April 19, 2016 Show with Tom Ascol on “Bringing Maturity to Young, Restless, and Reformed”

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 19th day of April 2016.

I'm so delighted that we have returning to our program one of my favorite guests from the old

Iron Sharpens Iron broadcast, Dr. Tom Askell, who is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida.

He is the executive director of Founders Ministries and teaching fellow of the

Nicole Institute of Baptist Studies at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.

Today we're going to be discussing the theme, Bringing Biblical Maturity to the Young, Restless, and Reformed, and we're going to be examining what this group is all about and also trying to get definitions on things like New Calvinism and all kinds of things that I'm sure will develop as a result of that.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Tom Askell. Thank you very much,

Chris. It's a joy to be back with you and I'm honored for this opportunity. Oh, I'm very honored beyond words, brother, and it's time for me to introduce you, on air at least, to my friend and co -host as of late, the

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, Tom. Hi, brother. It's good to meet you. I thought he was about to say the late

Buzz Taylor. And before we go into the theme at hand, some of our listeners may be discovering you for the first time.

Tom, why don't you let them know about Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida, Founders Ministries, and also the

Nicole Institute of Baptist Studies. Well, Grace Baptist is a church that has been in Cape Coral, Florida, for about 33, 34 years.

I'm the second pastor, so I'm about to complete my 30th year of ministry here. And it was a church that was founded, sadly, like most or at least many

Baptist churches, out of a split. And so there were some wrong motives and wrong actions taken, but God overruled all that and has brought us to some healthier paths over the last many years.

So I've been real privileged to serve here for these three decades.

We are a church that has, as our formal most robust Confession of Faith, the 1689 or Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.

And so that's an expression of our doctoral commitments. Founders Ministries is an organization that's been going on since 1982 that began with seven guys in a prayer meeting and thinking through the implications of the full authority of God's Word and the sufficiency of God's Word, knowing that the

Word teaches the absolute sovereignty of God and creation and providence and salvation. And so with those theological commitments and recognizing that the origins of the

Southern Baptist Convention were grounded in those doctrines of grace and the Reformed understanding of salvation, we decided to try to have a conference and begin to promote these convictions that once were in Stetson's theological position of the convention.

And God enabled us to do that with conferences and from that, a journal and a publishing house and website.

And we've just continued on through the years just increasing those ministries with fraternals and trying to encourage pastors, churches in the recovery of the gospel and renewal of local churches.

That's kind of what I've been involved with. And the Nicole Institute of Baptist Studies, obviously

I'm guessing that's named after Roger Nicole? That's correct. Roger Nicole, when he retired from Gordon -Conwell, moved down to Orlando and joined the faculty at Reformed Seminary, and of course he was a

Baptist, and the seminary was Presbyterian, though very Catholic in spirit.

And so upon his death, there were those that were interested in trying to honor his legacy.

Reformed Seminary started this Nicole Institute for Baptist students and brought on four guys to serve as visiting professors, and I've had the wonderful privilege of being one of those.

Now going back to Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, was that church founded by Ernie Reisinger?

No, it was not. Ernie retired from the other coast, where he had pastored a church in the

Fort Lauderdale area, and when he retired, he moved to the west coast of Florida, which is where we're located, and just began to attend at this church.

That's how I was introduced to it. They had kind of established it with their first pastor and fired him while he was on vacation, and Ernie began to preach.

During the interim, they found out he had been a pastor, so he began to preach, and I was visiting him one weekend, and he asked me to preach and just to fill in for him.

And from that, the search committee asked if I'd become their pastor. I was a little bit more involved in the process through the next few months, because I was not anticipating or looking for that, but God made it plain that was

His will. So my wife and two little kids and I moved to Florida in the end of May of 1986.

Yeah, the reason I brought up Ernie is that I knew he had some connection with Grace Baptist, and he did found the church where I'm currently a member, the

Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. That's correct. That's very true.

And well, the theme that we have today seems to be a very controversial theme, and there seems to be confusion amongst a lot of folks, including myself, as to where on the landscape of theology the

Young, Restless, and Reform movement falls, and would you use as a synonym for this movement,

New Calvinism, or is that something different? Well, I suppose it is somewhat of a synonym, though both are very difficult to define.

And I think Colin Hanson published the book that grew out of a cover story that he wrote for Christianity Today, I think it was back in 2008,

I think is when the book came out. And Colin did not coin that term. That term was used in the subtitle of the book.

I don't think he chose, I can't remember specifics, but I remember talking to him about that project as he was doing it.

And the genesis of the book is really fascinating. Colin at that time was serving as an editor at Christianity Today, was the youngest man on their staff, and so they were talking about the next big wave and what they would need to prepare to write on for Christianity Today, and they're thinking of the emergent movement and some of the other things that were current and gaining some traction at that time.

And Colin was the lone voice in the room saying, you know, I think there's something going on with resurgence of Calvinism.

And so they encouraged him to do the research and to run with that, and he wrote this article, and the article just resonated broadly and then out of that came the book.

So the New Calvinism, or that Young Restless Reform Movement, is a very broad movement.

In fact, there are some Reformed scholars and leaders who kind of take umbrage at using the title

Reformed or Calvinism to associate with this movement.

And they would say that it's really not that, that it's too diverse. But in my own study and thinking about the history of Calvinism or the history of Reformed theology, that's also a very diverse movement.

You know, there's not really a monolithic movement that we can look to and say, well, this constitutes true

Reformed theology or the true Calvinistic stream. That stream has a lot of variations in it.

So you have people today, even, who affirm what the Synod of Dort teaches on the atonement of Christ, but yet believing what

Dort teaches, think that that keeps them outside the camp of Calvinism. And so it's really just kind of interesting.

So from a historical perspective, I would say, yes, what's going on today with this younger generation primarily, which is where we see the activity taking place mostly,

I think it is a resurgence of biblical Calvinism and of what has been certainly a part of larger

Reformed movement from the 16th century on. Well, yes, obviously, going back to your comment about Calvinism itself or Reformed theology or Reformed Christianity, I should say, being diverse, obviously there are a number of different confessions of faith, which would be proof right there that you have a diversity that has existed.

You have the Westminster Confession, you have the Savoy Declaration, you have the

Three Forms of Unity, you have the London Baptist Confession, so you have the 39 articles of religion of the

Anglican Church. So you do have different expressions that have existed throughout the centuries of these doctrines.

Right, and then when you stop to think about people that we wouldn't have a great deal of argument about,

I don't think, including in the Reformed camp historically, well, there's man, there's some diversity there as well.

I mean, you've got people like Charles Spurgeon and Thornwell and John Gill and Andrew Fuller, and we could just go on and on down the line, the

Puritans and then, of course, variations within the Puritans themselves. So I think a historical perspective that would recognize a guy like J .I.

Packer as well as a George Whitefield or an R .C. Sproul and a

John Bunyan all sitting within that broad heading ought to be willing to allow some of the diversity that we see today flying under that same banner.

There seems to be an interesting mix of people that are associated with what is called

New Calvinism or the Young Restless and Reformed that don't seem to, on face value, belong together.

Mark Driscoll and Al Mohler, really? That's interesting. Yeah, I do, and you know, back in the 80s, whenever we were getting the

Founders Ministries movement, and when that was just in its infancy, one of the things that we talked about a lot was inerrancy is not enough, because the inerrancy movement within the

Southern Baptist Convention, as it had already been expressed in some of the broader evangelical world in America, was just gaining a lot of traction.

And praise God, I thank the Lord for that movement, and the belief and affirmation of the inerrancy of scriptures is vital, but it's insufficient, because you can have an inerrant

Bible and still ignore it or disobey it or not regard it or not believe it. And so inerrancy is not enough, and I'm almost tempted to go on to say today, in fact,

I'm beyond tempted, I'm there, to say that Reformed is not enough, or Calvinism is not enough.

Bunyan has this graphic picture in one of his characters when he is describing,

I think it's Mr. Buyan in Pilgrim's Progress, who loves religion when it walks in silver slippers.

And I think what we're seeing is that it has become chic to be a Calvinist, and so there's almost a bandwagon effect where many people jump on board, not really having convictionally come to terms with some of the things that they are comfortable professing and expressing.

And I don't want to be too harsh about that, but the two examples you gave, whenever you can say that those men are part of the same movement, then there needs to be a lot of qualifications going on.

