the doctrine of Christ, this topic has been written about numerous times, not only by great heroes of the faith of the past, whether they be ancient or more recent, such as the 16th, 17th, and 18th and 19th centuries, but also from, it has been addressed by contemporary authors, and I've had some of those authors on this program.

What did you think was needed in writing on this particular subject that drove you to say, I need to write this volume, because although there may be many excellent things available, there's just something that I.

Want to contribute myself? Yeah, that's a great question, and obviously we stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before us, so in some sense we don't, on this particular doctrine, because of its careful exposition through the ages, we're not really saying anything brand new in the sense of, oh, here's a new insight.

Yet, for every age, every day, there needs to be an articulation and a re-articulation of the foundational truths of the faith for the Church today, and that's really the job of systematic theology, to make sure that we are speaking in the context of some of the challenges, the problems, the trends, and so on that are going today, and to lay out a faithful exposition.

And so a part of the series that the book is part of is Crossway's series on the foundations of evangelical theology, is to lay out each of the doctrinal areas in such a way that it's saying, here's what evangelicals should be affirming today, and doing so in light of things that are going on, and, you know, historical reflection where we are in the 21st century.

So, one thing that, you know, it's nothing new here, yet, you know, when I wrote the work, I was very deeply burdened to make sure that, and this shows up in part one of the book, that we approach doctrine and theology, and particularly this subject of the person of Christ and Christology, according to the Scriptures, and we do it faithfully, and we do it with a proper theological method, which is not always done.

And so, history of the Church, there's been a uniform witness all the way to the Enlightenment times, we'll say to the 1600s of, you know, in the early Church, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the post-Reformation, who is the Lord Jesus Christ?

Well, He's God the Son Incarnate. In light of the challenges of the Enlightenment, and critical theories, and so on, we need to be able to withstand those challenges, and we need to do so firmly on the basis of a Christian worldview, a Christian theology, a proper Christian methodology, and so that, in some sense, was a little new, because it had to address the challenges of the day, and so that was part of the part one, so how do we move from biblical text to proper theology in light of the challenges of the day, to give a full biblical defense and worldview defense, and then thereafter was in one place, Church has actually said, unfortunately, as we live in the 21st century, there's a lot of historical amnesia, right?

So we think that part of our age is to, and so what was going on in evangelical thought that were departures from what I'm going to call, they had to be dealt with. I think many, many people in the evangelical Church thought, well, there's really no, there's no difference of opinion on who Jesus is with among evangelicals and Bible believers, but that's just not the case.

So I had to, as we worked through the work, at the end of it, take on some of those trends that were going on in the evangelical world. So all of that brings the book up to date, shows contemporary issues that need to be addressed as we faithfully articulate who Jesus is.

And proclaim the gospel today. Now I'm sure you agree that this problem that you have just just in detail described of churches and pastors and denominations and Christian individuals developing these unbiblical and even heretical understandings of Christ is a product of the very tragic lack of genuine exegesis of the scriptures and genuine study because you will have in many churches across the American landscape, and I'm sure globally, where they just love to lift up the name of Jesus and they love singing to him and about him, but they really don't, for the most part, possibly not ever, dig deep and plumb to the depths of the unsearchable riches of the word of God to really exegete and bring to the surface, to bring to the light of day, who Jesus Christ was, is, and ever will be.

Because there seems to be a championing of shallowness in regard to who Christ is, as much as people may love to talk.

About him and sing about him and sing to him. Well, that's exactly right, and it's not an engagement with scripture, it's not a proper exposition and exegesis of the text, and alongside that is also the adoption of ideas and assumptions, or what we sometimes even say presuppositions and so on, that are foreign to the scriptures, so that even if they do some exegesis, they are already not understanding what scripture is saying as a whole, they're not understanding those texts in context, they're not then understanding how the church has understood these passages, so it's a combination of things.

It's not doing engaged exegesis, it's the wrong interpretive methods as well that are being brought to bear, it's adopting false ideas that are alien to the Christian theology and Christian worldview, so it becomes a complicated affair, but at the bottom, the bottom line would be they're not taking scripture seriously, and they're not following scripture's own presentation of who the Son of God is, from old to new, a whole Bible, and realizing that he is the Son from eternity who has become incarnate, and so there's a whole host of things that are going on, especially in our day that it's so easy to pick up false ideas from the society around us.

Well, I think it would be wise for you to begin in as much of a summary fashion as you can, letting our listeners know, what is the truly biblical description of Jesus Christ, God the Son incarnate, and if you could give us the the primary things that all Christians should and must believe in regard to this very important doctrine, and by the way, it's interesting that you have as a subtitle, The Doctrine of Christ.

It's a very bold subtitle in a day and age when doctrine is dismissed as being nothing but divisive trivia that really just prevents the enthusiasm and the ecumenism of those who claim to love Christ, and they look down upon doctrine as if you can actually say anything that you believe about what the Bible teaches without bringing up doctrine, but it is an interesting phrase, the Doctrine of Christ.

Before we go into your specific description and definition of God the Son incarnate, if you could tell us why you chose to use that phrase,.

The Doctrine of Christ. Well, because doctrine is that which summarizes and states as a whole the biblical teaching, and doctrine is very close to the older understanding of dogma. This is what we ought to believe.

This is what God's Word teaches. This is what the whole counsel of God teaches from Genesis to Revelation, and to not maintain these doctrinal truths, these theological truths, these dogmas, especially in this case, is a life-and-death issue, so that the doctrine is saying, these are just nice wishes and thoughts.

This is dogmatic. This is theology. This is truth. This is objective truth that Scripture gives to us, that God has made known to us, and this needs to be embraced, believed, proclaimed, loved, and taught, and all of that gets bound up with the Doctrine of Christ.

This is what the whole Bible teaches regarding who the Lord Jesus is, and we have to say, with the area you commented about, some who see doctrine as divisive, and this type of thing, the truth of the matter is that they just impose their own doctrine.

These individuals who will say, well, you have doctrine, and we don't, and we just love Jesus, well, you just have to push further and realize that they have a whole doctrine, it's just not the correct doctrine, and they are just, in fact, they are the ones who say, we must fit into their mold, and you see this in theology, and you see this in all areas of life, especially morality, and these kind of things, and so we cannot be pushed by that.

We have to say, wait a second here, you need to articulate accurately who you think Jesus is. There's many Jesuses running around, but there's only one Jesus of the Bible, and that is what doctrine seeks to say, this is the Jesus that is presented to us, and that's what the Doctrine of Christ is.

Always keep that in mind, everyone has a doctrine, everyone has a theology, they just don't. Now, when we come to our understanding, then, of who the Jesus of the Bible is, I try to capture that in many ways with the title of the book.

Often, when we speak of the Lord Jesus, we just say God incarnate, but that's a little misleading if you're not careful, because the word we are saying that, of course, the Lord Jesus, isn't just the entire, now tying us to the Doctrine of the Trinity, so that there is a Father, there is a Son, there is a Holy Spirit, divine nature, the same essence, a number of ways of saying that.

There's one true and living God, and it's the Son of God from all eternity, the Son, who has always been there in relation to the Father and the Spirit, is fully God, just as the Father is fully God, and the Spirit is fully God, the Son is fully God, the Son, at a point in time, adds to Himself, human nature, Philippians 2, or John 1, 14, the Word, the Son became flesh, so that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son, who is fully God, He is the One who shares the divine nature with the Father and the Spirit, and He adds to Himself a second nature, a human nature, so that He is fully human, so He is the Son from eternity, the divine Son, who remains a divine Son, and always is a divine Son, who then becomes the One who is incarnate, the One who is the Man Christ.

In the language of the Church, Chalcedon, or Chalcedon, the famous Council in 451, often this is summarized, who is the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, He's the Son, the divine Son, one person, fully God, fully man, gives you some sense of the title, picking up the summary of the statement, this is the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son from eternity, who has become...

Amen, and we're going to go to our first break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr. Stephen J. Willem, on God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ, please send us an email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with a little less than 90 minutes to go, is Dr. Stephen J. Wellam, and we are discussing his book, God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ.

If you have a question that you'd like to ask, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And we already do have a listener question that I was going to wait a little bit before we took listener questions, but this one I think helps sets the stage further for this very important topic.

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and Susan says, as much as we can say that the Bible has very vital and necessary teachings about who Jesus Christ is, must we not be very careful in going beyond what is written and thinking that we can possibly grasp in perfection things like the hypostatic union and other things.

That are beyond our comprehension? Yeah, it's a great question, and obviously we have to, as we think through all the scripture says, we don't want to say anything that is adding to scripture or contrary to scripture.

What I would say, though, is that that's not what's taking place when we think about things such as when we move into theology, the hypostatic union, and wrestle with these areas. It really comes back to the question of what theology is and how theology is to be done.

Theology best goes back ancient in the history of the churches, is faith-seeking understanding, and by faith I mean that which is tied to what scripture says and what scripture gives. It's not a blind faith, it's a faith in God's word and what he has revealed of himself.

But we also, as we receive God's revelation and we read it and we then try to understand, in this case, who is the Lord Jesus? How do we make sense of all the biblical data about him that leads us to then try to understand?

And in fact, God wants us to understand. He's given us his word so that we will know him and we will love him and serve him and honor him. And as we read his word, we then see who the Lord Jesus is. As we work right across the Bible, we see that the Lord Jesus is the Son from eternity.

I think the best place for that is, say, in John 1. In the beginning is this work to face with. Realize then that he has become flesh, and we then think through the biblical data regarding the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and we then begin to say, this is how we are to understand how that material is to be put together to be faithful for itself.

Because some will put the data together in such a way that begins to deny the scriptural teaching, is what we call. So some will say, well, he can't be the Son from eternity. He must be a created being, which would be, say, a Jehovah's Witness or ancient Aryans.

And we say, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what the scripture says. That's unfaithful to it. So as we then try to put the pieces of scripture together, according to the way scripture teaches these things, inevitably, we then say, we start wrestling and giving terminology to hypostatic union, or what does it mean for him to be fully God and fully man?

