February 20, 2024 Show with Blake White AND Zach Maxcey on “The Covenant vs. New Covenant Theology Divide”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 20th day of February 2024.

I'm asking for continued prayers from my listeners, you folks, hundreds of you responded to my prayer request a couple of weeks ago about my bout with Bell's palsy. Well, it seems as just when the Bell's palsy vanished from my system, I now am battling what appears to be COVID, and the reason why I say that with a certain amount of certainty is I got ill the next day after having a business meeting with one of my advertising clients who was diagnosed with COVID, and I stupidly used his pen to sign the contract.

So, in fact, on my way home after getting that contract signed, it hit me, uh-oh, I used his pen, and sure enough, the next day I got sick, so I'm assuming it is also COVID. I don't know that for a fact, but I am using my friend pharmacist Banu Gadi's protocol of mega doses of vitamin D3, and it appears to be working because I am steadily getting better, but I appreciate your prayers.

Today we are having a program featuring two folks who are involved in the John Bunyan conference that is coming up just around the corner in Franklin, Tennessee. I have many fond memories permanently etched upon my heart connected with the John Bunyan conference, because when I was a young Christian, I began to regularly attend the John Bunyan conference, first in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and then in New Ringle, Pennsylvania, when they were being led by John Riesinger and Fred Zaspel, and it was always a joy to attend those events.

I met many new friends that are still my friends today, and I was always treated with an overwhelming measure of love and grace and an Irenic spirit, even though I have always been a member, ever since my salvation, of a church, a Reformed Baptist church that is a 1689 confessional covenantal Reformed Baptist church, and that is really what we're talking about today, the divide between covenant theology and new covenant theology amongst sovereign grace-believing Baptists.

And to discuss this today are Blake White, who is lead pastor of Southside Baptist Church of Abilene, Texas. He's an author and a conference speaker. Welcome, for the very first time, to Iron Shepherd and Zion Radio, Blake White.

Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me. And we're also joined by Zach Maxey, who is really running the conference that I just mentioned coming up. He is an elder at Grace Covenant Church of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and president of Providence Theological Institute of New Covenant Theology.

Welcome back to the program, Zach.

Hey, Chris. Great to be back, and great to be with both of you.

By the way, I know, being a native New Yorker, I'm mispronouncing the name of your city. How do you pronounce that?

Oh, it's Portsmouth, but that's fine. Okay.

Well, let's start with you, Pastor Blake, because we have a tradition here in Iron Shepherd and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, including any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And since you are our only first-time guest today, I'd love to hear your story.

Yeah, you bet. God's been very kind to me, like he's been kind to all of us in Texas, and especially West Texas. Everyone, I mean, almost everyone says they're a Christian. It's a lot of Protestant influence and, you know, just a lot of nominal Christianity, and that would have been me.

Most of my life, I'd go to church a few times a year, usually for the activities or the girls, and thought I was a Christian, didn't know any better. And my freshman year of college, so I moved away and went there to play basketball.

Another city in Texas, Temple, Texas, and basically was in a rough spot, a rough relationship, was really just pursuing the world, and it wasn't satisfying. And I knew enough being a West Texas boy, OK, I need to clean up my act.

Part of cleaning up my act, I mean, I need to go to church more. And so I ended up attending church more and really started to understand the gospel slowly but surely and realized, oh, it's not that I needed to clean up my act.

I needed to be born again. I didn't know the Lord, and so I thought I did, and I began to understand what it means to be a Christian, to be born again, understanding the concepts of sin and faith and repentance.

And so at 19, I became a Christian, and I'm very thankful. There's many people that I was running with, you know, there, but for the grace of God, it's just a clear testimony of God's sovereign kindness in my life to open my eyes and show me the air of my way and ultimately show me I was a false convert.

And how did you come to discover the doctrines of sovereign grace?

So that was the next year. The next year I transferred and was done with basketball, which was in many ways my idol at the time, and transferred to a school in San Angelo, Texas. And there was a group of Calvinists at that school, and to be honest, they were a little bit worldly.

And in fact, I remember one time playing pickup basketball. They got in a fight with this group of friends, got in a fight with the other team, a fist fight, a bunch of unbelievers.

You mean like what happens every time we have a business meeting at my church?

That's right. And so I didn't like these guys, and I didn't know much about Calvinism, but I decided I wanted to prove them wrong because in my mind, they were giving Christ a bad rep, and I didn't like their theology.

I was zealous for evangelism, and in my simple mind at the time, if God predestined people, what's the point of evangelism? And so I just kind of went on a journey on my own studying. And in those days, you know, this was before the days of Google.

This was probably 2000, 2002, 2003. And I jumped on what probably was AskJeeves .com and just started looking for resources to try to prove this stuff wrong. And I just remember DesiringGod .org, didn't know anything about it, didn't know anything about John Piper.

But man, at the time, it had a lot of resources. And one of the early articles recommended a book by J .I. Packer. Again, that name meant nothing to me, but it was called Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.

And so that was my issue was evangelism. And so I'm looking at both sides and basically one side, the Armenian side would say, yeah, this verse sounds like it's teaching this, but here's really what's going on.

And then the more Calvinistic side would say, yeah, this verse says this and that's actually what it means. And then when I grabbed Packer, the fog just cleared for me and I understood a compatibilistic view of God's sovereignty and human freedom.

So basically, I wanted to prove it wrong, and I lost that battle.

That happened with me as well. When I got saved out of Roman Catholicism, I was horrified by learning about the Calvinistic theology of the church where I was attending and where I was going to be baptized.

And not that I knew anything about Calvinism or even knew who Calvin was, but when I started to hear about their stance on predestination and unconditional election, I had never heard about those concepts before.

Even at evangelical churches where I visited while still a lapsed Catholic, and I even told my elders when they were preparing to baptize me, I don't know if I'm ever going to believe in this Calvinism stuff.

And sure enough, a member of the church gave me the booklet, George Whitfield's Letter to John Wesley on Election, and I didn't know who either of those men from history were, but it was the biblical proof that Whitfield presented to Wesley that convinced me.

And my first reaction was, oh no, this is true, but I still hate it. But then within maybe two months at the most, I fell in love with those teachings. So how did you know that you had to call upon your life to become a pastor?

Well, it was actually tied to that discovery. So I was very zealous for the Lord and zealous for evangelism, zealous for false converts. Since that had been me, I was very zealous to help people understand true and false conversion.

And it really was through understanding the character of God, the nature of grace, really understanding grace, that really just opened my eyes, knocked me back on my back, humbled me. And obviously, God became God, and the Godness of God was restored, and God became a lot bigger in my life.

And I just became really consumed with understanding Him through His word and wanting to help others understand and know Him through His word. And so that discovery, that was Easter of 2003, I believe, and just got so passionate about it, I didn't want to do anything else.

My plan at the time was to go coach basketball, hopefully at the college level. But I just became convinced that I wasn't going to find what I was looking for going that route, and I wasn't going to be happy doing anything other than helping people understand God through teaching the Bible.

And that just began a process, though. That was an internal calling, I felt, and thankfully had an external calling through some friends and through the local church and ultimately went to seminary and then got equipped and have been in it ever since.

Really, it was understanding sovereign grace that propelled me into the ministry.

Well, praise God for that, brother. And we are discussing something today that both you two men and I disagree over. I perhaps disagree over it far less radically than many who are in the so-called covenant theology camp, the 1689 London Baptist confession camp.

And I've always, ever since my earliest days of Christianity, maintained close friendships with men of God from both of those camps. I never found the differences to be of the great magnitude that advocates of either position find them to be.

And I have always felt at home visiting churches outside of whatever 1689 confessional church I happened to be a member of at the time. And I think that one of my goals today is to educate people on the differences of these two camps.

But also, I am praying that there is more unity and more of an Irenic attitude that develops between these two camps of sovereign grace believing Christians, because I believe that what we have in common far outweighs the differences we have.

And so, and I have, I have witnessed in the last, let's see, how many years has it been? 43 years or so, I was, I was saved in my 20s. And I have witnessed over these decades, since the 1980s, a far greater unity than existed in the 1980s and 1990s.

Between these, between these two camps, in fact, you would hardly ever see interaction between these two camps, at least cordial interaction. But I have, but I have to hand it to the late John Riesinger, because he did on occasion invite Covenantal Reform Baptists to speak at the John Bunyan conferences.

And one of them is a brother now in heaven, whose name escapes me because either because I'm 62 years old or because I am battling the sickness. But a brother from England originally, and hopefully that will come to me later.

But I remember being very blessed by that brother who spoke at the John Bunyan conference. But if you could, and by the way, folks, just to let you know why you're not going to be hearing Zach Maxey too often, unless he has a question for Blake White, is that he is serving really as a co-host during the first 90 minutes, and he will be my guest alone during the last half hour.

But if you could, lay out the primary differences between these two camps within sovereign grace-believing Baptists.

Yeah. So within the Baptist fold, it's a different discussion than within Presbyterian covenant theology. And as you said, there's so much common ground. Some of my best friends are 1689 men, even here in town, one of the churches that we basically consider an informal sister church is 1689 church.

So, yeah, I want to preface that. It's obviously an in-house debate, even within, you know, dispensationalism or Presbyterian covenant theology. All of us are within the evangelical camp with a high view of scripture and majoring on the major is so much in common, which is increasingly important in our completely secular age.

But within the differences within the Baptist realm, you could easily summarize it by saying the substructure is a little different. So 1689 is the second London, which is built off the Westminster confession.

In so many ways, it's the same thing with just a few eyes dotted differently and T's crossed differently when it comes to making it a Baptist confession. But the substructure is still covenant theology based on those three covenants, redemption, grace and works.

There's now also diversity within 1689, whether we're talking about reformed Baptist or 1689 federalism. So there's lots of nuances. So it's hard to generalize without being unfair to somebody. But the substructure would be different because new covenant theology or progressive covenantalism would not be structured around those three theological covenants.

But where the rubber really meets the road is when it comes to moral law. In 1689, we'll call moral law the Decalogue and new covenant theology would say the Decalogue is part of the law covenant that Christians are not under.

Now, nine of the 10 are repeated very clearly in the New Testament. So where the rubber meets the road is the Sabbath commandment.

Yeah, that is where the rubber meets the road, because most 1689 confessional reformed Baptists, if they were to visit a new covenant theology Baptist church, they might not even know it unless this issue of the Sabbath comes up and or unless the specific differences on the Decalogue come up during that worship service.

That is one of the reasons why I have been comfortable having a fellowship with brethren in both camps. And by the way, I wanted to let you know that I did finally remember who that confessional 1689 reformed Baptist was that preached at the John Bunyan conference, William Payne.

He is now with the Lord. But now, so when you became a believer in the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, Blake, were you at first a 1689 man and later became New Covenant? Because that seems to be the story with a lot of folks, although I do know of men where the reverse was true.

They started out as New Covenant and became 1689 men. But tell us about that specifically.

Yeah, so again, I was brand new to everything, had no Christian upbringing, and realized that I was wrong about how God saved sinners. So I was very, at that time, very, you know, epistemically humble.

OK, I was way off. So let me let me just learn for a little while. And then the men that were most helpful to me during that time were really, you know, reformed Presbyterians. I mentioned Packer, good Anglican, but also as I began to read and trying to learn, R .C. Sproul was hugely helpful.

I mentioned Piper was helpful, but it was mostly men who baptized babies. And I did not really at the time, you know, I didn't know being in West Texas, there's a lot of Baptist churches. So if I would go to a church, it tended to be a Baptist church.

But at the time, I thought, well, I'm learning the Bible. Maybe I should become Presbyterian. I see elders in the Bible. Presbyterians have elders leading. So maybe I should become Presbyterian. So that my next journey was on the whole issue of what do I believe about baptism?

And as I began to study the issue, you know, you study infant baptism. And with all due respect to somebody that I've learned from, there's not New Testament evidence for infant baptism. So when you're looking into the argument, what do you find?

You find covenant theology. And for me, that was all brand new. Obviously, these covenants that they were talking about, you can't find them directly in the Bible. So for a new believer, I was very confused.

I'm just trying to understand what covenant theology was as a new believer. On the other end, dispensationalism was also honestly just kind of strange to me as I tried to understand what was going on.

And providentially, as I'm trying to figure out what the Bible taught on this, trying to read, trying to understand the systems, trying to master the New Testament. I had taken a semester off in college where I was traveling to various universities in Texas in order to share the gospel and try to train people to share the gospel through the Baptist student ministry.

And I landed in Houston for about six weeks. So I was visiting. I was just looking up various Reform churches to visit while I was there since it was just temporary. And I landed in a church called Mills Road Baptist Church in northwest Houston.

And it was a Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. And I meet the pastor who's now retired, but his name is Larry Newcomer. He used to come to Bunyan. In fact, we would come together at times. And Larry, I'm talking with Larry.

I met him. I introduced myself and I'm telling him where I'm at, trying to figure out what I believe about baptism. And he says, hey, you ought to buy this book. And he points me over to his book table.

And it was a book, a little red book called Abraham's Four Seeds, subtitle, A Critical Examination of the Presuppositions of Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism. And I thought, well, there you go.

That's exactly what I need. And I read John Riesinger's book. It was just really helpful. I had just dabbled enough to understand the systems a little bit. And in that book, John's really not doing positive construction, but critical deconstruction.

And he just was very helpful to see the problems with both systems. And even how they share the same hermeneutic, they just apply it to different things. So they fail to consistently apply a Christ-centered hermeneutic to two different areas.

So covenant theology fails to apply a Christ-centered hermeneutic to the issue of offspring. And they take over into the new covenant and say, well, just like Abraham was to circumcise his offspring, so a believer is to baptize his offspring.

And they miss that Christ is the mediator, not the believer. So it's Christ and his offspring. How do you become an offspring of Christ? Through faith. So it entails a believer's church, in other words.

And then on the other hand, dispensationalism fails to bring the land promise through Christ and see that every promise is yes in him. And Christ also transforms who the people of God are. It doesn't matter anymore, circumcision or uncircumcision, it's all unity in Christ.

So that book really cleared the air for me. And again, he's not really advocating for new covenant theology in that book so much, but that set me on a trajectory, helped me understand the New Testament.

And then the next year, I go to Southern Seminary. In my first semester, I take hermeneutics with a guy that I'd never heard of named Stephen Wellam. Really, it just worked out with my schedule to take his class.

And then the first few weeks, Stephen Wellam starts laying out hermeneutically Abraham's four seeds. So I'll go up to Dr. Wellam after class and ask, hey, have you ever heard of John Riesinger? This all sounds very familiar.

And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, John discipled me. John married my wife and I. And I took everything that Dr. Wellam taught after that. And really now, after a decade of consecutive exposition, my convictions about New Covenant Theology have only strengthened over the years.

Now, Brother Wellam was actually one of the speakers at the last John Bunyan conference where I was in attendance, where I actually had the privilege of moderating the Q &A session. And he is not squarely in the New Covenant Theology camp, however.

Am I correct on that?

Well, this is where you get into a matter of definitions. Your listeners may be interested. I actually did an interview with Dr. Wellam, actually just published about six weeks ago, on the relationship between Progressive Covenantalism and New Covenant Theology.

And so when it comes to mainstream published New Covenant Theology, you really can't find a difference between it and Progressive Covenantalism.

That's interesting. By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with that name, Stephen Wellam is the principal of Toronto Baptist Seminary. And you reminded me that I've got to get him back on the program.

And his brother—actually, did I say Stephen? I meant to say Kirk, I believe. I'm getting the two—. Yeah, Kirk's in Toronto. That's right. Stephen's in Louisville. Right. And which one were you attributing to your growth in the understanding?

Kirk or Stephen? Stephen. They're in Southern Seminary. Okay. Sorry for mixing those up. But I have to get them both back on, whatever the case may be. By the way, when we come back from our break, Zach, just let me know if you have a question of your own that you'd like to ask as well.

But if anybody in the audience would like to ask a question, submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us a first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say that you are in a position where you're in great disagreement with your own church over the issues we're discussing.

Perhaps you're even the pastor of the church, and you're disagreeing with your own elders or your denomination. We understand issues like that would compel you to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

We'll be right back.

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Go to royaldiadem .com today, mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with our guests, Blake White and Zach Maxey, who are discussing the divide that exists between Sovereign Grace Believing Baptists over the issue of Covenant Theology versus New Covenant Theology.

And if you have a question, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com, give us first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And before I go to any of our listener questions, I'd like Zach Maxey to give our listeners all the details that they need regarding the upcoming John.

Bunyan conference. Yeah, certainly, Chris. So the 2024 John Bunyan conference is going to be held at Grace Church in Franklin. So actually, we we heard an advertisement by Bill Sasser from Grace.

Church in Franklin. Very generous supporter of this show, and I thank God for the benevolence and generosity of Pastor Bill, and I love him and his wife Lynn dearly, and I cannot ever thank them enough for loving this show so much that they share the money that God has blessed them with.

With us. Yeah, they're a wonderful brother and sister in Christ, and the conference will be held Sunday, April 14th through Wednesday, April 17th. And so for the actual conference schedule, so I'll just go through some of the names who will be speaking.

So we'll have Dr. Ted Bear from movie guide dot com. And so he's been on the show, too, in the past. Oh, I was unaware of that. He'll be speaking on the Christian and the TV film industry. And so how do we as Christians navigate that particular avenue of entertainment in a secular world?

The theme of the conference I forgot to mention is the glorious hope of Christ in the new covenant. And so with everything going on in the world and the crazy times and the interesting times in which we live, the board at PTI NCT, we came together and we wanted to offer a theme of hope to encourage the body of Christ with.

And Pastor Greg Van Court will be speaking on the the nature of true hope. So we'll have Dr. Richard Lucas, which we've already been talking about this, this growing conversation or dialogue between 1689 Baptists and new covenant theologians and progressive covenantalists.

And so, Dr. Richard Lucas will be speaking on the hope for theological rapprochement among Calvinistic Baptists. And so that's where his hope really lies is discussing how to how to build bridges between those two groups.

Pastor Gary George will be speaking on the near death experience, a false hope or another gospel question mark. Dr. Brent Parker will be speaking on the hope of the new exodus. And so implications for covenant and dispensational theologies will have Renee phrase speaking on Isaiah 16, 19.

So the incarnate God is our glory and eschatological hope. I'll be speaking on Titus to 13, the blessed hope. Pastor Blake White will be speaking on Romans eight, the hope of the new creation. We'll have a question answer panel and Pastor Bill Sasser of Grace Church will be speaking on Genesis 315.

So and for for information as it comes available, folks who want to either watch the conference online, can watch it via Grace Church's video feed if they're unable to physically attend. And as information becomes available, it's on the pci nct .org website.

So great.

And I have a couple of your speakers lined up for interviews. My friend, Pastor Gary George, who I've known since the early 1990s when I began attending the John Bunyan conference. He's going to be speaking on my show on this very same topic that he's addressing at your conference on near death experiences.

And Greg Van Court is also scheduled on the show. By the way, Gary is on Monday, March 4th. Greg Van Court is on Tuesday, March 5th. And I'm not sure. Did you say Ken Powers was one of your speakers?

I guess not. I did not see. I didn't see Ken Powers, but Renee Frey from Quebec,.

Canada. The only reason I say that is Ken Powers is on my show Wednesday. And right now, can't remember the topic that we're addressing. But anyway, mark your calendars for March 4th and 5th for two of the speakers for the John Bunyan conference will be on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

But do you have any questions for Blake White before I go to a listener question?

No, it's actually been really good just listening. So I have nothing to add really.

To what Pastor Blake has said. Okay, we have, let's see, Francine in Nolensville, Tennessee. And Francine asks, from what I understand from people who I have met in the New Covenant Theology camp, there is a divide between confessional, referring to the first London Baptist confession, and non-confessional or even anti-confessional Baptists.

I was wondering where you men stood.

On that issue. Yeah, I would be very worried about a non-confessional mindset individually or corporately. So it's just a matter of which one, obviously. So, you know, with New Covenant, we would disagree with the Covenant Theology substructure of 1689.

But there are many that are great. Obviously, there was a first one. Didn't often have to remind people of that. There was a first one. But I think for healthy preservation of truth, confessions are necessary.