July 30, 2018 Show with J. V. Fesko on “The Spirit of the Age: The 19th Century Debate Over the Holy Spirit & the Westminster Confession”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown 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, quote, 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 Arntzen. 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 Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 30th day of July 2018, and for those of you who tuned us in a little while ago and were hearing us broadcasting, we were knocked out by a thunderstorm here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but we have things up and running at least for now,

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God willing, but I am so delighted to have back as a returning guest on Iron Sharpens Iron J .V.

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Fesco, and J .V. Fesco is an author. He's the academic dean professor of systematic theology and historical theology at Westminster Seminary, California, and we are discussing his book today,

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The Spirit of the Age, the 19th century debate over the Holy Spirit and the

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Westminster Confession, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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J .V. Fesco. Hey, thanks, Chris, for having me. It's great to be with you today. Hey, it's great to have you back, brother, and before we go into the subject at hand, please let us know about Westminster Seminary in California.

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Well, Westminster Seminary, California, is the only Reformed confessional seminary west of the

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Mississippi, and we have been here for about 38 years. We've got a faculty of 13 with an enrollment of around 125, 130 students, which means that if you want to get a lot of face time with your professors, this is certainly a place to get that benefit.

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Not only that, but we're a confessional Reformed seminary. We adhere to what we jokingly call the six forms of unity, the

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Westminster standards, the catechisms, and the confession, as well as the Heidelberg, the

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Belgic, and the Canons of Dort, but most importantly, one of the things that we do is we teach you

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Greek and Hebrew so that you can exegete the scriptures in the original languages, because the scriptures are our primary and chief authority in doctrine and in life, so if you're interested in studying

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Reformed confessional theology and getting to know the scriptures better, or as we say, become an expert in the

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Bible, come out to Westminster Seminary, California. Amen, and the little joke about the six forms of unity, that is because you are combining the creeds and confessions typically and historically held by two different groups within the

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Reformed movement. You have the Presbyterians who adhere to the

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Westminster standards, and you have the Dutch Reformed branch of the church adhering to the three forms of unity, and our anti -confessional or merely non -confessional brothers and sisters in Christ who have on occasion sadly mocked us or even slandered us for believing in their minds that we adhere to the teachings and writings of men on the same par or even above the

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God -breathed words of scripture. They are just totally off base. They are either consciously or unconsciously slandering us, and this has never been the view of the

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Protestant Reformers, who have hammered out these confessions that have developed over the centuries and that we now still adhere to today.

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These are merely helpful guides, and they are summaries of what we believe the Bible teaches that has nothing to do with adding to the

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Word of God, is it? No, no, no, not at all. It's always in subordination to the scriptures.

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It's just, you know, as I said before, everybody has a set of beliefs about the scriptures.

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Confessional folks just write those things down so that we can testify to the truth, not only in connecting with the church of ages past, but also to testify to generations to come.

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Amen. And as I've said in this program before, for those of you who call yourselves

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Bible -only Christians, you claim that you don't have a creator confession. Well, you really do if your pastor does more than just read the

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Bible from the pulpit. If he actually attempts exegesis, if he teaches what he believes, in summary, the

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Bible teaches, then he is confessional, whether he calls himself that or not, and so is the

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And once you start telling people, either in writing or verbally, in your own words, what the

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Bible teaches, using extra -biblical language, you are really confessional or creedal, and you may be just totally unconscious of it.

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You're not really just using the Bible alone, even though you may believe, like we do, that the

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Bible alone is our sole infallible authority and is the only God -breathed word that we have.

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Yeah, and whether they realize it or not, to say, no creed but the Bible, that's a creed. It's just a really short one.

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That's right. Yeah, creeds are either good or bad. They're either biblical or not biblical, or a mixture of both, but they are present in the lives of every professing

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Christian. That's right. And I'm going to give our email address right now, if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, 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.

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. And this book that we are addressing today, The Spirit of the

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Age, the 19th century debate over the Holy Spirit and the Westminster Confession. Obviously, this debate, since it is identified in your subtitle as the 19th century debate, this is a debate that has occurred centuries after the

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Westminster Confession actually was in print. If you could explain the, first of all, the title,

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The Spirit of the Age, and then let our listeners know exactly what you mean by this 19th century debate.

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Sure. I call it The Spirit of the Age in many respects to echo some of the sentiments of the philosopher

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Hegel, in that Hegel was really influential not only upon philosophy in the 19th century, but also even theology, and that if you look at the 19th century, there was a flurry of theological works that came out that addressed the topic of the

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Holy Spirit, and that flurry has grown into a snowball, and it continues going on to this day, where in the 20th century, numerous theologians have written books on the

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Holy Spirit, and the impression that one gets is that prior to the 19th century, the

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Church really wasn't all that terribly interested in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And in fact, some historians have gone as far as to say that the

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Church has been overly fixated on the doctrine of Christ to the exclusion of the Holy Spirit. And so I wanted to find out for myself, as well as to ask the question, why is there this emphasis upon the

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Spirit at this particular point in history? And that's why I chose to title that book kind of echoing that Hegelian sentiment of the

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Spirit of the Age. Why is it that we are discussing these things? Why is this such a hot topic as of late?

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And the impression is, or at least I think the implication is, is that, well, if the

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Church has focused so much on the Holy Spirit now, there must have been some sort of deficiency in the past.

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And in many respects, that's what the whole book is about, is dispelling the myth that the

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Church was deficient on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and try to look into the past to recover what it is that we have historically professed, particularly in the teaching of the

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Westminster Standards, and then from there also explaining some of the historical origins of the debate itself in the 19th century.

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Great. And the Holy Spirit has been the subject of debate and confusion and the raising up of heresy and so on.

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There are professing Christians and churches and denominations and movements that have even referred to the

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Holy Spirit as a what rather than a who, not really believing upon Him as a specific person of the

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Triune Godhood, a person that is co -equal and co -eternal with the

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Father and Son. And these are no light or immaterial or inconsequential matters.

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These are not tertiary or secondary matters, or just subjects for Bible geeks to discuss and debate over snifters of brandy and cigars.

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These are very life -altering issues that...these are issues even that eternal life may hinge, are they not?

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Yeah, in certain cases I think that that's definitely true. You know, to think, as you mentioned, of the

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Holy Spirit as being simply the power of God, that is fundamentally a denial of the doctrine of the

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Trinity, and that's something that no Christian should do, and in doing so and denying the doctrine of the

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Trinity, I think certainly one's soul is certainly in peril. I would not want to go to the final judgment with that doctrine in hand, or I should say that incorrect doctrine in hand.

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But then too, I think that at least on the shallow end of that pool of error, there is a certain significant loss of rich scriptural teaching about the doctrine of the

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Trinity, the more that we either de -emphasize the doctrine of the Trinity, or in particular de -emphasize the doctrine of the

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Spirit, or the more that we fail to integrate the Spirit into our theology.

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You know, the Church has historically taught that the works of the and God are inseparable, but yet I think so many

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God -fearing, you know, otherwise Orthodox Christians rarely take into account the nature of the work of the

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Spirit, how the Spirit participates in the work of redemption. And in particular, say, as many

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Reformed folks do, or even critics of the Reformed tradition, they might look at the Westminster Standards and say, well,

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I don't see a chapter on the Holy Spirit. They must not have really spoken much about it.

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But in actuality, and as the book goes on to explain, there is a lot of teaching, an abundance of information that the

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Westminster Confession, and by connection the catechisms, speak about the doctrine of the

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Holy Spirit. Now, since this is a debate that you're speaking about that arose in the 19th century, who were or are the sides involved, the opposing voices involved in the issue, or of the issues of the

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Holy Spirit in the Westminster Confession? Yeah, I think that there were two large sides of the debate.

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The first side were those of the critics, and it involved two individuals that I think some folks may have heard of, or certainly most theology students have probably heard of them.

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The first is Charles Briggs. He was a liberal Presbyterian minister towards the turn of the century, in the 1800s into the 1900s, and he's famous for the

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Brown -Driver Briggs, the Hebrew dictionary or Hebrew lexicon that he co -authored.

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A lot of Hebrew students in the past have taken and made use of that exegetical resource, and in many respects,

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I think it's a fine lexicon, although it's been superseded by other more recent work.

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And then along with him, Philip Schaaf. Philip Schaaf is known for his three -volume Creed of Christendom, and I think many pastors and scholars to this day still use this resource.

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But what many may not realize is that Philip Schaaf was a significant critic of the Westminster Confession of Faith in particular, because of its supposed deficiencies on the love of God and the doctrine of the

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Holy Spirit. He was an Anglican, right, Schaaf? Schaaf, no, he taught at, let's see, at the

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Reformed, the RCUS Seminary in, I believe, in Mercersburg, I think is where it was.

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He was there for a time as well as at Union Theological Seminary. So again, liberal

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Reform guy, and I think he was in Presbyterian circles as well. But yeah, so they were on one side, and then you had others.

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At least initially, B .B. Warfield was vehemently opposed to the idea of changing the

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Confession on these particular grounds, and he was initially nominated to the committee to serve on, you know, bringing about these changes or suggested changes, but he objected and refused to serve, and he wrote to the moderator of the

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Assembly saying that he couldn't really in good conscience do so, because he believed ultimately it was an effort really to try to dismantle the

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Confession. Now, what happened as the outcome of this debate is you ended up with two chapters that were added on to the

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Westminster Confession of Faith, which are otherwise known as the 1903 Revisions, and there's a chapter on the

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Holy Spirit and a chapter on the love of God. Some folks, like Warfield, when he finally saw the finished product, thought, okay, well, this isn't so bad, and it largely restates some of the things that the

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Confession itself teaches. But others, I think, were not as sympathetic to these changes.

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They saw them as undermining the teaching of the Confession at a number of points, especially the chapter on the love of God, and so when the

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OPC, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, broke away from the PCUS in the late 20s, 1920s, they rejected or they set aside those 1903

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Revisions and refused to adopt them. And the same can be said for other denominations, like the

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Presbyterian Church of America, when they formed in the 1970s, so that when conservative denominations basically established themselves, they rejected these additional chapters because they saw them as really undermining the overall teaching of the

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Confession. Well, let's start where your book starts, after that initial summary.

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The state of the question, if you could, carry on. Yeah, I know, in terms of the state of the question, that's one of the things that you'll see, for example, in theological works written by theologians like Francis Turreton, and it's a methodological question.

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They say, well, what's the state of the conversation? What's going on? Who has said what?

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How long has this whole discussion been going on? And in particular,

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I wanted to talk about that a little bit at the outset of the book, just to show what has been happening in, say, in the last 20, 30, 40 years.

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You know, if you take a look at the table of contents, for example, of Louis Burkhoff's Systematic Theology, and then compare it with some of the more recent systematic theologies that have been written, whether you're talking about Millard Erickson, Baptist theologian, or my colleague

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Michael Horton, or some of these other folks who have written systematic theology books, you'll see that Burkhoff doesn't have a chapter specifically on the

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Holy Spirit, whereas these other theologies do. And so one of the questions is, why?

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And in particular, you've got a number of critics in the 20th century, also, as I said though, beginning in the 19th century, with Schaff and Briggs, who claim that the

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Reformed tradition really spent scant attention, or gave scant attention, to the doctrine of the

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Holy Spirit, you know, and so because of that, there has been this,

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I think, growing re -emphasis and people looking into the doctrine of the

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Holy Spirit. But in particular, what I wanted to be able to show is that as common as the criticism might be, that the confession is deficient, because you look at it, and in a table of contents, there isn't an immediate chapter listed, the person and work of the

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Holy Spirit. You know, you have in chapter 2 of God and of the Holy Trinity, that it goes immediately into the

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Eternal Decree. In chapter 3, you get a chapter on Christ the Mediator.

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In chapter 8, and then supposedly, there's nothing really on the Holy Spirit. And so what

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I aim to show is, first of all, you know, to ask that question, is it true?

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Is it true? Is the Holy Spirit truly absent from the Westminster Confession of Faith?

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The short answer is, absolutely not. The Spirit is definitely given a lot of attention in the

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Westminster Confession of Faith, and in particular, it was B .B. Warfield who says, that's correct, there is not one chapter on the

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Holy Spirit, but rather there are at least, he said, 13 chapters on the

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Holy Spirit. In particular, when you move from chapter 8 of Christ the

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Mediator, and get all the way down to, say, chapter 20, that's where you end up, or even chapter 21.

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You get so many references to the work of the Holy Spirit, that he's all over the place.

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Or, another way to say it, is that wherever the Westminster Confession addresses the topic of applied superiority, that's where you're talking about the person and work of the

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Spirit, so that there's a significant amount of attention given to the Spirit.

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But, that being said, I think that perhaps one of the more overlooked chapters in the

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Confession, when we're talking about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, comes in chapter 8.

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And that chapter 8 may be labeled of Christ the Mediator, but I believe that it is as much about Christ as well as it is about the

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Holy Spirit, because there are key statements in there that are about the Spirit to show how closely, and in concert, the

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Spirit and Christ work together to bring about the redemption of the elect.

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And so, that's how the book unfolds. You know, in the second chapter, it starts talking about answering the question, is the

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Spirit really absent? And then from there, in chapter 3, I talk about the Catholic roots of the

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Confessions, doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and then the fourth chapter, I talk about, you know, what the

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Confession itself has to say about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Now, why do you believe this charge was made by some, that there was an absence of discussion or specificity in regard to the

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Holy Spirit in the Westminster Confession? Now, I think that one of the reasons that this, there's a couple of reasons,

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I think, as I think about it here, is that first, theologians had changed the way that they were doing theology.

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In particular, let's say if you go back to the 16th century, they had what they called a commonplaces approach, where they took all of the commonplaces in Scripture that spoke about each doctrine, say the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of, you know, salvation, and they would gather them together under these various headings.

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Philip Melanchthon wrote commonplaces. In many respects, you can call Calvin's Institutes a commonplaces because he treats these doctrines in this fashion.

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But by the time you get to the 19th century, they changed theologians, many theologians changed the way that they talked about theology.

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No longer was there a discussion about these different doctrines kind of set forth together in a loosely historical unfolding where you go from God all the way to the end of the creation or to the eschaton.

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But rather, they said, no, you have to start with Christ. You have to start with Christ, and this is the whole way that you have to really deduce your entire system of thought, your entire system of theology.

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You begin with Christ, and that's how you come about with these things. And so they looked upon this older theology very derisively, very derisively.

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They said it's insufficiently Christological, and rather than beginning with biblical theological categories, they begin with the categories of systematic theology, and then once they create their system, they go back and they backfill

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Scripture into it to support their claims. And, you know,

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Charles Briggs makes this accusation against the Westminster Divines, and he says that it's mired in medieval theology.

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So he really spoke derisively of it. Now, there are a couple of things that we have to note at this point.