What do we do with passages that speak of him, John 8, 58, where Jesus will address himself as, before Abraham was, I am. And he takes the very name of God to himself from Exodus 3, which has to mean that he's claiming to be the Lord.

He's the God of the Old Testament. He's the one who is the Lord, the Son, who is God equal with the Father. And yet, at the same time, he will say, only my Father knows the end, or I don't know. We don't eliminate any of the data.

So what theology is doing is trying to wrestle with all, yet it's using, sometimes, terminology to then account for, or make sense of, what scripture is teaching, so that we preserve the full scriptural teaching against denials of what it actually says.

So, yes, we have to be too careful that you don't go so far. We stay with what scripture says, but scripture itself is driving us to think through these matters very carefully. When Jesus says in John 5 that, you know, I can do nothing on my own, other doing, and then says, whatever the Father does, I do, we have to think about that, and we have to meditate on that.

What does that mean for the Son of God to do everything that the Father does, which means create universes, and bring judgments, and sustains all things, which is an act of deity? Yet, at the same time, he says, I can do nothing on my own.

Well, we've got to put both of those together if we're going to take, and that leads us then to think theologically about all that God has said. And that's where the church then thinks about hypostatic union, and the relationship of the two natures of Christ, and so on, and so on, and so on.

And it's not adding to scripture, it's not going beyond scripture, it could. You have to be then instead saying, what we're doing.

Here is being... Now, just before we leave the concept of hypostatic union, does this not especially focus upon the fact that Christ is fully God, and fully man, and yet there is no.

Mixture of the two? Yes, I mean, hypostatic union, the very term itself, is from the Greek, which is picking up what we would say today, person, right? So that there's a long history of from the Greek, to the Latin, to English, and so on.

But when we speak about the hypostatic union, we're talking very specifically about what John 1 14 teaches. John 1 14 makes it very clear that the Word became flesh. It doesn't say that the divine nature became flesh, it speaks of the Word, which is identified in John's Gospel as the divine Son, the person of the Son.

Now, the language of person, we've now, you know, sort of now making sense of this data, that there's a Word in relationship to the Father, the Son in relationship to the Father, what are they called?

Well, they are persons who share the same nature, and it's the person who became flesh. So it's the person of the Son who added to himself a human nature, so that there's two natures, yet the deity, the divine Son, who shares with the Father and Spirit, the divine nature, it doesn't lose that deity, it's not blended with his human nature, is that he adds to himself a human nature, so there's now two, and the hypostatic union then reflects, how is it that the person of the Son has two natures?

How are those natures then related, and all of them, the implications of that, as in the person of Christ, we preserve what is foundational to Scripture, the creator-creature distinction, the difference between God and human, the divine nature and the human nature, all of that is being wrestled with when we talk.

About the hypostatic union. Well, I think that it would be very wise of us now to discuss, so we can basically warn our listeners where not to wander in regard to current known Christian evangelists, pastors, writers, and so on, but if you could, let our listeners know something about contemporary Christology and the two major.

Trends in contemporary Christology. Yeah, well, I mean, there's a number of trends that we have to think about in terms of outside of the larger evangelical world, and then obviously the trends that go on within the Christian Church and the evangelical world.

All of these trends need to be set over against the, not in every doctrine, but there's a number of doctrines, the doctrine of the Trinity, and particularly the person of Christ is what we're looking at here, the doctrine of Christ.

There has been, from the very beginning, agreement. The Scriptures are teaching this. They're teaching that the Lord Jesus is God the Son incarnate, that he is God the Son, fully God, fully man, one person, two natures, and that then got put into creeds and confessions that were consistent throughout the history of the Church, all the way until, say, the 1600s or late 1500s, right?

So that's the trend that's gone, and it's been, that teaching has been put together in a very specific way, trying to account for all the scriptural data and do justice to the biblical data and so on, and that's why we call that a classical view of who the Lord Jesus is, and there's been a whole history of that that's gone to our recent days.

Now, outside of the Western world, where you have the influence of Christianity on Western culture in Europe and so on, people began to depart from these things, and there's trends that basically reduce the Jesus of the Bible, they deny his deity, they deny the Trinity, they deny the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus as fully God, fully man, and they then recreated Jesus in terms of the search and trends for Jesus.

You know, a contemporary figure today, like a Bart Ehrman and others like that, which would deny anything of what the Bible is saying, and they reconstruct the Bible. That's a whole trend that you'll pick up in the universities, you'll read in the magazines, you know, a whole liberal Christianity that moves in that direction.

We need to oppose that, because they're not taking seriously the Jesus of the Bible.

Yes, in fact, Bart Ehrman specifically, I think one of the things that makes him more dangerous is that he is an agnostic who believes that Jesus actually historically existed. So sometimes, when you're listening to him, you might not be aware that he is not a Christian.

He is not a believer that Jesus is God. He used to be. Well, I don't know, obviously, he obviously never truly believed it, because as a Reformed Christian, I don't believe that a genuine believer can become an apostate like Bart Ehrman, but he professed to believe, was an evangelical, and in fact was considered a rising star by some amongst evangelicalism.