And of course I would have some real problems with some of the things that Mark Driscoll has, it's been made known that he's been involved in and been guilty of, and saying that that has a place in Reformed theology, but that doesn't have a place in any kind of biblical

Christianity. Now, would you have men that you and I both love and respect and admire, like Al Mohler and Mark Dever, would they identify themselves as new

Calvinists? Well, I don't think so. I mean, I certainly don't identify myself that way, because I'm nearly 60 years old, so there's nothing to do about it.

Mark and Al aren't that far behind me, so I don't think so, though they're very much involved with trying to breathe some health and give some theological leadership to those that would be more readily identified with New Calvinism.

I mean, again, Mark and I go way back, probably 25 years or so, and both were committed to these doctrines long before this

New Calvinism movement was a thing. Al was after that, but not too far after that, where he became convinced of these doctrines as well.

So the wave that we are seeing, those men would have been ahead of that wave, but both of them have a great love for the younger generation and what

God's doing in bringing a theological renewal to the younger generation, and they both have been instrumental in trying to bring some theological health to it.

Now, one of the things that I've heard about this movement that could be taken very positively, whether or not those who are the movers and shakers in the movement are being a bit too free with their criticisms of quote -quote old

Calvinists, perhaps even misrepresenting or to the point of slandering, but the understanding that many

Calvinists have become in practice hyper -Calvinists, not that they were doctrinally hyper -Calvinists, but they were very isolationist and satisfied with remaining in fellowship within the four walls of their church buildings and not really reaching out to the community and trying to redeem the culture surrounding us.

Would that be a justifiable way or a correct way of explaining the phenomenon?

Yeah, I think so, and of course there's a broad spectrum in what you just described there too, and some of that critique is legitimate and needs to be heard.

I mean, I own it, and there's a great temptation that comes with believing in the sovereignty of God to just rest in that and use that as an excuse, downplay the responsibility of people, and that temptation doesn't mean that the doctrine is wrong, it just means it's a temptation and needs to be resisted, and more truth needs to be brought to the table to keep in balance there and to keep that integration going.

So I think some of the young Calvinists have seen maybe a stodginess and an unwillingness to engage, and perhaps you can boil it down to a lack of love for people, a lack of real love for unconverted people that would motivate us to cross barriers and get outside of what is comfortable for us to try to bring the gospel to them.

And so I admire that tremendously as I have a conversation with my associate pastor today about that very point with how much we have to learn from some of these who would be more perhaps heavily involved or at the forefront of the young Calvinist or New Calvinist movement, how much we have to learn from them about cultural engagement and about evangelism and really trying to reach out and love your community.

I mean, I have much to learn on that. However, I do think, too, that some have gone too far and some are naive in the ways that they have voiced their criticisms or in the reactions that they have allowed themselves to imbibe in almost thinking that culture itself can be redeemed or that the world can be redeemed, and evangelism sliding into more and more almost what characterized the social gospel movement in the early part of the 20th century, where we're just trying to paint new buildings or put new paint on school buildings and do many good works, good things in the community, but with the gospel assumed or being muted, not almost forgetting that the gospel is a message that must be proclaimed.

And if there's not proclamation, not communication verbally of the message, or we're not getting the truth, the words of the message out, then whatever good stuff we're doing is not evangelism.

And so I think that's a tendency that some have in almost putting too much confidence in the culture, downplaying worldliness, not recognizing the dangers of worldliness.

People like John MacArthur have seen this clearly and spoken to it very boldly, and I think helpfully, though I don't think it's always been received real well by some in that New Calvinism movement.

Do you think that the New Calvinism movement might be, even if unconsciously, buying in too much to what used to be the playground of the

Armenians exclusively, but the seeker -sensitive movement, and trying to adopt too much of the characteristics of the world in order to be appealing to the lost community around them?

Like, for instance, I know that the New Calvinism, or the Young Restless and Reform group, have been criticized by those with more traditional music in their churches.

Perhaps even from outside of Reform theology, the fundamentalists have harshly repudiated the

Young Restless and Reform group for incorporating rap music into their evangelism and worship, and so on.

Now, like, for instance, to give you an example about the view I have of that, of rap music in particular,

I mean, when you boil down rap to its essence, it's really just poetry, it's rhyming.

But I do think that there is something very evil about the stage presence and the gimmickry of the hip -hop culture that really, you know, has imagery of arrogance and pride and greed and misogyny.

Bad dude kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, you know, the whole gold, thick gold chain and, you know, the whole arrogance and machismo and so on that very often accompanies even

Christian rap. But am I making sense here, though, as far as this movement being equated with incorporating that kind of thing too much?

Well, yeah, I think I understand you. I would say, I'm not sure I would, I wouldn't say it the way you just said it, and I'm not sure

I see it the way you do. No doubt there are elements, the way you just described it, that are there, but I'm thinking about guys like Trip Lee and Flame, I can't remember all those names, but I've listened to, just intentionally several years ago, got some

Christian rap or rhyme or hip -hop, whatever it's called, music, and started listening to it.

And the thing I came away with was how dense it was with theology.

It was amazing to me, I wasn't expecting it, and I gained a great appreciation for it.

However, whenever I'm talking about, we're talking about worship, well, music and worship, songs and worship are to be sung congregationally.

I don't know the congregation that could sing rap songs. But I've also been in wonderfully reformed confessional church services where songs were sung in Latin, and I didn't sing that either.

So, you know, there's a, I think there's dangers on every point of the spectrum here.

And so some, but the Latin music, it's great, and I'm sure has a wonderful place, and very kind of high church classical forms of music, that has a wonderful place too.

But again, I don't know that that would serve a congregation well, and so I wouldn't want to write it off, because it may not be the best choice in helping a congregation to sing

God's Word. And I wouldn't want to do that on the other end with rap either.

I mean, rap has a place, I wouldn't see it, it's places trying to lead the congregation in confessing

God's Word together and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. But having said that,

I do think that there are some who are just really quick to embrace whatever is new or cutting -edge, or seems to be at the forefront of a cultural wave, and almost uncritically bring that into the church.

I think that can happen on a number of levels, and some of these guys that are more culturally savvy and engaged, probably have a greater temptation of doing that unthinkingly, more so than some of us older guys who've been around a while, and I don't have, you know, nobody would accuse me of being on the cutting edge of anything cultural.

Let me speak from the standpoint of perhaps some of our listeners, because not everybody listens to Iron Sharpens Iron, you know, haven't listened to it very long, and I don't get all the reform magazines and things like that.

But you're mentioning a bunch of names and things, and these things have not yet,

I'm not getting this from my pulpit in church, so I'm not really understanding what exactly it is we're getting at here, because I don't know the people you're referring to or what they're doing.

So can you give me a little bit more of a definition of what you mean by the New Calvinism, or even the

Young Restless and Reform, because to the lay person in the church, you know, it's not coming across our

Christian radio station here, because it's not reformed at all. So I'm totally uninformed about what you're talking about,

I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, well, I think the, you know, if I could state it as positively as I could, these would be guys that take

God's Word seriously. They believe in inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture. They do believe in the sovereignty of God, and I'm embarrassed by that, seeing

God's sovereignty in the realms of creation, providence, and salvation. So they would affirm much of the way the doctrine of salvation was expressed coming out of the

Reformation and the Protestant statements about that. I think this younger generation of Calvinists, they have more of a positive orientation toward culture.

You know, seeing culture as neutral to positive, more so than negative, and so they would not want to, they would not want to be quick to deny culture.

You know, so they want to be savvy about that. I've heard like this, that, you know, culture is good, you embrace it.

Where it's bad, you fix it. You know, where it's neutral, you just, you know, it's a matter of liberty.

Do it or participate or not. And there's some wisdom in that, but I think that some might be a little bit naive.

And this, again, where worldliness creeps in in an unrecognized way, because you think you're just having a positive orientation toward culture.

I see this, for example, in the exercise of liberty within matters of art, entertainment, alcohol, tobacco, you know, none of those things are sinful at all.

I mean, I would argue strongly none of those things are sinful. But the kind of cavalier and almost immature distraction is very immature participation in all of those and other areas where there's a sense almost of an invincibility.

I can do this and not be, I don't have to be on my guard, I don't have to be careful,

I have to take the warnings of drunkenness. I don't have to worry about that because I'm affirming the goodness of alcohol,

I'm going to enjoy alcohol, so I worry about drunkenness. And I think what happens is people get tripped up in those areas.

So that would be kind of a spirit. But again, the good thing, another good thing about this young movement is, man, right now the international mission fields are being populated by this generation.

I've had missiologists that I respect tell me that the overwhelming majority of folks that they have volunteering to go are people who have this theological orientation.

They said it's just been explosive over the last years or so, which, man, praise God, you know, that's a good thing.

I think there's a lack of the view of the gifts and charismatic issues is a low priority for a lot of the folks in this movement, and so they're not, you know, they would be welcoming and embracing of charismatic theology in ways that more classically older reformed guys would be very hesitant about.

So some of those things would characterize it. We have to go to a break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Tom Askell regarding the New Calvinism or the

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And we're going to be right back after these messages with Tom Askell, so don't go away. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Tom Askle, and we are discussing the

Young, Restless, and Reformed Movement, New Calvinism, as it's sometimes called.

And if you would like to join us on the air, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. That's ChrisArnzen, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

And please include your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And we look forward to hearing from you. If you have questions, we already have a couple of people that have sent us questions, so we look forward to reading them in a moment and seeing if Dr.

Askle can answer them. But we also, before we return to our discussion, I wanted to make sure that I let you know about a pastor's retreat that's coming up.

Our newest sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, P &R Publishing, also known as Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, they wanted me to inform you that they, in cooperation with the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, are running the Faithful Shepherd Men's Retreat, or pastor's retreat,

May 9th through 11th at Harvey Cedars, which is a beautiful conference center on the

Jersey Shore in New Jersey. That's May 9th through 11th. The speakers are going to be

Dan Doriani and David Powleson, both of whom have been guests on Iron Sharpens Iron.

And if you'd like more details on this pastor's retreat, go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org, and you click on the tab at the top that says

Events. So we hope that if you are a pastor and live near New Jersey or in New Jersey that you would be attending that event.

I also want to keep reminding you that a week from this

Thursday, the Iron Sharpens Iron Pastor's Luncheon is going to be held at the

Thornwald Mansion right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And the guest speaker is

David Wood, who is an expert on Islam. He has traveled all around the world debating some of the most prominent

Muslim apologists and clerics. And he is,

I describe him, he doesn't describe himself this way, but I describe him as having at least nearly a photographic memory when it comes to not only the scriptures but even the

Koran. And he is a really amazing resource on this issue of Islam.

He's basically going to be speaking on separating facts from fiction when it comes to the

Islamic religion. This is all free of charge. If you are a man in ministry, you're going to get a free lunch.

You're going to hear the speaker that I just mentioned, David Wood of answeringmuslims .com.

You're going to also hear a word from Pennsylvania State Representative Stephen Bloom, who is a man who is truly committed to his

Christian faith, unwavering commitment to Christianity. He's a very impressive brother in Christ who's been on this program twice.

I look forward to having him back many times. It's very rare that do I hear someone involved in politics who is as unashamed of his

Christianity as Stephen Bloom is, and he is a very bold voice for the gospel in the political arena.

He will be speaking there as well. Each pastor that attends this luncheon is going to be leaving with a very heavy sack filled with books donated by major Christian publishers all over the

United States and the United Kingdom. I'm serious when

I say that it's probably going to be close to 30 or 40 pounds worth of books that they're carrying out.

Anyway, if you'd like to join us on that day, a week from this Thursday, please

RSVP by Saturday. You can email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And just to remind you, this is absolutely free of charge, and you're not going to be having to spend a penny at this luncheon, so we hope to see you there.

We already have some listeners that want to ask a question of Dr. Askell.

First we have Tyler in Mastic Beach, New York. Hi, my name is

Tyler. I'm from Mastic Beach, New York. I'm a student online with Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I agree with all you said. There are some elements of worldliness in the

New Reform Movement. What advice should you give to the charismatic gifts since it compromises

Scripture alone? With the question, what advice?

That's the way he worded it, but perhaps what do you have to say about the danger of the charismatic movement,

I guess is basically what he's talking about, because he sees it as a violation of sold Scriptura. Well, I want to be real careful.

I'm sympathetic to the best of those in the charismatic movement, and by that I would say the folks that have been clearly

Calvinistic in that movement. I think they're trying to honor the

Holy Spirit, and they take seriously the person of the Holy Spirit's work, and that's wonderful.

I am not convinced by their arguments, and the way

I approach this question is if we're going to use Bible words, then we need to be willing to use

Bible definitions. So what I do is go to the gift of prophecy, and let's just start with that.

If we're going to talk about the gift of prophecy continuing today, then we need to be willing to use the biblical definition of prophecy.

I know there are arguments for distinguishing between New Testament prophets and Old Testament prophets, and I've not personally been convinced by those arguments.

I don't think that we have any clear indication that would say there's a lesser grade of giftedness to New Testament prophets in comparison to Old Testament prophets.

But whenever you see the model of prophecy that God Himself reveals to us in the relationship between Moses and Aaron, where in Exodus 4,

He tells Moses that Aaron will be like a prophet to Moses, and Moses will be like God to him, and then in Exodus 7, we get that worked out where He says, you will put your words in Aaron's mouth, and he will speak them.

Well, that's the definition of prophecy. And so when somebody tells me they believe in the ongoing biblical gift of prophecy,

I try to get them to think about that definition and say, is this what you're talking about?

And inevitably, the best of these folks say, oh no, that's not what

I mean. So, okay, by the time some that I engage with finish qualifying what they mean, they're basically talking about biblical authoritative preaching.

Praise God. I believe in an ongoing prophetic ministry. I think it's in the Word. I think when the

Word is set forth, the work of the prophets is set forth, and we have a prophetic ministry, but it's in the written

Word of God. Same thing with apostles. The apostolic ministry is in the Word of God.

So, yeah, I do think there are some real cautions to be voiced and given to our brothers who are convinced charismatics, and the best of the charismatics that I know, try to heed those cautions and impose them upon themselves to guard against undermining the sufficiency and authority of Scripture.

So, I probably would just say amen and agree with the concerns of this brother.

Well, thank you very much, Tyler, and since you have emailed us a question today, you're getting a free

New American Standard Bible, a bonded leather, beautiful Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

New American Standard Bible, who are sponsors of the Iron Sharpens Iron program, and they are celebrating their 74th year of bringing

God's Word to God's people. So, we thank them for not only sponsoring this program, but for providing

Bibles for our listeners, and we thank Tyler for writing.

We also have a listener in Georgia. We have Brandon, who has a question.

What do you think about the New Calvinist perspective, understanding, and practice of the regulative principle of worship, or is the movement too diverse on the issue to apply the question?

Yeah, well, I think it is too diverse to give one assessment, because I think you would find people across the spectrum, some who do take it seriously, and probably more who do not acknowledge it, or may be ignorant of it, or some who just consciously reject it.

I do remember this question being put to Mark Driscoll, kind of as he was on his way up to the pinnacle of his popularity.

He was writing a book, and I can't remember now what the book was, but he had a contest as to what he was going to make one chapter based on a question from people that would send him emails or something, and whichever question got the most votes, he would write a chapter on that, and this question got that most votes, so he had to address the issue of the regulative principle, but in the process leading up to the conclusion of that determination, he made references and kind of smart -alike remarks about, you know, what is that, or why do we even care about that, demonstrating to me, at least, that he hadn't really thought deeply about it at that point.

So, I think that is a key area that needs more rigorous consideration by some in the younger generation who are excited about the new things they're discovering about God and these new doctrines, but have not thought through implications and applications to the area of worship, and particularly corporate worship.

So, that would be an area that I would encourage everyone to give more serious consideration to.

Well, thank you, Brandon, in Jackson, Georgia. You're also receiving a free, beautiful, bonded leather

New American Standard Bible compliments of the publishers, so thank you for that great question. Now, are the

Southern Baptists that are obviously in your denomination, who are not

Reformed, are they using the New Calvinism as a way to broad -brush all

Calvinists in your denomination, and therefore continue launching the attack against the doctrines of grace by trying to basically cookie -cutter

Calvinists in the denomination? I think some have attempted that.

I don't think they have gained much ground in that line of argumentation because the people who they would like to try to associate with the worst aspects, maybe some of the worst personalities that have been held up to scrutiny and have not done so well in that movement, the folks that they would associate with that movement from within the

SBC are just so different. It's hard to put the difficulties of the

New Calvinism movement around Al Mohler's neck and see what Al Mohler's done.

So, it doesn't gain much of a hearing, they don't get very far with those arguments.

But, some of the worst aspects of the New Calvinism, and by that I mean some of the more dramatic and public failures of some of its leaders, have been held up as cautionary tales, and with either the stated or more often implied understanding that, look, this is where this theology leads, or this is what this theology does.

