Separation and Theological Non-Negotiables

Welcome to No Compromised Radio Ministry. My name is Michael Lee Apendroth here with Steve Cooley. Steve Buchanan Ferguson Cooley. I didn't know you were Scottish.

I guess I was Irish.

We are in Boston after all. Steve, welcome back to No Compromised Radio, the Tuesday Guy Incarnate. Thank you very much. What does incarnate actually mean? Incarnate, in meat? Is that what it means? In flesh?

In the flesh, I believe it is. I could be wrong though. You're always the etymology guy. What's going on here?

Somebody taught me the other day, they said cerveza and cereal both have the same root because I guess it's wheat or grain or something like that. Who knew? I know. That's weird. I have been studying Hebrew, modern Hebrew with Duolingo and I'm only up to about 155 days in a row.

How many days in a row are you with Spanish?

It's about 1150, I think.

Have you missed any days and had to do the bridge, the gapping of the thing?

Oh, that was early on. I think I had that, but not for a long time. And now they make it easy because they give you bonus points for doing it in the morning and bonus points in the evening.

I know. I know. I have studied a little bit of the Hebrew language background and how they were having to make up a lot of words because there are certain words that exist today or things that exist today that didn't exist in the Bible.

And so how would they make, and some of these words they just make up. And on my Duolingo, it has something about birra or something. That's what birra is. So it's not cerveza in Hebrew. It's something like birra.

I just say cerveza. Steve, I last show brought up the message Bible and I'm going to just read from a passage. You tell me what it is. Celebrate God all day. Every day, I mean, revel in Him. Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you're on their side, working with them and not against them.

Help them see what the master is about to, that he's about to arrive. He could show up at any minute.

Somewhere in 2 Thessalonians. Philippians chapter four. I mean, you know, it's so, other than pointing us toward the second coming, I would have absolutely no idea. I mean, that could be anything.

But didn't Bono sit down and talk to Eugene Peterson, who did the message?

Yes, he did. I mean, Bono will sit down and talk to just about anybody, you know, I mean.

Let me ask you this. If you went to a church service, you're on vacation and it's a Sunday. So, you go to Lord's Day worship service and somebody was preaching and up on the PowerPoint, the message version was put up there, MSG, for a verse.

What would you, what would go through your mind?

Well, I'd, I'd say, I'm going to probably talk to the pastor on the way out and just, just tell him I'm allergic to MSG.

It makes me bloated. Remember, that was a big deal, though, for a while, the saddleback kind of thing. You'd find whatever version was kind of touchy-feely and you'd put that up. So, it'd be new living.

Well, it was actually like, whatever said what you were thinking, rather than, rather than trying to interpret the word accurately, it'd be like, why doesn't the Bible interpret me? Right? And so, so I don't even, I guess that would be like me Jesus, right?

Instead of iso Jesus or exo Jesus, me Jesus. Yeah, yeah. Selfo Jesus.

Yeah. Selfo Jesus, I guess. Okay. One more thing before the topic du jour. When you heard the word exo Jesus for the first time, I assume you were a Christian. Yeah, sure. Once in a while, I'll hear Victor Davis Hanson or Jordan Peterson talk about exo Jesus or something in a different context.

But when they first said exo Jesus, and you heard them say that, did you think it was something about Jesus?

Yeah, I guarantee you, I had absolutely no idea what the word meant. I mean, I, you know, I was about as biblically stupid as anybody could be when I got, and people might still say, well, Steve, you haven't gotten any brighter.

Baptist. Baptist. I mean, it's, even if I knew various passages from the Bible, I just didn't, you know, I didn't know anything about Christianese. So, exo Jesus would have been like completely foreign to me.

Herman who? Yeah. Didn't Todd Friel do a series on that?

Yeah. Herman who? Yes, he did. I think Herman Utix came from Hermes, right? And he was the great interpreter, the goddess of interpretation or illumination. The God. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

Biblical Translation, Christianese, and the Message Bible

All right. Today, let's talk a little bit about putting up walls around our building so no theological airs come in. It's called separation where we're going to hunker down us four, shut the door, no more.

Steve, what do we do when certain Bible teachers say something that's off? When do we say, I just can't recommend him anymore. I have to just disassociate myself from that orbit. What's our strategy when it comes to people online saying things?

Is there a point or what's the point?

So, is today's show, are we going to call it putting the fight back in fighting fundamentalists?

Again, typical Baptist always out there fighting. No, here's why I bring up this question. Now, because of social media, we can see what people think and do and believe and say, and we all like to hear preachers that are really good preachers and lots of times they're more famous, as it were, not even intentionally trying to be famous.

So, when would you stop listening to someone? And furthermore, when would you start telling other people to stop listening? So let's make it easy. There's a famous teacher and he teaches something different than we do, and he teaches infant baptism.

Would you tell the people at BBC, stop listening to the person who teaches infant baptism? No. Okay. How about if they are a congregational rule, that they're a pastor of congregational rule or maybe having not an elder rule like we would, but more like a Presbyterian elder rule in a session?

Well, I kind of admire people who survive congregational rule. I think it's kind of like, if you're a pastor and you survived like 10 years of that, you deserve some kind of WWE belt or something.

And Steve, here in New England, what our listeners probably don't know, if you're not from New England, congregational rule in New England is capital C.

It used to be like law of the land. Literally, you had to have a congregational church in your town to be a town. So, you know, a Dunkin' Donuts and a Congregational Church, Dunkin' Donuts founded in 1653.

Yeah.

How about eschatology? When someone says they're postmill, premill, amill, could you attend those churches? No. Well, if somebody at church was listening to someone and they said, oh, they're amill or premill or something like that, and they would say, are they still okay to listen to?

Yeah. I mean, you know, I guess the caveat I would make is, I don't really care what it is. If it's premill, postmill, amill, reconstruction or whatever. If I go there every Sunday and have to listen to, you know, whether it's making the Ten Commandments of the Law of the Land, stoning homosexuals or whatever it is, they're going to do that week after week.

Or even if it's just like, okay, the rapture is Wednesday. Oh, no, it's probably this coming Tuesday. All that stuff. I don't want to hear all eschatology all the time, no matter what your position is.

I just don't.

But Steve, Gerhard as Voss would say, eschatology precedes soteriology. Okay, back to the other point. Right. All right. Now, you brought up something, Steve, that's important. You brought up end times, but then reconstruction and theonomy.

If someone at Bethlehem Bible Church comes to you, our no-co listener writes in, I love listening to this theonomist. Should I keep listening to the theonomist? No. So, we've moved from, okay, I know postmill is hot and trendy and all that, but if people are postmill reconstruction theonomist, and that's their kind of hobby horse, by the way, that ends up being their hobby horse all too often, I would say there's got to be somebody else you can listen to.

Because it's going to wind up, I mean, they might have a lot of really good things to say, but it's probably going to wind up influencing a lot more than it should. It's like the chili powder in your cornflakes.

I mean, it's just too much.

If it was somebody who said, I'm reading this Lorraine Bettner book, Lorraine was a man, and he wrote many books. One was on kind of a Christian theology, which was good. I can't remember the name of it.

He wrote one on Predestination. Yeah, what was it called? The reformed doctrine. The reformed doctrine of predestination. And they said, I'm reading that book. We'd say, great. Yeah. Right? And he wrote a book on postmillennialism.

So, we're not against postmillennialists. We might disagree with their doctrine, but I would have no problem with somebody here saying, I love Lorraine Bettner, and I'm reading that book.

I mean, you can learn a lot from them. You can learn a lot from B .B. Warfield. I mean, there are men who hold, they have some quirky views about different things, you know, but you can, you could learn a lot from a lot of these godly men who've gone on to glory.

I think maybe Warfield was more amill than postmill, but there really wasn't a category. It was either premill or postmill back in those days.

He has some odd things with the Trinity, which you, you know.

Oh, so now that's where we're moving. Way to go, Steve. That was a good little Thank you. Segway. Segway. For a long time, I spelled that S-E-G-W-A-Y in my notes. Well, sad. And then remember people riding segways?

Did you ever ride a segway? No. I never did either. I wonder if they'd be any fun. I don't know. Maybe we could ask our neighbor. Oh, that's right. That's right. That's inside scoop there. Today on No Compromise Radio, I have Steve Cooley with me, and we're talking a little bit about pretty much if you're listening to our show and you're a lay person, or if there are people at our church, you know, at the church, it's not our church, the Lord's Church here, and they say, should I listen to this person?

And they are postmill. I'm reading this book by so-and-so. When are we going to tell them, no, pick somebody else? So let's talk a little bit about Trinitarian issues. Doctrine of God, big deal, no big deal, plenty of room to...

I think it's a pretty big deal. You know, I mean...

What if someone came to you and said, I'm reading about this guy, I'm reading this guy, and he says in his book about the man, Christ Jesus, when he was on earth, that he just didn't, you know, do any of his divine prerogatives, but he didn't use any of them, and he kind of like cloaked himself and didn't do divine things, or I don't even know how they say it.

It would be this kind of hyper-canonic thing. What if they're reading a book by someone who says something like that about the God-man, what would you say?

I would say avoid, yeah, I think there are certain variants, shall we say, certain wrong views that I just, they're just a time sink. They're not helpful in any way. And when they go counter to sound doctrine and the historical doctrine of the Church, you know, what has been seen as orthodox confessional, I would just say run, put those books down, read something better, right?

There's good, better, best, and if I could be honest, you know, that book may not even fall into the good category, right? If I'm thinking good, better, best, I can name, you know, half a dozen books off the top of my head that are better on Christology than that one, so don't read that.

Steve, I think kind of what we're driving at here is if you've got a good doctrine of God, good doctrine of soteriology, I personally don't care about a lot of the other little things that might happen, whether it's paedo-baptism, credo-baptism, whether what their end times things are, what their polity is.

I mean, ultimately Jesus is Lord of the Church. Those things are, to me, I don't mean secondary doctrines, but they're secondary for me to say,.

Oh, this is a big deal. Well, I think what it gets down to is something that you and I were talking about earlier off the air, which is can I learn something from this person, right? And some doctrines just overshadow other things where it makes it impossible for me to read or to listen to somebody.

You know, if I know they've got their doctrine of justification wrong, I have a real hard time then reading anything they might say about the law or about salvation or, you know, and so it gets to the point where I'm just like, why would I even listen to that guy?

Why would I even read what he has to say? Because, you know, I'm going to have to be so hypercritical that unless it's for some kind of assignment, I don't want to read it.

The Trinity, Christology, and the Doctrine of God

Well, let's just name names then. John Piper, if someone said to you, I'm attending Bethlehem Bible Church, I'm a member, I'm excited to learn, and there's a new book on Providence by John Piper, I haven't read it, and let's just say it's 99 great, maybe it's 100 great, who knows?

Would you want them to read that book knowing that his final justification stuff is a problem?

I mean, the short answer is no, I would not, you know, and I would rather they read somebody else on the same topic. I mean, there are things about John Piper that I wish I could just steal, you know, and I think that's what people really value about him, you know, his enthusiasm and his ability to speak plainly about a number of issues.

And certainly there's a winsomeness there and drama, but I think when it comes down to his, what's it, let's say wisdom in terms of, you know, who he platforms and who he goes and speaks with and, you know...

Rick Warren, Don Wilson, Mark Biskill.

Well, and even down at the Passion Conferences when he was there with just outright, you know, Christine Kane and other heretics, I don't understand that, you know, and you could say, well, he's just bringing light to the darkness.

Okay. I mean, I'm just not going to have other people thinking that, well, she's okay as a teacher and he's okay as a teacher because John Piper, you know, was preaching right along with him. No, just, no, don't do that.

Pete Turner As a pastor, sometimes I'll say, and I know you'll say the same thing when we're thinking about different people and what they write and say, would you have that guy come and preach for you, right?

That was a question we always had at seminary.

I couldn't trust him because I've seen him get, he's even confessed that he's gotten explicit instruction on what he was to do and then he decided not to do it. And I, no, just no.

Pete Turner. Steve, what about this? This is a little tangent, but that's okay because it's radio. We like to do that and change things up. We have a congregant, let's say, then they have the Providence book by Piper, or since we just brought that up, or I brought that up, and they have David Jeremiah books.

I personally would rather have them read David Jeremiah than John Piper. Pete Turner.

Well, because his errors are easier to discern, you know, and he's pretty obvious about them,.

Right? And we kind of know he's not in a different camp. I'm not calling him an unbeliever or anything like that, but it's just more mainstream, kind of like in the old days with Charles Stanley or Chuck Swindoll, just, you know, they're just kind of teaching and, you know, they're just, they're teaching as faithfully as they can.

I don't think that's any big deal for me, but when it's John Piper and he's, everybody thinks Piper's the Calvinist, he's the five pointer, therefore he's kind of this leader in the camp. He's not. I'd rather have them listen to a Calvary Chapel than Piper because at least we know Calvary Chapel is Arminian, no membership, low key charismatic stuff.

Does that make sense?

Pete Turner. Yes. Yeah. Because I think our tendency with somebody that we consider to be in our camp is to let our walls down, let our guard down, you know, not be hyper discerning. And in fact, I think the obvious or the opposite is true, that we need to be even more discerning, particularly with people like Piper.

So, are there certain people, Steve, that when you hear their doctrines, that do you have any.

Music go through your mind when they're teaching? Man, I start looking for the shark. All right,.

Let's keep going. Eternal functional subordination or eternal subordination of the sun, EFS, ESS. Can you give us kind of just a sketch on some of the components of those people that think, of what they believe, and then we'll talk about, should we jettison that or what?

Pete Turner. Well, the basic idea is that there's some sort of hierarchy in the Trinity and it's eternal, right? I mean, if you want to say that the sun in his incarnation, his humanity, was subordinate to the Father, well, I think you can certainly see that and teach that right out of the scripture.

If you want to say that the sun from all eternity was less than the Father, well, and that's what the EFS, ESS crowd says, that he was kind of, you know, taking orders from the Father in the eternity past.

That's shorthand for it, but wrong. That's just wrong. It's heretical. That was done, I mean, it's been brought up, it's been recycled, it's been repackaged. That's always been a problem that the Church has had, going back to the early days.

The first time it was declared, you know, a dead letter, there was declared heresy, it was in Council of Nicaea 325, but it came back and had to be dealt with again in 387 and, you know, on and on it goes.

And people are still trying to teach that today.

Pete Turner. Steve, I'm thinking now big picture. When you are at a local church and you're influenced by social media and print press and advertisement and PNR catalogs and Reformation Heritage books and Westminster books and Christian book discounters, et cetera, et cetera, Amazon books, should you kind of have a strategy and say to yourself, we love our pastor, we love our elders and pastors, they teaching the Bible faithfully, they keep quoting Machen, they keep quoting Calvin, they keep quoting Jerry Bridges.

I think I should probably read those same people. I guess here's what I'm driving at. Why doesn't Pastor Mike, why doesn't Pastor Steve ever quote positively John Piper? Why don't they quote Greg Bonson positively?

Is that his first name, Greg Bonson? It was Greg,.

Wasn't it? Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, Greg.

Why aren't they saying positive things about Doug Wilson? Why is it negative? Or why are they just avoiding it? Don't you think it'd be a good strategy for people at the church?

I think it would be very good. And you know, sometimes people will say, you know, I noticed we don't have any books by so and so, you know, why is that? And I'm happy to answer that question. Why don't we push John Piper?

That's a very easy question. And you know, it's not like because John Piper's never done anything good because I can hold up books and go, you know what, I really like this book, you know, The Supremacy of God and Preaching.

It's not a how to, but it kind of gets you in the right mindset about preaching. And I think that's fine. Or what about his Romans 9.

Dissertation? He has some really good information there in Romans 9. And I think, have I benefited? The answer is yes. But I'm trying to think as a pastor, that's the point. Just how am I going to tell somebody, oh, here's a book.

And by the way, Future Grace, watch out for this, this, this, this, and don't be fooled by his book to refute N .T. Wright, because he doesn't believe in.

Justification like we do. I just... Again, you know, I think if I'm reading it, if it's an academic assignment, you know, or there's some exceptional reason for me to read it, okay, fine. Because I kind of know what I'm looking for.

But I think for the layperson, I'd be like, don't, don't do that. You know, there's just too much to jump over to, you know, it's like an obstacle course. Why would you do that?

So, on the show today, we started off by saying, of course, there's charity, and there's an openness in a good way to read all kinds of different Christian writers from different backgrounds. We didn't mention J .C. Ryle, but you think, oh, we want to read Anglicans, right?

I think of 1662, Calm a Book of Prayer, other things. We don't have to believe exactly what people believe in order to benefit from them. So, there's the charity there. But pretty soon, it starts to narrow a little bit when it comes to folks at the church, because we're supposed to be shepherds.

We're supposed to say, watch out for this and watch out for that. But what happened, Steve, is we're just two guys here in a town of 7 ,000 people, and we don't have the platform that John Piper does, or Francis Chan, or somebody like that.

So, how can we be right.

When those guys are who they are? Yeah. You don't know anything. Have you sold half a million books? No. No, I haven't. How big's your radio station? How many stations are you on? How many churches have you planted?

How many conferences have you spoken at where thousands of people were there buying your t-shirts? Okay.

I think for the most part, we recommend and read probably Presbyterians, don't you think?

It's probably more Presbyterians than not. Are there some Baptists around that kind of.

Have figured things out a little bit? What's that guy's name? Steve Blyster? Steve? Steve. Yeah, yeah. Steve Munchkin? No, Steve Meister. That's right. Rich Barcellos is writing things. Jim Renahan, they're all kind of the Federalism 1689 branch.

I don't agree with all the little details of this, that, or the other, but I love those guys. I'm glad they're around. So, there are some Baptists. John Gill is a Baptist. I just picked up his.

Systematic Theology. I think that'll be good. I think it will be good because Matthew Barrett's been quoting him a lot in the Simply Trinity, so there's another Baptist for him.

Oh, see? I know. Who else are the other Baptists, the styling Baptists?

I don't know. I mean, we'd have to sit here and think about it a little bit, but there are some Baptists around. All right. Pat Abendroth's a Baptist.

Yeah, so far. Well, you know what, to just be totally fair, I said something to him.

In a text here the other day, and he said, I said something about Presbyterians, and he goes, not enough water. So, he's fine. So, on the show today, here's what we.

Wanted to try to accomplish. There are so many different theological positions out there that we have to just be aware of them, and we can say yes to many things, but there are a few things we have to say no to.

Yes. And we're saying no to if you reject the classical view of God that we see in Nicaea and Chalcedon and Athanasius Creed. If you're off on that, then we say to our congregants, I wouldn't read that.

It's not good for you. Correct? Right. You know, there are a lot of.

Implications to getting that wrong. Secondly, if you get justification wrongly, and I don't mean just initial justification and you're putting back in a position of favor with God. I'm talking about justification.

If you get that wrong, which leads all the way to the end, to no condemnation on judgment day. If you get sola fide wrong, and you maybe get it right other places, but you teach final justification, we say we wouldn't read that person.

Right. Or how about the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ? That is to say, what he did, his perfect life. Some people say that you don't get that credited to you as a believer. And that's Roman Catholicism to me.

I mean, that's errant theology. It's bad.

Okay. So, that's good. So, I think so far on the show, we've established there's many things we do agree with. We would say to folks at the church, you know what? They're theonomist. I wouldn't. They're EFS, ESS.

I wouldn't. They're off on sola fide. I wouldn't. They're off on the act of obedience of Christ. Isn't there some cult in Colorado now that's trying to say, you know, we're going to give you 50 grand if you can come and prove the point against act of obedience or for act of obedience.

They're against it. I don't know, but that sounds like a good show. They're the ones that I don't want to give them much publicity, but I think they went to the conference and they were handing out all the material.

Oh, really? They've called out Pat, I think by name. But I mean, what are you going to do? Go there and they're going to make up the rules. They're not giving their money to anybody. Wrestling to the ground.

So, we don't want to be fundamentalist and say, unless you believe in what we believe exactly, let's say 1689, everybody else is awful. And I think we see some very kind Presbyterians who realize that we're Baptist and they have certainly been nice and kind to us.

I'm going to be nice and kind to the PCA, OPC, URC people. We're not going to be nice to them. Not at all. And can you think of anything else that might make you say, we probably shouldn't recommend that person?

Any kind of big things that are happening in light of today's theological news?

Well, I didn't really sit and think about this. I know I gave you no time. Yeah. So, I don't know. But I mean, I would, again, the act of obedience of Christ, the imputation of that, I think that is a big issue and one that's probably a lot more widespread than even some of these others.

Theological Non-Negotiables and When Not to Recommend a Teacher

Okay, good. I like that. Pastor Steve Cooley and Mike Ebenroth here on No Compromise Radio Ministry. I have all these different buttons here and you have to try to figure out the buttons in this new mixer.

Steve, I'm going to be gone this summer for a while and you're going to take over for me as you faithfully do every year. You're probably going to be in the book of Acts. Do you think you want to record some shows?

I don't know. Is this like, are you putting pressure on me right now on the air?

Yes. I'm going to say, if you'd like Pastor Steve to do some shows, why don't you write me? I think it's actually Steve at No Compromise Radio or is it TMS Steve, Tuesday Guy Steve?

I don't know. I never get any no-co mail.

Remember when Ray Johnson used to answer all the emails? Yes. That was back in the day when we were a discernment ministry and a lot of people were asking questions. Yeah. But what about repentance? Those were fun.

Thanks for listening.