Systematic Theology (part 5)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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God, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. Help us to understand you better.

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Help us to understand ourselves better through this time. Just thank you for the opportunity to think about you and to worship you today in the word and in song and just to dedicate ourselves to you again this

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Sunday. Help us to do that. Help us to desire to live for you more and to surrender our lives to you more.

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Just thank you for people here and just please bless them individually with what they need to hear, need to know that that they might be helped by this time.

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Through your spirit, we trust you to work in us. Amen. So, systematic theology.

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Love systematic theology. I love how all the knowledge and truths are all intertwined and interconnected and for this systematic theology study that we've been going through,

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I've learned some new things. I've learned that systematic theology actually has some layers of that I didn't know existed, right?

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I've always sort of known it was the biblical truths and structured organization of doctrines that are spread throughout the

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Bible all pieced together in a nice format. But I learned that systematic theology also includes a little bit of a survey back through church history and what they've thought about the different doctrines.

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I never knew that was part of systematic theology. And I also learned that systematic theologies are supposed to connect the doctrines to what the issues of the culture are at the time that it's being written.

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And both of those things will kind of come up as we get into the system theology that we're going to be talking about.

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But those new things kind of burst my bubble, too. I kind of really liked the nice closed system.

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It was just the Bible and we're just going to know how all the Bible pieces of doctrine fit together. But now it's super open -ended, but that's fine.

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It's new to me. And, of course, with systematic theology, what did we have to start with first?

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We had to start with theology. We had to start with God. I think Corey called it theology proper.

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And we've been doing that for probably, like you could say, over two years now with the None Greater study, the

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Simply Trinity study, Corey's two weeks, and he's going to actually go back to God a little bit next week,

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I think. But this week we're going to transition. We're going to transition to the doctrine of man, which the

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Bible focuses on quite a bit, maybe even more than God. Not that it's more important than God, obviously not.

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And, of course, it focuses on man, so much so that God actually became a man, right?

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Pretty amazing. And with man, where do we have to start? We have to start with man in his original state before the fall.

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So essentially we're asking the very fundamental questions of what is man?

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What are we? And in the Birkhoff Systematic Theology, which is our text, there's, in this category of the doctrine of man before the fall, there's just too much to cover.

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I only have one Sunday morning here with you to do this, so I had to pick and choose. So we're just going to briefly hit the things that I am

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NOT going to cover. The first one, obviously, being we are a creation of God.

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And in particular, again, this connecting to culture, Birkhoff spends a little bit of time saying, yeah, we didn't evolve.

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And nobody here probably believes that, but you could spend tons of Sunday schools just on this one topic of creation versus evolution, and that we didn't evolve, and there's tons of great resources on that.

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We've all heard about that before. The second thing I'm not going to cover, that we're created in the image of God.

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We have a living spirit, like the animals, but very different from the animals in this being made in the image of God.

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That topic would address all the stuff that's included in that aspect of man, the faculties and abilities like God's communicable attributes, but in much lesser or lower forms or expressions.

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We're going to live eternally, sort of like God. We can create, sort of like God.

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We can communicate and have relationships, sort of like God does. We have dominion over creation, sort of like God does, etc, etc.

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The third category we're not going to cover is the unity of the races. We're all one human family.

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We all came from Adam. Acts 17 26 is a beautiful summary verse of that.

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He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.

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So these three categories, you've heard comments, you've heard teachings in sermons, lectures, that contain content on these three topics.

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So you've heard these before. Like in the unity of the races issue, it's more of like a black and white thing, pun intended, that it's just easy to understand that.

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We don't really have to go into much depth to grasp that issue. And so these three things, to me,

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I don't know, they seemed more kind of like been there done that, right? So I tried to pick something a little different.

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The fourth one though, and with any of these topics, if you want to have a bonus

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Sunday school session with just me over email or in person, I'd love to talk about any of these things if you have questions or whatever.

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Especially in this fourth category, we're not going to cover it. I really wish I had time to talk about this because I've been getting a lot more into covenant theology in the last few years.

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The fourth one is man in the covenant of works. This is the idea that God set up Adam with a covenant by which

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Adam, in theory, could please God by keeping the moral law of God perfectly. Obviously, he didn't end up fulfilling the covenant in reality.

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And then in conjunction with that, there's this idea of the covenant of grace whereby

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Christ fulfills that covenant of works for us that Adam failed to fulfill.

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And if you wanted one book to jump into covenant theology, this is the only one

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I've read and I really liked it a lot. It's called The Kingdom of God, A Baptist Expression of Covenant and Biblical Theology by Jeffrey Johnson.

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The second part, especially, is really accessible. It takes the different Noahic, Davidic covenants, and it gives them to you in almost like a story type fashion, a summary story type fashion.

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So I can recommend that to you. So that's all the stuff we're not going to cover. What will we cover?

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What we are going to cover is, I think, some things that are not often talked about as much or in as much depth.

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The constitutional nature of man. Number one, the constituent elements of man.

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The constituent elements of a human being, whether we're dichotomous or trichotomous.

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And second, the origin of the soul of man. Where does the human soul come from?

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So let's get into the first one, man's constituent elements. In other words, what is man made of?

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And from a theological perspective, we're not just listing body parts here. It's not what's man made of, he's made of organs and skeleton and blood.

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No, we're looking at from a theological perspective. So we're trying to assess the soul, the spiritual aspect.

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So what are these two options? Dichotomy and trichotomy. What is the dichotomy view?

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Just take a guess. Yeah. Someone who hasn't read the

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Burkhoff book. Two parts, okay. A guess? Boom!

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You got it. Jeopardy points for Anitra. So body and soul, we have just two parts.

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We're material and we're immaterial. Yeah, so what do you constitute?

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Yeah, it's a fancy way of saying what are you made of. I'm just using Burkhoff's fancy terminology, constituent.

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I mean, what are you made of? Okay, so then what would the trichotomy view be?

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Any guesses on that? Yes. More jeopardy points.

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All right, body soul or body soul and spirit. So we're gonna actually start with you guys.

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What do you think? Which is correct and why? Do you think the dichotomy view or just body and soul is right or body soul and spirit?

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And if you like the trichotomy view, body soul and spirit, what's the difference between soul and spirit?

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So I just just take guesses, say what you think. Good. Yeah, so I've always, before this study, been very torn on the topic and didn't really get into it that much.

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I'm sympathetic to both views coming into this and we'll see where I end up afterwards.

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I do, I think. I never saw really a great deal of emphasis on three parts in Scripture and the spotty soul just seemed like a simpler or elegantly simple kind of way of thinking about it, material, immaterial.

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But I was also very like thinking the spirit might be a different part as you view regeneration, right?

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So the regenerated part of us, that's born again. It's a new creation, right?

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So I was like, oh, well, maybe the spirit part of us is like that regenerated, born -again core and the soul is like our emotions in mind that are yet to be sanctified.

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Maybe that's part of the flesh, right? Or the old man, those emotions and thoughts.

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And the spirit is the redeemed part. So I kind of was very torn. I kind of feel both had viability, but let's see what

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Burkoff says. First he looks at church history, like we were saying, systematic theologies kind of do that.

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We'll try to hit this one fast. Church history is also torn on it, but they do seem to have a prevailing winner.

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The trichotomy advocates were the Greek or Alexandrian church fathers in early centuries.

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There are slight variations among them. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa. Interestingly, quote, after Apollinaris employed it in a manner impinging on the perfect humanity of Jesus, it was gradually discredited, unquote.

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A few smaller names held the trichotomy view during the Reformation and it did see some revival in the 19th century.

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The dichotomy advocates, Athanasius, Theodoric, the Latin Church, and Augustine, quote, gave prominence to this view, unquote.

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During the Middle Ages, this was the common belief and the Protestant Reformation didn't really change much.

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It just kind of let that ride and didn't vary from the prevailing dichotomous view at the time.

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So then Burkoff looks at scripture and he says it prevailingly points to dichotomy.

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But before he gets into the two parts and analyzing that, he spends a little time what we're going to do and just make sure we understand that we are really just one person.

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We're one man. We're always operating as one. Sure, the body and soul are mentioned in the

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Bible differently. It treats them, though, as a union, together as a whole person, especially in the

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Old Testament. In Genesis 2 .7, which is like a great verse for this whole topic, constitution of man, it's

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Genesis 2 .7 says, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.

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And that word being, nephesh, there, it used to, back in the King James Version, say soul and Burkoff says that's a little confusing because it's making it sound like just one part of us, but he says it should really be understood to mean the whole person because we are a whole person.

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And now the different translations, New King James says being, the NASB says person, and so that's an improvement on that to emphasize the unity.

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So then Burkoff looks at the different words. He admits straight up, sure, the Bible uses two different words in the both the

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Old Testament and the New Testament. The soul, in Hebrew, is nephesh, which we've talked about.

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Greek is suche, and spirit, the Hebrew is ruach, and the

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Greek is pneuma. But then Burkoff says this, quote, but the fact that these different terms are used with great frequency in Scripture does not warrant the conclusion that they designate different component parts rather than different aspects of human nature.

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A careful study of Scripture clearly shows that it uses the words, as Corrie said, interchangeably.

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Both terms denote the higher or spiritual element in man, but contemplate it from different points of view.

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And he gives tons of examples of this. I'm just going to give one for a time, and it's a great one for us, because this was just preached to us in Luke chapter 1, verses 46 to 47.

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Mary says, my soul, suche, magnifies the

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Lord, and my spirit, pneuma, has rejoiced in God my Savior. So there she's using them as though they're the same.

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It's synonymous, interchangeably. So that verse is a great example of the list that Burkoff goes through.

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So then why is there two words? The best, from the hip analogy

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I could come up with, is it's like heads and tails. They're both still looking at the same entity, and it's still one thing, but we're looking at it from different vantage points.

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And so Burkoff's summary of kind of the different viewpoints of spirit and soul is this.

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He says, spirit highlights the spiritual aspect or element of man, and it clarifies that the inner self as the seat or principle of life and action controlling the body.

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He says the soul, that word, is almost synonymous with the self or person. It's the subject of action, but can also still kind of get down, pointing specifically to man's, quote, inner life as the seat of the affection.

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So there's there's a lot of overlap in there. It's tough to kind of be a sharp distinction between the two.

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Burkoff says, in summary, thus it may be said that man has spirit, but is soul.

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He has spirit, but is soul. So now we're going to get to the problem scriptures, which

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Sharon mentioned, one of them. First Thessalonians 5 .23 and Hebrews 4 .12.

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And before he jumps into those, he gives us a little bit of like a hermeneutics rules reminder. He says in interpreting the

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Bible, we need to use the common ones to interpret the weird ones, the oddball scriptures.

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He says exceptional statements should typically be interpreted in light of the usual representation of scripture.

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So even if we had these two verses and we couldn't come up with any way to explain them as in the dichotomy view, even if we couldn't do that, we would have to just say, well, we don't understand, but the rest of scripture seems to be saying this.

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So these are probably, speaking of it in a way we can't grasp. But Burkoff gives us some good explanations,

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I think, for these two verses, how they're really truly dichotomous in their interpretation.

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The first one's from Paul, and to use the same point of the usual scriptures, he says

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Paul elsewhere talks about body and soul and that's it. So when we get to First Thessalonians 5 .23,

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we need to be consistent with Paul. It says this, Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Burkoff says it's probably just epics egetical. What's that word?

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I've never heard that word before. It's epics egetical, he says. And that's a fancy way of saying you just add words to clarify something.

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And so he says here Paul's probably trying to really drive home this completely idea, such that he adds both soul and spirit.

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So using our heads and tails analogy, we could say, I'm gonna clean your coin completely.

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I'm gonna clean your heads. I'm gonna clean your tails. I'm gonna complete the ridges around the circle. We're noting three aspects of something, but it's still just one thing.

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Epics egetical, sure. Hebrews 4 .12 For the

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Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two -edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

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So I'm going to give you two possible explanations. One's a bonus that I'm throwing in. It's not Burkoff's.

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Maybe it's hyperbole. Maybe he's expressing it with exaggerated language to exalt just how powerful and deep the cut of God's Word can be.

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That it can even divide things that are normally completely impossibly inseparable. My knife is so sharp

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I could cut through heads and tails. I could divide the two. Hyperbole.

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But Burkoff says that dividing idea is just applying to both. He says that division should be applied to both aspects, not separating the two into two parts.

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He says the Word of God is dividing, it's cutting down deep into the soul, and the

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Word of God is dividing and cutting down deep into the spirit. Not that it's breaking the two apart into two separate things.

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I'm going to really get inside your coin. I'm going to cut down into the heads, and I'm going to cut down into the tails.

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The idea, he says, is to let the phrase discerner of thoughts and intents of the heart, that's the overriding meaning.

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He's trying to get down into your soul and trying to get down into your spirit, into you, with that phrase division of soul and spirit.

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So any questions or thoughts on the constituent elements of man? What are we made of portion of our talk today?

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Questions, thoughts, before we go into the second one. I like that. Anybody else?

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Thoughts, questions on the constituent elements of man. What are we? Yes, prevailingly dichotomous in Scripture, and he says the only questionable verses are explainable in dichotomy view.

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Hermeneutics, we should interpret the weird ones with the rest of Scripture. Yes. I think if you were going to take the trichotomy view and hold to your guns on that, you would still say the soul and the spirit are both eternal.

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They're just kind of two things that go together. I don't know. I mean, in the final reckoning, the body is going to be eternal too.

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So, again, going back to the we are all one, we're one person, right? We're one. In the systematic theology, he doesn't get into the deep

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Greek stuff, so I don't really know, you know, to some degree we have to ask the Holy Spirit. Hey, why'd you do that, you know?

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He does actually talk about that, and he does give a little bit of the Greek culture and the influence.

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You know, I hesitate to say the Greek culture's influence on the Bible, but he does, you know, the writers were living in a

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Greek culture time. Alexander the Great spread it everywhere, so they were living there. So, they were using terms and addressing issues.

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You know, you see in John's epistle, he talks about Gnosticism type stuff because that was the issue, right?

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So, they talk in Greek terms and address things in a Greek kind of way, and that's kind of why the spirit -body distinction is, like, more prominent in the

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New Testament, because the Greeks thought about those two things as so distinct, and, you know, Gnosticism made crazy claims about the two differences, right?

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For time, I'm going to use that as a great segue and say soul, there's souls, but how did we get our souls?

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So, the second part is the origin of men's souls, and I'm going to use kind of some regular phrases to give you the options.

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The options are there's an all -souls warehouse, our souls come from our parents, and God creates our souls at conception.

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Those are the three options that Burkoff addresses. The official term for the all -souls warehouse is pre -existentialism.

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Our souls existed before our body was even conceived. This was advocated by early church father

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Origen, which I find humorous that Origen had a position on origins. They kind of struggled with this current existence that we're living, being a punishment, a suffering type of punishment, and they wanted that to be for a prior pre -existing sinning willingly, so they came up with this pre -existentialism view, quote, in order to reconcile the doctrines of the universality of sin and of individual guilt, unquote.

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So, there's this giant pool of all human souls that were all breathed into existence at the same time as Adam.

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We're all connected to Adam in that warehouse of souls creation event, and so then when he sinned, we participated with him as a pool interconnected with him as a large group.

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But, Burkoff says this possibility can just be pretty much dismissed due to,

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A, lack of scriptural and philosophical grounds, B, it makes men's souls, our immaterial existence, complete without the body.

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The body becomes almost like a secondary accident that just gets slapped on to the real person. It destroys the angel -human distinction, and he says it's experientially void.

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There's no corroborating evidence within the consciousness of man of such a prior existence. It's almost like reincarnation -ish.

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So, he throws out pre -existentialism. There is no all -souls warehouse according to Burkoff. The second option is a word probably you've never heard before.

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I never heard it. Tradutionism is the official term from parents with conception.

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Our souls were generated and transmitted through the souls of our parents, similar to the way the body forms from the sperm -egg combo.

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Not to get a little weird on us, but that's tradutionism. It was held by Martin Luther, held by the

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Lutheran Church. The Church Father Tertullian took this option, and he lists a bunch of arguments that are all in favor of tradutionism.

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He first goes with scripture. He says the tradutionists would say God breathed once.

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That's it. We only read of God breathing into a person in detail once, and so soul propagation from that point had to just come from that one soul.

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There's no mention of it, they would say. And they use the woman from man

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Eve event as sort of the first example of that. They would even quote 1st

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Corinthians 11 8 saying the woman is from a man, and they would say that means both the body and the soul came from Adam.

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And then thirdly they would say from scripture God stopped creating. He ceased creating right after the sixth day, so certainly

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God's not creating new souls constantly. And then so that's scripture, and then they say it is kind of like the animals.

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They go back to this animals thing, and they say animals are generating another generation of animals, which also have a nefesh, and so we're not going to say

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God's actively creating animal souls every time. Really? That's so they use that as a argument.

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Why not also humans the same way, but with a higher image of God type of soul? The next argument is personality.

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They say hey your kids are kind of like you in non -material ways. They have your personality and your abilities that are non -physical.

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Sure, they have your eye color and stuff, but they're also like you in other ways. Traditionism explains that, and it matches up with that really well.

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And then they say original sin fits traditionism well. It's the best explanation of that inheritance of moral and spiritual depravity, which is a matter of the soul.

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If the total depravity of the soul is something inherited from Adam, then wouldn't traditionism need to be correct?

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If each soul was created by God, where does the depravity come from? They would ask. Not from God.

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How could God bestow depravity upon a soul from himself when he's holy? So that's traditionism's prose.

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The objections or cons to traditionism. Tough to say that. The first thing is that it's anti -simplicity.

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Burkhoff really drives a lot on this simplicity of the human soul. He's like, traditionism is saying the human soul can be split up.

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That part of the soul of the parents can actually be peeled off and portioned off to create a new soul.

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He says that violates the simplicity of the soul. He never really gives the reason that the soul has to be simple and indivisible, but he assumes that it is, sort of.

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He says that the only way to get around that would be to say that we as parents are creators of souls, which that just puts us way above our pay grade, doesn't it?

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We're not creating souls. That's absurd. And then the creationism version, the

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God -creates -souls, would challenge this whole absolute rigid God -cease -creating.

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Because they would say, God's still making us new. He's still making us born again. And so, obviously,

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God's still creating, so that's absurd to be rigid on that one. I saw some hands.

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Yeah, yeah. You and Corey just have a way of reaching forward. Picking the stuff we're going to get to later.

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No, but there's actually, we're going to get to it, but there's actually better verses than Psalm 139. So, he has a little bit of a twisted view of scripture interpretation.

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Yeah, for sure. Alright, so then, we're on the objections to traditionism.

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The fourth one would be this whole ancestor's guilt thing. If we're going to assume that guilt is passed by transmission from parents, then why is it only the original sin of Adam?

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Wouldn't we get all of Adam's sins and all the sins of everybody between Adam and our parents transmitted to us, if that's the way that it happens?

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And so, they would challenge that, and it does also, I'll mention, seem like a flagrant contradiction to Ezekiel 18, if that's the case.

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The fifth reason is that the creationism option would reject traditionism is, it puts into this idea of there's only really one human soul substance.

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If Adam, then we got Eve from Adam, and then from, like, everything's coming from Adam.

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There's only one human soul, and everything's sort of being portioned off from that.

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And that seems absurd just on its face, but then especially if we were to apply that idea of one soul substance to Jesus.

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So, the last thing is it makes Christ sinful. If we assume all human souls are ultimately derived from human soul of Adam, who's corrupted and sinful, then

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Jesus certainly had a deity, but he also had a human soul in the hypostatic union, so Christ's human soul would have had to have been sinful if everything is flowing, transmitting from Adam.

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And this was not admitted by Birkhoff, but I do think, hard -pressed, if you back the traditionist into a corner, they would say, well,

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Jesus is probably an exception, you know, God can create a special human soul for him. So, now let's look at the creationism option that God creates at conception.

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The arguments in favor of the creationism view, not to be confused with creationism, the creating of the universe versus evolution, but creation of the human soul by God, scripture.

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We're going to start with scripture. The creationism advocate would say there's other passages that seem way more convincing and way more direct in their evidence than these indirect scriptural principles that are used to support traditionism.

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They say it's the same as it was with Adam's soul, it's from God. But these scriptures, they imply the same thing is for every person, not just Adam, that the soul is not just something that tags along with the body, but it's directly from God himself.

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Three examples, and these are really tough to refute, in my opinion.

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Ecclesiastes 12 .7 Isaiah 42 .5

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The Lord who created the heavens and the earth, who gives breath to the people who walk on it, and spirit to those who walk on it.

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Zechariah 12 .1 And Burkoff, as I hinted before, he likes the simplicity idea, and he says the creationism view keeps that idea that the human soul is indivisible and simple.

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Traditionism struggles with that and has to admit that the soul is splitting up somehow.

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And he says it's a better Christology, it avoids making Christ's sinful pitfall that traditionism has, which we just talked about.

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But there are objections to creationism from the traditionists. They would say it makes

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God the author of evil. This challenging objection can be best summarized with the quote from Strong that Burkoff gave.

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Quote, This theory, if it allows that the soul is originally possessed of depraved tendencies, makes

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God the direct author of moral evil. If it holds the soul to have been created pure, it makes

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God indirectly the author of moral evil by teaching that God put this pure soul into a body which corrupts it.

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But Burkoff would state, no, God's not making a pure soul evil by putting it into a depraved body descended from Adam, but rather God, quote, imputes to them the original disobedience of Adam, unquote.

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And I do see the distinction that Burkoff's making in the wording, but to me it seems like both sides kind of have to make an exception for Jesus of some kind.

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If God is always imputing Adam's sin to every human soul that he creates, why does he stop imputing it when

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Jesus' human soul is created? And the traditionists would say, well,

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God created a human soul and they would reject the transmission part. So both of them seem to me, I don't know, that they're making an exception when we get to Jesus.

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And that's fine. Jesus is an exception. So you're saying the all souls warehouse and the created by God are exactly the same because it's timeless.

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Not to go all dorky on you. Right. Yeah, I think that's a good point.

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But timelessness can get a little tough to insert into different doctrines, right? So the other objections, quick, because we only have five minutes left.

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The objections to creationism would say, well, the personality transmission to your kids is not explained then.

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And I would just say, well, we don't really understand where the brain stops and the soul begins.

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Maybe it's actually the brain being filtered through the soul. Also, I would say it could be nurture rather than nature.

34:19

Right. Maybe it's those traits are actually coming about through parenting and being around your parents so much. And then they would object with this rigid

34:28

God quit creating thing where God can't create anything anymore. So then he makes some concluding remarks.

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He says both he admits both sides have pros and cons. And he says many theologians take both different views on this.

34:45

For me, I think the three scriptures for creationism, the Ecclesiastes Isaiah and Zechariah verses are pretty compelling, pretty hard to counter those and interpret those differently.

34:55

Burkoff also prefers the creationism view as well because he sees that it avoids bad Christology and maintains the soul simplicity.

35:03

But if you're having trouble choosing between traditionism and creationism, you are in good company because Augustine also found it really hard to choose between the two.

35:13

All right. So because we only have a few minutes left, I'm going to jump right to the last section.

35:18

Why does it matter? And this is not Burkoff. He did not offer any of these comments.

35:24

So if they're dumb, it's all my fault. The constitutional man, each nature of man issues.

35:30

Why does this even matter besides just being accurate in our theological understanding?

35:37

Why does it matter? Whether you see yourself as a dichotomy or a trichotomy,

35:43

I think, could affect how you view your own sanctification. And I hinted about that earlier when

35:48

I felt torn about it. The origin of where you came from could skew how you think about yourself and who you are, how you view

35:57

God even. So on the constituent elements, the dichotomy versus the trichotomy,

36:04

I've got a few sanctification analogies. Again, not Burkoff. If it's dumb, it's my fault. So the trichotomy view.

36:10

I think you would kind of see sanctification as kind of like a military home base headquarters.

36:20

So the spirit would then be the completely redeemed, new, born again part of you.

36:25

And the Holy Spirit and sanctification process would kind of march out from there and try to take over your soul and clean you up.

36:34

That would be like sort of a trichotomy view of sanctification with the separate spirit, where the Holy Spirit is indwelling us and we're regenerated.

36:42

That's the regenerated part of us. The dichotomy view, for an analogy, would see it as more like a good infection.

36:53

There's only the soul, so the Holy Spirit indwelling us has to be, and regenerating us, has to be in that soul.

36:58

But the soul's not yet perfect, and so maybe it's sort of like a good infection.

37:04

The Holy Spirit is in that one soul, just spreading and growing and transforming us gradually and spreading out.

37:12

What about the origin of your soul? Why does it matter? So here's possible view of self and view of God's side effects.

37:23

Traditionism. If you opted for that one, you might have like a, my parents made me, leaning focus.

37:32

You think about the original sin concept as more of a transmission. Like Wes was saying, it came down through the lines from our parents up to Adam, transmitted.

37:48

And I would say your view of God would lean just a little bit more on the deism side. God's done creating souls.

37:55

He's stepped back from that. Certainly you could not be deistic, but in that one thing you would be slightly more deistic.

38:05

If you were a creationism advocate, you would have a God created me focus, wouldn't you?

38:12

Because you think you did. You'd have a little bit more of an imputation idea to the original sin nature.

38:20

And your view of God would be less deistic, more God's continually involved in the human race.

38:27

He's creating souls, thousands of them all the time. And so more involved in souls and the souls of all men.

38:36

And so with our last seconds, does anyone have any other ideas of how this matters to you?

38:42

That's something that came to you while we were talking about it. This is cool. This made me think about this. And now I'm going to live there.

38:47

Think differently. Yeah, I think that could become the case where like, oh, well, my spirit's redeemed and the soul is never going to be redeemed.

38:54

So, oh, well. All right. We are out of time. I'm sorry. Let me just say a quick prayer. God, thank you for this time to think about you and what you have done in creating the human being.

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And whether we think we came from our parents or you, God, it's all your plan. And we trust in you and we love you for what you've done.

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And you've given us this life. Help us to be sanctified. Whether we believe the Holy Spirit is a conquering headquarters in us or an infection that's good, that's changing us for your glory.