And, of course, that's not true. You do have solid Reformed men who, because of sin, have horrible failures, and you have

Arminian men who, because of sin, have horrible failures. So, it's not limited to one theological stream at all.

Now, I know this is a little bit off topic, but my mind is still totally boggled by the fact that you could have vehement anti -Calvinists who are considered the bulwark of the

Southern Baptist Convention, and how do they go about continuing to radically oppose and vociferously and aggressively oppose

Calvinism when it is clearly the doctrine embraced by the founders, which is why the organization that you're the executive director for,

Founders Ministries, that's why you call it that, is because the denomination was founded by Calvinists.

So, how do they justify that? Well, interestingly, we have less of that going on now than probably at any time in the last 20 -plus years.

Those kind of vociferous expressions of opposition, as you call them, anti -Calvinistic points of view, have become increasingly muted because the arguments that have been launched from that viewpoint have just been shown time after time not have legs.

They just don't hold up. Now, again, that doesn't mean Calvinism is beyond critique, or the folks who are

Calvinists today are beyond critique, not at all, but sometimes those arguments have been raised against this theological perspective in very inadequate ways, and they've been exposed.

For example, one of the most outspoken opponents of Calvinism in the SBC is a former president of the

SBC, and he preached a sermon called A Baptist and His Calvinism.

And that, along with several other sermons, was put on CDs and sent to every pastor,

Southern Baptist pastor in Florida, and to many Southern Baptist churches and pastors beyond Florida. And at the preface of this sermon, at least in the original edition that I got,

I understand it was edited out later, but he says, I have spent more time, more research on this sermon than any sermon

I've ever preached, and he's talking about A Baptist and His Calvinism. So that's his preface, and then he goes into the message, and he says, you know, it is just a fact that if you look back through history, there's never been a time when

Baptists have been five -point Calvinists. Well, anybody with an internet connection can easily disprove that.

I can see that as a Presbyterian. And so when you get that kind of stuff coming out, and this is the gravitas, we're really giving you the lowdown on this movement, and mistakes like that, historical mistakes like that are made, it's embarrassing for the person who makes them, and it just exposes how empty that argument is.

Now, again, that doesn't mean Calvinism is above critique, and it certainly doesn't mean that historical debates are finished and we don't have anything else to talk about.

But if you're going to make them, you need to make them substantively, because there are too many primary sources that are readily accessible today that will expose the emptiness and the superficiality of those kinds of comments.

So people are still doing it, and it's being done in academic circles as well. There was an article that came out in the

Theological Journal of my alma mater, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth last year, in which basically

Steve Lemke, he's the provost at New Orleans Seminary, wrote the article, and it was called something like this,

Baptist Revisionism, or who are the revisionists? Or Baptist Calvinists, who are the historical revisionists?

That was the thesis, or the question being asked. And it took Tom Nettles and me to task in our arguments that there was a theological consensus on the doctrines of grace, on Calvinism, for the first 50 to 75 years of the

Sundance Convention. And so Dr. Lemke cited all kinds of sources and tried to make his case.

Tom and I were not convinced by his argument, and so we wrote a response to that.

And in their kindness, the Southwestern Theological Journal editors published our article.

It's just come out in the last month or two, in the current issue of that journal, in which we tried to take

Dr. Lemke's arguments point by point and refute them. And readers will have to decide for themselves whether or not we were successful.

Of course, I wouldn't have published the article if I didn't think we were successful, so we believe we were.

But that was very healthy. It's a high level. There wasn't any name -calling. It was just very strong, rigorous, hopefully careful academic argumentation based on historical theological sources.

That's healthy. I think that's great. And if we can keep the debate at that level or increase it more and more to that level, that will serve the

SPC well. The more outspoken, shoot -from -the -hip kind of criticism, it's still out there, but it's not gaining much of a hearing anymore because there's just too much evidence on the other side.

Is there any kind of fellowship taking place between those in the

Young Restless and Reformed group and those who are from the

Emerging Church movement? Well, you know, there's an interesting history behind that.

Mark Driscoll actually came out of the Emergent Church movement, and it's a fascinating story.

I think the story is told one place, maybe in Tony Jones' book. I forget what it's called.

Maybe it's just called Emergent. The Emergent Church shut down that whole movement, pulled the plug, not long after it was gaining some prominence.

But they met at a Mexican restaurant. Some of the leaders, Tony Jones, I think

Mark Driscoll, and I forget the others, were at a Mexican restaurant in Dallas, Texas.

And in that meeting, it became very clear that Driscoll was on a different trajectory from these guys because one of the things that characterizes this new

Calvinism is a complementarianism as it comes to relationships between sexes.

And that was not the direction that these other Emergent leaders were going. And the issue of the authority of Scripture, they were beginning to kind of play fast and loose with that.

And Driscoll and those who followed him were not. And so there was a real separation that took place.

If you're going to broad -brush the Emergent Church movement, you would say, well, there was an evangelical, more

Calvinistic wing to it. It was represented by Driscoll, Acts 29, and such that maybe has fed into what now has become the new

Calvinism. So I don't think, you know, there were some common sources perhaps early on, but I don't think,

I don't know of anyone today that I would say, oh, yeah, they're looking over the fence to what was the

Emergent Church movement and trying to take cues from them. So at least the old guard of Calvinists should be pleased that the complementarian aspect of gender roles is still intact in their view.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so many things to celebrate and to be grateful for. I mean, we can take a snapshot of this movement and spend years pointing out the deficiencies of it.

But when you put that snapshot in a video of what's happened over the last 30 years,

I will take where we are going today versus where it looked like we were going 30 years ago all the time.

It's so much healthier. The Bible's taken seriously. Some of these, you know, the issues of evangelism are being taken seriously.

Mission's taken seriously. The importance and centrality of the gospel and Christ -centered preaching, all of that in this new

Calvinism movement, all those things are highly regarded. So that's the, those are pluses.

And in the midst of criticizing what needs to be criticized, we shouldn't overlook so much that we ought to be celebrating.

And where would this, where would the majority of these young, restless and reformed individuals be from denominationally or in regard to fellowship?

Would most of them be Baptistic? Would they be Presbyterian? Would they just be equally divided amongst those groups?

Well, it's really fascinating. And I don't know any kind of, any type of formal study, you know, that's been done well.

But anecdotally, it just kind of from a perspective of looking into it, it seems like there is, if not a majority, at least a very significant segment of it is being led by Baptists.

So you've got John Piper, and you've got Al Mohler, and you've got Mark Dever. And there are probably others

I'm not thinking of right now. But that's to the consternation of some who don't think Baptists have a right to lay claim to being reformed.

You know that argument pretty strongly, that reformed

Baptists is an oxymoron, I think is what he said. Yes, yes. You are referred to as Calvinistic Baptists.

Yeah, right, right. And so, but it's fascinating to me that it seems like at least there's a strong element of Baptists involved in this.

And I would be willing to argue that maybe, maybe a majority. You look at Southern Seminary, Colin Hanson called that Ground Zero for the

Young Restless Reform Movement. And of course, you know, Southern has some diversity on its faculty, but it would all be within the broader understanding of what's come out of the

Protestant Reformation Movement. We're going to be going to a break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Tom Askell and our discussion on the

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in for the last hour, we have been discussing the

Young, Restless, and Reformed movement with our guest, Dr. Tom Askle. And we will continue to do so for the next hour.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Now, you've been saying a lot of positive things about this movement.

What are your major concerns that you think might require a lasso of some sorts to hold them at bay to a degree or at least get them to pause and reconsider things?

Yeah, well, there are two or three things that I believe are desperately needed. And it's not unique to this movement,

I would say it is. In fact, I've been saying this for quite a while. But I think for Christianity to be healthy, there needs to be a robust confessionalism that is a part of it.

And by that, I don't mean that we elevate the confessions or the creeds to the level of the Bible, not talking about inerrancy or infallibility.

But we are talking about great utility. And there are creeds in the

Bible, there are creedal statements, obviously, and probably baptismal creeds in the Bible. In early church history, we see the use of creeds being very effective and helpful for catechetical purposes.

And so one of the things that I would love to see happen is for these younger folks that are coming to the doctrines of grace and embracing that, finding the goodness and joy of God in the way

He's revealed Himself in sovereignty, to recognize that expressing that, that they're not the first generation to express that, to discover that, and to learn from in humility those on whose shoulders we stand.

And so, man, I think for healthy church life, a confessionalism is vital.

It's important. Our faith is a doctrinal faith, and everyone professes something about the nature and the content of that faith.

And we ought to be formal about it, be willing to be formal about it. We ought to be precise about it.

We should value theological precision, and a good confession of faith does that.

So that's one area that I see as a weakness in many respects with some of the young guys that I've associated with and known.

I mean, they're good guys, and some of them will even tip their hat at some good

Reformed confessions, but not really embrace those confessions, not really recognize the importance of being confessional in their own lives, privately, personally, and in their churches as they try to lead congregations.

So that's one significant area that I see a great need to improve upon. Now, is there objection to that, that it's too much of an anchor to the past, or what's the point on the anti -confessional?

Again, I think, for some at least, I think there's a naivete of thinking, well, you know, we don't need what others have said, and we can do this on our own, and we believe the

Bible, we take the Bible seriously. Some would find aspects, like of the 1689

Confession, I'll just use that, would find that to being restrictive or maybe antiquated, and not liking the precision of it, and so they would object to certain aspects of it, and in doing so would find that to be ground to dismiss the whole idea, or to just take it lightly.

So, yeah, you know, I'm confessional, but it doesn't really impact the way that they think about their

Christian lives in practical terms, or in the ways that they would try to minister or lead churches, or see churches instructed.

And I think it's, well, I think you're missing out on something that is very, very important.

A good confession of faith, used well in the life of a congregation, used well in the life of a

Christian, brings a great deal of value with it. Yeah, as they have been called there, they're excellent guardrails against heresy, because somebody has to, if you have an official confession of faith that you have adopted, then when you violate that, there's going to be more of a noticeable drift outside of a cherished and firmly held system of belief.

Absolutely, and what it is, it's saying we are pre -committed to these truths, not because they're in the confession, but because we believe they're in the

Bible, and the confession believes they're in the Bible, or has been recognized as being in the Bible, and asserts them.

And what that does is it does provide guardrails, it provides some safety for a church, and for a minister, for a

Christian. For example, through the years, there have been multiple times that we have had people, usually from the outside coming among us, who have wanted to change what we believe, or wanted us to entertain certain thoughts.

So we've had everything from Seventh -day Sabbatarians, to New Covenant adherents, to full preterists, who've come among us and said, won't you at least talk to us about these things?

Will you at least give us a hearing? And our response as elders has been, yeah, we'll be glad to sit down and talk with you about it, but understand we're not coming to the table neutral.

We're coming to the table with pre -commitment. We lay our cards on the table, this is what we've already thought through, this is what we've already affirmed to be biblical truth.

And so if you are going to, we're going to converse with you about it, understand you're going to have to convince us away from what we've already seen to be true.

We're not coming saying, well, we're blank slates, and the Bible's blank, and so let's just figure out what the Bible says.

No, we believe we've already found what the Bible says on these things, and this is where we stand.

And that has not always gone over well with those who think, well, you're just not open -minded.

Well, we are open -minded if you can show us from Scripture, but we're not coming here without conviction. We've nailed our convictions to the mast.

This is who we are, this is what we think is true. And so if you're going to convince us otherwise, you're going to have to show us that this point of doctrine that we have confessed, and we have confessed with people now for hundreds of years, is inaccurate.

And that's your challenge, that's your goal, that's your agenda, and if you can't do it, you're not up to it, well, then there's no reason for us to talk.

Well, you mentioned robust confessionalism, but we're still missing two points here. You said there were three things that you were...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I would say the other, and it kind of flows out of that confessionalism, but one thing where there's a glaring lack of importance given to it is the issue, the relationship of law and gospel.

I think this is foundational, healthy confessionalism.

I mean, a good confession will get this straight and will assert it. And the longer that I live and minister, the more convinced

I am, as the old divines were, that this is the very marrow of theology, this is the very center of what is vital in our theological thinking.

So to have a wrong view of law and gospel, how they relate to each other, how they serve each other, what each does that the other doesn't, to have a wrong view there sets you up to go into any number of errors.

And in fact, I think many, I would almost be willing to say all theological errors can be traced back at some point in their route to a misunderstanding of law and gospel.

So things like problems with sanctification, and we've got a lot of that today, and especially with some of the younger guys who have embraced

Calvinism, where there's this fear of legalism. Some have come out of legalism and legalistic churches, and in reacting to legalism, they think that the antidote is almost an antinomianism.

Whereas the opposite of legalism is not antinomianism, it's the gospel, and how the gospel works.

And of course the gospel that comes to us from God through Jesus Christ, that same God has given us

His law. And the gospel that saves us from the condemnation of the law, but then also empowers us through the

Spirit to live lawful lives. And so I'd say law and gospel is really, really very important.

And I've got friends, some good friends, that don't see this the same way that I do, but I appreciate the fact that they see the importance of it.

We would agree on the importance of it, though we might disagree on how law and gospel relate to each other.

I think that needs to be a conversation that we ought to be having for the next ten years in this

Reformed movement, or this Calvinistic movement. I believe it's begun, this new book by Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ, is a book that is going to force that conversation.

It's one of the most profound books that I've read, certainly in the last ten or fifteen years. And we still have a third.

Yeah, and this would, again, it fits under the confessional issue, but it would be in the realm of ecclesiology and pastoral ministry.

So much, or I should say a lot of the younger, more hip type of pastors today, not just talking about Calvinistic or part of the new

Calvinism, but just across the board, for many in that generation of pastors, the issue seems to be more on terms of leadership and being a movement leader or a leader that is able to get things done, more so than being a pastor or a shepherd.

And so the idea of a pastor, a shepherd, shepherding a flock, caring for souls, it seems quaint to many of these leaders.

And I think some of the folks in the new Calvinism movement have bought into that or been convinced by that.

So you look at the way that churches are served by pastors in this movement, and the churches aren't shepherded by the pastors.

The churches are led by the pastors, may be taught by the pastors, but in terms of shepherding, that idea of elders shepherding a flock is robustly appreciated.

And because of that, I think that's some of the reason you have these multi -site churches.

One man's got to do the preaching, he's got the magic, and so put him on a video in seven different places and let soul care be done otherwise.

And I don't think that will hold up to a rigorous biblical evaluation.

And again, I know there have been a lot of debates about this, people who advocate that other... Well, I just had to remind myself that I'm listening to a

Baptist. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, there was a very big controversy, at least in my area in Buffalo, New York, years ago around the time of my ordination.

It was a hot topic. And Baptist, I was almost like the word elder was removed from the scriptures.

Oh, I know, I know. And some people still get really nervous about that. But if you look at our old

Baptist records, I mean, it's just some of our Baptist pastors preferred to be called elder.

You know, there was an elder, I forget his name now, but he was a church planter in Louisiana, Jackson, Louisiana, and Clinton, Louisiana, and into Mississippi.

And, man, the records, I mean, his name was Elder something. That's how they called him. They didn't call him pastor, they called him elder.

It's a Bible word, and that's the thing I always come back to. Why would you be offended by a word that's in the Bible? That was my contention at that time.

But I was definitely in the minority. Well, this is when I was in, well, of course, like I said, I pastored in,

I can't even say it anymore, an independent Baptist church. And so, you know, it was a total different species from what we're talking about now as far as Reformed Baptists are concerned.

And elder was just, it was nontraditional that Baptist churches did not have elders, and how could you justify being in a

Baptist church that did and that kind of thing? Well, obviously, there are Baptist churches, though, that have created an unbiblical elder board that is like some kind of a morph between deacons and pastors.

Do you follow what I'm saying? Would you agree with that, Dr. Rascal? Okay, yeah. Elaborate on that a little bit more, what you're talking about.

Well, in my experience amongst Reformed Baptists, the teaching has predominantly been, with some exception, but predominantly has been that there are only two offices in the church in the scriptures, and that is pastor and deacon, and the pastor would also be described biblically as an elder or as a bishop.

Overseer. Overseer, shepherd. But there's only two offices, elder, deacon, and there are some churches that almost have developed an advisory board or something of that nature that is called the elder board that doesn't really have the identity of the pastors or the elders or the shepherds.

Yeah, yeah, I think I understand what you're saying now, like church councils or committee on committees or something.

And what I've seen too in churches, I've been a part of churches like this, where the deacons, you have deacons, deacons take on more of a ruling function.

Yes, yes. They're the decision makers. And some of the most frustrated

Baptists I've ever known have been godly deacons who wanted to do what they understood the

Bible called deacons to do but were expected to do by some in the congregation and usually the pastor to do what the

Bible calls elders to do. And so when they would try to do what they believed the Bible called them to do, they were not doing what the pastor and others were expecting them to do.

And when they tried to do what the pastor and others were expecting them to do, they were shot at by those who were reading the same

Bible saying, well, that's not what deacons are supposed to do. They were just in a no -win position. We do have a question from Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and it basically touches on something you were already saying, and perhaps you could elaborate more on that.

His question is, because of the lack of confessional standards amongst many in this young Restless and Reform movement, do you see a blending or a dominance of the

New Covenant theology being embraced? Since I have witnessed that most of the

New Covenant men that I have become familiar with are non -confessional. Well, yeah, there probably is a connection there.

I think that's probably a good connection that he has made. And yes, there is a great number in this movement that would be best classified as New Covenant in their understanding.

Maybe you could define that. And I want to make it clear also that I do have very dear, beloved friends who are in the

New Covenant theology movement, and I've interviewed them. Right. And some of them are really brilliant writers and powerful speakers and so on.

But if you could. Yeah, absolutely. And basically, the New Covenant theology, as I understand it, is a wanting to acknowledge that the

Ten Commandments served, if not exclusively, primarily as a covenant for Israel.

So with the passing of Israel as a coveted nation, so the

Ten Commandments have passed. So we're not under the Ten Commandments as a rule over our lives, but we're under the

New Testament Commandments. And so we should obey what Jesus has told us to do in the New Testament. Which would include nine of the

Ten Commandments. Yeah, usually the Fourth Commandment is the donkey on which the tail, or the tail on which the donkey is placed.

Right, right. The issue that tends to be the rub is what do you do with the Fourth Commandment.

And so the argument goes that if it's not in the New Testament, then that's where we get our ethics from is the

New Testament. One of the early leaders in the New Covenant theology movement has said it like this, that in the

New Testament we have a higher standard of righteousness than was given in the

Old Testament with the Ten Commandments. So in Christ we have a higher standard of righteousness. What I would say in response to that is no, that's not true.

In the New Testament we have a higher obligation to the standard of righteousness that has always been

God's standard from Old to New Covenant. And so it's a fine point.

The best, and I've got New Covenant friends too, and the best of them are very careful to guard against some of the, what seem to me to be necessary implications, though they would say they're not necessary and they would repudiate the worst of those implications, which

I praise God for. And they're very careful about that. So issues like justification, if we're not under the

Ten Commandments, if that's not the law by which God is going to judge the world today and which still obtains today, then from what law, from the condemnation of what law did

Jesus justify us by his death, and his life and death, there are significant questions about that.

Again, the best of the New Covenant theologians I know, and preachers and teachers, would be very careful to say no, no, no, no, we're not at all going to give up full justification by the righteousness of Christ.

We're going to guard against losing that. But another implication or question

I have is if we're going to get our death exclusively from the New Testament, what's repeated in the

New Testament, then we've got problems. Because the New Testament does not forbid bestiality.

And so how do we know that that is forbidden if we cannot reason from an ongoing, unchanging standard of righteousness that has come from God and to see the commandments as not arbitrary, but as a transcript of God's very character.

God gave those commandments not merely for Israel, they did come to Israel in special ways to govern their life as a nation and worshiping community, but they also came to Israel as creatures made in the image of God.

And we are still creatures made in the image of God today, and so we still have a good summary in those

Ten Commandments of what God requires of all people everywhere. And when we become followers of Jesus, those requirements aren't lessened at all.

In fact, I would argue that our obligation to those requirements are heightened. And by the way,

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, we are still waiting for your full mailing address so we can ship you out a

New American Standard Bible. And Christian in Cumberland County, we are going to be sending you one as well.

Thank you very much for the question, the excellent question.

Now, one of the things that seems to be a positive thing,

I mean, when it comes to ecumenism, there is,

I mean, some of us from more conservative backgrounds, you know, go into convulsions when they hear that term, but obviously there's a biblical ecumenism that should and must be taking place if you're going to be a biblical and obedient Christian.

But obviously that can be taken to a sinful and unbiblical extreme when people are linking arms with apostates and so on.

But do you see a healthier understanding of biblical ecumenism coming out of this movement, or is it too dangerous in your opinion?

I think it's healthy. The Together for the Gospel conference was last week in Louisville.

There were 10 ,000 people there from various denominational backgrounds.

And there were a lot of reasons for the people there to be divided from each other.

Good reasons, biblical reasons. I'm glad to have brothers who are Presbyterians who are fully convinced of their view.

And when we talk about our differences, they help me to think carefully about the point at which

I disagree with them, and that's a good thing. And their convictions and my convictions are worth dividing over.

We're talking about a church, and I think that honors the truth. I don't think that's a blow to the truth.

But whenever we're talking about enterprises for the kingdom of God, the fact that we agree on the gospel is tremendous.

I agree with Presbyterian brothers oftentimes far more than I do with brothers who might be

Baptists, but who would disagree on these issues related to the doctrines of grace.

So that kind of breadth, I think, is healthy. There's a danger with it always, because you love your brothers who are

Anglicans and Presbyterians and various stripes of Reformed folks, and the temptation is to begin to lower your commitments to your distinctives.

And I don't think we should ever do that, but I think we should always make a difference between what our distinctives are versus what our essentials are.

And if we can do that in a good humor, then we can serve one another, and I think we present a good witness to the world as well.

Well, I think one of our guests, and I can't remember which one since we've had so many. If you talk to Chris, everybody's been on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Well, I don't think I've ever made that claim. But a few weeks ago, one of our guests actually pointed out, and I thought this was a really good way of looking at it, because we're accused so often of building these walls around our groups.

Oh, that was Joe Thorne. That was okay, and he said, no, it's backyard fences. Yes. Yes, where we talk over the backyard fence, we're good neighbors, but yet there's certain places where we have to, like, you know,

I certainly wouldn't come to you with my children and say, would you please baptize them? So I have to go to a place where that's going to happen, but that doesn't mean that there's a wall, it just means there's a backyard fence.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And when that request comes over the fence, that's when

I turn the garden hose on you. Oh, yeah. Spraying, is that a new baptism?

Okay. I didn't mean as a form of baptism, I mean to chase you away. Oh, sorry.

But there seems to be a lot of, I mean, what's the word

I'm looking for? There seems to be a lot of militancy that exists amongst the

Reformed community that is sectarian in spirit, and that's one of the reasons

I brought up my question, is because I understand if a

Pato Baptist or a Presbyterian is clinging tenaciously to something that he thinks is biblical, but when the mockery and the belittling of those of us who are

Reformed Baptists, it really gets tiresome. So that's why at least I see something positive in the backyard fence model rather than the stone wall 80 foot high.

I agree with that, and I think it can extend beyond that too, in that we're called to be gracious and loving and merciful all the time.

We're to love our enemies. So whenever we have brothers that we disagree with strongly on important things, we don't get a license because they're wrong, or we think they're wrong, to hate them or to treat them in a dismissive way.

And that's a lesson I need to learn more and more, and I think it's something the Reformed world needs huge doses of, and I think some of that with these younger guys seems to be taking hold in healthy ways.

So with my pastor friends who are not

Reformed, I want to love them, I want to learn from them, I want to fellowship with them where I can.

There's things we're not going to be able to cooperate on. It may be lamentable, but it's understandable, but that doesn't mean

I have to love them less or treat them like they're second class citizens in the kingdom.

I want to learn from them because I've got blind spots. This was an especially tough lesson for me because, as I told you, my background was fundamental

Baptist, and one thing I learned to be very early on was a fighting fundamentalist.

The main tenet was to be against everything and everybody. And I remember reading one time in the book of James where the wisdom from above is first, it's peaceable, it's gentle, and I thought, wow, this is not describing the way that I've been preaching.

I need to do some work here. But I think you're going to catch that in any group.

I remember when I first came into Calvinism, into the doctrines of grace, there was that tendency to have these fierce arguments with people who just couldn't see it, and I realized

I got nowhere with that. Right. Yeah, we used to talk about the cage stage of Calvinism.

Yeah. I've seen some very funny cartoons with that. Many of us went through it.

Yeah, that's where a new convert to Calvinism should be locked in a cage for a certain period of time to get all of his aggression out before he's let loose in public, and I have witnessed that quite a bit amongst folks that I have met.

But we're going to our final break. If you'd like to join us on the air, we do have a couple of people waiting patiently to have their questions asked and answered.

If you'd like to join them with a question of your own, we're running out of time, so please email us now at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. I do have a question perhaps I'll present to you,

Dr. Raskel, before the break so you have time to think about your answer, but we do have an anonymous listener who said that,

I was going to purchase the book that you mentioned by Sinclair Ferguson but was dismayed that Tim Keller had written the foreword.

I had heard very negative things about him that he should be avoided at all costs.

Can you please comment about that? If you could perhaps, when we return from the break, give us your assessment on Dr.

Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. But this is our final break.

If you'd like to join us, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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This is Chris Arns. And if you've just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes, our guest has been Dr. Tom Askall.

And we have been discussing the Young, Restless, and Reform movement in both positive and negative aspects.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, this is your last opportunity. We've only got about 25 minutes left or so of the program, so you can email us at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

But I asked a question before the break, Dr. Askall, about Tim Keller. He's a very controversial figure where you have varied opinions about him amongst theologically reformed

Christians, some who laud him as one of the most brilliant minds to be eagerly sought after in our day and age, and some are very leery and very critical, to say the least, of Dr.

Keller. What is your answer to our guest's question about him? Yeah, well,

I don't know Dr. Keller personally at all. I've read probably not very many of his works, but some.

I've been helped by some of his lectures on preaching and his book on center church and some of his essays and articles

I've just been challenged by. So I have an appreciation for him. However, I know that there are good people that I respect who have serious problems with him.

I've had friends that have cautioned me not to quote him because of baggage that they see that he has on cultural issues and creation matters and such.

So I respect all that. I would say to this listener, however, Sinclair Ferguson doesn't have to prove his reformed credentials to anybody.

And the fact that Sinclair Ferguson asked Tim Keller to write the foreword,

I take that as, okay, then I need to be humble enough to not let that be a deal breaker for me in reading this book.

And when you see why, it's because Keller is the one who really kind of badgered

Sinclair or suggested to him and kept on him about writing a book on a series of lectures that he gave 30 years ago on the

Merrill Controversy. And the introduction is very good. I mean, I was surprised to see

Tim Keller as the one who wrote the preface to it. I was not expecting that when

I heard about the book and ordered it and got it as soon as it came off the press. But Keller's introduction is good, and it does not detract from the value of that book at all.

The book raises many questions, and there are good people who come across like they're a little bit nervous by the way

Sinclair has taken this controversy and turned it into an opportunity to do some really healthy, exegetical and pastoral and historical and systematic theology.

I think it's valuable for that, whether you agree with him or not, the fact that these issues are being brought into the limelight is vitally, vitally important.

So I would just encourage everybody to go get the book and read it, and don't let the introduction by Keller turn you away from it.

And just kind of ask yourself the question, if somebody as esteemed and someone as trustworthy as Sinclair Ferguson would ask

Keller to write the introduction, then shouldn't I at least be willing to read the book? Yeah, Sinclair Ferguson is one of the most powerful preachers of the gospel

I have ever heard in my life. I have had the privilege of hearing him preach,

I don't know, probably close to ten times, maybe more, and he is certainly one of my favorite preachers that I have ever heard.

And I'm going to give a plug to my former church on Long Island, because they have a series that Dr.

Ferguson preached there many years ago on dealing with remaining sin.

So I'm going to tell you to go to gracereformbaptistchurch .com. Gracereformbaptistchurch .com,

and contact them and see if you could order the series, which hopefully they have it transferred over to CD, because this was when

CDs didn't even exist when Dr. Ferguson preached that conference at Grace Reform Baptist Church.

But go to gracereformbaptistchurch .com and ask for the conference series on dealing with remaining sin by Sinclair Ferguson.

There is another anonymous listener who wants to know why you as a

Reformed Christian even bother hanging in there with the Southern Baptist Convention, which is so predominantly

Arminian. Yeah, that's a good question. I actually get that from people inside the convention, too.

But here's the reality, and it's sometimes difficult for our brothers and sisters who are not

Baptists to get this, but every Baptist church is independent and is autonomous.

And so there is no structure of authority over the local church.

And we can argue and debate whether that's good, biblical, or whatever, but that is a fact.

It's just the way that Baptists have understood ecclesiology. So the church that I pastor that affiliates with the

Southern Baptist Convention is as independent as any independent Baptist church,

Bible church, non -denominational church in existence. There's nobody that tells us what to do.

We are not beholding to any authority above the local church.

So that's how we understand the Bible to teach ecclesiology. So having said that, our association with any group, locally, on the state level, national level, with the

SBC, is voluntary. And we do so to the degree that we see it as being appropriate, helpful, opportunistic, useful, any other adjectives that we could throw in there.

And here's what it comes down to for me as I thought through this over many, many years, is that there are many things right now that we do as a church that I can do as a

Southern Baptist that if we left the convention tonight, I could not do tomorrow.

It's access, it's opportunities, fellowship, resources that I would not have that I have today.

There's not one thing that I could do tomorrow that I cannot do today if we were to leave tonight.

Because we give up none of our autonomy, none of our understanding of what we're going to do, depending upon how the

Word of God leads us, according to the light the Spirit gives us. So that understanding, our affiliation with the convention, it's not really costly.

I mean, there are some goofy things that go on in Southern Baptist churches.

I don't know if you guys heard Steve Furtick a couple of weeks ago, saying God broke the law in order to love, you know, and what his sermons were.

He's a Southern Baptist, and that's embarrassing, and it's stupid, and it's heretical. In fact, could you repeat that?

Because for some reason, your voice is becoming a little garbled. It has happened a few times during the interview, and then it clears up, so I'm not sure why that's happening.

Okay, it may just be I'm tired or old or something. No, no, no, it's definitely a technical issue.

It's breaking up, yes. Okay, Steve Furtick is a pastor in North Carolina. He's a Southern Baptist graduate of Southern Seminary, and he's a pastor that I would not want to recommend.

I think he's got some serious theological issues. He said in a sermon a couple of weeks ago that got put out on the

Internet, this little clip, that God broke the law in order to love us.

Oh, wow. Yeah, you know, like they use the analogy of a dad taking a baby or a husband taking a wife to the hospital because they're in an emergency need.

You're going to break the speed limit. You're going to ignore the speed signs because you're driving your child to the hospital.

And so God broke the law in order to love us, to come down here to save us. Well, that's just absolutely lunacy.

I mean, it's wrong on so many levels. And he's a Southern Baptist, so whenever that gets played to people, they hear, the

Southern Baptist, well, I'm a Southern Baptist. I get roughed in with that, and that's costly. That's what

I mean. That's not helpful. But he's an independent, that's an independent Baptist church, and we're an independent

Baptist church, and we can address those issues. We can speak to that, and hopefully something may even be said at the

Sunday Mass Convention this summer about those kinds of statements and not tolerating them. So there's no loss of autonomy for us staying

Southern Baptist. But within the Southern Baptist Convention, we're going in healthier directions today than we have in a long time.

And you can just see it. More and more of our church is taking seriously the responsibility to practice meaningful membership, to be engaged in expositional preaching, to take church discipline seriously.

I mean, those are things that 35, 40 years ago weren't nearly as widespread as they are today.

And so while we still have our problems, and there's no shortage of problems that we can talk about and address, there are many good things going on in terms of what's happening in the international mission field, what's going on in North America with church planning efforts, what's going on in many of our cemeteries.

There's disaster relief. There's just a lot of good things that Southern Baptist churches have cooperated in order to try to bring about, and I'm happy to be associated with that.

We have Christopher from Suffolk County, Long Island, who wants to know, is the liberalism that was once prominent in the

Southern Baptist Convention still in existence? Not in the way that it was.

And by that I mean the battles that were fought for the authority of Scripture were sometimes difficult and tragic, but necessary.

And by God's grace, those battles, if we're going to use the language, were won. So we do not have any president of any seminary that denies the authority of Scripture.

We do not have any executive at any key position in the Southern Baptist Convention, in any of our organizations, that has not affirmed the full authority of God's Word.

And these are things that you couldn't say 35 years ago. So that has changed.

For example, there was a theology professor at Southern Seminary back in the 1970s and early 80s, and he would begin his lecture on the

Bible when it came that part of the semester to talk about the Scriptures. He would bring a copy of the

Bible into the classroom and throw it in a garbage can. Wow. That's how he would start his lecture.

We don't have that happening anymore. And I'll never forget the first time

I walked across the campus at Southern, I think Al Mohler had been there maybe five or six years, and there had already been significant turnover.

And just to see the names on the doors of some of those new professors, I wept.

I just could not believe the change that had already taken place, and it's gotten far better since then, in those first few years of his administration.

So those are incredible things that are happening. Liberalism, I can't say liberalism doesn't exist in the

SBC, it does. There are still some churches affiliated with the SBC that pride themselves in their liberal views.

They are not in positions of influence, and they're not in any kind of position of gaining a hearing that would be approved by the body of churches in the convention.

Well, I want to make sure that, before we run out of time, before we go to a couple of more listener questions,

I really want to make sure that what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding our topic today is said.

So if you could summarize what you most want our listeners to remember when they leave the program today.

Well, I would say, praise God. We ought to be praising God for the good things that we see happening in this new

Calvinism movement. This is a work of God. I think it is indeed a revival.

It's a reformation of things that are going on, and we ought to praise God for it. That movement, however, needs to continue in becoming increasingly rigorous.

It needs to be more confessional. It needs to be more cognizant of the relationship of law and gospel.

It needs to be given a greater place to thinking about pastoral ministry and ecclesiology.

But overall, with all of its problems, we ought to thank God for what he's doing. Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania wants to know, are there any

New Calvinists in the Founders Ministries movement? Well, it depends on how broadly you define the movement.

I would say, yes, there are churches and pastors that associate with us and appreciate what we're doing that would identify themselves as New Calvinists.

There's no one in our leadership. All of our leaders, all the board members, and those that have positions of responsibility affirm the 1689

Confession. What do you think is the biggest hang -up that old -school

Calvinists have to what is known as New Calvinism?

What are their biggest arguments, and do any of them really have merit?

Well, some of them do. I think the concerns for worldliness and kind of a naive embracing of cultural waves,

I think there needs to be caution given there, and there's been some good cautions voiced. But I think some, too, are just fearful of what is unfamiliar, like some of the music that is brought in.

If the music is doctrinally, if the words are doctrinally sound, then

I want to be as generous as I can be in terms of the style or how it's put together, though I have my preferences and I have some concerns about some styles and how they play in congregational life.

But I want to be generous about that. I think sometimes we get so accustomed to our own ways of doing things that we begin to blend what are our preferences or customs into what are our real biblical convictions, and we confuse one with the other.

One of the best things that's happened to me is God's given me the opportunity to worship in strongly confessional churches in other parts of the world, and their services don't look anything like our worship services.

From Romania, where there is a very strict formality and sobriety and seriousness and reverence, quietness, to Zambia, where there's about a 12 - or 13 -part harmony in the songs that they sing, and they all start on the same beat.

It's amazing, and I couldn't do it if I lived 100 lifetimes. But they're 1689 churches.

They're brothers that would fit in well with us, and I would be happy living in their churches, though it would be different than my preferences and what

I've become accustomed to in forms of worship. The essentials are there.

I find that myself. The older I get, the more I like the way I do things and have done things, and something that's different than that.

I can be quick on the trigger to say, Well, that's not biblical or that's dangerous or something, but when

I reflect upon it more carefully, I realize, Well, maybe not. Maybe there's no real biblical principle at stake here.

It's just a matter of how that's being applied. We do have a listener from Beebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know if you have any concern over how many

Reformed churches seem to have become enamored with the charismatic style of worship.

I am not talking about becoming continuous regarding sign gifts.

I'm just talking about style. Well, and again, I don't. I am not as concerned about that as maybe some would be, because if the doctrine that is being sung is biblical, if it's right and good and true, and if there is an appropriateness with the music and the words, and I'm not the best one to make that judgment call,

I think there's a wide variety in God's people and what God's provided to us that we can incorporate into worship.

I don't think all of our worship services have to look the same, and that's my point. I mean,

Manhattan is going to look different than Cape Coral, and that's going to look different than Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And so I don't want to get exercised about things that really aren't biblical.

And some of these things are preferences. Some of these things are customs. But I think you did touch on something that affects this before, that what can the congregation do, because it's possible to have some really good worship choruses, but then it's also possible that you have songs that are maybe beautifully designed for somebody singing in a concert, but to try to sing along with it congregationally would be very difficult.

Exactly, and that happens on both the high end of musical culture and the low end of musical culture.

And we want to make things accessible to the congregation, and when you do that, you're going to give up some of the expertise that could be utilized in music, and yet you don't want it to be done sloppily.

You want there to be some expertise. You want it to be done with excellence. And so there's always that balance between,

I think, excellence and accessibility in how we lead our people to sing.

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of modern worship has really become more and more entertainment.

Yeah, yeah. And isn't that, I mean, the scriptures condemn vain worship, and I think that that is where a lot can be said about the music that is being sung if it's designed for congregational worship or for one or two or three people leading a band or so on.

Yeah, that's right. And that's an issue of the heart. And, you know, you can find that with one song leader standing up leading a congregation.

I mean, it can be done in such a way that I find off -putting, and I'm tempted to judge what's going on in the guy's heart.

But, man, I think we understand the simplicity of worship and that it's focused on Christ.

Then I'm not concerned how many instruments there are. I'm not concerned what those instruments are. If they are all harnessed with this understanding that we are here because of Christ and we are regulated by his word and offering a praise to him.

I don't think the Bible, I don't think the regulative principle disallows guitars or requires organs.

And I just think when we start getting into those kinds of ways of thinking that what's happening really is we're revealing some of our own provincialism and maybe limited exposure to other very sincere confessional

Christians that we couldn't drive a sheet of paper between us and them and what we believe. But whose background, life, circumstances, culture is radically different than ours.

And making more of an issue over those differences than what biblically we should be allowed to.

And maybe you could conclude the program. You've already given loving words of chastisement and warning to those involved in the

New Calvinism or the Young Restless and Reform. Perhaps you could do the same for the old guard of Calvinism.

Perhaps you have a warning for them and a word of loving rebuke and challenge perhaps.

Yeah, I would say let's don't write people off too quickly. Let's be patient.

God's been patient with us and some of the folks. I'm in that group I guess now.

And I remember, man, I had more zeal than knowledge for a lot of years about the way that I was handling the truth that God was showing me.

And I'm grateful that the people loved me and some older men came alongside me and helped me. They didn't throw me away or write me off as being zealot or too radical.

And I want to be that kind of guy for younger men who are coming up. And also, we need to remember our own history.

The Reformation revival is always messy. We get these nice books that tell us the outcome and we romanticize that.

But, man, it was messy. I mean, Karlstadt and Luther, they were dear friends until Luther came back from the

Wartburg Castle and threw Karlstadt out on his ear. And so these things, any movement of God has always been messy.

And we shouldn't romanticize it and say, well, because it's got this problem, because it's got that problem, then it can't be true.

You know, it's not really of God. A healthy dose of religious affections by Jonathan Edwards, I think, would serve us all well.

And finally, in regard to our Arminian brethren, there are some of our

Calvinist brethren who go overboard in their ridicule and condemnation of those who do not agree with us on these things.

I think many times Calvinists forget the very doctrines they claim to uphold and believe in.

They look down on others because of their self -perceived superior intellect when the doctrines of grace are intended to humble us and not exalt us.

What would be the word of challenge that you have to Christians who should rightly be very concerned about doctrine and theology, but in the spirit of men like Spurgeon, who had some wonderful things to say about Arminian brethren, even

George Whitfield, who would have conflict with his dear friend

John Wesley over these doctrinal issues. He requested that Wesley preach at his funeral.

What do you have to say, as we conclude, about that issue? Yeah, I would say love your Arminian brethren as you love yourself.

And just remember that none of us have it exactly right. We all have holes in our theology.

We just don't know where they are. And we don't get a pass to quit loving because somebody disagrees with us.

I'm reminded of a story John Newton told about Calvinists. He said sometimes a

Calvinist is like a blind man who the Lord opens his eyes and gives him sight, and the first thing he does is picks up a big stick and starts beating up other blind people because he can't see.

And we deny what we profess to believe, what God's shown us, whenever we take those kind of attitudes with brethren.

If what we believe is really true, we ought to be the most humble people in the kingdom, if we really believe it.

And I know that your website is truegraceofgod .org. I want to thank you so much for being our guest today,

Dr. Raskel, and I look forward to having you back on the program very soon. Chris, thanks so much. It's a joy to be with you.

Buzz, good to meet you. Good to meet you. Thank you very much. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you tomorrow with your questions for our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.