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First is we might hear a number of things that maybe resonate with us.

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What's wrong with being Christocentric? What's wrong with using biblical theology?

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What's wrong with using Scripture first to then go about going and doing to do our theology?

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And on the surface, these things all sound fine and well, but when you dig beneath the surface and you look to see what

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Briggs had to say about these things, you realize he's using the language of conservative theology, but he has radically changed its meaning.

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And this is something that J. Gresham Machen warned about in Christianity and liberalism, and you find the seeds of this really kind of methodological shift in the late 19th century, until it really kind of fully flowered in American Presbyterianism in Machen's day.

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And the idea is that when he says you have to begin with Christ, it's really a doctrine of Christ reconstructed, that it doesn't have a lot to do with the doctrine of Christ from the

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Scriptures, but rather it has more to do with liberal notions of Christ, that Christ is, you know, the universal

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Redeemer of all human beings. And when you say that you begin with Christ, you're not necessarily beginning with the

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Christ of Scripture, but rather you're beginning with this liberal notion of who

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Christ is, and that supposedly is supposed to be the touchstone or the defining doctrine of everything else that follows.

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And this is one of the reasons why I think Briggs and Schaff found the doctrine of predestination so detestable.

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They just couldn't stand it, and so they were doing everything they could to undermine it. But then another reason,

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I think, that comes about for these shifts and changes is that because of the influence of the philosophy of G .W

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.F. Hegel, Hegel said that we were supposed to be entering into a new phase of history marked by the

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Spirit. Now once again, Hegel may talk of the Spirit, but he doesn't have the doctrine of the

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Trinity in mind, but rather just the unfolding and the evolutionary development of history.

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History as Spirit, if you will. And so he goes about talking about these things.

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This is hugely influential on theologians who say, yeah, we've left the period of the

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Father, we've left the period of the Son, and now we're entering into the period of the age of the

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Spirit. And I think that these kinds of ideas were just really in the water of the time.

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When you look at how many works on the Holy Spirit started coming up, not only in liberal circles, but in addition to this, you had really the beginnings of the charismatic movement, say for example in the,

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I think it was the 1906 Azusa Street Pacific movement that got started. You had charismatic schools popping up, so that there was just this significant interest in the person and work of the

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Spirit due to philosophical, theological, as well as even experiential types of movements within the

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Church. So much so that I think a lot of Presbyterians took a look around and they said, hey, why aren't we talking more about the

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Spirit? Or at least that's a general way of describing it. And so I think all of these things fed into the effort and the motivation to rework, or at least to add these additional chapters or the chapter on the

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Holy Spirit to the Westminster Confession of Faith. And just to put it very bluntly,

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I think Schaff and Briggs, despite their erudition, really misunderstood not only the

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Confession, but in particular they misunderstood the theology of the 16th and 17th centuries.

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And you mentioned the Azusa Street Revival in the early 19th, or should

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I say early 20th century. You also have the divide amongst Pentecostals occurring when the

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Oneness Pentecostals were excommunicated by, I believe, the Assemblies of God, so you have interesting aberrancies.

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Not that this was the first time that modalism appeared on the scene, and modalism is an ancient heresy, but it was manifest in a new form in the 20th century, so you had a lot of different approaches and views being discussed about the person and work of the

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Holy Spirit. Right. No, you're absolutely right. Now, it's interesting that you would have those looking at Reformed Christianity as being insufficient, subordinate, or devoid of not only talking about the

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Holy Spirit, but actually the presence and possession of the Holy Spirit, which of course is a slander, when we, who are theologically

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Reformed, actually believe that dead, lost sinners are more in need of the

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Holy Spirit than your average non -Calvinist Christian believes. We actually believe that it is impossible for one to even have saving faith without a miracle of the

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Holy Spirit first occurring in our hearts and minds. Mm -hmm. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right.

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Now, we're going to our first break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own regarding the spirit of the age, the 19th century debate over the

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Holy Spirit, and the Westminster Confession, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

30:14

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

30:22

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you disagree with your own pastor or congregation on this issue.

30:33

Perhaps you are a pastor and you disagree with your own denomination or fellowship on this issue, or you're not even a

30:40

Christian and you just are confused. Well, whatever the case may be, if you want to remain anonymous, we understand that these are sensitive issues that people disagree over, and they are very serious issues that people disagree over.

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So we will accommodate you, but if it's not a personal and private matter, if you're just asking a question for theological clarification or something, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages with Dr. J .V. Fesco and our discussion on The Spirit of the

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Age, the 19th century debate over the Holy Spirit and the Westminster Confession. My name is

31:27

Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

31:33

I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the doctor of ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

31:39

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

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It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in Midtown Manhattan.

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You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc .nyc.

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They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

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If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

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New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

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.nyc. Have a great day. Chris Orenson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here.

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So we can only expect what God believes is best for Mike as a result of this trial.

36:47

We are back now with our conversation with Dr. J. V. Fesco, author, academic dean, professor of systematic theology and historical theology at Westminster Seminary, California.

36:58

We are talking about his book published by Reformation Heritage Books, The Spirit of the Age, The 19th

37:03

Century Debate Over the Holy Spirit and the Westminster Confession. And Dr. Fesco, you mentioned earlier one of your chapters,

37:11

The Catholic Roots of the Confession's Pneumatology. And for those of our listeners who are confused by this very fancy book -learning word, pneumatology, that's the study of the

37:24

Holy Spirit, is it not? Yes, that's correct. That's just the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And there are, as you probably are aware, there are

37:36

Protestants, evangelical Protestants. Many of them would be from a fundamentalist camp who would see, aha, the confession's pneumatology has

37:49

Catholic roots. That's one of the reasons that we need to stay away from Reformed confessions and creeds because they're all rooted in Roman Catholicism.

37:58

And you might even have some Calvinists who are non -confessional making claims like that.

38:05

But what do you exactly mean by the Catholic roots of the confession's pneumatology?

38:11

Because I know that even the framers of the Great Confessions of the faith, they were not in harmony with the soteriology of the

38:20

Church of Rome. In fact, both the Westminster and the 1689 London Baptist Confession identified the

38:27

Pope as the Antichrist. So even though many, if not most, Reformed, confessionally

38:32

Reformed Christians today do not agree with the framers of the confessions on that issue, they would still nonetheless be very concerned over the heresies of Rome.

38:45

So when you have a chapter that is titled such as the way that you have titled it, the Catholic roots of the confession's pneumatology,

38:52

I think that some explanation needs to be made. Yeah, sure. I mean, from one vantage point, it's just simply saying the universal, the roots of the doctrine in the universal

39:05

Church, you know, it's as we profess in the Apostles' Creed, one holy and Catholic apostolic

39:10

Church, Catholic with a small c, which again denotes universal. And so in that sense, we say that the

39:20

Reformation, and in particular the Westminster Confession of Faith, has its roots of doctrine in the teaching of the universal

39:30

Church. And so by that we mean this, is that in the 16th century,

39:36

John Calvin wrote a letter against Cardinal Satellito. Cardinal Satellito was a

39:43

Roman Catholic bishop who was doing everything that he could to win the city of Geneva back into the

39:50

Church. And in particular, he accused the 16th century

39:55

Reformers, like Calvin and Luther and others, of being the inventors of novel doctrine.

40:01

And so when Calvin responded, he said, no, we're not inventing novel doctrine, but rather the teaching of the

40:09

Reformation, the teaching of the Reformers, goes back to the earliest roots of the

40:14

Church. We agree with the Church Fathers, such as St. Augustine, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and others, these

40:25

Church Fathers, and that we are taking the very best teaching of the Church Fathers, and we are bringing it forth to show that our teaching is not only in agreement with their historic teaching, but also, and most especially, that they are in agreement with the teaching of the

40:43

Scriptures. So Calvin wasn't attributing authority to the Church Fathers, like Augustine or Cyprian, from the vantage point of saying that they are on equal par with Scripture, but rather they're simply saying that they're part of the one true

40:58

Church, and we, as 16th century Reformers, are their heirs.

41:04

Another way to, I think, look at this question is that I think that a lot of people look at the tree of the history of the

41:15

Church, and they look at the branch of the Reformation as being one branch breaking off and away.

41:22

But I want to encourage folks to think about it very differently, to say, no, the

41:28

Reformation exists on the main trunk of the tree, and that it is the

41:35

Roman Catholic Church, especially in the Council of Trent, that has broken away, and it is the diverting branch.

41:44

It's Rome that has departed from the teaching of the Universal Church, not the 16th century

41:50

Reformation, because the way that Calvin defined the Church is he defines it in his letter as being the body of believers that have existed throughout all parts of the world and throughout every age in history.

42:07

And he says that that is the Church to which we belong. So in that sense, we don't want to say that the

42:14

Reformation teachings are new, because then we might fall prey to the accusation that, well, this is novel, this is a sect, this is something that has never been seen before.

42:28

And he says, no, no, we're not that, but rather we're part of the one true Church. We're part of the one true Catholic, with a small c,

42:36

Church. And in fact, in the 16th and 17th centuries, there were a number of well -known

42:42

Reformed theologians. William Perkins was one of them, who wrote a work entitled,

42:48

Reformed Catholic. In other words, he was saying that, no, we are true

42:53

Catholics. We are, we have reformed the teaching of the one true Church in the sense that we are in harmony with the teaching of the one true

43:02

Church. And so he wrote this book, Reformed Catholic, and I think Reformation Heritage Books will be publishing that very soon in the new collection of the works of William Perkins.

43:15

But all of this is to say is that, so when I say, when I talk about the Catholic roots of the Confessions pneumatology, it's not that the 16th century

43:22

Reformers were inventing this stuff whole cloth, just sitting down there and saying, well, it's just us and our Bible.

43:28

But rather, they were looking at the very best and the most scriptural teaching of the ancient

43:33

Church, and say, yes, we agree with the ancient Church on these points.

43:39

And where that really comes up, particularly as it relates to the doctrine of the

43:45

Holy Spirit, and within the broader question of the doctrine of the Trinity, is in the

43:52

Confession statements that echo and use the very language of the ecumenical creeds.

43:59

The Council of Chalcedon, the Council of Constance and Opal, the Council of Nicaea, where this language gets repeated not only in the

44:09

Confession, but also in the larger and shorter catechisms. Many Churches, Reformed Churches today, for example, still regularly use and profess the

44:20

Nicene Creed, for example, along with the Apostles' Creed. So by saying the

44:25

Catholic roots of the Confessions, doctrine of the Holy Spirit, simply basically pointing out, saying the continuity, and there are some discontinuities, but the continuities that exist with the ancient

44:38

Church, going all the way back to those ecumenical creeds, and in some cases even perhaps sometimes before that.

44:46

We have a listener in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, Susan Margaret, who asks,

44:54

I do not know enough about the history of the Presbyterian Church to be aware of how liberal the

45:01

Presbyterian Church in the United States of America was back in the early 1900s when they sought to redefine the

45:10

Holy Spirit because of the assumed deficiency in the Westminster Confession, but were these redefinitions intended to open up a biblical defense in their minds, of course, for more liberal and heretical and apostate notions?

45:33

I think in some respects, yes, that's the case. You know, I think that what they were trying to do is they were trying to justify, in many respects,

45:43

I think, for example, with Briggs, they were trying to justify, he was trying to justify universalism.

45:50

So there's a passage that I quote in the book where he talks about the idea that the

45:57

Scriptures are but one source of authority or one source of revelation, and that we cannot discount the beliefs of Muslims, we cannot, you know, discount the beliefs of worshippers of the sacred fire, which

46:15

I think are Zoroastrians, but rather we have to recognize that even the human conscience is a source of the knowledge of God, and that these two, these other people as well, can also be saved.

46:34

And so what you get with Briggs in the late 19th and early 20th century where he's pushing for universalism, you get,

46:42

I think, in spades in the 1920s with the whole controversy surrounding

46:49

Pearl Buck and her book The Good Earth, which he was a so -called missionary to China.

46:56

That's one of the reasons that J. Gresham Machen was in great disagreement with the denomination to which he, at that time, belonged.

47:06

Right, exactly. I mean, basically, Machen opposed Buck and the mission board of the

47:12

Presbyterian Church because he was saying, you've completely stripped our missionaries of the gospel.

47:18

They are not promoting gospel, they are promoting humanitarianism, and as beneficial as humanitarianism may be, you know, anybody can conduct humanitarian efforts, but only the

47:30

Church of Jesus Christ can promote and will promote the gospel of Christ, and so that's why he formed the

47:36

Independent Mission Board, and obviously there's a whole lot of history that follows that. That's the main reason he was dismissed by the

47:45

Presbyterian Church. Right, exactly. So that's the nature of the liberalism of Briggs.

47:51

That is the ethos that was behind the effort to revise the

47:58

Westminster Confession of Faith, and sometimes what happens is that you get somebody pushing hard on one side, you get somebody pushing hard on the other side, and you get something of a compromise in the middle, and that's to a certain extent what these changes to the confession amounted to, but if you read the additions to the

48:17

Westminster Confession of Faith with Briggs's theology in mind, there's a very different message that comes out, versus if you read it with, say, somebody with, like,

48:26

Warfield's convictions in mind, you know, you won't necessarily get to the same places. But this is what they were trying to do, and in the end, you know,

48:35

Briggs was defrocked and later joined the Anglican Church, and when

48:42

Briggs joined the faculty at Union Theological Seminary prior to his defrocking, you know, he asked his colleagues, like Philip Schaaf, hey, you know, what about subscription to the

48:55

Westminster Standards? I mean, I don't want to, you know, what are we supposed to do with this? And that's where Schaaf told him, don't worry, our terms of subscription are rather loose.

49:04

You can take issue with whatever you'd like. So they didn't take the confession very seriously, and shortly thereafter,

49:12

Union Theological Seminary rejected the Westminster Confession and the standards as their doctrinal standards and set them aside.

49:23

And so, you know, it's all of these things that really feed into the, you know, Machen's battle with liberalism, so that if you want a brief diagnosis of the problem, you can read

49:34

Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, whereas if you want to get kind of deeper into the issues, and particular as it relates to the

49:43

Holy Spirit, that's when you would, you know, hopefully pick up at least what I've written here and, you know, look into those, that aspect of the whole thing.

49:54

Well, thank you, Susan Margaret. In Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, you have won a free copy of The Spirit of the

49:59

Age, the 19th century debate over the Holy Spirit and the Westminster Confession by our guest J .V.

50:05

Fesko, compliments of our friends at Reformation Heritage Books, and also compliments of our friends at CVBBS .com,

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Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. We'll be shipping that out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

50:21

We have, let's see here, Bobby in Hartsdale, New York.

50:28

Bobby asks, I know that the PCUSA, which began as the

50:35

Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, is a very liberal denomination and had problems even over a century ago, as you are discussing, but I'm wondering how liberal could it have been in the earlier half of the 20th century if great men like John Gerstner and R .C.

50:56

Sproul rose up from out of that denomination and were still teaching in it for quite a while before leaving it?

51:05

Yeah, you know, that's always a tough question to answer just because, you know, there's the whole question of wisdom is at what point do you abandon ship?

51:17

And the analogy may not be a precise, certainly it's imprecise, because, you know, when the ship goes under the water, well then, if you're not already off, it's probably too late.

51:28

But, you know, the idea is do you stay within in the effort to reform it and to change it, or do you abandon it and, you know, and break away and start a, you know, a breakaway church?

51:49

And that's always a difficult question to answer, and there are all kinds of questions and persons and, you know, and issues that feed into those types of decisions so that, you know,

52:01

I've never had the chance to talk to Sproul specifically about that question, but I know that so many of these men,

52:10

I think, really gave a significant effort at changing the conversation, at changing the theology of the denomination.

52:20

But eventually, I know that Dr. Sproul, you know, left and became a minister of the

52:25

PCA. I can't say for Dr. Gerstner because I never met him.

52:31

Yeah, he did eventually, he was a holdout for quite a while, even though he is an arch, or was, well, actually is still in heaven, an arch conservative.

52:42

He had such a strict view of church membership and the reasons why one should cut themselves off from a church that they vowed to belong to that he apparently, from what recall in his contribution to,

52:59

I think it was the book Onward Christian Soldiers or something like that, it was a book about the church, and the late

53:07

Dr. Gerstner said that the only reason that you ever leave a church is when they begin to deny the actual gospel.

53:13

So he was more of a holdout than Dr. Sproul was, I believe. Yeah, and I think another factor there, too, is that you often find conservative pockets within these churches, and so you say, okay, you know, can

53:30

I contribute to this pocket growing? And can we change things and push things back in the right direction?

53:37

And it's rare, but there have been instances where denominations that have veered left have, you know, moved back to the right.

53:45

So the question as to when to leave is, you know, is ultimately one of wisdom.

53:52

Sometimes it's more than that, but yeah, it has to do with how long are you willing to wait patiently to try to work things out.

54:01

I think some people leave denominations entirely too soon, but on the other hand, you know, it's often difficult to say, but you know,

54:09

I respect those men and the decisions that they made, and I may not have personally made those same decisions at the same time, but apart from being able to talk to everybody involved in all of the situations and circumstance,

54:23

I just have to say, well, I respect the decision, and I hope and pray that God would give people wisdom to know when is the right time to leave a denomination.

54:32

Yes, the Lord did bring about a great transformation in the Southern Baptist denomination decades ago and seemed to have rescued it from liberalism.

54:46

Then the war between the Calvinists and the anti -Calvinists continued on even after the liberalism seemed to at the time be purged from the denomination.

54:57

But sadly, there seems to be a return to liberal thinking, and it's a tragedy what's going on with some of those involved in promoting critical race theory and being really dangerously soft on the sin of homosexuality, and we've got to pray about the

55:20

Southern Baptist convention, that the Lord once again rescues it or just brings it into ruin so that those who are involved in that denomination may start afresh without any negative and heretical and apostate baggage that they are being linked to.

55:40

But we are going to a midway break right now. The midway break, as many of you know, is a much longer break than normal.

55:48

It's approximately 12 minutes long, and that is because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a long break because they air their own commercials and public service announcements during this break.

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So please be patient as we go on this break. Take this time to write down questions for Dr. J .V.

56:06

Fesco. Also take this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers because the more you successfully patronize our advertisers, the more they are likely, the longer they are likely to remain as sponsors, and we rely upon their advertising dollars to exist.

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So please write down that information that you hear from the advertisers. And don't go away.

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God willing, we are going to be back after this break with more of Dr. J .V. Fesco. So please write down your questions, and we look forward to hearing from you after this break from our sponsors.

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01:06:32

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpman's Iron Radio. We have a few special events that we have got to let you know about before we return to our discussion with Dr.

01:06:42

J .V. Fesco. First of all, coming up this week on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, August 2nd through the 4th, the

01:06:51

Fellowship Conference New England will be taking place at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine.

01:06:58

And the speakers at this conference include my friends Pastor Tim Conway, Pastor Mac Tomlinson, Pastor Jesse Barrington, and Pastor Nate Pikulitz.

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That is the Fellowship Conference New England. I strongly urge you if you live in or near Portland, Maine, or if you just have the ability to get there by train, plane, or automobile,

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I strongly urge you to be there at the Fellowship Conference New England. You can register at fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

01:07:27

fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. Then coming up in November the 9th and the 10th, the

01:07:33

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals once again having their Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology at the

01:07:39

Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania. The theme this year is the glory of the cross, and the speakers include

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David Garner, Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Winn.

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That's November 9th and the 10th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

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If you want to register for the Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology on the glory of the cross, go to alliancenet .org,

01:08:07

alliancenet .org. Then you click on events, and you scroll down to the

01:08:13

Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology. Then coming up in January 2019, there is an event that I look forward to with bated breath every year, like a kid in a candy store, like a kid on Christmas morning, uh, ready to open up his presence.

01:08:31

I am going to be once again, God willing, manning an exhibitor's booth at the

01:08:36

G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The G3 Conference stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory, and it's being held once again at the

01:08:44

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. And the theme is the mission of God, a biblical understanding of missions.

01:08:55

The speakers at this magnificent conference are going to include, God willing, John Piper, David Platt, Stephen Lawson, Voddie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

01:09:06

Bewe, my favorite preacher of all, pastor of Kabwatha Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and chancellor of the

01:09:14

African Christian University. If you haven't heard Conrad M. Bewe yet, you've got to hear this man preach.

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He is unbelievable. And we have Tim Chalies, Phil Johnson, the executive director of John MacArthur's ministry,

01:09:27

Josh Bice, who is the executive director of the G3 Conference, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and, uh,

01:09:37

Stephen, uh, Stephen, uh, Nichols, Stephen J. Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible College, the

01:09:45

Bible college founded by the late Dr. R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. And the list goes on and on and on.

01:09:51

If you want to register, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. And while you're at it, if you want to also register not only to attend, but to have your own exhibitors booth, like I will be manning,

01:10:04

God willing, there at the conference, uh, then please register because they are expecting between four and 5 ,000 people at the conference.

01:10:15

And again, this is being held Thursday, January 17th through Saturday, January 19th, 2019 at the

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01:10:30

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01:10:37

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01:10:42

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01:12:47

By the way, that's also the email address you can send in a question to our guest, Dr. J .V. Fesco, that's chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

01:12:54

chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and if you just tuned in to the program, we are discussing

01:13:01

Dr. Fesco's book, The Spirit of the Age, the 19th century debate over the Holy Spirit and the

01:13:07

Westminster Confession, that's chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com

01:13:13

is our email address. Dr. Fesco, we have another listener for you with a question, this is

01:13:23

Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and I have to enlarge

01:13:28

Gordy's email because it's written with a microscopically small font, and it says, particularly

01:13:38

Reformed Presbyterians, but also Reformed Baptists, are referred to as God's frozen chosen.

01:13:46

In your opinion, is this due to a careful observance of the regulative principle that results in a seemingly, in a seemingly church lack, let me refer,

01:13:56

I think he has a grammatical problem here, observance of the regulative principle that results in a,

01:14:02

I'm going to reword his thing here, in a church seemingly lacking a moving of the

01:14:09

Holy Spirit. In other words, is it the influence of the regulative principle, or just a fear of appearing charismatic?

01:14:16

I guess what he means is a fear of appearing charismatic, that we may appear to be frozen, and lifeless, and emotionless, and motionless to other people in the outside world that is predominantly,

01:14:31

I guess, charismatic. But if you could respond to Gordy. Yeah, no,

01:14:36

I think maybe a little bit of that is at play when we talk about the frozen chosen as a label.

01:14:42

You know, I think one, it's because, you know, at least in Reformed churches that practice and employ the regulative principle of worship, the idea or the teaching that, you know, if it is not commanded in Scripture, or if it doesn't have

01:14:58

Scriptural warrants, then we're not allowed to practice whatever it may be in worship, so that our worship services look a particular way.

01:15:08

Whereas if you look at what we could call maybe liturgical chaos that exists in the broader church, where, you know, it could be anything from, you know, people so -called prophesying to things that look like rock and roll shows, and you wouldn't be able to really tell that it's a worship service.

01:15:27

I think in comparison to those types of, you know, so -called worship services, yeah, we look like we're kind of, you know, frozen.

01:15:34

But then, too, I think that, I don't know, I think that Reformed folks, we like to do things, you know, like Paul says in 1

01:15:41

Corinthians 14, decently in an order, and so we look a little bit stiff, perhaps, from a certain vantage point.

01:15:48

But, you know, one of the things that I try to point out in the book is that I don't think we need to worry about theological frostbite if we understand that we've got a vibrant doctrine of the

01:16:00

Spirit. I like that phrase, I've never heard that before, theological frostbite. Yeah, you know, because it's like,

01:16:06

I think so many people say, well, you know, hey, you don't have the Spirit because you guys don't have people speaking in tongues and prophesying, and I say, well, no, actually, you know, we've got something better.

01:16:17

We've got the Holy Spirit speaking, is one of the phrases that the Westminster Confession uses in chapter 1, the

01:16:23

Holy Spirit speaking through the Word of God and through the preaching of God's Word.

01:16:29

Why would we want some individual's, you know, so -called prophecy when we could have, you know,

01:16:35

God himself speaking to his people through those means? And so I think when we get dialed into that frequency and we recognize what's going on, then

01:16:45

I don't think that we necessarily have to worry about such things. But going back to the question, yeah,

01:16:52

I think that that's why some folks have labeled us the frozen chosen. Yeah, and sometimes it's well -deserved, we have to be honest.

01:17:01

There are people in churches, but that's not exclusively a Calvinistic phenomenon.

01:17:06

There are people in a lot of churches that are really not singing and praising the

01:17:12

Lord as if they are actually addressing him in the worship service. There are, you know, all kinds of churches that are guilty of dead, passionless worship and behavior in a church service.

01:17:28

So anyway, well, thanks a lot, Gordy. And since you live so close to CVBBS, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service on North Hanover Street in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, since Mechanicsburg is only 10 to 15 minutes away from you, please pick that up yourself tomorrow while they are open and that will save them from the shipping cost of sending that to you.

01:17:55

So just let us know if you require that they mail it to you, but I'm sure that you could pick that up since you're so close.

01:18:01

Thank you very much for contributing your excellent question to today's show. We have, let's see here,

01:18:11

John in Bangalore, Maine. John in Bangalore, Maine says, I tuned in late, so please forgive me if you have already spoken about this already, but are there any conservative individuals who are prominent teachers today or congregations or denominations that are carrying on, perhaps unconsciously, the aberrant notions of the

01:18:41

Holy Spirit that the PCUSA started to promote in their attempts at revisions of the

01:18:50

Westminster Confession's understanding of the Holy Spirit? And give us specific ways where we can be on the lookout for these views cropping up, perhaps while we're listening to Christian radio, watching

01:19:03

Christian television, or reading Christian books, and we may be totally unaware that these conservatives are really either misinformed or intentionally carrying on a dangerous teaching about the third person of the

01:19:18

Holy Trinity. Yeah, you know, I mean, off the top of my head,

01:19:24

I can't necessarily identify any specific, I mean, I don't know, I think the question's for the conservative folks that are doing it, but at least very generally,

01:19:34

I can say that one of the trends that you find in the 19th century debate, and it's one of the trends that I think that continues more broadly in the

01:19:42

Church, is that any time there is an effort to promote the doctrine of the

01:19:47

Holy Spirit, what sometimes happens is that people unhitch the doctrine of the

01:19:55

Holy Spirit from the doctrine of Christ. But if we recognize what Jesus taught about the

01:20:01

Spirit and the sending of the Spirit in the 14th chapter of John, we're going to recognize that the

01:20:06

Spirit's mission is to exalt the person and work of Christ, so that any message, any book, any teacher that takes the attention away from the person and work of Christ and the

01:20:23

Gospel, to focus supposedly upon the work of the Spirit, it is not honoring what the

01:20:30

Spirit is actually all about. It's like I tell my students this on a regular basis, you know, historically speaking, and I don't know who coined the term, but people will say that the

01:20:42

Holy Spirit is the shy person of the Trinity, because the Holy Spirit does not draw attention to himself, you do not find any explicit statements of the

01:20:53

Spirit, per se, in comparison to the explicit statements that you find of the

01:20:59

Father and of the Son, because it's the Spirit's role to point to Christ, to teach us and to bring to remembrance the things that Christ has said and taught, to apply the work of Christ to the elect, to their sanctification and to their salvation.

01:21:18

So I think that that's the important trend that I see, and so for example, in the broader

01:21:23

Charismatic movement, and I've seen this, you know, firsthand in some

01:21:28

Charismatic churches, and I've read things by some Charismatic teachers, you know, the idea that somebody would claim to prophesy and to speak in the power of the

01:21:39

Spirit, yet it's unintelligible, or it doesn't magnify Christ, it doesn't promote the

01:21:46

Gospel, I say that that, to me, I think, as far as the Bible is concerned, is not really the work of the

01:21:54

Spirit, because basically, that person is claiming to be speaking in the power of the

01:22:01

Spirit, yet is not in any way bringing things around to the Gospel, to the fact that we are sinners, that Christ has come to save sinners, and that Christ, through the cross and through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, is now continuing to intercede for sinners.

01:22:19

You know, those are the types of things that we want to hear, not these other things about, well, you know,

01:22:25

God wanted me to tell you that, and all of a sudden it's become all about me, or it's become all about the person that is giving the so -called prophecy.

01:22:35

So those are the kinds of things that I would see, at least generally speaking, carry on in kind of the spirit, if you will, of what was going on in this 19th century debate.

01:22:49

Yes. Very often, if you have a church or a preacher preoccupied with the

01:22:58

Holy Spirit, at least the phrase, the Holy Spirit, might not necessarily be an actual preoccupation with the true person of the

01:23:09

Godhead. It might be just a phrase that he's throwing around. Very often, when they are preoccupied with talking about the

01:23:15

Holy Spirit, they are really preoccupied with an experience that they're trying to promote, rather than the actual deity.

01:23:27

Right. And, well, I think it was Gordy that, actually, we already spoke about Gordy winning his book.

01:23:36

Oh, that was John in Bangor, Maine. John in Bangor, Maine, we need to get from you your full mailing address in Bangor, Maine, so that we can ship out to you this free book that you have won by our guest,

01:23:50

John V. Fesco, The Spirit of the Age, The 19th Century Debate Over the

01:23:55

Holy Spirit and the Westminster Confession, and compliments of our friends at Reformation Heritage Books, and also compliments of our friends at CVBBS .com,

01:24:03

who will be shipping that out to you. If you could, before we move on, we're going to be going to a final break in a few minutes, a much briefer break than the last one.

01:24:16

If you could reiterate the actual issue for our listeners, especially those who tuned in late, that is at the core of the debate that we should be very aware of when it comes to orthodoxy, and a biblical understanding of the

01:24:35

Holy Spirit, and something that is an invention of men. Yeah, I think very briefly, the debate arose over the supposed, over the complaint that the confession,

01:24:47

Westminster Confession of Faith, is supposedly deficient in its doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and because of that, 19th century liberals proposed to add a chapter to the confession about the

01:24:58

Holy Spirit. But when you really look at what the confession itself teaches, especially in chapters 8 and following, it talks about the fact that the and the doctrine of Christ go hand in hand, and the

01:25:13

Holy Spirit is an integral part of the Westminster Confession of Faith, ultimately echoing what

01:25:19

Jesus, for example, says about the role of the Holy Spirit in John chapter 14, that he would send another, and that this comforter would bring to remembrance everything that Jesus had taught, and ultimately apply the to the people of God.

01:25:38

And so in this sense, far from being deficient, when you look at the details, there's actually a fantastic and wonderful, beautiful doctrine of the

01:25:49

Holy Spirit present in the Westminster Confession of Faith. And that's what I go to set about in the book, is to show how the

01:25:56

Holy Spirit is present in the confession, how it has teaching, its roots of this teaching are in the ancient

01:26:03

Church, and then talking about the way in which the Holy Spirit functions, if you will, in the

01:26:11

Westminster Confession of Faith to put forth a biblically vibrant and orthodox doctrine of the

01:26:18

Holy Spirit. Amen. We have, before we go to the break, time for one more question.

01:26:25

We have Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, how do you respond to anti -Trinitarians who will say that whenever Trinitarians are involved in describing and explaining the

01:26:42

Holy Trinity, they are involved in gross eisegesis, and inserting things into the scriptural texts that don't exist, and they might even say that the reason there is some confusion and debate over what the confession has to say in regard to the

01:27:03

Holy Spirit is because of the very thing I just mentioned, that they will claim that the Bible itself is unclear.

01:27:12

Yeah, no, I mean, first and foremost, I think that we would want to recognize that the

01:27:18

Church historically, at this point we could say, whether it's Roman Catholic, whether it's

01:27:25

Protestant, whether it's Eastern Orthodox, that historically for the last 2 ,000 years, these major, you know, if we can say denominational entities, have all historically affirmed the doctrine of the

01:27:41

Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is not something that professing Christians debate.

01:27:48

Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is what divides and defines the Christian Church over, from, and against all other religions in the world.

01:27:58

It's not that some Christians profess the Trinity and others do not. This is something that divides

01:28:04

Christian from non -Christian, so that's the first observation. The second observation is that what the

01:28:11

Church did, the ancient Church did, for example, in the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Chalcedon, as it was refining its expressions about and its teachings about the person and work of Christ, is ultimately talking about the relationship among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is something that you find in the

01:28:33

Scriptures. So that from the very earliest days of the Church, the

01:28:38

Church itself recognized that there are three persons in this one

01:28:43

God, so that when the Apostle Paul, for example, in Romans chapter 9, verse 5, states very clearly that Christ is

01:28:52

God and gives to him a title that was reserved for Yahweh alone in the

01:28:58

Old Testament, that this is speaking to this truth. That at the baptism of Christ, for example, when the skies open up and the

01:29:07

Gospels testify to the Spirit descending like a dove upon Christ and then the

01:29:13

Father bellowing forth and saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, that the

01:29:19

Church, the ancient Church, looked at these and recognized that these passages were teaching that there are three distinct persons, but nevertheless in line with Deuteronomy 6 -4 and following,

01:29:30

Hero Israel, our Lord, the Lord our God is one, that they were recognizing that these three persons exist as one

01:29:38

God over and against all of the other so -called deities that every other religion might try to bring.

01:29:45

So that in this respect, I think the Scriptures are eminently clear on this, and the fact that they're clear is evident in that Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, all affirm the doctrine of the

01:29:58

Trinity, and so this is no sideline teaching, this is no point of confusion for people in the

01:30:05

Church, but rather this is the teaching of the historic and universal Church as well as the clear teaching of Scripture.

01:30:12

Well, we have to go to our final break right now, and we do have a couple of people still waiting online to have their questions asked and answered by you, but if you would like to join those folks in line,

01:30:22

I would do so now because we're rapidly running out of time. Please send us your email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:30:30

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com, and as always, please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence.

01:30:37

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away.

01:30:43

We'll be right back with J .V. Fesco. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round

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I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

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If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

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.nyc. Have a great day. Chris Orenson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here.

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01:34:55

That's chrisorenson at gmail .com. to be much more concerned with how

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01:37:31

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is a non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit, non -profit,

01:46:14

And so that's why so many, you know, there's a quote in the book that I use by Hermann Bavink, where Hermann Bavink says, when we are talking about the writings of Augustine, Cyprian, or Aquinas, they are not the exclusive property of Rome, rather they are, we are as much indebted to them as any other.

01:46:37

They are as much our theologians as they belong to Rome, because at this point there's only one church.

01:46:44

And so in the 16th century, you get the question, who truly represents the very best teaching of the church?

01:46:51

Is it Trent and the so -called Roman Catholic Church, or is it the Protestant Reformation? I think as a whole, you have to say biblically, the

01:46:59

Protestant Reformation, and especially as you find that teaching in the chief confessions,

01:47:05

Protestant confessions of the Reformation. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, is there clear, decisive evidence that an

01:47:18

Orthodox pneumatology existed amongst the church fathers before any of the major councils of the

01:47:25

Catholic Church? I mean, generally speaking, I'm going to say yes, it's just that it would take me a little while to dig this stuff up, you know, but when you look, for example, at the teaching of Tertullian or Athanasius, those theologians provide what you have as the building blocks for what ultimately becomes some of the chief statements and teachings of the ecumenical councils.

01:47:53

So in that sense, yeah, I mean, I think we get, you know, good, solid Orthodox teaching on the doctrine of the

01:47:58

Holy Spirit, and in general, in the doctrine of the Trinity. But again, it would take me some time to have to go and dig that material up.

01:48:08

Well, thank you, Arnie. You have also won a free copy of The Spirit of the Age by J .V.

01:48:13

Fesco. Please give us your full mailing address in Perry County, Pennsylvania, so cvbbs .com can ship that out to you.

01:48:20

And we thank Reformation Heritage Books once again for their generous contribution to our show today by providing these free copies.

01:48:30

We have another anonymous listener who asks, I have close friends within my congregation who will insist that although a denial of the

01:48:42

Trinity is heretical, they will still say that it is a non -salvific issue because so many

01:48:48

Christians within Trinitarian churches still are unconsciously explaining a modalist version of the

01:48:58

Trinity when asked about the situation. Could we separate between the average

01:49:04

Christian who may have ignorance or lack of clarity on the Trinity, since it is such a very deep and mysterious topic, and those that are in the forefront of promoting a non -Trinitarian concept of God that are leaders in the movement of Oneness Pentecostalism and other movements that are anti -Trinitarian?

01:49:27

Is there not a difference between the movers and shakers and leaders and authors and speakers and seminary professors who are heretical on this and the average

01:49:38

Joe in the pew? I think that there is some place for that kind of a distinction, though I would want to make sure and qualify that answer very carefully so as not to give the impression that the doctrine of the

01:49:52

Trinity is not an essential teaching of the Christian faith and therefore one necessary for our salvation.

01:49:59

And I would make, you know, I think three observations come to mind. First of all, one, yeah, anybody who explicitly and knowingly rejects

01:50:08

Trinitarian theology, I would say is guilty of heresy, and that's not just the opinion of Protestant Christians, but rather, as I said,

01:50:18

Christians universally, whether they're Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.

01:50:24

That is, that's heresy from all of those different denominational perspectives. So yeah, we would want to bracket them out and say that that is, you could even go as far as saying it's a damnable heresy because they are rejecting that explicit teaching.

01:50:41

But then when it comes to the average layperson in the Church, I would want to distinguish and make the following carefully crafted statement to say that it's one thing to maybe have a failure to understand the depths of the doctrine, and say, for example, to say, affirm that yes, we worship

01:51:02

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but be incapable of explaining that to a degree of accuracy and scriptural clarity.

01:51:15

I think that's a person that, you know, I'm not going to be quick to judge and say, well, it's possible that that's not something that endangers their salvation.

01:51:26

That being said, I would never want to be in that position and go to the throne, or go to the judgment, if you will, with that doctrine in hand, and that's why it's so important for pastors, for elders, for parents to teach the people of the

01:51:45

Church, whatever age, you know, whatever their place in life, the essentials of this doctrine.

01:51:51

And while at its root, the doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery, nevertheless,

01:52:00

I think its formulaic statement is very simple and easy to learn.

01:52:06

And in fact, my middle child, my son, who is eight years old, you know, was interviewed by the elders this week, or this past, yesterday, on Sunday, so that he could become a

01:52:18

Communicant member in the Church, and one of the questions they asked him is, they asked him, you know, questions particularly about the

01:52:27

Trinity, and would I say that he understands the doctrine of the Trinity as well as I understand it?

01:52:34

No. I mean, I've been studying theology now professionally for 25 years, but I would still say that he has an orthodox understanding of the doctrine of the

01:52:45

Trinity when he says that it's one God and three Persons. And that simple, childlike faith,

01:52:52

I think, is something that really any and every Christian should be able to profess.

01:52:57

It's not overly difficult, we're not asking anybody to explain the mysteries of how this one

01:53:04

God exists in three Persons, but nevertheless, it's a Trinitarian profession of faith. And in particular, in my own denominational context, it requires, in order to become a

01:53:15

Communicant member in the Church, or, you know, if somebody's joining the

01:53:20

Church, making a profession of faith, they're required to profess faith in the Triune God, not just in Christ.

01:53:28

So, as common as it may be, this is my third and final point, as common as it may be to have people that maybe don't understand it,

01:53:37

I think that we should make every effort to, you know, to instruct them and teach them in making that simple profession of a

01:53:47

Trinitarian faith. Yes, do you think the difference in our approach might be, obviously there are hypothetical and theoretical kind of situations where you don't want to rob a mourning person whose loved one just died, you don't want to rob them of peace of mind and hope in the eternal life of the one who has departed because of the fact that they may have had a water, ice and steam understanding of the

01:54:23

Trinity or something like that, but at the same time, you want to warn those holding to these aberrant views that they are not safe in continuing to hold them.

01:54:35

Right, exactly. I mean, it seems, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know what your specific view is on this, but it seems that in regard to even the doctrine of Sola Fide, when

01:54:48

Paul is chastising the Church of Galatia, he seems to treat the average members of the

01:54:57

Church in a different way than the actual Judaizers who were the teachers of the heresy that seduced them and bewitched them.

01:55:05

There seems to be a different, he calls them his brothers where he doesn't call the Judaizers his brothers. Right.

01:55:11

No, I think that's precisely the kind of distinction that we would want to make and, you know, it's one of these things where I don't want anybody to go with a deficient doctrine of the

01:55:21

Trinity and to carry one, and as soon as I find out, I'm immediately correcting them and trying to teach them and trying to help them to understand.

01:55:31

But as you said, in the same way that Paul could call the Galatians his brothers, but have very strong words of denunciation for the

01:55:39

Judaizers, that's the kind of distinction I would say here. Because I have heard people give the water -steam -ice thing, and I kind of say, okay, hold on, that's a really bad analogy,

01:55:49

I don't probably understand what you're saying, let's clean that up. And they always say, oh, okay,

01:55:54

I didn't realize that, and they're often mortified when they find out that that's heresy. You know, so yeah,

01:56:00

I think that that kind of distinction and pastoral treatment of the situation is warranted and is important to maintain.

01:56:11

Well, I would like you to return as soon as possible, in fact I'm going to have a couple of words with you, if you don't mind, off the air very briefly.

01:56:19

I want you to return to discuss your commentary on Romans, if you would like to do that, also published by Reformation Heritage Books.

01:56:28

Can you give our listeners a brief teaser as to why this commentary may be different than a commentary, or commentaries, plural, that they already have on their shelves?

01:56:38

Yeah, no, I mean, it originally began life as a sermon series, you know, a number of years ago, and then

01:56:44

I kind of reworked it and overhauled a lot of it. And I'd say that one of the things that I've always tried to make a hallmark of my preaching in particular, and of my commentary works, in particular the commentary on Galatians that I've written, or now this commentary on Romans, is

01:57:00

I really tried to integrate both Old Testament and New Testament, so that, you know, every time the

01:57:05

Apostle Paul is going back to the Old Testament to talk about some particular truth,

01:57:12

I really want to go back to the Old Testament to say, well, why is Paul pulling this Old Testament text, and why is it significant for us, so that, for example, when

01:57:23

Paul says in Romans 3 that no flesh will be justified in his sight, why is he pulling that from Psalm 143 and David's claim of making the exact same claim?

01:57:33

And then the second thing that I really try to do in this particular commentary that is going to be unlike, say, more technical commentaries, is that I really try to drive the point of the text home in terms of bringing to bear, you know, particular application to say, what is this particular teaching that Paul brings forward do in terms of our

01:57:57

Christian walk? You know, how then should we live if this is what

01:58:03

Paul has said is true? And so that's what I really try to do in this, is really press those points of Paul's application to the reader, because in the end, he was writing these things to see the obedience of faith spread throughout the

01:58:20

Church, and so that's really what I try to do, you know, link the Old Testament to the New Testament, and then really press those points that Paul makes for application for the

01:58:28

Christian life. Yeah, as opposed to unhitching the Old Testament from the New Testament, as tragically

01:58:34

Andy Stanley recommended that we do. Kim Riddlebarger, who's been a guest on this program,

01:58:41

Kim Riddlebarger, who co -hosts The White Horse Inn with Michael Horton, another former guest on the show,

01:58:48

Kim Riddlebarger says, Fesco tackles the thorny issues in Paul's epistle to the

01:58:54

Romans with scholarly rigor, yet his treatment is nicely seasoned with pastoral wisdom.

01:59:00

Well, we look forward to having you return to the program to discuss that. We want to thank again Reformation Heritage Books for providing us with these copies of the

01:59:09

Spirit of the Age that we gave away today. Their website is heritagebooks .org. You can get all of Reformation Heritage Books from cvbbs .com,

01:59:20

our sponsor as well. cvbbs .com. I want to thank you so much, Dr. Fesco, for being such an excellent guest.

01:59:25

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote in questions today. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater