The Redemption of Christ

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:33

And greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a stormy day here in Phoenix, Arizona. Much lower temperatures than we are used to this time of the year, but that's perfectly all right.

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We are very, very happy about that. I probably should have closed that door. It's a little bit loud out there.

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I hope you're not getting any echoing back from that, Rich. But anyway, just a couple of things before we dive into the primary topic that I want to get into today, which

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I'm really looking forward to doing, actually. And that is, we're going to be looking at a chapter from the

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Institutes of the Christian Religion. It seems to be getting louder. So watch how fast I can do this.

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Push door closed. Sit back down. Can you tell

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I'm here alone? Yes, I am here alone. Rich is remote today, and that just helps us get things done.

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I had to be down here for some seminary stuff, and now we're doing the program now. And as you know, starting

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Monday, three -week, over three -week trip, and then 12 days home, and then a 31 -day trip, which will include getting together a lot of you folks at G3 in Washington, D .C.,

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and looking forward to meeting folks and a number of speaking engagements set up.

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If you get anywhere near Chris Arnzen, he's going to make you talk wherever.

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Someday, I'm going to put together a book about those early years with Chris.

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An entire chapter description of the first hotel he put me up at, which actually is amazing that we became friends after that.

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Because, you know, yeah. Anyway, so I'll be in Chris's area.

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I'll be speaking at his pastor's luncheon, and then he's got me speaking a number of other places there in the

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Pennsylvania area over a certain period of days. I'm going to try to get

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Chris out to the Gettysburg battlefield and run him around out there.

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I think I've told the story before. My mom used to do that with me when I was about six or seven years of age.

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She would take me out of school, say that I was sick that day, and it was a 30 -minute drive from Harrisburg to Gettysburg, and we would walk the battlefield at Gettysburg.

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And I did some of the most incredible memories of my life, formative memories of my life, climbing through Devil's Den and staring across the field of Pickett's Charge.

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And very few people have even the slightest idea.

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I hate those things where, you know, Jay Leno used to go, and now everybody goes walking around and asking people basic, simple questions about American history and who's the vice president today, and most people do know that one now.

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And no one has a clue. They know nothing. And public -educated students today, if they even know anything about it, they don't know a thing about it.

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They don't know anything about the complexities and everything else that was involved. And in fact, in some ways, especially about the

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Civil War, you're not even allowed to. You're not even allowed to even read both sides of an argument.

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There's only one side, and it's the side that won, and that's it. There was nobody. Everybody on one side was good, and everybody on the other side was bad.

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Okay, well, yeah, there you go. So I'm gonna hopefully get a chance to take

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Chris around there. So we're gonna be doing, speaking there, but that's later on down the road.

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That's the second long, the long one. This next trip up to primarily Colorado will involve the getting together with Jason Lyle, smartest man on the planet, and we're gonna be doing a seminar at Redemption Hills Church, which is sort of the church.

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There are two churches in the Denver -Boulder area that I'm normally at. I'm not sure yet if I'm gonna be at the second one.

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I heard from the pastor, but I haven't heard back from the pastor. Of course, I had lost his text initially anyway, so we're just getting old like that,

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I guess. But Redemption Hills there in the Denver area, Bruce and Marty Nicolay, my family in Denver.

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I look back upon it now, and I imposed upon them for eight years, living with them each summer, basically, those four people.

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But they're dear friends, and we'll get to see them, and we'll be at the church up there. And that'll just be in a matter of weeks.

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So I'm excited about all of that. I hope that you saw, I learned only this morning that David Allen has been, well, now

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Southwestern is disputing what David Allen has said, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you can't see what's happening in the

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SBC right now, if you can't see that what has happened is because of the last gasp efforts at the last meeting, you don't have, it's being called the drift.

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Drift is when in a slight breeze, a ship moves over toward the dock a little bit, or in a car race, you drift into the guy next to you.

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This ain't a drift. This is a sudden course correction. This is a, we won, we've got it, and they'll never have another shot, so let's do what we've intended to do all along and have been telling people wasn't our intention to do anyways.

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And now David Allen and I have normally been doing this number on particular redemption,

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Calvinism, since 2008. So it's been 14 years.

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I remember it well, and that's been the extent of our relationship, unfortunately.

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But in the midst of all that, everyone who knows Dr. Allen that I've talked to, and I know just a few people who know both of us pretty much equally well, have all said to me that David Allen is a salt of the earth type of guy.

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He believes what he believes, and I believe he's wrong about what he believes on a number of things. But still, the things that we have in common are very broad and very deep and very important.

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And here's somebody who I think was at Southwestern for 18 years. And if you don't see that this is a part of, if this is happening at the exact same time that the president of Southwestern is telling people that it is an appropriate interpretation of the

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Baptist faith and message to have women preachers, oh, it just seems to me that Southwestern is being turned into just another version of Southeastern, which is not a good thing as far as if you want meaningfully conservative graduates coming out of your seminaries.

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I forgot to adjust the temperature in here, and there's nobody else to do it.

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So it's very nice to be able to do that. I don't know why we call those things phones.

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They're not phones. I hate even using it as a phone. But anyway, it's so obvious what's going on, and despite our strong disagreements with one another, it just seems that when someone has been as deeply involved in a seminary, this kind of dismissal, this kind of parting the ways, it's just sad, you know?

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It shouldn't happen this way. It does, it's a fallen world.

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But here's a situation where I think all of us can just sort of go, all right, we have our disagreements, but man, that shouldn't be how things are done.

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It's not good. So I actually contacted Dr. Allen and expressed those sentiments to him, and he was kind in his response.

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So I think that's a good thing. I think it's, you know, stand together or hang separately,

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I guess, especially when it comes to the left, because they don't care about our theological differences.

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They just want us all gone. I just saw, and I need to give credit where credit is due.

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David Hacker, good job, dude, on Twitter was, he quoted from Vidu using language that really is so hyper -technical that I have never seen anyone successfully communicate the pastoral importance of the hyper -technical terminology, in my experience anyways.

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You know, I come from the 20th century, and the 20th century, according to some people, was a theological wasteland.

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And what we were really focused upon was getting the people in the pew to understand the most basic functional definition of the doctrine of the

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Trinity, and to know why they believe it from scripture, so that then they could make application to that in worship and in life.

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But that was just for, that was for dumb people. That's child's play now. Everybody's got that down now, and now that we're in the 21st, it's 2022.

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Could grief for almost a quarter of the way through? I just realized that. Wow. I mean,

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I'm still thinking about the people who were freaked out about Y2K. And we're almost a quarter of the way through the next century.

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No wonder I'm feeling old and everything hurts. Anyway, what were we talking about? Okay, yes.

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So David Hacker quoted for us all a citation from Aquinas that,

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I hadn't seen this one. So, can

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I make that any bigger? Oh, good, good. Thank you, Mac OS.

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Thomas Quine, Assuma Theologica three, question three, answer five. I answered that as we said above, assumption implies two things, viz the act of the one assuming and the term of the assumption.

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Now the principle of the act is the divine power and the term is a person, but the divine power is indifferently and commonly in all the persons.

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Moreover, the nature of personality is common to all the persons, although the personal properties are different. Now, whenever a power regards several things indifferently, it can terminate its action in any of them indifferently as is plain and rational powers, which regard opposites can do either of them.

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Therefore, the divine power could have united human nature to the person of the father or of the

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Holy Ghost as it united it to the person of the son. And hence we must say it, the father or the

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Holy Ghost could have assumed flesh even as the son. That's not the normative perspective of most

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Trinitarian theologians today, but that's what... No, that's all within the context of looking at the doctrine of Trinity, not from biblical terminology and a biblical metaphysic, but applying an external standard to it.

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And hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. But yeah, it was fascinating quotation from Thomas Quines.

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We'll see how that goes. Last night, I had a little encounter with the editor of the

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G .K. Chesterton Twitter feed. And a lot of us follow that. Chesterton said a lot of really brilliant things.

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But as Doug Wilson and I have discussed on this program, in fact, in the past, well, swear to best dialogue,

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Chesterton was a good papist in the fullest sense of that term. And so yesterday a thread was posted on the

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Chesterton feed where Chesterton just rips into the

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Reformation. It blames Reformation for everything that went wrong in Europe. And it was just one of the most horrible things that's ever, ever, ever, ever happened, which was historically the

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Roman Catholic understanding, complete rupturing of the church. I know Roman Catholics that don't have that view anymore.

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And I don't know how you exactly fit it with post -Vatican II thinking, but Chesterton was not post -Vatican

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II thinking. So there you go with that. And I was not expecting any feedback.

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I just simply responded to the first tweet in the thread and just simply said, this is just a reminder to all of us outside of Chesterton's native people, something like that, that he was a son of Rome in the fullest sense.

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And that while he may say great intellectual things, grace and the preeminence of grace is something that does not come from the intellect.

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It comes from the work of the spirit and the heart, which is why the most lowly person can understand it and the most advanced person can understand it because it comes from the spirit.

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Well, shockingly to me, whoever the editor is of that Twitter feed, I don't know.

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I got the distinct feeling that person does know me. And so I responded to my statement.

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And so I then responded back and we went back and forth.

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And I thought it was pretty fascinating. I laid out all sorts of the most basic issues in regards to Rome's political dominance, the abuses of the

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Roman Catholic system and all sorts of things like that. And responded to a lot of what he had said, a lot of what had

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Chesterton said. And he comes back, you're being evasive and stuff like that. But then he mentioned the gospel.

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And so I went straight in and I said, okay, let's talk about it. Are you the blessed man of Romans 4 .8?

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Now I get the feeling he's probably seen the encounter with Peter Stravinskis and that question from 2001, 21 years ago.

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You would think after 21 years, there would be a real good solid answer to this. There just isn't.

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Rome doesn't have a non -imputation of sin. And it's interesting, another guy in that thread, he just went crazy saying, hey, that idea of the imputation of our sin to Christ, this is just the most absurd blasphemy.

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It deserves the full condemnation of the church. You really get in him the old style

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Roman Catholic complete confusion of justification and sanctification and what it means, what the result is.

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So that he's saying, God makes souls objectively pleasing to him.

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Yeah, in sanctification. No, that's justification. And that's what leads to, and it's nothing changes.

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That's what leads to Luther's dunghill, which they love to attack.

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But then the reality from his perspective then, the idea that justification, since justification is sanctification, you are made objectively pleasing to God in baptism.

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So you are turned into a pile of gold, but because this is a synergistic system, you can never know whether you're a pile of gold or a pile of dung.

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And in fact, it's considered to be presumption if you think you're a pile of gold. And of course you're always looking to yourself because it's you that matters.

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It's whether you have availed yourself of the means of sacramental forgiveness and grace.

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And that grace is a mixed grace. Jesus, Mary, the saints, all in the treasury of merit and the whole sacramental system based upon freewill, synergistic cooperation, all that kind of stuff.

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And so that pile of gold cannot presume to be a pile of gold.

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And that's why I remember so clearly my mom coming back from a funeral when

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I was a kid. It's amazing the little things that happen in your life that your children will remember until the day of their death.

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And she had come back from Roman Catholic funeral and she was like, it was so sad because there was no assurance.

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There was no, you know, we were praying that, you know, and of course they've got purgatory and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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And I'm not sure that my mom had a full understanding of Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory as it existed at that time.

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I'm not sure that the current Pope believes in purgatory in the way that it's been described. I can find dogmatically, but I just remember so clearly the brokenheartedness that was hers at the hopelessness that there was just no assurance of what she had seen.

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And that's what happens when you conflate justification and sanctification, when you make them the same thing and the focus becomes all on you and your current state because there is no non -imputation of sin.

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And this guy, you look it up on my Twitter feed if you want, you can follow the discussion going on with that guy.

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Other people have picked up on that, but it just really illustrates the issue.

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So I asked the editor, are you the blessed man? He just dismissed it like that and said, just go read

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Scott Hahn's commentary on Romans. Like I said,

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I've had a few encounters with Scott Hahn. Oh, Rich says, let folks know you are booked for the trip.

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Yeah, everybody's called, well, you need to come to my church, shouldn't you? Yeah, unfortunately, especially that part of it, all my time there is booked up and then that means

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I got to boogie it back across the country to teach early church history at Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

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So yeah, no, we're already filled up for both of those particular events as far as visiting churches and stuff, which

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I'm looking forward to, it's gonna be great. I'm even gonna be in St. Charles at Covenant Grace Church again, just one night.

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I'm gonna do one of my church history things, an evening with some of the early church fathers. Love doing that talk and I'll change it up because there's just so much and I'm gonna be teaching that subject two weeks later.

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So all sorts of directions you can go, but I just now saw that.

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So yes, so he says, read Scott Hahn. And I'm like, oh,

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I could tell you a lot of stories about Scott Hahn, but I won't. So I grabbed

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Scott Hahn's comments on Romans chapter four, verse eight and I post them on Twitter. The whole thing with reference to his book and go, okay, here's what he said.

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Here's why he's wrong. He didn't address the issue. Fascinatingly, it's just as shallow and misses the point just as badly as Thomas Aquinas did.

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I wonder why that would be. Is it possible that having a sacramental mindset that is unbiblical in its origination and its force and its redefinition of grace might function as a negative lens filtering out what's right there in the text of scripture?

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Huh, yeah, it's exactly what happens there. And so I post the whole thing and said, okay, he didn't answer the question.

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Back to you, are you the blessed man? No response, no response, because there is none.

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If you commit a venial sin in Roman Catholicism, it is imputed to you and you have to deal with that in confession and in penance.

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If you commit a mortal sin, you lose the grace of justification. Again, I doubt the Pope believes this anymore.

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I know almost nobody at Boston College believes this anymore, but this is the dogmatic teaching of the church.

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At least it was. You know, you've got to answer why most of your leaders are wishy -washy about these things, but there are still believing

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Roman Catholic leaders who do believe all this stuff. And if you commit a mortal sin, you lose the grace of justification. You are, boom, pile of dung.

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And you have to be re -justified through the sacramental process. But all of this leaves flecks of dung on the pile of gold once it becomes a pile of gold, which is why you go to purgatory to have it cleansed, you see.

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But your suffering in purgatory isn't suffering of Christ. It's satisfacio, your suffering.

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And then the indulgences are the mixed merit of Christ marrying the saints. And that's how you get the last of the dung off the surface of the gold, because the issue is not the perfection of your

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Savior and his righteousness is imputed to you, it's the nature of your own soul. It's a vast difference, huge difference.

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I can't see how there could ever be any concept of assurance or peace in the

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Roman system. Can't, can't see it. So, there was no response, at least as I looked at just before the program started,

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I didn't see any, didn't see anything of that. So, okay, we looked at that, we looked at that.

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So now, I always enjoy doing this. I did this,

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I remember doing this on one of my first road trips where we just, we open up the

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Institutes of the Christian Religion, and I'll just be absolutely perfectly honest with you. I would rather read two paragraphs of John Calvin than 10 ,000 of Thomas Aquinas.

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It's not just a personal thing. I just invite anybody, grab your copy of the

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Institutes, if you have one, I'm just pointing at the one that I use to teach back there. Turn to the second book, chapter 16,

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How Christ Performed the Office of Redeemer. Now, that is a glorious topic, that is a glorious topic.

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And when you read Calvin's treatment here, remembering he's writing this initially, initially, initially, as a defense of the

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Protestant movement and the persecution of faithful Christians in France, it has an apologetic element to it.

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And yet, it is just, it's beautiful. Now, why do

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I point us to this? Because Josh Sommer posted another misrepresentation of me yesterday at 2 .59

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p .m. Those with a quote, reformed biblicist end quote understanding, that's me, okay?

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I wrote that article and said, this is, you know, Josh Sommer hasn't worked through the letter to Saddletto and demonstrated that I was wrong.

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Nobody on that side has even touched it, okay? Pretty much what we've gotten since December of last year.

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Whenever we go into Aquinas or Calvin or whatever, all of a sudden, they have to floss their cat's teeth or something.

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So, reformed biblicist, that's the terminology that I used. So, he's talking about me. So, he's saying,

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James White, who has a reformed biblicist understanding, could not say what

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Calvin here says. And he quotes one section in chapter 16, one section.

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Pastor Sommer, if you're going to use Calvin, realize that we all have him. And some of us have been teaching

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Calvin longer than you have been alive. And so, we can recognize when

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Calvin is being misused and abused, as you did. And let's see how that works, because he goes to the end of the chapter.

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And Calvin has used, as an outline, a portion of the

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Apostolic Creed. And so, toward the end of the chapter, he makes some comments about, well,

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I realize that the apostles, it's been like come from the apostles and there's been changes in it.

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And just like there's been changes in the Nicene Creed over time. And he's doing his,

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I understand church history and the fact that things have changed in church history type of thing.

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Which, of course, in no way, shape, or form, in any sense whatsoever, is contradictory to anything that I laid out in the little article that I wrote on reformed biblicism.

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I teach church history. I'll be teaching church history at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in intensive form, early church history, in just a matter of weeks.

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And I've published many books where I will include, in this chapter,

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Calvin cites Augustine three times and Bernard once.

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Oh, so he's quoting the great tradition. No, he never uses that terminology. He's never using either one to prove a point.

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In the chapter prior to one of the closing statements, that is what

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Josh Sommer quotes, John Calvin quotes 90 verses of Holy Scripture.

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Nine, zero, 90. He never refers to the great tradition.

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He never refers to Thomas Aquinas and he never proves any one of his points from anything other than the inspired scriptures.

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That's the context. That's where you fall apart, brother, because you don't read the whole thing.

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You don't read it in context, either what I write or what Calvin writes, either one. So as I read this,

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I thought, man, this is an awesome section. This is so good. Let's make sure that everyone understands.

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Here is another example. This is the fascinating part. You want reformed biblicism?

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Look at the 16th chapter of book two. It's exactly what it is. Here you have a central doctrine of the

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Christian faith directly related to the gospel. And what is the singular source of divine revelation that John Calvin uses to demonstrate his point?

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He does not escalate the apostles' creed to the point of being an equal authority or a lens through which you must look.

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Instead, it is thoroughly biblical in its argumentation from beginning to end.

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Here is reformed biblicism. Thank you for pointing it out to us.

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It is very useful. So let's look at what

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Calvin had to say. The title of the chapter is

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How Christ Performed the Office of Redeemer in Procuring Our Salvation, the

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Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. That's awfully important stuff.

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And then there are sections that are presented. There are a total of 19 sections in the chapter.

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All of that, we have hitherto said of Christ, leads us to this one result, the condemned dead and lost in ourselves.

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We must in him seek righteousness, deliverance, life, and salvation as we are taught by the celebrated words of Peter, neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.

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Acts 4 .12, please note that in, please note the substantial difference in how

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Calvin handles the text of scripture and how Thomas Aquinas does.

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Because this is, this is important. This is very important. Calvin's going to get into Greek, he's going to get into Hebrew.

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And, but the big difference is, think back when we've looked at Romans 4,

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John 10, John 6 in Aquinas, you will see very frequently poetic lines from the

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Psalter thrown into the middle of a conversation. And the only connection to the conversation is a single word.

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The original context of the Psalm was not talking about what the New Testament writer was talking about, but they used the same word.

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Therefore, in medieval thought, in pre -modern exegesis, you can make the connection.

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And any of you who've dealt with Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, Ellen G.

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White, Charles Taze Russell, Victor Paul Weirwill, let's bring, let's bring back a name from the past, huh?

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Most of you have no earthly idea who Victor Paul Weirwill was. The Way International, yeah. They all did that.

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That was, that's the essence of I have a point.

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Oh, here's a biblical passage that used that word. Bingo, it must be connected. No, it doesn't mean it's connected at all.

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But that's what Aquinas did. He did it all the time. If you took out all the extraneous references, he didn't think they're extraneous because medieval method of interpretation, it's same word.

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So I can connect the words, even if what the author was talking about then and what the author, there's no connection whatsoever.

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And it has nothing to do with Messianic fulfillment, prophecy, none of that.

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All that is left off to the side. As long as there's a word, boom, we can make the connection.

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If you took all that stuff out of his commentaries, they would not be very long. They would not be very long.

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So Acts 4 .12, it's actually in context. It's actually what is being addressed there.

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The name of Jesus was not given him at random or fortuitously or by the will of man, but was brought from heaven by an angel as the herald of the supreme decree.

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The reason also being added for, he shall save his people from their sins, Matthew 1 .21. How often have we utilized

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Matthew 1 .21 properly in looking at the consistency of biblical revelation in regards to the work of Christ?

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No, it's not just a word. There's actually what it's talking about. In these words, attention should be paid to what we have elsewhere observed that the office of redeemer was assigned him in order that he might be our savior.

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Still, however, redemption would be defective if it did not conduct us by an uninterrupted progression to the final goal of safety.

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Therefore, the moment we turn aside from him in the minutest degree, salvation, which resides entirely in him, gradually disappears so that all who do not rest in him voluntarily deprive themselves of all grace.

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It's all found in Christ, in Christ and Christ alone exclusively. Now here's first citation of Bernard.

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The observation of Bernard well deserves to be remembered. The name of Jesus is not only light, but food also, yea, oil, without which all the food of the soul is dry.

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Salt, without which a condiment, whatever is set before us is insipid. In fine, honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, joy in the heart, and at the same time, medicine, every discourse where this name is not heard is absurd.

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A beautiful line from Bernard, but it's illustrative, not made the foundation.

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Notice the scriptures were the foundation. Oh, and here's an illustration from Bernard, which is perfectly fine.

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There is absolutely no, there is no reformed biblicist objection to the utilization of citations from early church fathers or from medieval writers to illustrate a point.

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It is when you say that there is an external tradition that becomes the lens through which you must view scripture, that's when you've gone to the dark side, okay?

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That's when you may not realize it, but you've just agreed with the other side.

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And sometimes people don't see that if they are not actually engaged with the other side.

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But here it is necessary diligently to consider in what way we obtain salvation from him, that we may not only be persuaded that he is the author of it, but having embraced whatever is sufficient as a sure foundation of our faith, may assure all that might make us waiver.

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For seeing no man can descend into himself and seriously consider what he is without feeling that God is angry and at enmity with them, and therefore anxiously longing for the means of regaining his favor.

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This cannot be without satisfaction. The certainty here required is of no ordinary description, sinners until freed from guilt, being always liable to the wrath and curse of God, who, as he is a just judge, cannot permit his law to be violated with impunity, but is armed for vengeance.

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Sounds like what Luther had discovered, isn't it? Yeah, it is. But before we proceed further, we must see in passing how it can be said that God, who prevents us with his mercy, was our enemy until he was reconciled to us by Christ.

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This is a question that many people ask of Reformed theology. For how could he have given us his only begotten son, a singular pledge of his love, if he had not previously embraced us with free favor?

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As there thus arises some appearance of contradiction, I'll explain the difficulty, the mode in which the spirit usually speaks in scripture.

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Oh, wait a minute. Calvin, just go with the great tradition, man.

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What are you being a biblicist for? You're going back to scripture?

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There's been lots of discussion of this, and that's how the sacramental system developed. Oh, but he's going to scripture.

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The mode in which the spirit usually speaks in scripture is that God was the enemy of men until they were restored to favor by the death of Christ, Romans 5 .10.

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That they were cursed until their iniquity was expiated by the sacrifice of Christ, Galatians 3 .10 .13.

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That they were separated from God until by means of Christ's body they are received into union, Colossians 1 .21 .22.

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Such modes of expression are accommodated to our capacity that we may the better understand how miserable and calamitous our condition is without Christ.

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For were it not said in clear terms, the divine wrath and vengeance and eternal death lay upon us, we should be less sensible of our wretchedness without the mercy of God and less disposed to value the blessing of deliverance.

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For example, let a person be told, had God at the time you were a sinner hated you and cast you off as you deserve.

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Horrible destruction must have been your doom, but spontaneously and a free indulgence, he retained you in his favor, not suffering you to be estranged from him.

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And in this way rescued you from danger. The person will indeed be affected and made sensible in some degree how much he owes the mercy of God.

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But again, let him be told as scripture teaches that he was estranged from God by sin and error of wrath exposed to the curse of eternal death, excluded from all hope of salvation and complete alien from the blessing of God, the slave of Satan, captive under the yoke of sin in fine doom to horrible destruction and already involved in it.

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That then Christ interposed, took the punishment upon himself and bore what by the just judgment of God was impending over sinners with his own blood, expiated the sins which rendered them hateful to God.

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By this expiation satisfied and duly propitiated God the father. Oh, did you catch that by the way?

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Remember certain Southern seminary graduates that got all mad at Josh Bice because he said something about the son propitiating the wrath of the father.

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Here's John Calvin. By this expiation satisfied and duly propitiated

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God the father. By this intercession appeased his anger on the basis founded peace between God and men.

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And by this tie secured the divine benevolence toward them. Will not these considerations move him more deeply?

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The more strikingly they represent the greatness of the calamity from which he was delivered. In short, since our mind cannot laid hold of life through the mercy of God without sufficient eagerness to receive it with becoming gratitude unless previously impressed with fear of the divine anger and dismayed at the thought of eternal death.

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We are so instructed by divine truth, divine truth and where's that found?

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As to perceive that without Christ, God is in a manner hostile to us and has his arm raised for our destruction.

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Thus taught we look to Christ alone for divine favor and paternal love. I can guarantee you that Jonathan Edwards read those words, meditated upon them and that formed at least some aspect of the background of sinners in the hands of an angry

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God and the other sermons that Edwards is famous for having preached on that particular subject.

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Oh, definitely. Though this is said in combination with the weakness of our capacity, it is not said falsely.

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For God who is perfect righteousness cannot love the iniquity which he sees in all. All of us therefore have that within which deserves the hatred of God.

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Hence in respect, first of our corrupt nature and secondly of the depraved conduct following upon it, we are all offensive to God, guilty in his sight and by nature the children of hell.

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Well, you don't hear that much on Twitter these days, do you? But as the Lord wills not to destroy in us that which is his own, he still finds something in us which in kindness he can love.

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For though it is by our own fault that we are sinners, we are still his creatures. Though we have brought death upon ourselves, he had created us for life.

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Thus mere gratuitous love prompts him to receive us into favor. But if there is a perpetual and irreconcilable repugnance between righteousness and iniquity, so long as we remain sinners, we cannot be completely received.

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Therefore, excuse me, therefore in order that all ground of offense may be removed and he may completely reconcile us to himself, he by means of the expiation set forth in the death of Christ, abolishes all the evil that is in us so that we formerly impure and unclean now appear in his sight just and holy.

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Accordingly, God the father by his love prevents and anticipates our reconciliation in Christ.

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Nay, it is because he first loves us that he afterwards reconciles us to himself. But because the iniquity which deserves the indignation of God remains in us until the death of Christ comes to our aid, and that iniquity is in his sight accursed and condemned, we are not admitted to full and sure communion with God unless insofar as Christ unites us.

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And therefore, if we would indulge the hope of having God placable and propitious to us, we must fix our eyes and minds on Christ alone as it is to him alone.

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It is owing that our sins, which necessarily provoke the wrath of God are not imputed to us.

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To catch that, are not imputed to us. See the connection between what we were talking about earlier with Chesterton and the editor there and the

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Roman Catholic guides. That is anathema to the system that views

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Thomas Aquinas as its greatest doctor. Central to the gospel, the non -imputation of sin.

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Central to the gospel, the imputation of Christ's righteousness without it, you have nothing. You have nothing.

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Sure, I'm glad that I can be reminded of that as I read Calvin, which I can't be when

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I read other people. For this reason, Paul says that God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,

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Ephesians 1, 3 -4. These things are clear and conformable to scripture. The term tradition does not appear anywhere in this section.

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These things are clear and conformable to scripture, not scriptures interpreted by the great tradition, but to scripture.

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And admirably reconcile the passages in which it is said that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, John 3, 16.

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And yet that it was when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, Romans 5, 10. You notice that the exegesis, the use of the text of scripture is not based upon singular words.

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This is not pre -modern exegesis. The connection between this exegesis and Murray's commentary on Romans and Mu's commentary on Romans and all the exegesis

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I provided in the God Who Justifies is clear and self -evident. There is a chasm between this and the exegesis normally, normally offered in the medieval period.

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Are there times when Aquinas hit the nail on the head?

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Yep. But he had to get out of his normal rhythm to do it. For Calvin, it is the normal rhythm.

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And yet there are people telling us we need to go back. No, ain't going back. Y 'all wanna go. See you later.

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Bye -bye. But to give additional assurance to those who require the authority of the ancient church, notice he's not proving his point, but you want something from the ancient church?

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I will quote a passage of Augustine to the same effect. By the way, one of the passages quotes from Augustine, one of my favorites, and I've used in debate with Roman Catholics, and make sure you note this stuff.

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Incomprehensible and immutable is the love of God. This is a quote. For it was not after we were reconciled to him by the blood of his son that he began to love us, but he loved us before the foundation of the world that with his own begotten son, we too might be sons of God before we were anything at all.

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Our being reconciled with the death of Christ must not be understood as if the son reconciled us in order that the father, then hating, might begin to love us, but that we were reconciled to him already, loving though at enmity with us because of sin.

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To the truth of both propositions, oh no, it continues on, okay.

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I was looking for the quote marks. To the truth of both propositions, we have the attestation of the apostle.

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God commanded his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, Romans 5 .8. Therefore, he had this love towards us even when exercising enmity towards him, we were the workers of iniquity.

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Accordingly, in a manner wondrous and divine, he loved even when he hated us. For he hated us when we were such as he had not made us, and yet because our iniquity had not destroyed his work in every respect, he knew in regard to each one of us, both to hate what we had made and love what he had made.

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Such are the words of Augustine, that's Tractate in John 1 .10. If you want to look it up and read the rest of it.

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When it is asked then how Christ, by abolishing sin, now again, Augustine wasn't his proof text.

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I cannot tell you how many times when reading Thomas, instead of a biblical phrase or a biblical text, you get as such and such a person said, and that's your evidence, that's your proof.

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It's not what the scripture says, it's as this person said. Well, couldn't he be doing the same way that Calvin?

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He could have, but that's not how he did it. That's not what pre -modern exegesis was. So every time you find anybody coming along who's bought into the false dichotomy between modern and pre -modern exegesis, because it's a false dichotomy.

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We've pointed this out in Carter's book. It's an either or, it's not an either or. Reformed theologians have been doing believing exegesis after the

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Enlightenment. Believe it or not, there are still people who believe the Bible is truly the word of God and it's consistent with itself.

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And you don't have to become Bultmann or Schleiermacher just because you're not a

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Christian Platonist. Those are not the only two options, sorry. There's a whole world of consistency that is being ignored when this, we've got to do pre -modern exegesis stuff comes trotting across the stage.

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When it is asked then how Christ by abolishing sin removed the enmity between God and us and purchased a righteousness which made him favorable and kind to us, it may be answered generally that he accomplished this by the whole course of his obedience.

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Oh, I love this. This is the passive and active obedience of Christ. This is proven in the testimony of Paul, as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners.

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So by the obedience of the one, the many may be made righteous, Romans 5 .19. And indeed he elsewhere extends the ground of pardon which exempts from the curse of the law to the whole life of Christ.

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Quote, when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were under the law,

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Galatians 4 .4 .5. Notice again, this is how we do exegesis today.

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This is how Calvin was doing it. That is how our confessions came into existence.

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The fundamental gospel assertions of the Westminster Confession of Faith and London Baptist Confession of Faith are not based upon pre -modern exegesis.

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They're not based upon medievalism. They are based upon dealing with the text in the context in which the text was originally written.

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It's plain, it's right there. That's why there are those little verse reference thingies that actually have something to do with it.

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Thus, even at his baptism, he declared that a part of righteousness was fulfilled by his yielding obedience to the command of the Father.

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In short, from the moment when he assumed the form of a servant, he began in order to redeem us to pay the price of deliverance, the whole life.

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The whole life. That's what he's talking about here. Scripture, however, the more certainly to define the mode of salvation, ascribes it peculiarly and specially to the death of Christ.

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He himself declares that he gave his life a ransom for many, Matthew 20, 28. Paul teaches that he died for our sins,

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Romans 4, 25. John the Baptist exclaimed, behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,

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John 1, 29. Paul in other passages declares that we are justified freely by his grace, the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, Romans 3, 25. He knows all these passages are directly on the subject.

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Again, being justified by his blood, we shall be saved in the wrath through him, Romans 5, 9. Again, he has made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we may be made the righteous of God in him, 2

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Corinthians 5, 21. And now here, notice how many verses have been used.

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Now listen, I will not search out all the passages for the list would be endless, and many are afterwards to be quoted in their order.

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In the confession of faith called the Apostle's Creed, the transition is admirably made from the birth of Christ to his death and resurrection, which the completion of a perfect salvation consists.

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Still, there is no exclusion of the other part of obedience which he performed in life. Thus Paul comprehends from the beginning even to the end, his having assumed the form of a servant, humbled himself, becoming beaten to death, even death across Philippians 2, 7.

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And indeed the first step in obedience was his voluntary subjection, the sacrifice would have been unavailing to justification if not offered spontaneously.

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Hence our Lord, after testifying, I laid down my life for the sheep, distinctly as no man take it from me, John 10, 15, and 18.

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In the same sense, Isaiah says, like a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth, Isaiah 53, 7.

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The gospel history relates that he came forth to meet the soldiers and in presence of Pilate, instead of defending himself, stood to receive judgment.

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This indeed he did not without a struggle where he had assumed our infirmities also. And in this way, it behooved him to prove that he was yielding obedience to his father.

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It was no ordinary example of incomparable love toward us to struggle with dire terrors and amid fearful tortures to cast away all care of himself that he might provide for us.

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We must bear in mind that Christ could not duly propitiate God without renouncing his own feelings and subjecting himself entirely to his father's will.

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To this effect, the apostle apositively quotes a passage from the Psalms, lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will,

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O God, that's Hebrews 10, 5, quoting from Psalm 40, verses seven and eight. Thus, as trembling consciences find no rest without sacrifice and ablution by which sins are expiated, we are properly directed thither, the source of our life being placed in the death of Christ.

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Moreover, as the curse consequent upon guilt remain for the final judgment of God, one principal point in the narrative in his condemnation before Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, to teach us that the punishment to which we were liable was inflicted on that just one.

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He could not escape the fearful judgment of God and Christ that he might rescue us from it, submitted to be condemned by a mortal, nay, by a wicked and profane man.

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The name of governor is mentioned not only to support the credibility of the narrative, but to remind us that Isaiah says that the chastisement of our peace was upon him and that with his stripes we are healed,

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Isaiah 53, 5. For in order to remove our condemnation, it was not sufficient to endure any kind of death, to satisfy our ransom was necessary to select a mode of death in which he might deliver us, both by giving himself up to condemnation and undertaking our expiation.

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Had he been cut off by assassins or slain in a seditious tumult, there could have been no kind of satisfaction in such a death.

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But when he is placed as a criminal debar, where witnesses are brought to give evidence against him and the mouth of the judge condemns him to die, we see him sustaining the character of an offender and evildoer.

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Here we must attend to two points, which had both been foretold by the prophets and tend admirably to comfort and confirm our faith.

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When we read that Christ was led away from the judgment seat to execution and was crucified between thieves, we have a fulfillment of the prophecy, which is quoted by the evangelist.

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He was numbered with transgressors, Isaiah 53, 12, Mark 15, 28. Why was it so?

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That he might bear the character of a sinner, not of a just or innocent person, and as much as he met death on account, not of innocence, but of sin.

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On the other hand, when we read that he was acquitted by the same lips that condemned him, for Pilate was forced once and again to bear public testimony to his innocence.

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Let us call to mind what is said by another prophet, I restored that which I took away, Psalm 69, 4.

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Thus we perceive Christ representing the character of a sinner and a criminal, while at the same time, his innocence shines forth and it becomes manifest that he suffered for another's and not for his own crime.

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Now, let me just stop for a moment because people who have read Carter's work, you need to recognize that in modern unbelieving seminaries or compromised seminaries, whatever, turn off, when you deal with prophetic fulfillment in Christ, you will find in the vast majority of those places a complete lack of belief, a complete lack of belief in the consistency of scripture, a complete lack of belief in a harmony, supernatural nature of scripture.

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And many times when I read Carter, he's reacting against that, as do

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I, as I have always reacted against that. If we still had the tapes, if somebody still had the tapes,

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I can guarantee you, you could go back to the 1980s when we started doing this program, when

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I was in seminary at Fuller, where I specifically addressed and discussed this as the dividing line, the fact that I'm having, everything

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I'm having to read, all the commentaries I'm having to read, start off with the assumption of the non -supernatural character of scripture.

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Oh, yes, they talk about the spirit blesses or something, but the idea that there could be this kind of prophecy in the

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Psalter, in Isaiah, in fulfillment of Christ, just dismissed.

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I recognized that long ago, every Reformed writer, preacher, commentary, author recognized the same thing without ever whispering a word about Plato, without ever filling an entire conference with repeated reference to the great tradition.

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And yet we believe that God has spoken His word. We believe that believing exegesis, as we saw in the first chapter of London Baptist Confession of Faith, is something that involves the spirit of God, submission to God's truth, and wrote on the basis of that.

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To pretend that we didn't is to engage in a caricature and fantasy. And so the prophetic fulfillment of scripture requires the scriptures to be a spiritual book.

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That does not mean that you can then ignore historical questions regarding Isaiah, that when you look at Isaiah 7, 14, that there was not an immediate fulfillment at that time, but that there is a later and greater fulfillment as is almost always what you're dealing with with David and the

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Psalter, right? All of this is perfectly consistent with Reformed biblicism, perfectly consistent, and demonstrated here by Calvin.

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Let me finish this one, and I'm going to have to skip because it's sort of out of time.

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But, he therefore suffered an unconscious pile at being thus by the formal sentence of the judge ranked among criminals.

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And yet he is declared innocent by the same judge when he affirms that he finds no cause of death in him. Our acquittal is in this, that the guilt which made us liable to punishment was transferred to the head of the son of God, Isaiah 53, 12.

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We must especially remember this substitution or that we may not be all our lives in trepidation and anxiety, as if the just vengeance which the son of God transferred to himself were still impending over us.

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Do you see that for Calvin? A proper understanding of the gospel, prophetic fulfillment,

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Christ's role as high priest, Christ's role as lamb, has the practical application in our lives so that we may not be all our lives in trepidation and anxiety.

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What is the real reason that you have peace with God? Because the perfection of the work of Christ in your place.

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And the more you understand of that work as revealed in scripture, as revealed in scripture, as only revealed in scripture, speculative assertions that go beyond what is found in the

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Theanistos revelation do not satisfy the sheep of Christ. Empty calories.

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But when you understand what is actually taught, in the page of scripture, you do not live your lives in trepidation and anxiety, but instead you recognize the depth of what

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God has done for you. I would like to honestly read the whole thing, but I can't.

01:02:00

It's too long. I would highly recommend it to you. Highly recommend it.

01:02:05

Again, book two, chapter 16. If you haven't purchased the Institutes, get them.

01:02:10

Get them in paper. I'm reading it electronically. Yeah, it's pretty nice to be able to expand the font.

01:02:16

Don't have to put the old man glasses on, all the rest of that kind of stuff. I just don't know how much access we're going to have to these things in the future.

01:02:27

So get yourself a set. Get yourself a set. Again, wonderful, in -depth, biblical, citation of text after text after text.

01:02:41

He goes into Apollutrosus, Antilutron, Hilasterion, he goes into the

01:02:48

Hebrew. It is, it's great. And then in section seven, he says the creed next mentions that he was dead and buried.

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So he uses the Apostles' Creed as an outline.

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Never applies to it the role of lens, authority, nothing.

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He's using it as an outline because it is all simply biblical.

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That's what Irenaeus is, when Irenaeus first has his skapos, his scope from the

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Apostles, it's all sub -biblical. That is, it is derived from direct biblical statement. It is not an external tradition passed on from the

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Apostles, which is what Aquinas did believe, regarding at least certain things.

01:03:48

So he says that the creed next mentions that he was dead and buried. Here again, it's necessary to consider how he substituted himself in order to pay the price of redemption.

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And what's the answer for this? Hebrews 2 .9, Hebrews 2 .14, 15. Very much following the exact same exegesis that I've given of that exact passage in dealing with particular redemption, by the way.

01:04:05

Available in numerous contexts. He then, he says, here we must not omit the descent to hell, which is of no little importance to the accomplishment of redemption.

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Then he has a discussion of, for although it is apparent from the writings of the ancient fathers that the clause, which now stands in the creed, was not formally so much used in the churches.

01:04:25

And so now we start talking about the historical aspects of these particular things. But when he gets to the discussion itself, it's back into what scripture says in regards to what is the sepulchre, things like that.

01:04:41

But he admits, this is, there's much difference of opinion regarding what the creed is referring to at this particular point of time, which is rather interesting that the creed is not nearly as clear as the scripture on these particular things.

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Ah, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. But apart from the creed, we must seek, ah, section 10.

01:05:07

But apart from the creed, we must seek for a surer exposition of Christ's descent to hell, and the word of God furnishes us with one, not only pious and holy, but replete with excellent consolation.

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What did Calvin just say? We've got the creed, but what's in scripture is much surer.

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Creed isn't the key to the scripture. The creed isn't what makes the scripture interpretable.

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It's much surer exposition found in the scriptures. I would point you to that.

01:05:44

Let me get down here. So the section that was cited that allegedly no

01:05:52

Reformed Biblicist could ever cite, we've demonstrated that that just shows no understanding of what we said and no understanding of what

01:06:00

Calvin was talking about either. So it's wrong on every possible level. This is toward the end of the chapter, there's just so much stuff.

01:06:15

Oh, by the way, was that, yeah, got just a couple of,

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I'm sorry, there is something here. Can Dr.

01:06:38

White repeat what institute reference again? Sorry, book two, that's from Twitch, book two, chapter 16 of the

01:06:45

Institutes. We are now in section, I'm going to read some from section 14 where you try to wrap this up, but I'm going to have to go a couple of minutes longer.

01:06:53

I mentioned that, and this is really important, I mentioned that Calvin quotes from some of the key texts from Augustine in reference to Augustine's understanding of the real presence of Christ in the supper.

01:07:06

And this is, if you have Roman Catholic friends and family and stuff like that, we can leave all this other stuff aside. Okay. Yeah, here, this is, where does this citation start?

01:07:23

Is this the whole, is this all the citation? Okay. This, our

01:07:34

Lord himself also declared to the disciples that it is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you,

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John 16, 7, to console them for his bodily absence. He tells them that he will not leave them comfortless, but will come again to them in a manner invisible indeed, but more to be desired because they were then taught by a sure experience that the government, which he had obtained, the power which he exercised would enable his faithful followers to not only live well, but also die happily.

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Indeed, we see how much more abundantly his spirit was poured out, how much more gloriously his kingdom was advanced, how much greater power was employed in aiding his followers and discomfiting his enemies.

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Being raised to heaven, he withdrew his bodily presence from our sight. Think about Rome's teaching on transubstantiation.

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Christ is, why do Roman Catholics genuflect when they go into the building?

01:08:26

Because Christ is physically present in the monstrance, in the tabernacle. Augustine had no such thing.

01:08:34

Augustine is consistent on this point. Being raised to heaven, he withdrew his bodily presence from our sight, not that he might cease, not that he might cease to be with his followers who are still pilgrims on the earth, but that he might rule both heaven and earth more immediately by his power or rather the promise which he made to be with us even in the world be fulfilled by his ascension, by which as his body has been raised above all heavens, so his power and efficacy have been propagated and diffused beyond all the bounds of heaven and earth.

01:09:03

This I prefer to explain in the words of Augustine rather than my own, okay? He's just made the assertion, and now he's going to say, and this is what

01:09:12

Augustine said, quote, through death, Christ was to go to the right hand of the father whence he is to come to judge the quick and the dead and that in corporeal sense, according to the sound doctrine rule of faith for in spiritual presence, he was to be with them after his ascension,

01:09:29

Augustine tractate in John 109. Another passage he is more full and explicit, quote, in regard to ineffable and invisible grace is fulfilled what he said, lo,

01:09:39

I am with you always, even at the end of the world, Matthew 28, 20, but in regard to the flesh, which the word assumed in regard to his being born of a virgin, in regard to his being apprehended by the

01:09:50

Jews, nailed to the tree, taken down from the cross, wrapped in linen clothes, laid in the sepulcher and manifested on his resurrection, it may be said, me ye have not always with you.

01:10:00

Why? Because in bodily presence, he conversed with his disciples 40 days and leading them out to where they saw, but followed not, he ascended into heaven and is not here for there he sits at the right hand of the father.

01:10:13

And yet he is here in the presence of his God said for the presence of his

01:10:19

Godhead was not withdrawn. Therefore, as regards his divine presence, we have

01:10:24

Christ always, but as regards his bodily presence, it was truly said to his disciples, me have not always, for a few days, the church had him bodily present.

01:10:35

Now she apprehends him by faith, but sees him not by the eye, Augustine tract 8, 51.

01:10:42

It is without question that Augustine taught that Christ's physical presence is in heaven and the church does not possess it.

01:10:54

He is with us spiritually by the promise made in John 14 and 16, the

01:11:00

Holy Spirit of God. This is how the father and son make their presence with his people is through the spirit, but bodily he's not with the church until he returns.

01:11:13

So remember, the whole concept of transubstantiation is not going to become prevalent for another 600 years after Augustine.

01:11:24

Real presence and transubstantiation are not the same thing. They are not the same thing.

01:11:33

And yet Roman Catholic apologists always assume it, always assume that that's the case. Take note of those things.

01:11:41

Talks about the exaltation of the son, sits right hand on the father. Okay. From this doctrine, faith thrives manifold advantages.

01:11:52

This is talking about his ascension to heaven, his intercession, having entered the temple not made with hands, he constantly appears as our advocate and intercessor in the presence of the father, directs attention to his own righteousness, so as to turn it away from our sins, so reconcile him to us as by his intercession to pay for us a way of access to his throne, presenting it to miserable sinners to whom it would otherwise be an object of dread as replete with grace and mercy.

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Isn't that... I just have to ask you guys, those of you that are pushing this new perspective, show me a single thing that Thomas Aquinas ever said that is actually biblical, that hasn't been said better by somebody else, before or after him, anything.

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Did you hear what I just read? I read it too fast. I read it too fast. It was a long sentence. It's a long sentence.

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For having entered it in our flesh, as it were in our name, it follows, as the apostle says, that we are in a manner now seated in heavenly places, not entertaining a mere hope of heaven, but possessing it in our head.

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Secondly, faith perceives that his seat beside the father is not without great advantage to us. Having entered the temple not made with hands, he constantly appears as our advocate and intercessor in the presence of the father, directs attention to his own righteousness so as to turn it away from our sins.

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Do you hear that? He directs attention to his own righteousness so as to turn that attention away from our sins.

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Look to the perfect Savior, not to my sins, because he bore my sins in his body upon a tree.

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So to reconcile him to us, as by his intercession to pay for us, a way of access to his throne, presenting it to miserable sinners, to whom it would otherwise be an object of dread as replete with grace and mercy.

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Oh, how many times have I said this in leading pastoral prayers, that we come before the throne of grace, and if we weren't regenerate, if we didn't understand the perfection of the work of Christ, we don't want to come before the throne of God.

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We know our sin, we know his holiness, but by his intercession to pave for us a way of access to his throne.

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Thirdly, it discerns his power in which to pin our strength, might, resources, and triumph over hell. When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive,

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Ephesians 4a, spoiling his foes. He gave gifts to his people and daily loathes them with spiritual riches.

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He thus occupies his exalted seat, that thence transferring his virtue unto us, he may quicken us to spiritual life, sanctify us by his spirit, and adorn his church with various graces.

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By his protection, preserve it safe from all harm, and by the strength of his hand, curb the enemies raging against his cross and our salvation, in fine, that he may possess all power in heaven and earth, until he have utterly routed all his foes, who are also ours in complete the structure of his church.

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Such is the true nature of the kingdom, such the power which the Father has converted upon him, until he arrive to complete the last act by judging the quick and the dead."

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Oh my goodness. And not a word of it grounded in anything but divine writ.

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Not a word of it. Oh, there's so much more here.

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I hate to... Read it, folks. Read it. It is, again, steeped, steeped, steeped in text after text after text.

01:16:06

I see something... Well, I know, but I am, unfortunately. Okay. So let's get to the point that was quoted.

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We've already seen Calvin contrast the sure truth of Scripture with anything that's not

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Scripture, including the creed, but let's get to the point that was quoted. Hitherto, I have followed the order of the

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Apostles' Creed, because it states the leading articles of redemption in a few words, and may thus serve as a tablet in which the points of Christian doctrine, most deserving of attention, are brought separately and distinctly before us.

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Notice, there's no authority in them outside of Scripture, but it's a brief, a more concise way.

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I call it the Apostles' Creed, though I am by no means solicitous as to its authorship. The general consent of ancient writers certainly does ascribe it to the

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Apostles, either because they imagined that it was written and published by them for common use, or because they thought it right to give the sanction of such authority to a compendium faithfully drawn up from the doctrine delivered by their hands.

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By the way, may I point something out? He's speaking post -Enlightenment here. Okay, he's speaking post -Renaissance.

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He's speaking post -recognition of anachronism. So that element of critical thought, not

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Enlightenment in philosophy, but Enlightenment in the Renaissance of a recognition of anachronism, the great tradition thought the

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Apostles wrote this. He's breaking with it. He recognizes, we don't really know the

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Apostles wrote this, and he's right. He's exactly right, but he doesn't just throw it out, but he also does not in any way, shape, or form make the foundation of authority.

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I have no doubt that from the very commencement of the Church, and therefore in the very days of the

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Apostles, it held the place of a public and universally received confession, whether it be the quarter from which it originally proceeded.

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It is not probable that it was written by some private individual, since it is certain that from time immemorial, it was deemed a sacred authority by all

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Christians. The only point of consequence we hold to be incontrovertible, that is, that it gives, in clear and succinct order, a full statement of our faith, and everything which it contains is sanctioned by the sure testimony of Scripture.

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Oh, it's sub -biblical. It's derived from biblical statements. This being understood, it were to no purpose, labor, anxiously, or quarrel with anyone as to the authorship, unless, indeed, we think it not enough to possess the sure truth of the

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Holy Spirit, without at the same time knowing by whose mouth it was pronounced, or by whose hand it was written.

01:19:06

So, what has changed since Calvin's day, is we have much more ancient patristic material than was available at that time.

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Oh, yeah, sure, there was Clement, and stuff like that, but there have been numerous, what he could have done with the

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Epistle to Diognetus, for example. Oh, just incredible. But these have all been discovered since the days of Calvin.

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So, he didn't know about a lot of that even earlier stuff, and hence, makes presuppositions as to how ancient this actually is.

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But again, you're going to find the same biblical truths that are found in what's called the

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Apostles' Creed. That's basically the same thing as you have in Irenaeus's Scopox.

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So, that's 170s, and you're going to find the same stuff in Ignatius in 107 -108.

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Not in that specific term, but very close. Ignatius predates

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Chalcedon by hundreds of years, and yet comes to the same conclusions. But again, in every single one of these, let me close this.

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Here's the last section. Let's listen to Calvin.

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When we see that the whole sum of our salvation and every single part of it are comprehended in Christ, we must beware of deriving even the minutest portion of it from any other quarter.

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If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that he possesses it.

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If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, we shall find them in his unction, strength in his government, purity in his conception, indulgence in his nativity, in which he was made like us in all respects.

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In order that he might learn to sympathize with us, if we seek redemption, we shall find it in his passion, acquittal in his condemnation, remission of the curse in his cross, satisfaction in his sacrifice, purification in his blood, reconciliation in his descent to hell, mortification of the flesh in his sepulcher, newness of life in his resurrection, immortality also in his resurrection, the inheritance of a celestial kingdom in his entrance into heaven, protection, security, and the abundant supply of all things in his kingdom, secure anticipation of judgment and the power of judgment committed to him.

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In fine, since in him all kinds of blessings are treasured up, let us draw a full supply from him and none from any other quarter.

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Those who, not satisfied with him alone, entertain various hopes from others, though they may continue to look to him chiefly, deviate from the right path by the simple fact that some portion of their thought takes a different direction, no distrust of this description can arise when once the abundance of his blessings is properly known.

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And he comes to those conclusions without a single reference as part of his foundation, anything other than his theonistos,

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God breathed. That's preaching. That's preaching.

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Why didn't Thomas do it? Because he had been given falsehoods.

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His focus upon the alleged sacrament of the mass does not allow him to even – when he looks at Romans chapter 4, he can't even see.

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He can't even see the provision made by God for that which gives us peace with him because that filter, that lens, it filters it out.

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Recently, I got in my truck and I was trying to look at an electronic screen and I couldn't see anything.

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And then I realized I was wearing polarized sunglasses. As soon as I took them off, easy to read. I can still see the screen with the polarized sunglasses on.

01:23:47

I just couldn't see anything on it. Lenses can be extremely powerful. And I think the difference,

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I think the reason that you read, if the pulpits of our churches would thunder with that kind of Christ -centered,

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Christ -exalting preaching regularly, what a difference it would make.

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And the difference in reading Calvin doing it and then reading

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Thomas should tell you what the difference really is. It's the origin and source.

01:24:30

It's where it's coming. It's where it's coming. So Josh, everything in that chapter, smack dab consistent with everything

01:24:43

I said in that article. Thank you for pointing it to us. You were,

01:24:49

I don't know why you can't hear Calvin and can't hear me. Nothing I can do about it. Nothing I can do about it.

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I hope and pray as you continue on that things will change, but there's nothing

01:25:05

I can do about it. But thank you for giving us the opportunity of reading some of the best material in the

01:25:13

Institute, some of the most Christ -honoring, biblically -grounded, awesome stuff, and not a shred of it dependent upon anything found in Craig Carter's book.

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Not a shred of it, not a thing. Praise God. All right.

01:25:29

There you go. It is, by the way, it's a little warm in here because it is,

01:25:35

I know everybody in the Houston and New Orleans is going to laugh, but it's humid right now.

01:25:42

Anything over a 70 -degree dew point in Phoenix is just ugly.

01:25:49

And it is, we've just got a big old mass of humidity sitting on top of us right now.

01:25:56

It happens. It happens in August. It happens in July. It's just how it works. But we need it.

01:26:02

Believe me, everything would be dead here, completely dead if we didn't have it. So we'll let you know how we're going to work out, because road trip

01:26:14

DLs, you know how that is. So if you don't have the app, you need to get the app so you can get the notifications. Because once I hit the road, things happen.

01:26:26

Road closures happen. Alternate routes have to be taken. All sorts of things happen.

01:26:32

Only way to really communicate with you well is to use the app. So make sure to download that.

01:26:38

And if you want to help us, I mean, gas is much more expensive.

01:26:44

Thankfully, it looks like it's only going to be about 25 cents more expensive than it was on the last trip, at least for a little while.

01:26:52

Funny how Putin was in control of it before, but now it's Biden bringing it down.

01:26:58

You and I both know. Anyways, if you'd like to help us on these trips, see opportunities to get together.

01:27:07

Like I said, I'm really looking forward. I hope we get good recordings of the conference that Jason and I do, because I think we're going to have some important stuff to say about secularism, the greatest enemy of the church.

01:27:23

I've always said that, and it is becoming very, very, very clear that that is the case in our day as well.

01:27:30

So if you want to help support us, there's travelfund .aomin .org, and we will see you next time. Thanks for listening.