April 12, 2018 Show with Dr. James M. Renihan on “What Does the Bible Teach About Ministerial Training?”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 12th day of April 2018.

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I'm delighted to have back on the program a returning guest, Dr. James M.

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Renahan, who is president and professor of historical theology at the new IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas, which will be launching its first semester,

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God willing, this September. And today we are going to be discussing what does the Bible teach about ministerial training.

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So if you know of anybody that has a desire to be a minister, you know of people who are already pastors, well, call them up, send them an email, send them a text, tell them to tune in to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio anywhere in the world at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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And if it's impossible for them to listen live, make sure you tell them about the program that they can listen to tomorrow on the archived recording, which should be available after 12 noon tomorrow.

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But it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. James M.

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Renahan. Thanks, Chris. It's good to talk to you again. And let me give our email address for our listeners right away.

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If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Renahan, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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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

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you disagree with your own pastor on theology or a particular doctrinal issue, or perhaps you're a pastor and you disagree with your own denomination or your congregation on some theological matter.

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We understand that you might want to remain anonymous, but other than that, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

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Well, at the outset of the program, Dr. Renahan, tell our listeners who may be unfamiliar with this exciting new project, tell us about the

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IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. Sure. Well, for 20 years

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I've been at Westminster Seminary, California, serving as the dean and professor of historical theology at the

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Institute of Reformed Epistudies. And it's been a great 20 years, a wonderful relationship with the seminary, with the faculty.

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Those guys are dear brothers and good friends. But a couple of years ago, we began to consider the possibility of advancing our institute into a full -blown seminary program.

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We did a lot of research and came to the conclusion that this would be a good thing to do.

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And so, with the blessing of the folks here at Westminster, we are moving on to Texas to begin a full seminary program.

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Here in California, we have offered five classes that apply to the Westminster Seminary Master of Divinity degree, but in Texas, we'll be offering a full program and granting the degree ourselves.

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We already have the license from the state of Texas to grant the degree. Lots of legal work has been done.

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We have a faculty in place. We have a curriculum put together. We have an astoundingly large number of interested prospective students.

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The library is growing. We're really excited about this, and so we hope to begin with summer

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Greek at the end of July and the fall semester in the first week of September.

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Great. And we will be repeating this information, of course, but if anybody wants more information about the

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IRBS Theological Seminary, all you have to do is go to their website, irbsseminary .org,

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irbsseminary .org, and don't forget to put two S's back -to -back in that URL, since it is

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IRBS Seminary. And before I take any of our listener questions, which are already popping up, let me ask a few questions of my own.

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Have you considered changing the name of IRBS now that it is independent from Westminster Theological Seminary?

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Because a lot of people, obviously, when they see that name, they're not automatically going to understand what IRBS stands for.

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Yeah, that's an interesting question, and we struggled for a long time with the name that we had to give to this, because we wanted something that would help people to understand what we're all about.

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And several folks argued that because we've had 20 years of experience, and because we're viewing this as a continuation of what we've been doing in California, it would be helpful to us to keep those initials,

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IRBS, for the sake of continuity and identity.

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And so after a lot of discussion, a lot of thought, we came to the conclusion that we would do that.

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As one of our friends said, it's a clunky name, but people remember clunky names.

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I thought that that was a good insight into this. So IRBS Seminary would be like IBM, which originally stood for International Business Machines, or BP, which used to stand for British Petroleum, but doesn't anymore, it's just BP.

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And so IRBS Theological Seminary ties us to the past, but it moves us forward into the future as well.

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So, interesting question, Chris. At this point, that's our name.

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And, well, I'm sure that in time it will become a household name just like IBM, at least with Reform people.

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At least with Calvinists, it will. I'd be curious to know what a reading list would look like for an

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IRBS course on Baptist covenant theology Of course, there are a lot of people, both

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Baptists and Presbyterians, who will say that's an oxymoron, Baptist covenant theology.

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But obviously we do not believe that as Reform Baptists. If you could give us a list.

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There have been a lot of minor works on the subject from various viewpoints over the past several years, but there is no single major work that authoritatively defines our position.

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Yeah, that's an interesting question, too. I wouldn't be teaching that class, and so it wouldn't be my call to definitively set up a reading list.

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But I assume that whoever would be the professor of that class would probably assign

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Nehemiah Cox and John Owen, the book Covenant Theology from Adam to Christ, as a primary source.

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They might choose R .B .C. Howell's book, The Covenants. They might choose A .W.

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Pink's book on The Covenants. They probably would want to choose my son

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Sam's PhD thesis, which has just been published under the title

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From Shadow to Substance, The Federal Theology of the English Particular Baptist. He wrote that at the

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Pre -University of Amsterdam and just received his degree last fall, and it's been put in print by the

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Center for Baptist History and Heritage at Oxford University. So I expect that they would probably want that.

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And then there are a variety of other more recent works that could be consulted as well.

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Now Sam, if I'm not mistaken, didn't he also write a book on impassibility of God?

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Two of them, yeah. He did God Without Passions, A Reader, and then

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God Without Passions, A Primer. So yeah, this is his third published book.

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Great. I'm going to take one of our listener calls before I continue on with some more questions of my own.

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This is a bit off topic, but I figure I'll have this one asked as early as possible so that we can continue on sticking to the major theme here.

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If anybody else has questions, try to keep them to something in regard to the training of those in the ministry.

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But this does apply since this is a unique aspect of Reformed Baptist theology as opposed to Baptists of other persuasions,

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I think. We have Jeremy in Arlington, Texas who says,

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Can Dr. Renahan develop why the Christian Sabbath is to be on Sunday? I know that it is implicit in the

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New Testament, but I've heard some pushback from people in my church that it doesn't really matter what day due to Romans chapter 14 verses 5 through 6.

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I am a Sabbatarian, but I want to be prepared to defend that position more. Now obviously you would be giving us a summary because that could be a lengthy discussion.

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In fact, Jeremy, if you send me an email later, I can get you the audio for a two -day debate that I aired on the old

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio program broadcasting out of New York between one of the faculty members of IRBS Theological Seminary, Sam Waldron, and a

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Seventh -day Baptist. They debated this issue on this program, the old program, which is not on the new website.

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We haven't gotten all the old programs archived on the new website yet. But if you email me, I'll get you that very lengthy discussion on this.

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But Dr. Renahan, do you have anything to say about it? Sure. Hi, Jeremy. Thanks for asking the question.

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Yeah, Chris said I should summarize, so that's what I will do. You see a pattern that begins right at the resurrection of the church meeting together on the first day of the week.

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Of course, the disciples are gathered in the room on the night of the resurrection, and Jesus comes and meets them.

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And then, if eight days later, when Jesus comes and presents himself very graciously to Thomas, and in that counting, the eighth day after the first meeting would have been the

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Sunday again. The day of Pentecost, when the church was gathered together, was a

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Sunday, 50 days after Passover. In Acts chapter 20, verse 7, and the context there, you have an interesting thing.

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Paul arrives in Troas five or six days prior to what the events that are described to us in verse 7.

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But Luke says that when the church came together to bake bread, they observed the with the church.

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On any other day, he waits until the Sunday to meet together with the church and to praise

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God. But I think that the strongest argument for the change of day is in Hebrews chapter 3 and 4, and its theology of the resurrection and the relationship between the

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Sabbath that remains for people, God, and the resurrection. You know, there are two versions of the

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Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5. And in the fourth commandment, there's a difference between them.

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And the letter to the Hebrews capitalizes on that difference. The old

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Sabbath, the seventh day, looked back to two events, the old creation, the creation of the world, and the exodus from Egypt.

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But the new Sabbath memorializes the new creation and the new exodus, that is, the new creation that comes through Christ's resurrection and the new exodus that comes as a result of His resurrection setting us free from sins.

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And so the first day of the week is the most appropriate day because it memorializes to us the wonder of the resurrection of Christ and the benefits that come to us in redemption.

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John Owen and his work on A Day of Rest handles that in depth in his commentary on the book of Hebrews.

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That's just a summary, but that's where I would go, and I really do, I love the way that the letter to the

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Hebrews capitalizes on the word katapausis, which means rest, and then changes it to sabbatismos when he says there remains a

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Sabbath -keeping for the people of God. We're going to go to an early break because I want

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Dr. Renahan to hang up and call a different phone line for our interview, because we do have a little bit of a static issue, and I think that if we use a different phone line it will be cleared up.

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If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson 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

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Well, I believe we are now back with Dr. Runahan, correct? I hope I'm on. Yes, and you're much, you're sounding much better.

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There's no static on this line. Okay, well, good. Thank you. Yeah, we have to remember next time we have you on to use this different line, because for some reason we were having over -modulation on the original one.

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Can you tell us what a theological seminary is? That may sound like a basic question, but some people might actually have misunderstandings about that.

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Yeah, you know, I have found as I've talked to people that there are a lot of people who, they hear the word, and they know that it's something out there that does something good somewhere, but they're not really sure what it's about.

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Really, a theological seminary is a school, and it supports the churches by providing academic preparation for men who are called to go into the gospel ministry.

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Most churches are not equipped with the necessities for the training of men, so the seminary exists to provide them for the benefit of the church.

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It has to always view itself as a servant to the churches and not become an entity that is strictly for higher academic learning.

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I mean, that's what it is for, but the purpose of that learning is for the benefit of the churches.

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So it's a training school to prepare, to give the academic preparation to men who would serve in pastoral ministry.

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And why is ministerial training important? Some people would say that if we really believe in the perspicuity of scriptures, that the scriptures are intended by God, that they are easily understood, that special training should not be all that important or necessary for somebody going into the ministry.

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How do you respond to that? Yeah, that's an objection that occasionally arises as well, and maybe it will lead to some further questions.

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But I would say the first reason is that the Bible itself tells us to do it. Paul, in 2

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Timothy chapter 2, very clearly tells Timothy that he is to train the next generation of men who themselves will be able to train others, and on and on and on.

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And in the context, it's very clearly the gospel that Paul is thinking of there, that the need to understand and to spread the gospel.

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Now, there's a whole lot more to talk about in terms of the basis in the

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Bible for ministerial training, but that's the first answer that I would give, is that the scriptures themselves tell us to do that.

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But beyond that, pastoral ministry is the most important task in the world.

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That's not to demean any other employment that anybody has, but everything else that we do, whatever it is, whether we work in a machine shop or we're a heart surgeon, has to do with this life.

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But pastoral ministry has to do with preparing people for the life to come.

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It has to do with teaching them about who God is, and what the gospel is, and what they must know, and what they must believe in order to receive the forgiveness of sins and to enjoy the blessing of eternal life.

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And I think too often, people treat that task as if it's a very simple thing that anyone can do, where the scriptures give to us examples of the fact that it's actually a very difficult and challenging thing.

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We need converted men, we need the power of the Holy Spirit, we need dependence on the scriptures, but we need to be thoroughly prepared in all of those things for the task that is before us.

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And then the third thing that I would say is that the challenges of the world in which we live, of a culture that's far removed from the culture of scripture and the world in which it came to humanity, our societies are so different today that to understand and communicate what the

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Bible says to individuals on the street or even people in churches is a really important task.

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One of my friends once said, if you go to a cardiologist, what kind of training do you want from him?

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Well, you want the best kind of training. You want him to know exactly how to diagnose your problem and how to give a prognosis for assistance, recovery from it.

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I think that there's an analogy from that to pastoral ministry. We don't want somebody coming to us with half -baked ideas of what the

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Bible says. We want them to know thoroughly what the Bible says and be able to minister that to people of all sorts, of different ages, with different backgrounds, with different troubles and problems that they bring with them in different circumstances of life.

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You know, you begin to think about a church. Let's say a church of 100 people. All of those 100 people have different challenges that face them.

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To think that without the right kind of preparation you can go to each of those people and help them with their spiritual problems is really an overestimation of your own abilities.

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And the seminary helps men to be able to face those challenges so that the best kind of pastoral care can be given to people in all of the variety of circumstances that they face.

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Well, you know, a lot of times when this issue comes up, you will have people like Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

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And to my knowledge, I don't think he had any formal training. And here he is known globally over a century later as the

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Prince of Preachers. And the man's volumes of writings, the transcribed sermons that he has available to us so many years later after his departing this earth and entering into heaven, even are used in seminaries themselves.

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And you'll have the most brilliant of theologians using his sermons and his writings. So how do you respond to something like that?

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Yeah, that's a really interesting question. You know, Spurgeon, all that you said about Spurgeon is true, but there's more to the picture.

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Part of it is that he, of course, he was a genius. He was very unusual in terms of his mental capacity.

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I think maybe the only person that we have seen in our lifetime who has the mental ability of a

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Spurgeon would be someone like R .C. Sproul. You know, R .C. could stand up and preach for half an hour without any notes and virtually without any long -term preparation because he had done so much work beforehand.

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He had it all in his mind. And Spurgeon seems to have been a man who could do that. But Spurgeon spent a lot of his childhood and teen years at his grandfather's reading the

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Puritan books that his grandfather had on the bookshelf. And so in a sense,

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Spurgeon had a preparation from the best teachers by that reading. But another thing that people forget when they cite

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Charles Spurgeon as an example is that Spurgeon himself saw the importance of ministerial training, and he began in the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle at what was called the Pastor's College. And the purpose of the Pastor's College was to train men for the ministry.

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So Spurgeon is an advocate of ministerial training. He's a bad example to use.

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To pull up Spurgeon is to say, you're forgetting what Spurgeon was all about, because he recognized his circumstances were less than the best that they ought to have been, and that it was more beneficial for the future for him to establish this

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Pastor's College. He hired a man named George Rogers, and they did a good work in London in preparing young men to serve in the gospel ministry.

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So Spurgeon was an advocate for ministerial training, not an opponent. And so he's not the best example for people to cite.

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And going to the actual inerrant God -breathed word, we have the 12 apostles who didn't go to seminary.

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So how do you respond to that, which is even more of an important issue? Yeah, well, I mean, they spent three years with Jesus.

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They went to Jesus Academy. Yeah, basically, that's right. They, you know, okay, if somebody has the privilege of walking beside and watching the

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Lord for three years, that's pretty good preparation. They may have been fishermen and tax collectors, not the academics of society, but they had the best possible education you could get.

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So, you know, to bring them up doesn't really make the point either.

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Yeah, and could one rightly respond to that argument, that it is interesting that the apostle

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Paul wrote most of the New Testament, and he was certainly a very educated man.

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He was a Pharisee. Yeah, in fact, I would like to at some point talk about Paul, because he's a really good example of the benefits of a thoroughgoing training.

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Yeah, well, perhaps we can have a full program on that. What should a seminary teach and provide to its students, first and foremost?

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Oh, that's good. I would say, you know, what we've tried to think through in preparing for what we're doing is, what is the best possible preparation that we can give to men?

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And the first thing that we have wanted to emphasize is learning that is presented in an atmosphere of genuine piety.

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We really believe that a useful minister is a man who loves

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Christ and loves people. And even the study of Greek verbs or the

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Hebrew language or the details of biblical interpretation need to be in a climate where there is love and respect to God, a genuine fear of God that permeates the atmosphere of the classroom.

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And so, you know, learning sometimes can be dry and dusty, but it doesn't have to be.

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Learning ought to be something that fills our minds, fills our heart with wonder at the glory of God.

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And so, you know, we've, I think you had recently on the show, Steve Martin. In fact, I listened when he was on.

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And we asked Steve to be our Dean of Students because Steve understands the principles of what's called experiential

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Calvinism, Calvinism that genuinely focuses upon the piety of life.

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And we've asked Steve to be our Dean of Students so that he will help us to establish from the beginning a climate in which our classes emphasize that level of piety, the necessity of each of the men to benefit from the means of grace and to walk with God on a daily basis.

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So I think that's where you begin. That's the first thing. Of course, there are other things that the seminary needs to provide.

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Probably after you think of piety, it would be exposition of scripture.

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And that means instruction in the original languages of scripture.

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It's really surprising that there are a lot of schools today that are diminishing the role of the

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Greek and Hebrew languages. And as my beloved friend Ron Baines, who's now with Christ, used to say, if a pastor is not able to work in the

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Greek and the Hebrew, then he and his people are one step removed from the writings of the

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Bible themselves, which come to us in those languages. And Ron was right. And so we believe that it's really important to give a thorough education in the languages.

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And that education in the languages is not just so that you can read Hebrew and Greek, but so that you can use them in reading and understanding and interpreting the

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Bible for God's people and for the lost that you preach the gospel to. So, sound exposition of scripture that's based in the

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Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. Then, of course, it also ought to provide a thorough theological training.

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Men need to understand what the Bible teaches us about God, about man, about salvation, about the church, about his purpose for this world from beginning to end.

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All of those various heads of theology, they need to know them and understand them. And understand them in a way that they see the integrated nature of Christian theology, how one thing influences another along the way.

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By the way, was Ron Baines from England? No, Ron was pastor up in Maine.

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He was one of our trustees, and he was just one of my best friends.

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He passed away October 28th, a year and a half ago. Oh, wow.

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Yeah, for some reason, I was connecting him with some British Reformed Baptist that I saw preach in the 1990s who went home to be with the

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Lord. He may have a similar name. Maybe it's Roger Baines. I'm not sure. I don't know.

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August 28th, two years ago, I remember that day very well.

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Well, I'm sorry for your loss, but obviously Ron is not experiencing any remorse about this at all.

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No, no, no. You know, another thing that—and I emphasized this earlier—another thing the seminary needs to do is really walk closely with churches.

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And one of the things that we decided from the beginning that was really important—and I learned this here at Westminster Seminary in California because they have a great program—but it's internships and apprenticeships.

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Internships are where students are required to be involved in a local church.

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They develop a formal relationship with the church, and the church takes them through a variety of tasks, exposes them to the real -life ministry.

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This can be done on a weekly basis, but even better during the summer when they can maybe spend four, six, eight weeks at a pastor's elbow learning from him.

37:38

An apprenticeship is more like after you graduate, you go to a church for a year or two years or three years, and there learn some more.

37:50

And sometimes when men have done that, they've stayed at those churches, they've been called to be elders there.

37:56

Other times, that opportunity to be apprenticed to a pastor has opened the door for them to go and serve by themselves in another congregation.

38:06

But we really believe in this. You know, the seminary is about academics, but it has to find a way to give real -life ministerial experiences to students, and only a church can do that.

38:19

Seminary doesn't baptize, seminary doesn't observe Lord's Supper, the seminary doesn't do visitation, it doesn't provide help for people in the midst of their needs.

38:32

And so it needs the churches, it serves the churches, it stands beside the churches, and it's the churches that have to provide those things to the men.

38:43

We have another Texan, we have PJ from Bridge City, Texas.

38:50

And PJ says, I was previously a seminary student at Grace School of Theology in Houston, Texas.

38:58

I extremely disagree with their soteriology, and 90 % of my papers ended up having to be rebuttals.

39:05

You can imagine this was not a very enjoyable situation in most cases. I am very

39:11

Reformed in my theology in doctrines of salvation, but I am also classic pre -mill.

39:19

Would your school be a good fit for me, or would it be another situation where I have to write rebuttal after rebuttal?

39:28

Well, PJ, probably it would be.

39:37

Although, you know, the one area where you probably would rebut something is that the majority of the faculty will not be classical pre -millennial.

39:49

Now, is that different from historic pre -millennial? I'm assuming the same, Chris. I don't know.

39:55

Okay, because the confession certainly doesn't require one specific understanding of the entire—

40:02

No, that's right. And there were, in the 17th century when the form of pre -millennialism—it might not have been a literal thousand years on earth, but they would have argued for some kind of earthly reign of Christ for an indefinite period.

40:24

But, you see, most of our professors—not all, but most of our professors—will be more sympathetic to amillennialism.

40:33

And so you would run into that in a course on eschatology and perhaps other places, but that would be the one area of difficulty.

40:44

You know, Chris, I mean, PJ, if you look at our website, you can send an inquiry to us, and we'll have somebody who is better able to communicate with you, understand more what your question is about, and be able to help you.

41:02

And maybe it would be a great fit. Well, thanks, PJ. And I would love to hear an update from you and see what progresses in the weeks and months to come in regard to perhaps you enrolling as a student there at IRB Estheological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

41:23

But thank you for your question, and keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and spreading the word in Texas and beyond.

41:31

Why start a new school? Aren't there ones that exist that are sufficient? Yeah, that's a fair question, too.

41:43

Yes, there are a lot of good schools that do good work. In our beginning, our school in no way is intended to be a criticism of anybody else.

41:55

You know, I've loved being here at Westminster Seminary. My two sons are graduates—or two of my sons are graduates—of

42:02

Westminster, and I deeply appreciate the education that they've received here. I think Westminster is a great school to attend.

42:12

I've benefited myself from the different schools that I have been part of over the years, schools where I have been a student, and I'm thankful to God for them.

42:24

But the reason that we have wanted to start a school is that there is no place that holds the doctrines that we believe the

42:36

Bible teaches in all of their fullness. There's no accredited residential school like that.

42:46

We, you know, we're committed to the theology of the Second London Confession, the

42:51

Baptist Confession of 1689, because we believe it teaches what the

42:57

Bible teaches. In my time here at Westminster, I have really appreciated the emphasis that they have for Presbyterian students on a commitment to the

43:10

Westminster Confession or the Three Forms of Unity, and I've seen the great benefit that comes to the students and then to the churches where the students serve of a unified faculty who are committed to the same principles.

43:26

The Presbyterians who graduate from here are really well trained in that whole

43:32

Presbyterian system. Now, of course, my job has been to try to help Reformed Baptist understand the

43:39

Reformed system in its Reformed Baptist presentation. But the benefit that those

43:47

Presbyterian students have received here is what we want to provide to young men so that they don't have to unlearn or relearn things that they might get in another school.

43:59

There are many really fine men who teach in schools, there are many really fine schools, but there aren't any residential accredited schools that will provide what we provide.

44:12

And that's why we want to train men, because we want to give to Reformed Baptists what we see

44:19

Presbyterians benefiting from in schools like Westminster, California or Puritan Reformed Seminary or places like that.

44:26

Now, you've already obviously mentioned some distinctives, but can you mention any other distinctives of IRBS Theological Seminary that makes you stand out, even amongst other

44:36

Reformed Baptist institutions of higher learning? Well, the first one that would distinguish us from others is just that our goal is to be residential.

44:49

You know, there's a place for different models of training, but we really believe in the residential model, that men coming together in a community, bringing, if they're married, bring their wives, their families, and those communities, those couples, those families, those individuals getting to know one another as a mutual support group, getting to know their professors, spending time with their professors in class and then outside of class, having access to a really fine library, all of those things are benefits that we believe are important.

45:24

And so, yeah, to be residential is one of the distinctives. Likewise, I've used the word accredited.

45:31

We're not accredited yet, but we will be applying for accreditation, and we have determined from the beginning that we will meet all of the accreditation standards so that when we apply, we don't have to change things.

45:46

We will know, or we will be already walking down the road, and the accreditors can look at us and say, this is good, thank you for doing this, and then we don't have to change directions in the way that we do it.

46:02

But, you know, there are other things that are, maybe those are distinctives that show some differences from some other brothers.

46:17

But there are more important things that I hope we will emphasize as we move into the future.

46:28

I can think of five. We want to, and we've already talked about this in a sense, we want to be confessional.

46:38

We want the confession of faith to determine our courses, our instruction.

46:46

We want to be faithful to it. We want people to be able to look at us and say, we know what they believe because they're public about it, they're honest about it, there's integrity in their statements.

46:57

Whether or not I agree with them doesn't matter, I know what they're about, I know what they believe. So we want the confession, which we believe is a really fine summary of the teaching of the

47:11

Word of God, we want the confession to be like guardrails that keep us along the road on the way.

47:20

Secondly, to go back to one of your earlier questions, we are covenantalists.

47:27

We're very strongly covenantal. And so covenant theology will be a central part of our curriculum.

47:36

Now, I told you before, I won't be the one teaching the class in covenant theology, but covenant theology will be present throughout our system, throughout our classes.

47:47

It will inform much of what we do, and it will be central. And so when

47:53

PJ asked his question, if PJ were a dispensationalist, he would be uncomfortable, and he would be rebutting in class or in his papers our covenant theology.

48:04

But that's a central, non -negotiable, distinctive for us. Another thing is the church, and I guess

48:14

I'm picking up on what I've already said, that the church is central. We have to view ourselves as servants to the church.

48:20

And so we're cultivating relationships with churches in the Dallas -Fort Worth area, and we already have established relationships with churches around the country, and even around the world.

48:31

People would like, in various places in the world, they'd like our students to come for internships. And so we don't want to lose our focus on the importance of the church.

48:43

Fourth thing I would say is the Bible. The Bible has to be central, and I'm going in order of importance here, so the last one is the most important.

48:52

The Bible needs to be at the center of everything we do. It needs to be loved and respected and taught and understood and just put into our minds and govern everything so that it is the final written authority for us.

49:10

It stands above the confession, and we want that to be our identity, and we want it to be the identity of the students.

49:18

We want them to graduate with that kind of love and appreciation for the Bible. And then the last distinctive, and I would hope that every

49:26

Christian school would want to do this, is we want Christ to be at the center of everything.

49:33

It's easy to say, but it's really our desire. And like I said, that's not a distinctive that separates us from anybody else, because I hope everybody else has that desire, but we need to state it.

49:45

We need to say we want the Lord Jesus Christ to be at the heart of everything that we do.

49:51

We want to honor Him. We want to proclaim Him. We want to see His majesty and His glory extolled among all of our students and in every church where they go and serve.

50:03

So those things will be sort of defining qualities of what we're about, the confession, covenant theology, the church, the

50:14

Bible, and our Lord Jesus. Yes, and obviously there are multitudes of seminaries and schools that may make a claim like that, that unlike IRB as theological seminaries are really nowhere on the same planet as biblical

50:34

Christianity or even the Christ of the Scripture. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are schools that do it well.

50:41

Let's be honest. There are schools that really do it well, but there are other schools that make the claim that don't.

50:46

And they allow other things to come in. And we just have to ask the Lord to guide us and guard us from falling away from the principles that we're starting with.

50:59

Well, I am going to go to our midway break right now. And when I return from the break,

51:05

I would like you to introduce our listeners to some of your faculty members by giving us a brief bio sketch of as many as you care to mention.

51:16

And I think that that might be something very enlightening and something of great interest to our listeners about IRB as theological seminary.

51:26

This is a longer than normal break because the Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a 12 minute break between our two segments.

51:37

So please be patient as we take this longer break than normal. And please take this time to not only write down the information that our advertisers provide so that you can patronize them, because when you help our advertisers remain in business, you are helping

51:53

Iron Sherp and Zion Radio remain in business or remain on the air. So please not only respond to our advertisers anytime you are able, but also take this time to write in a question to Dr.

52:05

Jim Renahan of the IRB as theological seminary. We already have a number of you waiting.

52:12

So we will get to as many of you as we can as time will allow. But please feel free to get in line because you never know how many we can fit in.

52:22

Send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

52:31

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

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God willing, we'll be right back after these messages with more of Dr. James Renahan and the

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IRB as theological seminary in Mansfield, Texas. I am

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if you mention Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. Before we return to our discussion with Dr.

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James M. Renahan of the IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas, we just have a couple more announcements we have coming up just in a matter of a couple of weeks.

01:05:49

In fact, even in a couple of days, tomorrow in fact, is when one of these events starts.

01:05:57

We're talking about the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. The title of the conference this year is

01:06:05

The Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit, and it will be held in two locations, neither of which is

01:06:11

Philadelphia. It is called the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology out of tribute or in tribute to the late

01:06:18

Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, now spending an eternity with Christ in heaven. He had conducted these conferences at the 10th

01:06:27

Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for many years, so even though it's no longer in Philadelphia, they still call the conference affectionately the

01:06:37

Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. The first location, which begins tomorrow, is the

01:06:44

First Christian Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. And the second location, the 27th through the 29th of April, will be held right around the corner from where I am,

01:06:56

Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Well, it's a lot further than right around the corner, but it's a half hour or more away.

01:07:03

Actually, it's more like two hours away, I believe. But I intend to be there, and God willing,

01:07:09

I will be there. So if you would like to register for either of these locations or both, go to Alliancenet .org,

01:07:18

Alliancenet .org, click on Events, and then click on the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology.

01:07:25

The speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, Conrad M. Bayway, who

01:07:31

I believe is one of the most powerful preachers alive on the planet Earth. We just had him yesterday as a guest on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, and if you missed it, go to our archive to listen to that discussion.

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I thought it was truly fascinating. Richard Phillips, who's a friend of mine, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

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Jonathan Masterd, David Murray, and Scott Oliphant. And if you would like to register, once again, go to Alliancenet .org,

01:07:56

Alliancenet .org, click on Events, and then click on Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology.

01:08:02

Please make sure that you tell the folks at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that you heard about these events from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio.

01:08:10

Last but not least, the part of the program that I really dislike conducting, and that's begging you for money.

01:08:18

I went for years without ever making a single public appeal for donations for Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, and my advertisers, who spend hard -earned money keeping this program on the air, have urged me for a long time to make these public appeals because of the urgent need of more finances.

01:08:37

So I finally, a number of months ago, caved in to their pressure, and I am making these daily public appeals for those of you who love this program and don't want it to disappear.

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Just go to IronSherpa'sIronRadio .com, click Support, and then click Click to Donate Now if you care to donate instantly with a debit or credit card.

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That's a fairly recent addition to the website of Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, largely due to many of you who have been asking for an easier and faster way to donate.

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And in fact, it was primarily people from other parts of the world that were making that request from Australia and the

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UK and other places. So now you can do that. Just go to IronSherpa'sIronRadio .com, click

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Support, and then click Click to Donate Now, and you can also send in a check the old -fashioned way via snail mail.

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There will be an address that pops up when you click Support. If you want to advertise with us, we certainly could use your advertising dollars, and as long as whatever it is that you're promoting is compatible with what we believe here on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, you don't have to believe identically with me, but as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with our theology, it doesn't militate against what

01:09:53

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01:10:00

and put advertising in the subject line, whether it is your church, your parachurch organization, your business, your professional practice, or special event, we would love to help you advertise it as long as it is compatible with what we believe.

01:10:13

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in questions for our guest,

01:10:22

Dr. James M. Renahan, the president of the IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas, and once again that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:10:34

And before I have Dr. Renahan introduce us to some of the faculty members with a brief biosketch of each of those he has time to mention, we overlooked a very important question during the first half of this interview.

01:10:53

What does the Bible have to say about ministerial training, Dr. Renahan? Well, it actually has a lot to say about it, and that's a good question.

01:11:03

But before I get there, I want to say this. You just mentioned Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology.

01:11:09

Yes. Our director of administration, Matt Stahl, will be at the

01:11:15

Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania Conference, and we'll have a table there. Great. People can stop by and get information from Matt, really happy about that.

01:11:27

Yeah, I'm happy about that too. I will be there, God willing, with my two new pastors at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, John Miller and Simon O'Manney.

01:11:37

Right, and Simon O'Manney is a graduate of? Yes, that's right, IRBS. That's right.

01:11:43

And you're his former pastor. I was. It was great to see you when

01:11:49

I came out for his ordination service in February. That's right. Really thankful for him, and yeah, he's one of our graduates, and really deeply love

01:11:58

Simon and Megan and their family, and thankful to God for them, so that'll be great.

01:12:04

But let me answer your question. There are several places that we could go in Scripture, but I'll make it as brief as I can, and it's the

01:12:16

Apostle Paul who needs to be considered here. You know, in 2 Timothy 2, Paul tells

01:12:21

Timothy that he's to train... the things that Timothy has heard from Paul, he's to bring to, entrust to faithful men who'll be able to teach others also, and Paul envisions this generation by generation by generation passing on of the knowledge of the truth, the fullness of Christian theology.

01:12:41

If you back that up into chapter 1, pay no attention to the chapter division, which wasn't there when

01:12:48

Paul wrote. It's very clear that he's talking about something that originates in heaven, it is given to Paul, Paul passes it on to Timothy, Timothy passes it on to other men, and it will continue.

01:13:01

And it's the deposit of truth, it's the full deposit of truth that is contained in the

01:13:06

Scriptures. Now, we ought to ask a question then, in the background of what's happening in 2

01:13:13

Timothy 2. By the way, that text has been co -opted wrongly by some parachurch organizations who treat it as a text about discipleship, and it certainly is not that.

01:13:28

It's a text about training men for the Gospel ministry. It really troubles me that it has been co -opted by others, and misused, and really misrepresented, and I think a lot of people have bought into that, well, this is one person discipling another person.

01:13:45

No, that's not what it's about at all. But that's another topic, and we could spend a lot of time on that. If you think about the background of what's happening here, we ought to ask a question or two.

01:13:57

One of them is, where did Paul get all of his knowledge? How did

01:14:02

Paul know the Old Testament so well? Now, I would argue, and if somebody wants to slightly disagree with me, that's okay, but I would argue that the best interpreter of the

01:14:15

Old Testament that we have, apart from the Lord Jesus, is the Apostle Paul. And the reason I say him rather than Peter or someone is just, we have the largest amount of material from Paul's But he really understood what the

01:14:28

Old Testament was about, and saw how it pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ. But where did he get that knowledge?

01:14:35

Where did he get that information? Well, he says something really interesting in Acts 22, and he points us in a very helpful direction.

01:14:46

Maybe you remember there in Acts 22, there's a riot that breaks out in the temple because there are some opponents of Paul who really want to see him put to death.

01:14:57

They don't like the fact that he's converted to faith in Christ and has become such a powerful preacher and witness to the gospel of Christ.

01:15:06

They're not happy with the fact that many of their own followers have also been converted and follow

01:15:11

Jesus because of Paul's ministry. So a riot breaks out in the temple, and Paul is taken by the

01:15:17

Romans, and Luke presents it as a very dramatic scene. He stands up on some stairs, he speaks to them in the

01:15:24

Hebrew language. Luke says that there was a hush that came over the crowd.

01:15:29

In fact, twice he says that. There was an even greater quiet when Paul spoke to them. And he begins making a defense of himself.

01:15:38

He's trying to connect with these people so that they will calm down, and so that he'll be able to continue the ministry that God has given to him.

01:15:49

And one of the first things that he says is, you know me, and you know that I spent my childhood, my youth in this city being trained at the feet of Gamaliel.

01:16:00

Now we know that Gamaliel was one of the prominent rabbis of Jewish life in the first century in Jerusalem.

01:16:12

In fact, his school was probably the premier rabbinical training school in Jerusalem.

01:16:20

And Paul studied there. Paul grew up there. He was given the best possible education.

01:16:26

He wasn't a believer yet, but his mind was filled with the Old Testament. When he came to faith in Christ, it's as if the light went on, and now he was able to see that the

01:16:36

Old Testament was about Jesus, not just about Israel. Well, let's take that a step backwards.

01:16:41

What is the school of Gamaliel? Well, it is believed that the school of Gamaliel is an example of a revival that was made among the

01:16:53

Jews in Israel, primarily in Jerusalem, of the Old Testament schools of the prophets.

01:17:00

When you read the historical books, and you read some of the prophets themselves, there is very specific language.

01:17:07

The older translations call them schools of the prophets. Literally, the Hebrew says sons of the prophets, but there's consensus that the phrase sons of the prophets means students of the prophets, those young men who are being trained by older men.

01:17:24

And primarily, they were being trained in understanding the law of Moses and proclaiming the law of Moses.

01:17:30

The Old Testament prophets were not primarily men who told the future. They were primarily men who had the responsibility of preaching the word of God to the people of God, to the

01:17:40

Israelites. So there was this institution in the Old Testament. You know, it's interesting, for example, you have

01:17:47

Amos in Amos chapter 7, and he has that famous line, I'm not a prophet, nor am

01:17:53

I the son of a prophet. He's not talking about his father there. He's talking, he's using that phrase to say,

01:18:00

I wasn't trained up in the schools of the prophets. But we have this Old Testament example of schools where promising young men who are called to the prophetic office would be brought under the tutelage of older prophets and prepared for their ministry, one generation training the next generation.

01:18:22

After the return from exile, there is an attempt to revive or to restore the practice of the schools of the prophets.

01:18:29

And it's believed that Gamaliel school is an example of that strain of restoring what had been lost in the apostasy of Israel and in the exile.

01:18:41

Paul benefited from it. And we are the recipients of the benefits of Paul's training, because we read his epistles, we read

01:18:51

Galatians, or we read Romans, and we say that's what the Old Testament is about. And that's why

01:18:56

Paul was so good. Of course, he worked under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but he wasn't a blank slate in which the

01:19:04

Holy Spirit just poured into his mind all of this truth. He was a man who had been thoroughly prepared to be used by the

01:19:10

Spirit to give us the scriptures. So that's a model in the Bible itself that we're seeking to follow.

01:19:18

Now, we want converted men. We don't want unconverted men. We want men who show that they have a genuine faith in Jesus Christ, but we want to be like those schools of the prophets.

01:19:28

In fact, that's one of the nicknames Spurgeon gave to his college. We want to be like those schools of the prophets, filling the minds of men with the

01:19:36

Old Testament and the New Testament so that the Spirit of God is able to use them to go out.

01:19:42

So that's the major biblical basis that we see in both the

01:19:49

Old and the New Testament, that kind of consistency of preparing young men. I get excited when

01:19:54

I think about it and talk about it. Amen. Well, if you could now introduce our listeners to some of your faculty members.

01:20:03

Oh yeah, I'd be glad to do that. We have quite a few men who have agreed to teach for us in various capacities, and I won't take the time to talk about all of them, but let me mention some.

01:20:17

I will be teaching. Most of what I will be teaching is pretty much the same types of courses that I've taught here in California, with some adaptation.

01:20:29

Steve Martin and I are team teaching a first semester course that I think we're calling

01:20:34

Introduction to Theological Studies, but it's where we want to especially focus on the importance of piety in the life of a

01:20:42

Christian man. We want to talk about the call to the ministry about love for Christ and how to cultivate genuine piety in the life of a minister and why it's so important.

01:20:53

Steve Martin will be teaching. Primarily that will be his responsibility, is that course team teaching with me.

01:21:03

Richard Barcelos, Dr. Barcelos, who has done some fantastic work of late in the relationship of Old Testament and New Testament biblical theology, is our

01:21:16

Associate Professor of Biblical Studies. He's responsible for the whole department of exegetical studies, helping to choose the professors that are teaching

01:21:27

Old Testament and New Testament, looking over their curriculum and all the rest, and he will be teaching several courses, hermeneutics,

01:21:35

New Testament biblical theology, things like that. Dr. Fred Malone, who I think you had last

01:21:40

Friday and Monday on the program, is our Professor of Pastoral Theology.

01:21:47

Fred has responsibility for the whole area of teaching the pastoral ministry courses.

01:21:55

He won't teach them all, but he has responsibility for them, helping to choose who the professors will be, what the curriculum will be, and we're really excited about that because Fred is known around the world for his skill in pastoral ministry.

01:22:12

In fact, we had some very positive feedback from people who heard those two interviews, especially from some that were on the fence in regard to paedo -baptism, and Fred knocked them over into the

01:22:28

Baptist side, the credo -baptist side. Amen. I love my paedo -baptist brothers,

01:22:36

I've lived in their world for the last 20 years, but amen. It was a slam dunk for Fred, no pun intended.

01:22:45

We've just announced recently the appointment of Stephan Lindblad, who's a pastor in Washington and is right on the verge of completing his doctoral degree at Calvin Theological Seminary to be our

01:23:00

Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology. I'm really excited about that. Stephan is a graduate of Westminster Seminary here and of IRBS, in fact he's one of our first two graduates, what, 17 years ago.

01:23:12

And his father is Don, correct? His father is Don Lindblad, that's right, they're co -pastors of a church in Kirkland, Washington.

01:23:22

But Stephan has done some really fantastic work, he'll be an excellent Professor of Systematic Theology, and he has the responsibility, like Dr.

01:23:31

Barcellos and Dr. Malone, of overseeing a department, his department is Systematic Theology.

01:23:37

So those are the five key guys who have the most responsibilities.

01:23:45

Alongside of them, our Old Testament professor will be a man named

01:23:50

Terry Clark. Dr. Clark received his PhD from Spurgeon's College in London, he's an

01:23:56

Old Testament scholar. He's just retired from being the Principal of a

01:24:02

Theological College in Queensland in Australia. I've taught there several times, he's a good friend, and he'll be teaching several of our

01:24:13

Old Testament classes. James Dolezal, a very fine scholar from the

01:24:19

Philadelphia area. Yeah, we've had him on the program. Yep, he's a visiting Professor of Theology, and he'll be teaching the

01:24:28

Doctrine of God, and also a course on the introduction to Christian philosophy.

01:24:35

Crawford Gribbon is a world -renowned Puritan scholar, teaches at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and he'll come in probably once every two or three years and teach a course on Puritanism.

01:24:51

And maybe this is where I can mention this. We announced about two weeks ago that we have signed an agreement with Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to serve as a doctoral study center for them.

01:25:07

And Dr. Gribbon is already one of the professors in their doctoral program, so hopefully he'll be participating with us in that doctoral program.

01:25:17

That's really exciting to have that relationship with Puritan Reformed, with Dr. Beakey. Yes, I've known

01:25:24

Dr. Beakey going all the way back to the early 1990s. I've interviewed him many times, and in fact

01:25:29

I was one of the key people that first got

01:25:35

Dr. Beakey on the radio when he began to co -sponsor the

01:25:40

Voice of Sovereign Grace, which is a radio program that I developed, and he also launched the

01:25:45

Gospel Trumpet, I believe it was called. But yeah, I have really enjoyed his friendship and benefiting from his ministry for a long time.

01:25:55

Yep. Another man that we'll be having to teach for us is

01:26:00

Dr. Ian Fuller. Ian is a professor at Massey University in New Zealand.

01:26:07

He's a credentialed scientist, highly regarded in his field, which is geohydromorphology.

01:26:15

That's the study of how water affects the landscape, the terrain. Ian is an elder in a

01:26:22

Reformed Baptist church. He's committed to our confession of faith, and he'll be coming in and teaching a course to pastors on how to respond to supposed scientific objections to the

01:26:31

Christian faith. I'm really excited about that. Would that include responding to objections made by old earth creationists?

01:26:40

I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will. He knows his stuff from the scientific side of things, and he's a committed confessional

01:26:50

Reformed Baptist. So it's a great addition, and really, really excited about that.

01:26:58

Then also, some of the others who will be teaching for us, as you mentioned before,

01:27:03

Dr. Waldron. Dr. Waldron will be teaching, I think, our eschatology class for us, and we're really pleased with that.

01:27:12

We have an agreement in principle with Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary to support one another in the work that we're doing.

01:27:22

They do distance education, we do residential education, and our goal is to walk hand -in -hand together in supporting each other.

01:27:30

So we're really pleased with that, and we think that that's a good thing, and looking forward to Dr. Waldron working with us.

01:27:38

Many who are listening may know the Dr. Tom Askell. He'll be a professor of pastoral ministry for us.

01:27:48

A young man who is right near the end of a PhD program at the

01:27:54

Free University of Amsterdam named Ryan Davidson, pastor in Hampton, Virginia, is going to be teaching our counseling course for us.

01:28:04

Ryan is a good man, a good friend. By the way, he'll be speaking this year at the

01:28:10

Building Tomorrow's Church conference in June in Flagstaff, Arizona, and for young people, that's a fantastic conference.

01:28:20

I spoke at it a couple of years ago. My daughter went to it last year. I highly recommend it, and all they have to do is

01:28:27

Google Building Tomorrow's Church, and they'll find the information for that. It's a great conference, and Ryan is a first -rate young scholar, really, really pleased to have him working with us.

01:28:38

Tom Hicks, who is Fred Malone's co -pastor, in a sense, he's

01:28:44

Fred's follower. He's taken over most of the primary responsibilities that Fred used to have.

01:28:51

Tom will be teaching for us. Jason Montgomery, who you had recently on the program, who's in the

01:28:59

PhD program at Southwestern Seminary, he will be teaching our church history classes.

01:29:05

I'm really pleased with that. You could tell by your conversation with Jason what a personable guy he is.

01:29:11

Yes. But he also knows his stuff, and he'll do very well teaching church history for us.

01:29:19

And then Raymond Perrone from Quebec will teach a course in missions. Ken Poles will teach a course in worship.

01:29:27

Ishwaran Mudliar will be our language teacher. He has a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, which is a

01:29:34

Harvard University -level degree. Everybody who knows him tells me he's really excellent in languages.

01:29:42

He'll be teaching Hebrew and Greek. And then a friend of mine, Mike Prada -Gallaudet, who has a

01:29:48

PhD from Cambridge University in England, will be coming to teach a course in pastoral administration.

01:29:56

He, besides his PhD, also has an MBA, and he's very skilled in terms of how to lead a church forward in ways.

01:30:07

So we've asked him to come and teach for us, and he'll be doing that. So that's most of the names.

01:30:15

We have a couple others. There's another man who recently has been nominated, but I'm not sure that the final decision has been made, so I can't really talk about that nomination yet.

01:30:28

One of the things that we're doing, Chris, with some of the professors is we're trying to have some conferences where they will be featured speakers.

01:30:42

The first one is going to be in London next week, April 21st, at the

01:30:48

Barbican Center in London, which is a primo venue. It would be like the

01:30:53

Lincoln Center in New York. That's what it is to London. And we're holding a conference there, and Oliver Almond Smith, who's one of our pastors in northern

01:31:04

England, and Matt Bingham, who just finished his PhD under Crawford Gribben, and I will be speaking there.

01:31:11

And then we have planned a conference in Sydney, Australia, where Mike Prada -Gallaudet is pastor at his church,

01:31:20

Stanmore Baptist, and Mike will speak, and Stephen McKay, who's an up -and -coming scholar and one of the elders at Stanmore, will speak, and my son

01:31:31

Sam will be there that week to teach a class for the School of Theology at Stanmore.

01:31:37

He'll speak, and then I'll be there too to speak. And then the next week I'll be in Auckland, New Zealand, July 14th.

01:31:45

We're going to do it over again, but this time with Richard Barcelos, who will be in New Zealand teaching a class for the

01:31:51

School of Theology in New Zealand. Rich and Dafydd Hughes, who's one of our pastors in New Zealand and I, will be doing a conference in Auckland, New Zealand, on July 14th.

01:32:01

So we have some really great men. It's an excellent faculty, it's exciting to look at these names and think of the skills that they will bring to our students.

01:32:13

But we want to give them more prominence, and part of the idea of these conferences is to promote the seminary and put some of our men before people.

01:32:23

In fact, you should tell your faculty member in Belfast that our mutual friend,

01:32:31

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, will be there in the not -so -distant future debating a

01:32:37

Roman Catholic apologist named Peter D. Williams on indulgences. And I don't have the exact date, but if anybody wants to find out about that debate in Belfast, Northern Ireland, you can go to aomin .org,

01:32:49

a -o -m -i -n .org for Alpha Omega Ministries. But we have to go to our final break.

01:32:54

It's going to be a very brief break, and before we go to that break, I want to read a question to you from Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

01:33:05

I thought it would be good for you to hear the question first because it's kind of an interesting question. It involves some speculation on your part, but Gordy asks, in your opinion, how would the likes of John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, etc.

01:33:19

view the majority of seminaries in the United States today, and what would be their greatest concern, in your opinion?

01:33:28

Obviously, I said you would have to speculate about that, but we'll have you respond to Gordy in Mechanicsburg when we come back from our final break.

01:33:36

If anybody else wants to join Gordy and some of the other people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:33:46

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

01:33:52

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with more of Dr. James M. Renahan. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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01:39:08

We are now back with the final 18 minutes or so of our discussion with Dr. James M. Renahan of IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

01:39:18

And before the break, Gordy in Mechanicsburg asked the question, in your opinion, how would the likes of John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, etc.,

01:39:27

view the majority of seminaries in the United States today, and what would be their greatest concern?

01:39:37

Well, Gordy, that's an interesting question, and as Chris said, it would involve a certain amount of speculation on my part.

01:39:44

I was thinking during the break of Owen and Edwards.

01:39:49

Edwards, of course, was trained at Yale. Owen, a graduate of Oxford, and then when

01:39:55

Cromwell was in power during the 1650s, Owen was the vice chancellor of Oxford University, which basically meant he was the man in charge on the ground.

01:40:07

And he was, I think he had a reasonable idea of what ministerial training was about there.

01:40:17

And based upon what I know of his experience at Oxford, I would guess that his evaluation,

01:40:26

I think you said in the question, many of the seminaries or perhaps most of them, I think he would have a certain amount of concern that schools have moved away from a close and careful study of Scripture.

01:40:39

And maybe that's evidenced in two ways. Number one is that a lot of schools focus their attention on what they consider to be the practical aspects of the ministry.

01:40:53

I have a friend who attended a very famous, well -known large school here in the

01:40:58

United States, and what he said 15 years after his graduation from the

01:41:05

Master of Divinity program there was that it didn't really give him a theological education. It trained him to be the pastor of the first church in the county seat in a particular state here in the

01:41:19

United States. He was a manager rather than a pastor. He was an administrator.

01:41:25

He was someone who knew how to develop programs and use programs in the life of the church, but he was not given a theological education.

01:41:34

I think men like Edwards and Owen would be very concerned about that. The other way that they would be concerned is that many schools have diminished their emphasis on the

01:41:47

Bible and Christian theology. A lot of schools no longer require men to study the original languages and to be able to work in the original languages.

01:41:57

Many of them have a very broad approach to Christian theology. One famous school that I know very well, for example, is all about inerrancy.

01:42:09

Once you get past inerrancy, a lot of other things in Christian theology are up and open for discussion and debate, and they're not very concerned about the differences that exist once you get past inerrancy.

01:42:25

An example, I sat in a classroom once where the doctrine of justification by faith was being discussed among probably 15 to 20 individuals.

01:42:37

Some of the people at the table were from Christian groups that have a view of justification that includes works.

01:42:47

I don't mean Roman Catholics. I mean Protestant groups that in one way or another allow works to participate.

01:42:53

That was viewed to be acceptable alongside of the Reformed and Lutheran view that justification is completely apart from our works.

01:43:03

I think that that would be very troubling to John Owen and Edward and others along the way.

01:43:10

So they would be very concerned about those things and would want to call the schools back to a real commitment to the type of confessional

01:43:20

Christianity that they knew so well. Now that's speculation, and someone might come along and say, well, wait a minute,

01:43:26

I have an example that would be different, and I'd be glad to hear that. I wouldn't be opposed to hearing that, but that's just from what

01:43:33

I know. That's how I would answer that question. Thanks for the great question, Gordy. We have

01:43:39

Joe in Slovenia who asks, Dear Brother Chris, thanks for blessing us again with Dr.

01:43:46

Renahan. Dr. Renahan, will IRBS Theological Seminary teach social activism as being gospel issues?

01:43:56

Why or why not? Please elaborate. Well, you know,

01:44:02

I think the last time that I was on your show, Joe from Slovenia called in. So old friend

01:44:07

Joe, it's nice to hear from you. Actually emailed in, not called in. Well, emailed in, yeah, yeah.

01:44:13

I hope someday to meet you, Joe from Slovenia. I hope to be speaking at a conference in Germany in September.

01:44:21

I'm not sure. And he does have a daughter in Georgia and in the United States. Not the

01:44:27

Georgia near Ukraine, Georgia here in the United States, and he visits, I think, at least once a year, so who knows?

01:44:34

Good. Well, our concern is going to be confessional Christianity and pastoral ministry, and we're going to be focusing on the classic disciplines of pastoral ministry, and we don't want to get caught up in the current trend, whatever that current trend happens to be.

01:44:55

Right now it is social justice issues. That's what people are concerned about, but in five years it'll be something different.

01:45:04

And I think that when you build a church or school or any

01:45:10

Christian entity around the trends of the day, you open yourself up to all kinds of problems.

01:45:17

One of them is that you have to constantly change to keep up with the trends. We want to provide to our students really a classical training in preparation for the ministry, not a trendy training for men in the ministry.

01:45:31

So hopefully, whatever the current subject is that's capturing people's mind and that's being debated on Twitter or wherever else it happens to be debated,

01:45:45

I'm on Twitter so I see some of this stuff there. Whatever that is, we don't want those things to influence what we're about.

01:45:54

You know, I believe that the issues that people need to face are the issues that have faced

01:46:00

Christians for 2 ,000 years. If something is important enough to have appeared throughout the history of the

01:46:08

Church, then it's important enough for us to think about. But yesterday's issues and tomorrow's issues are not the things that ought to drive what our curriculum is about.

01:46:19

Well thank you, Joe, in Slovenia. Keep listening to the program and spreading the word about it in Slovenia and beyond.

01:46:26

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks, how do you respond to pastors and perhaps even members of churches where the pastor is not seminary educated but has been doing a remarkably fine job for decades and some might think that he will now be looked down upon after hearing of the importance of a seminary education?

01:46:55

Yeah, that's a really good question. And let's make it clear that there are a lot of men like that who didn't have the opportunity to have any kind of formal training, but they are men who are diligent and hard -working and have been wise enough to study the best books to give their time to careful study of the

01:47:18

Scripture. And those men need to be lauded, they need to be respected, we should honor them for their faithfulness and their commitment, and in no way should anyone look down upon them and their ministry.

01:47:34

So I have the highest esteem and respect for men who fit that kind of category.

01:47:42

And what I would say, if I had the opportunity in those circumstances, is thank

01:47:47

God for the diligence of your pastor, for the grace of God in his life, and for the work of the

01:47:53

Holy Spirit through him. God has given to you a precious gift. Amen.

01:47:59

We have, let's see, Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, would it not be ideal if churches began to select people from among them who are very qualified, aspiring pastors, and send them to a seminary such as yourselves so that they can return to one day either become associates to the pastor already there or to take over the pastoral position when that pastor retires, since you will have a man who has actually grown from amongst the flock there and then returns as even more fully equipped to help shepherd and teach the brethren in that congregation?

01:48:46

I wonder if we can hire Arnie to do promotion. That is exactly right.

01:48:57

That was well said, and I 100 % agree with Arnie on that.

01:49:05

So all I can do is say thank you, Arnie, for asking that question. I'm with you wholeheartedly. I do believe, and I think

01:49:12

Arnie implies this, that churches need to be more active in cultivating young men for the ministry.

01:49:20

I think it ought to be a regular part of the prayers of each congregation that they ask the

01:49:27

Lord to raise up men in their midst who show giftedness and godliness and who could be trained.

01:49:33

And the desire that they ought to have is that they would indeed come back and take up a ministry in that congregation, or be sent out from that congregation perhaps to plant another church or to help another church nearby.

01:49:49

I'm with you 100%, Arnie, and I'm joking, of course, but it's that kind of perspective that needs to be repeated over and over again to churches.

01:50:04

Cultivate men, send men, prepare men, bring them home, let them be leaders in your church.

01:50:11

Amen. Amen. Now don't you think that one of the reasons why that's a good question is because it is not the normal thing?

01:50:18

I mean, isn't it true, at least it's true from my own experience, from knowing pastors of churches and knowing members of many different congregations all over the

01:50:29

United States and different parts of the world, when they need a pastor, the first thing they typically do is look outside for someone rather than look within themselves.

01:50:40

It's almost as if a prophet is without honor in his own home, you know, it's funny.

01:50:48

Well, that's true, but it is true that a lot of churches don't have those men, and it is necessary for them to, pardon me, to look elsewhere.

01:50:59

It also may be that in a small church, you know, there's a pastor who intends to spend his life at that church, decades, and a young man comes up and the church can't afford to bring him on alongside of the older man.

01:51:16

In that case, maybe that man has to be given up to another congregation. You know, there are circumstances, but Arnie has hit the ideal right on the head.

01:51:26

We have an anonymous listener who asks, What do you say to someone who really has a very strong desire and aspiration to become a minister who has been told he has many of the gifts and character traits that are vital for a pastoral ministry, and yet the person just simply cannot afford going to a seminary such as yours?

01:51:54

Yeah, what do I say? I say, well, first off, we have purposely chosen to have lower fees than almost everybody else.

01:52:05

Our costs will be about half of what other schools charge, and that's because we believe that it's important that men be able to come and not face indebtedness as a result of their study.

01:52:22

The second thing that I would say is, contact us, and maybe there would be a possibility of finding some support somewhere.

01:52:33

We actually have received inquiries from a couple of interested donors.

01:52:43

In fact, we'll be announcing a scholarship next week that someone is providing for a very specific circumstance that probably wouldn't apply in this circumstance, but somebody is offering a scholarship to one of our students.

01:53:01

Another family has offered help along the way to a student. It may be that there is a way to work through this, but the best thing to do is not to assume that it's impossible, but rather to inquire and see what the possibilities may be.

01:53:20

We have John in Bangor, Maine, who asks, can you summarize what you think are the most vital things that a person should view as a sign that he is being called into the ministry?

01:53:35

Oh, yeah, that's a good question too, John. Well, you know, we talk about the call to the ministry in two terms, the internal call and the external call.

01:53:47

The internal call is described in 1 Timothy 3 .1, if a man desires the office of an overseer, he desires a good thing.

01:53:56

One of the words that Paul uses there is the word that generally elsewhere is translated lust. He's talking about something strong.

01:54:02

So there has to be a drive on the inside. But the external call is really important as well, and that's where the church comes in.

01:54:09

The church needs to see that there is at least the beginnings of grace.

01:54:16

Grace must be present, and the beginnings of giftedness. The man must have some level of ability to take what he has learned and minister to God's people from what he has learned.

01:54:30

And so that's where you have to start. Do God's people see in you, and are they able to affirm the reality of this inward desire?

01:54:45

And if they don't, then you have to realize that your inward desire is probably not the work of the

01:54:51

Holy Spirit of God, but something else. And we have

01:54:56

Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, how far would you go in allowing a student to enroll at IRBS Theological Seminary in regard to differences of theology?

01:55:13

Let's suppose even a Roman Catholic or someone who has a seriously heretical theology, perhaps even a denial of the historic gospel, would they be permitted to attend?

01:55:26

No one who denies the historic gospel would be able to attend, no. We welcome students from a broad spectrum of evangelical

01:55:40

Christianity, because we want to be servants to them, and to be honest, because we hope that three years of consistent instruction in many classes from different men, who are all committed to the same principles, will take that man from whatever broad position he happens to hold when he comes in, to a real thoroughgoing commitment to Reformed theology at the end.

01:56:07

So our student body, we hope will be made up of men from evangelical churches, although primarily they'll be men who are committed to Reformed Baptist faith.

01:56:19

We have time for one more question. An anonymous listener who wants to know, can women enroll at your seminary even though you are complementarian?

01:56:32

Not in the Master of Divinity program, but we have a Master of Arts in Religious Studies program, and women are permitted to enroll in that.

01:56:40

Great. Well, I would like you to now spend about three minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners.

01:56:49

Well, the whole purpose of starting up this seminary and doing all the work that we have done and hope to do in the years to come, is that we want to glorify

01:57:02

God, and we want to see the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed among the nations.

01:57:08

The Great Commission drives us, the belief that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and has ascended into heaven.

01:57:17

All power in heaven and earth is given to him, that from his throne in heaven he gives men to the church to serve as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.

01:57:31

Because we believe that those things are true, because we believe that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, because we believe that the world needs the gospel, that men and women and boys and girls need to know that they are sinners, and that the only hope for forgiveness of their sins is in the work of Jesus Christ, trusting in him who was sent by God to accomplish that salvation.

01:57:57

That's what we're all about. And so the goal of this is not simply to build a school so that we can have a school, it's to build a school so that we can train men that the gospel might go out to the ends of the earth to the glory of God.

01:58:10

So I'd ask your listeners to pray for us, to help us, look at our website, you mentioned it before, irbsseminary .org,

01:58:19

and ask the Lord to give us wisdom to stay within the guardrails, that illustration

01:58:28

I used before, and to honor him in all the work that we do. Well, thank you so much,

01:58:34

Dr. Renahan, for being a guest again. I look forward to many return visits as a guest to Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio.

01:58:40

In fact, I'd love to interview more of your faculty as well. And once again, I know that your website is irbsseminary .org,

01:58:50

irbsseminary .org. Don't forget to put the two S's back to back in there. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

01:59:00

Mark down your calendar for tomorrow, because we have Reverend Jack D. Kinnear on the program.

01:59:07

He is a conservative Presbyterian within the PCA, but is on the faculty of the

01:59:13

Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He's also a thoroughly knowledgeable expert on the subject of Eastern Orthodoxy, and you don't hear too many

01:59:23

Protestants or Calvinists who know a lot about that issue, so it's going to be fascinating,

01:59:29

I am certain, tomorrow from 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern Time with Jack D. Kinnear on Eastern Orthodoxy.

01:59:35

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:40

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you tomorrow with questions for our guests on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio.