August 28, 2017 Show with Dr. James E. Dolezal on “All that is In God: Evangelical Theology & the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism” AND Kurt M. Smith on “Remembering Luther’s Fight: A Primer on Martin Luther’s Life & Legacy of Standing for the Gospel”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 28th day of August 2017.

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I'm so delighted that we finally have been able to get on the program for the very first time

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Dr. James E. Dolezal. As some of you may remember, we had scheduled

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Dr. Dolezal to be interviewed on Iron Sharpens Iron several weeks ago, I believe it was, and there was some unforeseen scheduling conflict that arose on Dr.

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Dolezal's part. So we thankfully were able to get Dr. Dolezal in today on the program even though it was very late notice.

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Some of you may know that Dan Phillips was supposed to be our guest today, but as others of you may know,

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Pastor Phillips pastors in Houston, Texas Copperfield Bible Church and that area has been flooded very severely because of the hurricane and then a subsequent tornado, although Dan Phillips does give us the good report that he has been spared from any very serious disastrous effects of either of these storms.

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So we thank God for preserving and Dan Phillips and his congregation and his family and we hope to have

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Dan back on the program in the near future once things settle down there in Houston and he is able to participate.

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But as I said, we have James E. Dolezal on today and Dr. Dolezal teaches

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Church History, Trinitarian Theology and Philosophy at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

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And today we are discussing his book, All That Is in God, Evangelical Theology and the

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Challenge of Classical Christian Theism. That's our first hour. The second hour we're going to have Kurt M.

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Smith returning to the program. He is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama and we're going to be discussing his new booklet that is in print now,

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Remembering Luther's Fight, a primer on Martin Luther's life and legacy of standing for the gospel.

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But first of all, as I said for the first hour, let me introduce to you for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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James E. Dolezal. Chris and Buzz, thanks for having me. It's good to be here. And in studio with me is my co -host that was just mentioned, the

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Reverend Buzz Taylor. And it's good to be here again. And Reverend Buzz Taylor is only going to be able to be with us for the first hour because he has a concert where he is playing the trumpet and has to leave after the first hour.

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So if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr. James E. Dolezal, please email us at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name at least, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

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Before we get into the contents of this book, Dr. Dolezal, when I have a first -time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, I usually ask them to give an abbreviated version of their testimony of how they came to saving faith in Jesus Christ, including the religious atmosphere of your upbringing, if any, and what providential circumstances the

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Lord used to draw you to himself and to eventually save you.

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Oh, glad to. Thanks. Thank you for asking. I was raised in a Christian home in the

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San Joaquin Valley in California. My father is still a farmer there in the valley and was blessed to be raised in a

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Christian home, but also one in which I was carefully taught the scripture and doctrine. So for maybe some of your listeners, the

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Reformed Faith is something new. I remember not knowing the Reformed Faith, their being exposed, the wonderful doctrines of grace.

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I knew scripture and I was blessed for that. As a child,

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I think I believed what I was taught, whether I had true saving faith or not.

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There was a time I made I can't say for sure whether that was a genuine safe faith or the response of an obedient child, but by the time

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I had moved away to college, this is in the mid -90s, I went to college in Southern California at the

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Master's College. Some of your listeners might be familiar with it. And there I met godly peers that were my age but sincerely seeking the

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Lord and to walk after him in faithful discipleship. And that was an immense challenge to me and one that the

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Lord used to bless me and draw me perhaps to saving faith for the first time, perhaps to just a maturation in the faith.

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But that was certainly a turning point for me in my time at the college there.

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I ended up majoring in biblical studies. That's not what my original intention had been, going there, but the

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Lord was pleased to just direct my desires in that way. After I graduated from the

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Master's College, I then enrolled in the Master's Seminary, which is a different faculty, different campus, but a lot of similarities.

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They're about 20 miles apart in Los Angeles. And did my divinity degree at the

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Master's Seminary. It was during that time that I met my wife,

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Courtney. We were married in 2002 and she's been a great blessing and encouragement to me.

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After graduating from there, I pastored for a time in Southern Alberta, Canada, the city of Lethbridge.

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And then in 2006, moved to Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, where we are now to pursue further studies at Westminster Seminary.

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Great. And the Reverend Buzz Taylor and I have manned exhibitors booth for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio at several major Bible conferences.

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And there typically has been very close to our booth, a booth for Cairn University. Why don't you briefly tell us about Cairn University?

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Cairn is historically a Bible college, though now it's something of a hybrid of curriculum of biblical studies, but also studies in liberal arts and sciences, education, business, music.

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So in many ways, it's more of a traditionally ordered university, but still with a high view of the inerrancy and the authority and inspiration of the scriptures and of what

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I like to call classical Christian orthodoxy. It's not a denominationally affiliated school, but it's a school whose doctrinal statement reflects historic truths of the

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Christian faith. And I've been teaching there in the School of Divinity since January of 2013, and it's a privilege to be there.

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Well, by the way, before I forget, Phil Johnson of Grace to You Ministries, the

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Media Ministry of John MacArthur, and also Dr. Jim Renahan of the

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Institute of Reform Baptist Studies and Seminary asked me to extend their greetings to you.

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Oh, that's kind of them. Jim is a good friend, and Phil was my pastor from the mid -90s until 2005.

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So I have a deep appreciation of both of those men. Praise God.

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Well, this is a really compelling title of your new book, and to tell you the truth,

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I think it's a title for a book that would be impossible to be written because all that is in God could not possibly be compiled into a single volume in the

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English language on the face of the earth. That's right. This is a peculiarly short book, given its title.

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And the subtitle is Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism.

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Why don't you define Classical Christian Theism for us? Classical Christian Theism is probably best captured in a variety of ancient conciliar statements and confessions in the heritage of the

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Protestant Reformation, but the core of Classical Christian Theism that I'm going for in this book is the idea that God is sufficient in himself for all that he is, and so therefore he's unchanging, he does not receive new states of being, he is self -sufficient, or in theological lingo, osse, or the doctrine of osseity, he is of himself or from himself,

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God is the reason for God. And this comes together with a host of other doctrines, usually closely associated, divine eternality, divine infinity, and then a doctrine for which

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I have special interest, divine simplicity. Some of these doctrines are familiar.

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Eternal and unchanging, I think, are doctrines that we have spoken of freely for many years.

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Doctrines like osseity we hear a little less about, and simplicity just seems odd. But nevertheless, these are core components of a classical doctrine of God.

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And when I say classical, I also mean Catholic in that small -c sense of it being doctrines you would find historically in the

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Eastern Church, in the Catholic Church, in the Protestant churches, whether that is the

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Lutheran scholastic tradition, whether that's the Reformed scholastic tradition, in fact you'll even find affirmation of a number of these doctrines even in someone like Jacob Arminius.

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There's a sense in which Classical Christian Theism has impressive ecumenical credentials as sort of a core of what we believe about God.

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Maybe that's enough to say this is what I'm getting at. I'm getting at something that historically had broad consensus, maybe what we might call meat -and -potatoes orthodoxy.

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And the Rev. Buzz Taylor has something to say. The first thought that comes to my mind when you mention God is sufficient in himself, and therefore he's unchanging,

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I have heard this used to defend the doctrine of, for example, the perpetuity of spiritual gifts and things like that.

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By saying that, you're not saying that God always operates the same as he always has, are you? No, that's a good question.

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When I say he's unchanging, what I mean is that God in his own act of being is unchanging.

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But certainly the way that God administers and brings about progress in history, whether that's through works of prophecy or signed gifts or even redemptive historical events like the

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Flood or the Exodus or the crucifixion or resurrection of our Lord, of course there is change and development and progress in the external works of God.

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So that the fact that God is unchanging doesn't mean that what God is doing in providence is unchanging.

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There's change in history, not change in God. Yeah, it's interesting that many charismatics use the argument that Buzz gave that tongues and sign gifts must still exist because God doesn't change, and yet most of them are dispensationalists.

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Yes, that's peculiar. I think it also belies an error in which there's a tendency, and I'm actually getting at a little bit of this in my book, a tendency to elide or kind of conflate the historical revelation of God and his, what the earlier theologians would have called his works out extra, that is to say the things he produces or brings about, to elide those works of God into God's very being itself.

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And what we need to do is draw a sharp distinction between the manner in which

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God reveals himself and brings about his purposes in history, and the manner in which

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God exists in and of himself, so that his immutability no more argues for an unchangingness in history than, say, his eternality requires that creatures be eternal in the same way

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God is. We don't want to elide the being of God into the being of the world or the progress of history.

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Let me just read a couple of endorsements for this book, both written by men who have been guests a number of times on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.

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We're going to start with Jonathan Master, Professor of Theology and Dean of the

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School of Divinity at Cairn University. He says, this is a significant book on the topic that could hardly be more important.

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What we believe about the nature of God matters, and we dare not risk having an underdeveloped or sub -biblical understanding of such a central

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Christian concern. To put it as plainly as possible, I want every one of our students to read this book and to reflect deeply on its teachings, since what

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Dolezal seeks to explain is nothing less than the historic doctrine of the

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Christian church. Quite a powerful endorsement. And then J. V. Fesco, Professor of Systematic Theology and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary in California, who's also been a guest several times on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.

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He says, the road to doctrinal decline is not a steep cliff but a gradual descent.

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Before we realize it, we have altered or abandoned long cherished beliefs and doctrine.

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James Dolezal sounds the alarm on the important but forgotten doctrine of divine simplicity.

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He calls the church back to its traditional understanding and creedal affirmations, not because he fears change, but because they are biblical.

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This book is well worth the time to read, digest, and reinvigorate our understanding of the simplicity of God.

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And that's J. V. Fesco, as I mentioned. I'm looking forward to having back in the program. And also, as I mentioned earlier,

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Phil Johnson and Dr. Jim Renahan both eagerly and enthusiastically recommended that I interview

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Dr. Dolezal on this book today. This is an interesting phrase that you don't hear too often, and especially you don't hear it from Reformed people, but divine simplicity and the simplicity of God, both used by Dr.

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Fesco in his endorsement of this book. If you could explain that, because that is something that you don't hear, as I said, too often from Calvinists.

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Yeah, it's a doctrine that in one sense has been there with us for many years.

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It's a common one in the theology of the Church Fathers.

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You'll find mentions of it in Irenaeus and Athanasius and Augustine quite a bit, as well as later

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Boethius and then someone like Thomas Aquinas. What's interesting to me is that we also find it almost ubiquitously in the

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Reformed Confessions, whether those are the Dutch Confession, I'm thinking of the

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Belgic Confession, which begins with words affirming simplicity.

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In fact, the very beginning of the Belgic Confession, one of the three forms of unity for those in the

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Dutch tradition is that we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being whom we call

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God. And then they proceed to say, eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty, completely wise, just, good, and the overflowing source of all good.

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That's the first article of the Belgic Confession. A single and simple spiritual being, this is the very first thing that they say they all believe in their hearts and confess with their mouths.

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We find the same language, though they're the same doctrine, the slightly different language in the first of the 39 articles of the

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Church of England. The language probably is the language of Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he says that God is without body, parts, or passions.

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The statement that God is without parts or not composed of parts is the same doctrine as you find in the

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Belgic, that God is simple. That exact phraseology is taken over without modification by the

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Westminster divines in the Westminster Confession. It's left perfectly intact by the

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Congregationalists, led by John Owen in the Savoy Declaration. And then the

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Baptists, the particular Baptists who wrote the Second London Confession of Faith in 1677, left that phrase exactly as Cranmer had penned it a century earlier, or more than a century earlier.

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Interestingly, just to kind of show that the reach is not, that this is not even really a Reformed doctrine, you also find affirmation of it by the

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General Baptists of the 17th century. These may be what we call four -point

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Calvinists, maybe not full -blown Arminian in some cases, but nevertheless, even the

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General Baptists are making a strong affirmation of divine simplicity. So it's, you're right, it's a doctrine that we don't talk a lot about, and in fact it sounds strange.

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The first time that I heard God was simple, it just didn't sound right to me. It almost sounds blasphemous.

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Yes, it sounds blasphemous, because if you've tried to study the doctrine of God, it's not easy.

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So we think, if God is simple, why is he so hard to understand? There's a book

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I don't like on simplicity, but I will grant that the author did come up with a witty title on a complex doctrine of a simple

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God. And while the book has its problems,

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I think this is what many are confronted with. God can't be simple if he's so hard to understand. When we say he's simple, though, we don't mean simple to understand.

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We're not saying that our knowledge of God is simple or that it's easy. What we're saying is that in his being,

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God is not built up out of parts, and by part I mean anything in God that is less than the totality of his godness.

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And that I think we do believe as Christians, even if we don't know what to call it.

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And one of the things that was mentioned that obviously piqued my interest right away is in Dr.

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Fesko's commendation where he says, the road to doctrinal decline is not a steep cliff but a gradual descent.

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And before we realize that we have altered or abandoned long cherished beliefs and doctrine, what would be some of those things that you would include in that list of abandoned doctrines that long have been cherished?

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Certainly simplicity, of course. I think also to some extent doctrines of authority, and in this book

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I'm arguing, especially in chapter two, that the doctrine of immutability has been compromised.

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And I think what Dr. Fesko rightly observes is that those who've abandoned these doctrines didn't wake up one day and say, you know,

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I don't like my church's confession anymore. I don't want to confess that God's without parts. And all this language about God being all sufficient in himself, maybe we could soften that.

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People, I don't think, suddenly decide to abandon these doctrines.

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Rather, it seems to me that in many cases it happens incrementally and somewhat indirectly.

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In other words, a new doctrinal explanation, you know, suggests itself to us.

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We endorse this new explanation of how God creates or how he relates to his creatures or something like that, and then suddenly what we find out is that we've somewhere along the line lost hold of, say, a doctrine like immutability, so that we start to allow a little bit of mutability, a little bit of changeableness into the very being and life of God.

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And I'm not claiming that people are doing that. There are certainly some liberals that have intentionally and knowingly taken leave of classical

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Christian orthodoxy, but what I'm suggesting in this book is that in fact a number of our conservative and even

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Calvinistic brethren have perhaps unintentionally or unwittingly moved down that path as well.

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Yeah, as far as the confessional and biblical doctrine that God has no parts like a human,

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I know that the Mormons believe this heresy about the being that they would call

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God, which of course is no resemblance to the God of Scripture. You have some word -of -faith

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Pentecostals who actually believe God has a physical body. I was raised

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Roman Catholic, and although they did not teach that God the Father has a physical body, it's interesting that in all of our children's storybooks about the

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Bible, there was always a painting or a picture of God the Father, and even in the

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Sistine Chapel and many other depictions of God the Father in Roman Catholic artwork, you will see a gray -haired bearded man depicting

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God the Father. Has this notion actually seeped into other areas of what is called

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Christendom? That's an interesting question. I would say certainly Mormonism embraces a

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God with parts. In fact, as a friend put it to me one time, I was talking to him about the Mormon doctrine of God, and he said, do

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Mormons even really have a God? It seems that what they call God is something like a big cosmic finite creature.

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In a sense, I would say, yeah, actually it's a kind of atheism, because at the end of the day, what they're calling

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God is nothing like what Christianity has ever called God, the absolute creator of heaven and earth, who is independent and self -sufficient in his being.

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With Catholicism, I think the error lies not so much in their creedal statements, that they are abandoning the classical doctrine, but you're right, sometimes physical depictions of God without very clear doctrinal teaching about the inadequacy of those physical depictions can certainly lead the layperson to draw some wrong conclusions about God and whether God has parts.

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I think where it seeps into evangelicalism, though, I mean, this idea that God has parts, is not with respect to physicality.

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In fact, most evangelicals, in fact, I've never met an evangelical who, and I'm using that term in its very broad and indescript way, who believes that God has physical extended material bits.

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Where they run into trouble with the doctrine is with regard to non -physical parts.

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And I would suggest that the confessions and the language of Cranmer are not so much denying simply that God has a physical extended body or body parts, but that he lacks anything that could be a constituent of God's being that is less than the totality of his being.

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So, for example, in a human being, there are, of course, physical body parts, your medial and your distal parts, you have your elbow and your knee and your ankle and your cranium, and these are all physical body parts, so that your body is a composition of bits, of material bits, so to speak.

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But there's also other ways in which beings can be composed of parts. For instance, humans also are composed of matter and spirit, so that what you are as a human being is not all material, as the materialist false teaching of much of philosophy today would say.

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And neither are you, like an angel, so to speak, entirely immaterial, or an immaterial being that can go and take on different material forms or indwell different bodies.

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You're not a strictly immaterial being, you are a composition of matter and of spirit or soul, and so that what you are as a human is composed not just of material parts, but of also a material part and an immaterial part.

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Within your, even within your immaterial features of being, you're not perfectly simple or without parts, because there are different non -physical parts, such as the intellect, the will, the appetite, and then most basically, and this is where every creature is composed of parts, the parts of essence and of existence.

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And maybe the best way to illustrate this is simply to say that your existence is not given to you by your essence.

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Your essence is humanity, your existence is that in virtue of which your humanity exists. But it's not because you're human that you exist.

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It's possible that no human exists, and it's not humanity that makes you exist, rather it's an existence that God gives to your humanity.

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So that even if you were a purely spiritual being with no material whatsoever, insofar as your essence is not to be, it's not your essence to exist, you would be composed of essence and existence.

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That is to say, you depend upon features of your being, like existence and essence, that are more basic than the totality of your being.

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And in this way, every creature, even the most spectacular angel, is a creature made of parts, dependent upon the one who puts those parts together.

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And so when we say God is without parts, we're denying all types of composition, whether material parts or immaterial parts, or especially existence and essence, that makes

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God to be. Now, I don't want this to take us too far afield of the topic, but what on earth are the scriptures referring to when

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Moses saw the hind parts of God? I just cannot fathom what that is about.

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Yeah, that's a great question, and when you come to the scriptures, it's interesting as Christians in the

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Orthodox tradition, being evangelical Protestants, Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, etc.,

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we deny that God has physical body parts. We don't believe that God has legs and arms and a torso and a digestive system and a nose and a set of eyes and literally ears that receive sound waves to hear.

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And yet the Bible speaks quite profusely with physicalist or materialist language to describe

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God to us. And what I would argue is happening there, and sometimes he's even using visible physical phenomena to manifest his covenantal presence and favor.

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And I think what's happening in those instances is that God is condescending to use physical, creaturely phenomena and even matter to represent or manifest or show his presence to us.

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So that it's not that God somehow physicalized himself and thereby had, you know, hind parts, or that God somehow has a right arm as opposed to a left arm, or that God has nostrils that smell incense burning to him, though the

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Bible will speak in this language. Historically, we would say that this is a kind of accommodated anthropomorphic language, where God takes on the form of the human to describe something true about himself, even though the form that he uses isn't literally true.

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It's a kind of figurative speech, and yet it's still a speech and even a phenomenal presentation of himself that nevertheless discloses truth about him.

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And I think that he does this with more than just human parts, right? He also does this with animal parts.

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He talks about having wings. I think technically we should probably call that zoomorphic language, and he also will describe himself as a rock.

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We might call that geomorphic language. So that God uses the language and the imagery of the created order, and of humanity in particular, to describe and draw near to us in language with which we are familiar, all the while knowing, and we know, that God is not actually a piece of sedimentary material, even though the

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Bible calls him a rock, and he's not a cosmic feathered thing with wings, even though he speaks of his wings and pinions by which he protects us, and that he doesn't have a digestive system, even though God talks about his bowels.

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Yeah, the difference with this, though, would not be just literary poetry to enable us to understand

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God. This seems to be an eyewitness account of something. In fact,

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I've heard it could be an epiphany of Christ, pre -incarnate Christ, or something. Possible, I think, and what

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I want to add to that is that it's not just in language that God accommodates himself. It's also in the use of physical phenomena, so that he can manifest his presence in physical ways.

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He uses the Shekinah glory, a visible light, a light which men can approach. God dwells in unapproachable light, but in his great mercy and kindness, he gives us in the

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Shekinah a visible light to which we can approach. He dwells among them in a cloud. Sometimes he draws near by using sound waves, and so he speaks from the burning bush to Moses, and I take it that Moses is actually hearing literal sound and language with which he's familiar, or he speaks to Elijah in a still, small voice, so that God can use and bring into his use physical phenomena, whether that is a cloud, or a light, or a sound, or whatever that glorious, visible thing was that passed by in front of Moses as he was hit in the cleft of the rock, that God can use his creation and even physical phenomena in that creation to manifest his covenantal presence and favor to his people.

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Reverend Buzz Taylor has a question, but we'll have to wait until we return from the break. Hold on to that thought,

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Buzz. If anybody would like to join us, now is the time to do it, because remember, Dr. Dolezal was only on with us for the first hour, so if you have a question, please shoot it to us right away at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Don't go away.

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We'll be right back, God willing, with Dr. James Dolezal, right after these words from our sponsors.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Ironson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

38:55

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

39:05

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

39:13

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

39:19

Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

39:25

This is Chris Sarnes, and if you just tuned us in for the first hour of our program today, we have

39:31

Dr. James E. Dolezal online with us, and he is going to be on until 5 p .m.

39:38

Eastern, and then following Dr. Dolezal, Kurt M. Smith will be joining us to discuss

39:44

Remembering Luther's Fight. But right now, we are discussing with Dr.

39:49

Dolezal, All That Is in God, Evangelical Theology, and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism.

39:55

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, do it quickly, because we only have about 15 minutes left.

40:02

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

40:09

And the Reverend Buzz Taylor, you had a question. Yes, you referred to biblical language being anthropomorphic, and that God does not have parts as it seems like it describes in the scriptures and so forth, and I understand that.

40:22

But I hope I'm not going to be splitting any Baptist churches through this, but would you also apply that to God's emotions?

40:28

What are you talking about? The splits already happened. Well, maybe we can mend some of those now.

40:35

Well, that's a good question, and I grant that that seems to be a harder question.

40:44

When the Confession says that God is, and I'm thinking of the Second London, but this could be

40:49

Savoy or 39 Articles or Westminster as well, and certainly is the tradition of the

40:55

Church prior to that. When we say God is without body, I've never met a dissenter, a

41:02

Christian who dissents to that doctrine. When we say that God's without parts, I think sometimes people might mistakenly think that that means he's without body parts, which of course it means that, but it does mean much more than that, and most basically it means that he's not constituted of a principle of essence and a principle of existence that are really distinct.

41:22

Rather, his essence is I Am. His essence is his existence. The third rail on that is this question of whether God is without passions, and that, perhaps like saying

41:37

God is simple, sounds very odd to our ears, because when we hear the word passions, we think care, love, real anger or opposition to sin.

41:50

When we hear passions, we hear the word emotion or something equivalent to it, and of course, the

41:56

Bible, much like it is full of physicalist language describing God, is also full of emotive language describing

42:03

God. God has said, his wrath is said to wax and to wane, and he is said to love and be full of mercy and compassion, and what are these if not passions?

42:15

And maybe a brief response just on why the Confession says God does not have passions.

42:21

The Confession is not denying that God loves or that God is full of mercy or is gracious or abundant in goodness, forgiving iniquity, as the

42:33

Confession goes on saying. It's not saying that he does not really love or that he does not really oppose sin.

42:39

When it denies that God has passions, what it really means is that God does not possess his love or his opposition to sin the way that creatures do.

42:50

And passion, historically, is a word that denotes some process of undergoing.

42:58

In fact, that's what the word passio means. It means to undergo, to suffer, to submit.

43:04

It denotes an experience by which a new state of actuality, be it love or be it anger, is brought into the person through some experience they have.

43:16

So, you know, I live in Pennsylvania, and I have to drive the Pennsylvania Turnpike on the north side of Philly most days of the week, and that can be somewhat aggressive, and maybe you've all had the experience someone cuts you off, and suddenly you are pleasantly going along whistling a tune, and your emotional state was at peace, and suddenly your adrenaline is pumping, and your ire has been provoked, and you're no longer in a state of tranquility and peace.

43:49

You are now a little bit miffed. Now, I'm from New York. That never happens in New York. If you are somehow exempt from this illustration, we want to hear from you.

44:03

The reality is, that's a passion. It's not a passion because it's anger, and your state of sort of relative emotional stability or even kind -heartedness, which you suddenly lost when you were laying on the horn in response, that is not a passion because it's love.

44:21

Love as such, or even opposition to sin or iniquity as such, are not passions.

44:28

The reason we say they're not passions is not because they're not real in God, but rather because they do not come into God's possession by way of some action upon Him, so that God is not moved to a state of love, and He's not moved by the creature to a state of opposition.

44:47

Rather, what we should say is, it just is His nature to love, and it just is

44:52

His nature to oppose sin as a consuming fire of holiness that He is. Now, the way that He shows

44:59

His mercy, and the way that He shows His love, and the way that He shows His holy opposition to sin does actually unfold in time, and does actually unfold with respect to creaturely actions, so that His wrath is against those that disobey

45:16

His will and reject His Son. His love is bestowed upon those who once were under His wrath.

45:23

What changes is not God in His inner actuality, what changes is

45:29

God's dealing with the creature in time, so that when we say God's without passions, so yes, to your question,

45:34

Buzz, that's the long way around. I wasn't trying to really avoid your question. In answer, I would say yes, just as all the physicalist language, and even the language of, like, remembering and forgetting and all these things that God has said to do, just as those are all anthropomorphic,

45:51

I would say that the language of emotional change or alteration is also anthropomorphic.

46:00

If you want a $10 word for it, technically it's anthropopathic. It's using the language of human pathos to describe

46:09

God, and from our standpoint, from our perspective as creatures in time experiencing the dealings of God in succession, one after the other,

46:18

God does appear to us in one moment under a manifestation of wrath, and in another through the reconciliation brought about by His Son under a manifestation of grace and mercy and reconciliation.

46:30

What all we're saying in the Confession, and historically with impassibility, is simply that God does not enter new states of being having previously not been in that state of being.

46:42

If He did, then of course He wouldn't be immutable, and you would also have to explain how God began to be or exist in a way that previously

46:51

He was not. And I think that's really the concern, not that God doesn't really love or really oppose sin.

46:58

I actually hope to eventually have a friendly, brotherly, collegiate debate on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio between two

47:05

Reformed Baptists on both respective sides of the debate at hand in regard to the impassibility of God.

47:14

So keep your eyes and ears out for this debate, God willing, which hopefully will occur before 2018.

47:22

We have Pat in one of my favorite cities, not that I've been there, but I just love saying the name of the city.

47:31

Pat from Rancho Cucamonga, California. He says, what is

47:36

Dr. Dolezal's reply to a moderate view of eternal functional submission that speaks of being based on prosopological?

47:46

While it seems not as severe as some departures,

47:52

Dr. Dolezal's highlights in his book, wondering if he considers this view to still be compatible with classical theism.

48:02

In an article I read, I wasn't sure if Dr. Dolezal's view was in reference when it stated, certain radical and rationalistic applications of simplicity drive the thinker toward an arid and lonely

48:14

Unitarianism and make him squelch a fully engaged and dynamic interaction with the data of Scripture.

48:23

The article did address Dr. Liam Gallagher's view, I assume Dr. Dolezal shares.

48:28

The article is from Founders Ministries and is by Dr. Tom Nettles. One thing I really wish,

48:33

I wish I would start getting intelligent people write questions into the program. Just kidding. Obviously a very in -depth question there,

48:43

Dr. Dolezal. Yeah, thank you. Probably more than I can handle in a few moments.

48:52

I would say, and maybe what, you know, I'm not being able to treat the entirety of the question and not having read the article to which

49:01

Pat refers, I would simply say that divine simplicity, and this may not answer his question,

49:08

I hope it does at least in part, divine simplicity does rule out the notion of functional subordination in the

49:17

Godhead, and I'm making a distinction here between the subordination of Christ to the Father in his humanity.

49:24

As man, as human, Christ is of course obligated to render to God the same obedience and allegiance that every creature is, and moreover, as the second

49:35

Adam, he is obligated to render the obedience that the first Adam failed to render.

49:41

So the subordination of the Son with regard to his humanity, and I take it, of course, Pat, I'm assuming, is going to agree, is certainly true of Christ with respect to his humanity.

49:51

Does Christ, as divine, submit himself to the Father? And this is where I think divine simplicity helps to rule that out, and I might make reference very briefly to a somewhat technical but really an excellent and learned article by Dennis Jowers in the book entitled,

50:12

I think it's something like, An Evangelical Subordinationism, question mark, and it's edited by Wayne House and Dennis Jowers, and it's in its various voices on both sides of this issue of whether there is subordination of the

50:28

Son to the Father, and Jowers argues that given divine simplicity and the simple unity of the divine nature, which would include, of course, the power, the prerogative of command or authority as well as as well as acts of will, that the

50:46

Son, insofar as he is divine, has precisely the same will, knowledge, power, and prerogative that the

50:53

Father has. And so in that respect, if the Son were to submit himself to the

51:00

Father in the Godhead as God, we would have to posit a really distinct will in the

51:07

Son that is not in the Father, and then the will of God would be rendered a kind of collective will, a will of three persons, each willing a discrete and different act of will than the other two sort of coalescing together in a community.

51:23

What we want to do is avoid that idea that the will of God is some kind of result from a communal action, but rather say the

51:31

Son's will and the Father's will are the same will as God. Of course, as man, his human will is in submission to the

51:37

Father. I would just suggest, and it's certainly only just the beginning, is chapter six in my book where I deal with the question of simplicity, and I briefly talk about subordination and how simple unity and substantial unity historically were used to rule out any notion of subordinationism in the

51:59

Godhead. But maybe Pat is far beyond that and is asking questions that may be better answered in an article.

52:08

I would point to chapter six of my book, but only as a beginning point, because this whole question of subordinationism certainly warrants a longer explanation.

52:22

Well, Dr. Dolezal, I'm going to email you at some point today a calendar when you can return to the program as a guest, and hopefully the next time you'll be on for two hours, because as you saw, this one hour went by like a bullet, and we only have time for one more question now.

52:39

We have Joe in Slovenia who says, there are some who say penal substitutionary atonement is divine child abuse.

52:48

I believe those who use that saying are also implying even unintentionally a denial of divine simplicity in the

52:57

Trinity, even a denial of the Trinity itself. Their view makes Jesus seem to be an unwilling victim.

53:03

Am I right in thinking this? And that's Joe in Slovenia. Yes. I think he is right in thinking that, because obviously in Christ's human nature, there is an expression of his will in the

53:19

Garden of Gethsemane, most preeminently to obey the Father's will, not my will, but yours be done.

53:27

And yet, of course, Christ in the fullness of his humanity, looking at the prospect of suffering divine wrath in his own body on the tree, is standing there in a kind of truly human terror.

53:45

Jesus doesn't float through his human career, levitating above the realities of humanity.

53:51

Jesus experiences and faces death and the wrath of God with all the dread that any human should, and yet his will to obey the

53:58

Father is triumphant, even unto obedience of death on the cross. But this picture of this as divine child abuse does tend to give the idea that Christ does not have two wills, but one will.

54:13

And I can't get into this, and maybe this is just a teaser to the listener, but there is this grand historic doctrine of the two wills of Christ.

54:22

In so much as Christ has two natures, he also has a will proper to each nature, so that the will of Christ that submits himself to the

54:30

Father is a will that is proper to his humanity, and that is not the same will as the will that he shares with the

54:37

Father and Spirit, from which all eternity he wills exactly what comes to pass, even his own death on the cross.

54:43

This doctrine, the idea that the cross is divine child abuse, tends to, in a certain sense, treat the will of Christ as if there is only a single will, and that Christ is undergoing something at the hand of the

54:59

Father that he would never have desired, and yet clearly he's told us that both his human will, not my will but yours be done, is in alignment with the

55:07

Father's, and of course, as one with the Father and Spirit in the act of the decree and of providence, he is from all eternity willing precisely this sacrifice of himself in his humanity.

55:21

And so I think the idea that this is divine child abuse is severely, let us just say this with, and I think it's

55:28

Joe, is severely undermined, if not entirely falsified, by the simplicity of the nature and the singularity of the will that is had by the

55:38

Father, Son, and Spirit. These are technical questions that your listeners have.

55:45

Yeah, well, my apologies to Joe in Slovenia, because I actually read a different listener's question accidentally.

55:52

That was Brian in an unmentioned city or state or country. Brian never told us where he's from.

55:59

We thank you, Brian, for the question, and please give me your full mailing address, because you, along with Pat in Rancho Cucamonga, California, have both won a free copy of All That Is in God, Evangelical Theology and the

56:14

Challenge of Classical Christian Theism by our guest, Dr. James E.

56:20

Dolezal, who I hope returns to the program very soon. And I want to give our listeners both the website for Cairn University and also for Reformation Heritage Books, the publisher of All That Is in God.

56:33

First of all, Cairn University, that website is c -a -i -r -n -dot -e -d -u.

56:43

That's c -a -i -r -n -dot -e -d -u. And Reformation Heritage Books is heritagebooks .org,

56:51

heritagebooks .org. And hopefully you can come back soon, Dr.

56:56

Dolezal. It's apparent that we could spend another two hours on this one book and still not even scrape the surface here.

57:04

Chris and Buzz, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much, and we look forward to your return.

57:10

Thank you, brother. And folks, don't go away, because we are having a second guest join us,

57:16

Kurt M. Smith from Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama, who's going to be discussing

57:22

Remembering Luther's Fight, a primer on Martin Luther's life and legacy of standing for the gospel.

57:29

I apologize to all the listeners who wrote in to ask Dr. Dolezal a question, but we ran out of time, and an hour goes by far too quickly with a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

57:42

But we look forward to hearing from you and your questions for Dr., or should I say pastor,

57:47

Kurt M. Smith on Luther's Fight right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune into A Visit to the Pastors' Study every

01:06:48

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01:06:58

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the

01:07:04

Pastors' Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

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Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastors' Study, because everyone needs a pastor.

01:07:17

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned into our program today, the guest that we have now for the second hour of the program is

01:07:28

Kurt M. Smith. And Kurt M. Smith is going to be discussing a booklet that he has written, which is a part of the

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Solid Ground Christian Books Reformation 500 series of booklets.

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These are excellent booklets because they are addressing ideal, or should

01:07:48

I say primary, issues involving the Protestant Reformation.

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And we are in the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and I should say in the year of the 500th anniversary of the

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Protestant Reformation, starting with the official date of that celebration being

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October 31st of this year, commemorating the day that, or the date that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses in protest to the practice of indulgence selling to the door of the

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Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. And Pastor Kurt M.

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Smith is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Pine Mountain, Alabama.

01:08:35

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, Pastor Kurt M. Smith. Thanks, Chris.

01:08:41

It's good to be back with you, brother. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Kurt, our email address is

01:08:49

ChrisOrensen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:08:56

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

01:09:02

USA. Please only remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable because of the fact that the question involves a personal, intimate, and private matter.

01:09:11

Perhaps you are asking a question about the Reformation and your own pastor disagrees with you on something that you believe or whatever it is that would compel you to remain anonymous.

01:09:24

We will honor that request. Otherwise, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

01:09:34

And we already, by the way, for those of our listeners who are wondering, we already had an interview with Kurt Smith where he gave his abbreviated testimony of salvation.

01:09:47

So if you want to look that up later on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, if you want to look up other previous interviews that we've had with him, you can go to the ironsharpensironradio .com

01:09:57

and click on the archive of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:10:04

That would be to the top right of the page. It says past shows and in parentheses podcast.

01:10:12

Click on that and then type in K -U -R -T in the search engine and you will immediately get the previous interviews that we have conducted with Kurt M.

01:10:26

Smith. But today we are, during the second hour, addressing Remembering Luther's Fight, a primer on Martin Luther's life and legacy of standing for the gospel.

01:10:35

Now immediately some might wonder, now wait a minute, why on earth is a

01:10:41

Baptist writing a book commemorating the legacy of Martin Luther?

01:10:47

This seems oxymoronic, some might think. If you could explain why. That's a good question.

01:10:54

I was hoping you would ask that. Well, for one thing, as Baptists, we are

01:11:04

Protestants, and so we are part of the heritage, the doctrinal, theological heritage that came forth out of the

01:11:17

Protestant Reformation, and very, very specifically what

01:11:23

I'm referring to are those five solas, those five biblical principles that the

01:11:33

Protestant Reformation shaped for us and really defined for us what we call historic evangelical

01:11:39

Christianity. Those five solas being sola scriptura, by scripture alone, sola fide, by faith alone, sola gratia, by grace alone, solus

01:11:49

Christus, by Christ alone, and solidea gloria, to God alone be the glory. And Martin Luther actually shaped those presuppositions that defined the

01:12:02

Reformation. Those Reformation slogans found their root in Luther's thinking and continue to be, as I said, what defines historic evangelical

01:12:11

Christianity to this day. So as a Baptist, I should really care about that, and not only that, but also what

01:12:25

Luther stood for, what he fought for as far as the recovery of the gospel, that should matter very much to every

01:12:36

Baptist. You know, so, I mean, granted, there are many things theologically, doctrinally, that we would stand in disagreement with, as far as conclusions

01:12:48

Luther had made, things he believed. There are a lot of places where we would disagree with him, but when it really came down to what was

01:13:02

Martin Luther fighting for, uh, that is the recovery of the gospel, then as a

01:13:09

Baptist, I can stand right with Martin Luther. In fact, one very prominent

01:13:16

Baptist historian, who I've had on this program a number of times, who

01:13:21

I love interviewing, Dr. Michael A .G. Haken, who is a professor of church history at the

01:13:28

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and many of our listeners may also remember him as a faculty member at the

01:13:38

Toronto Baptist Seminary, where my friend Dr. Tony Costa is the professor of apologetics and Islam.

01:13:49

There is a really remarkable or profound commendation that Dr. Haken gave to this booklet.

01:13:58

There seems to be no end of Luther's studies, and especially in this year, 2017, when many are celebrating the beginning of the

01:14:06

Reformation. Kurt Smith's brief study is extremely helpful, and he isolates the core legacy of Luther and why his life and thought is still needful of study and reflection today.

01:14:18

Moreover, he is quite prepared to strike new ground based on a careful reading of the evidence.

01:14:24

His dating of Luther's conversion to 1518 is a case in point, and that as the real beginning of the

01:14:32

Reformation. Should we then be shifting our celebration to next year? With the questions at the close, this is an ideal tool for studying the significance of Luther's life and having something to celebrate.

01:14:46

That's an excellent point that he brings up, because Luther's 95 theses were written when he was still a devout

01:14:53

Roman Catholic. He was just protesting against the sale of indulgence selling. He wasn't protesting indulgences themselves at that point in his life, nor much of anything else in Catholicism of primary significance.

01:15:09

But that was the first domino to fall, at least in a primary sense. Am I correct?

01:15:16

Yeah, that is correct. I mean, certainly Martin Luther, when he wrote the 95 theses, he was not thinking anywhere in his thoughts at that time, at least based on his writings, of a

01:15:33

Protestant Reformation. He had no category for that.

01:15:39

He was a devout, dutiful son of Catholicism when he wrote the 95 theses.

01:15:45

And of course, as I point out in the booklet, because I do go out of my way a little bit here to discuss this, that the 95 theses were not written to be a

01:15:57

Reformation manifesto. There was nothing in the 95 theses which pointed people to the heart of the gospel at all.

01:16:06

The 95 theses made no mention of justification by faith alone, nor even the doctrine of solo scriptura.

01:16:13

And so there was no core Reformation thought in the 95 theses. And I'm going to say the truth is, the 95 theses were a call to an academic debate which did not question the use of relics nor indulgences, but only their misuse.

01:16:34

Luther believed that the way the indulgences were being sold actually cheapened repentance, which at that time was at the core of Luther's thinking.

01:16:45

But Luther was still a dutiful son of Catholicism. And to add one more layer to this,

01:16:50

I quote from Michael Reeves in his introductory book on the Reformation called The Unquenchable Flame, which is published by Brauman and Holman.

01:17:00

And in that book, Michael Reeves says, the theses were an attack on the mistreatment of indulgences from a monk who still worked within the thought world of medieval

01:17:12

Roman Catholicism. The theses affirmed the existence of purgatory and sought to defend the

01:17:18

Pope and indulgences from the bad name abuse would give them. In the 95 theses,

01:17:25

Luther was being a good Catholic. Yes, and he was objecting in regard to those indulgence selling practices.

01:17:37

Johann Tetzel, correct? His approach was very much like a snake oil salesman, where he was scaring people into purchasing indulgences for the sake of not only lessening their own time in purgatory, but the souls of their loved ones.

01:17:58

And that is how, am I mistaken in saying that that is how really the papal basilica of St.

01:18:08

Peter in the Vatican was built, on the money of that fear -mongering of the lady of the

01:18:14

Catholic Church back in the day of Tetzel? Yes, Pope Leo X, who was the presiding pope at that time, all he really cared about was building the cathedral.

01:18:28

I mean, Pope Leo X was nothing more than a man who was very much after gaining more money to build more of really what was his own little kingdom.

01:18:46

And so yeah, Luther certainly reacted to that, reacted to that in a moral way.

01:18:56

I mean, if you want to get down to it, I mean, the 95 theses, they were calling more for a moral repentance of what was going on at that time through the selling of the indulgences by Tetzel and what he was doing.

01:19:15

But again, Luther had not yet had his eyes opened by God's grace to see how a guilty, hell -deserving sinner could be made right with a holy

01:19:28

God, even though at that time in the fall of 1517, he was very much on his way to discovering that because of the lectures that he was given at that time on Romans and Galatians and the

01:19:43

Psalms. And Luther was seeing, and had been seeing over a period of like five years, flashes of the gospel through these lectures and just having the scriptures before him like that.

01:19:57

So there was a spiritual awakening that was starting.

01:20:05

And of course, it would really come to full fruition in the year 1518 when

01:20:11

Luther had started his second lecture on the Psalms. And during that period, he would continue to go back to Romans 117, which of course, as we know, that was the key text, and Luther says it himself.

01:20:28

I mean, that is where the gates of paradise opened up for him, and he entered into redemption by Christ.

01:20:37

Let me repeat our email address for any of our listeners who would like to join us on the air with a question.

01:20:44

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:20:51

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

01:20:56

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it is about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

01:21:05

And the thing that will come up very often amongst those

01:21:13

Baptists, those fellow Baptists who despise the notion or the mention of the

01:21:23

Reformation in many ways, and Luther himself, is because they will say, why on earth are you celebrating in any way a man who was responsible for the persecution, torture, and death of many of our forefathers?

01:21:40

And they're referring to the Anabaptists, of course. Now, Luther personally did not call for the torture and execution or actually physically participate in it in any way, shape, or form, did he?

01:21:53

No, he did not. No. Wasn't it the case that he did? His guilt lies in the fact that he did not grant free passage to Anabaptists seeking refuge.

01:22:05

Am I right on that? There was some kind of culpability here. Yeah, yeah, he did. He did.

01:22:10

He did have culpability in that way. But as far as, you know, calling for their execution, anything that extreme, no,

01:22:21

Luther was not. He was not responsible for anything like that. But, you know, but yeah, he did.

01:22:26

He did see and look upon the Anabaptists as being troublemakers. And of course, you know, there were certainly parts, you know, parts and segments and offshoots of them that were great troublemakers.

01:22:39

But, you know, but yeah, I mean, Luther, he didn't go to the extreme of calling for or certainly participating in the execution of any of this.

01:22:50

Yeah, I think Luther's primary concern, was it not over the anarchists amongst the

01:22:56

Anabaptists who were actually violent and trying to stir up upheaval in the community for people to overthrow the government and so on.

01:23:09

And Luther did not want to have his Reformation painted with the brush that included these anarchists.

01:23:19

Yeah, that's exactly right. And of course, to parallel Luther's conviction about that, go back to when he was in the castle of Wartburg for that year that he was exiled there, but really exiled to safety after the

01:23:41

Diet of Worms. And anyway, what brought him out of that exile and back to Wittenberg, which was his place of living, was the word that got out to him of all of these citizens of Wittenberg destroying, you know, different relics and stained glass and statues and, you know, just all kinds of things like that, just in other words, just vandalizing.

01:24:12

And in Luther, you know, Luther returned to Wittenberg to really put a stop to that and to say, you know, this is not what we're to be about.

01:24:24

And so, yeah, so when it came to, you know, to things like that, you know,

01:24:31

Martin Luther really, you know, he gave no quarter. We're going to be going to our final break of the program today.

01:24:39

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for our guest Kurt M. Smith on the

01:24:44

Reformation or Martin Luther, specifically, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:24:53

Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside of the USA and only remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable because the matter is in regard to a personal and private one.

01:25:06

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01:29:27

This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest for the following half hour, which began a half hour ago, is

01:29:35

Kurt M. Smith. He is our guest for the second hour on this theme,

01:29:42

Remembering Luther's Fight, a primer on Martin Luther's life and legacy of standing for the gospel.

01:29:48

This is a booklet which I think that every pastor listening should order at least a case of this book, and other booklets in the

01:29:58

Solid Ground Christian Books Reformation 500 series. These are booklets that could fit in many track racks and are affordable enough and small enough that you could, or short enough,

01:30:10

I should say, that you could give out more liberally to not only your congregation, but to visitors to your congregation so that they can learn more about why many

01:30:21

Protestants are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

01:30:28

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:30:35

Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA. And before I return to our discussion,

01:30:43

I just have a few announcements in regard to our sponsors having special events. The Semper Reformanda Reformation Conference, featuring

01:30:53

Phil Johnson of Grace to You Ministries, the media ministry of world -renowned

01:30:59

Bible teacher John MacArthur, is going to be held September 30th through October 1st at the

01:31:08

Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. If you would like to register for this conference, go to gracebfc .com

01:31:25

or you can call Grace Bible Fellowship Church at 717 -652 -5229, 717 -652 -5229.

01:31:38

And those of you who live on the Long Island, New York area or in the

01:31:43

Long Island, New York area, my friend that I mentioned just a few moments ago, Dr. Tony Costa, who is the professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, he is going to be speaking at the

01:31:56

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York for their 500th anniversary celebration of the

01:32:04

Gospel of the Reformation. And that will be held, as I said, at the

01:32:09

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville on 1055 Portion Road in Farmingville, Long Island, New York.

01:32:15

If you want more details, go to wotchurch .com, W -O -T, which stands for Word of Truth, church .com,

01:32:23

W -O -T church .com, or call 631 -806 -0614, 631 -806 -0614.

01:32:32

That celebration is being held also on Friday, September 29th,

01:32:38

Saturday, September 30th. And actually, I guess it's only one day that overlaps with the

01:32:44

Phil Johnson conference, so the September 30th day. So Friday, September 29th and Saturday, September 30th, these are the two days that the

01:32:54

Gospel of the Reformation 500th anniversary celebration will be held by Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, New York.

01:33:02

Then the next day on Sunday, October 1st at 11 a .m.,

01:33:08

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Medford, New York will also have Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary speak for them at their

01:33:17

Sunday morning worship service. If you'd like more information on how to get to Hope Reform Baptist Church and other information, go to hopereformedli .net,

01:33:29

hopereformedli .net, or you can also call Hope Reform Baptist Church of Medford, New York at 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

01:33:41

Then after that, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

01:33:47

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology on the theme for Still Our Ancient Foe, which obviously has a lot of connection to our topic today with Kurt M.

01:33:55

Smith, or Still Our Ancient Foe, a line from that classic Reformation hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress, and that line specifically is in reference to Satan, our ancient foe.

01:34:07

Speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

01:34:12

That's November 17th through the 18th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

01:34:19

If you'd like to register for that conference, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

01:34:25

click on events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology.

01:34:31

And then following that, this January from the 17th through the 20th, the G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, the

01:34:37

G3 standing for Grace, Gospel, and Glory. The theme in January will be

01:34:43

Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. The 17th of January is exclusively a

01:34:48

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and then from the 18th through the 20th is exclusively an English -speaking version of the conference.

01:34:56

And speakers at the English conference include Stephen Lawson, Vody Balcom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

01:35:04

Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, and Martha Peace.

01:35:14

If you'd like to register, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

01:35:20

Please tell any of these organizations who are running these events, if you are registering or just contacting them to find out more information, please tell them all that you heard about those events from Chris Arnsen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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01:36:49

Now we are back to our discussion with Kurt M. Smith on Remembering Luther's Fight, a primer on Martin Luther's life and legacy of standing for the gospel.

01:37:02

And before I go to a couple of questions from our listeners,

01:37:09

Kurt, one other thing that some of our Baptist brethren will claim that we who are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

01:37:20

Protestant Reformation are celebrating an anniversary of something that has nothing to do with our ancestry anyway.

01:37:27

They will say that Baptists are not Protestants, we've never been Protestants, and even

01:37:32

Charles Spurgeon made a comment. I don't know if he was being consistent with many of the other things he said, but Charles Haddon Spurgeon even made a similar comment that we were never part of the

01:37:43

Protestant Reformation, and even though he obviously gleaned heavily from the

01:37:50

Puritans and the Reformers and loved their writings and teachings and agreed with the majority of them other than those that are specifically

01:37:58

Baptistic. But what do you say about that? Well, when you look at the history of Baptists, Baptists emerged out of Protestantism going back into the 17th century, early 17th century in Great Britain.

01:38:21

They emerged as one of the Separatist groups as they were called, the dissenters dissenting from the

01:38:33

Church of England, but they were coming out of Protestantism.

01:38:43

And certainly one thing that I had pointed out in another one of my publications, in fact, it's the book that you and I talked about a few weeks ago,

01:38:58

The Gospel Heritage of George of Baptist. In that book, in the third chapter of that book,

01:39:16

I make this very clear about Baptists as it regards the

01:39:22

Protestant Reformation, and that is that from a historical standpoint,

01:39:31

Baptists have always been known as people of the by this identification,

01:39:37

Baptists from their emergence in 17th century England had gained the reputation of being that Christian body within Protestantism, whose declaration of doctrine and practice was solely governed and ruled by the

01:39:53

Word of God. In fact, the Great Reformation principle of sola scriptura, by scripture alone, can be argued as finding its fullest expression with Baptists than with any other

01:40:08

Protestant group. This is why Church historian Robert G. Torbett, in his history of the

01:40:14

Baptists, made the case that Baptists, to a greater degree than any other group, have strengthened the protest of evangelical

01:40:22

Protestantism against traditionalism. This they have done by their constant witness to the supremacy of the scriptures as the all -sufficient and sole norm for faith and practice in the

01:40:36

Christian life. So, what can be said historically, and then even theologically, about Baptists is that we took those gospel principles that were rediscovered during the 16th century by the

01:41:01

Protestant reformers like Calvin and Luther and Tyndale and so forth, and we just continued the

01:41:10

Reformation to its final end. We took, okay, if we really believe that the

01:41:16

Word of God is our sole rule for faith and practice, well, then let's just draw this out to its logical conclusion.

01:41:23

And historically, that's why Baptists, that we believe in a regenerate church membership, we believe in believer's baptism, we believe in a separation between church and state, which for men like Luther, they didn't see that.

01:41:45

They didn't believe that. They still saw and believed that the church and state were wed together.

01:41:50

In fact, for Luther, Luther even believed that it was the responsibility of the state to perform excommunication of church members.

01:42:00

So as Baptists, we took the principle of sola scriptura as one example and just took it to its logical conclusion.

01:42:11

It reminds me of a debate that John MacArthur and R .C.

01:42:17

Sproul had many, many years ago on the subject of baptism. You might have heard this. If I'm not mistaken, yeah, okay.

01:42:25

Well, you can actually still get a copy of this debate if you look in your ministries, if I'm not mistaken. But it was so funny,

01:42:34

John MacArthur knowing that he was facing an audience that was largely

01:42:40

Presbyterian, made the comment as his opening remarks that he was there to go ahead and finish the

01:42:47

Reformation that they started. Now I've heard,

01:42:57

I don't know if you can confirm this or not, I have heard that there was a time when both

01:43:05

Luther and Zwingli, during communication with Anabaptists, came very close to conceding the

01:43:15

Anabaptist understanding of believer baptism only or credo baptism, credo baptism, however you want to pronounce it.

01:43:22

Is that true? I have heard that as well.

01:43:29

What I heard, and this is something that I would have to go back and obviously check out, but what

01:43:37

I've heard, and I've heard this for years, is that Martin Luther actually saw, scripturally, believer's baptism, but he refused to go that far.

01:43:55

He feared it would create anarchy, didn't he? Because when you were baptized as an infant, you became automatically a citizen of that country.

01:44:03

Exactly, that's what he said. He said, we're not about a revolution, but a reformation.

01:44:12

That's what I've heard. I had to check that out, but I've heard that from several sources.

01:44:20

Great. Well, we also have Daniel in San Jose, California, who has a question.

01:44:28

After all your research to write this book, was there something that you found out about Luther that is relatively unknown today?

01:44:35

Also, for those who will celebrate this year's 500th anniversary of the Reformation, what are some negative aspects about Luther that we should be aware of?

01:44:45

Wow, good question. Well, as far as something that was unknown that I discovered in my research for this booklet,

01:44:56

I'd have to answer no. I did not find, I did not discover anything that had not been written about, touched on before.

01:45:09

As far as the next part of the question, what is it about Luther, either as a man or what he believed negatively that we could steer from,

01:45:29

I would say that more than anything, and this has been written about in a couple of places,

01:45:38

I'm thinking in particular of the publication that came out this year by Reformation Trust, The Legacy of Luther, it's called.

01:45:54

It has several contributing authors, and the introduction is written by John MacArthur, and John MacArthur focuses on an aspect of Luther's character, his personality, which was very bombastic, and that's well known.

01:46:16

In fact, Luther himself was very well aware of how bombastic he was and could be.

01:46:27

In fact, he confessed himself, Martin Luther said, I cannot deny that I am more vehement than I ought to be.

01:46:38

And in his later years, that vehemence unfortunately led him into writing some things and saying some things that we would wish today that he had not lived long enough to write those things.

01:46:57

I'm thinking in particular that the tract that he wrote against the Jews, which he has received a lot of criticism about and from by church historians.

01:47:13

But yeah, I would say if there's anything negative that we would say, we don't want to follow

01:47:18

Luther here, it would be in how harsh and how loose and free he could be with his tongue.

01:47:37

One thing about Martin Luther, as Michael Reeves said, he was shock therapy for the world.

01:47:48

So even in his day, even among his own generation,

01:47:53

I'm thinking of his closest friend, Philip Melanchthon, even Philip Melanchthon winced at how brash that Luther was.

01:48:05

And in fact, to quote again from Martin Luther, Luther said, I was born to go to war and give battle to sex and devils.

01:48:14

That is why my books are stormy and war -like. I have to root out the stumps and clumps, hack away the thorns and brambles.

01:48:23

And Philip Melanchthon, he of course agreed with Luther's own assessment of himself.

01:48:29

And in Melanchthon's funeral oration for Luther, he affirmed

01:48:35

Desiderius Erasmus' statement regarding Luther, that quote, because of the magnitude of the disorders,

01:48:43

God gave this age a violent position. Wow. Yeah.

01:48:50

And I think that very often that people when they hear about Luther's very horrible writings in regard to the

01:49:01

Jews later on in his life, they forget that people when writing polemically in regard to religion they very often may be mistaken in this modern age as being racists or something.

01:49:19

And I'm not saying that, I'm not saying Luther was free from racism either, but Luther, he wanted desperately and passionately wanted

01:49:30

Jews to convert to Christianity. The Nazis who in the 20th century used some of his rhetoric to bolster their anti -Semitism, they could care less if Jews converted to Christianity.

01:49:44

In fact, they tried to root out converts to Christianity who were ethnically

01:49:50

Jewish and have them executed. They didn't care if someone came to Christ at all, the

01:49:57

Nazis that is. They wanted to exterminate all people who were ethnically

01:50:03

Jewish, where that was not Luther's passion at all. In fact, wasn't his bitterness and anger fueled by the fact that his expectations were not met and fulfilled when he was expecting that the

01:50:20

Reformation would usher in masses of Jews to convert to Christianity? When that did not happen, he in bitterness began writing the way he did.

01:50:31

Well, he certainly was impassioned to see the

01:50:36

Jews in mass convert to Christ. The historical context behind the tract that he wrote against the

01:50:47

Jews had to do with news that had come to him that in the country of Moravia, Christians were being induced to Judaize.

01:50:59

So Luther, in response to that, came out as Roland Bainton writes in his classic definitive biography of Luther, Here I Stand.

01:51:11

Bainton said that Luther came out with a vulgar blast in which he recommended that all the

01:51:17

Jews be deported to Palestine. Failing that, they should be forbidden to practice usury, should be compelled to earn their living on the land, their synagogues should be burned, and their books, including the

01:51:28

Bible, should be taken away from them. And Bainton says one could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was written, yet, and this is a very important statement that Bainton makes, yet one must be clear as to what he was recommending and why his position was entirely religious and in no respect racial.

01:51:53

There you go. That's the key. That's what should be remembered because, you know, like you said, yes, the

01:52:00

Nazis were using some of these writings of Luther that he wrote against, you know, really against Judaism.

01:52:11

It wasn't against Jews as persons, Jews as ethnic Jews. Luther had no issues with that.

01:52:20

You know, his issue was with Judaism and Judaism's opposition to the gospel because, as I point out in this booklet

01:52:28

I wrote, everything Martin Luther was about, what he stood for from the time of his conversion till his death in 1546, it was all about fighting for the recovery of the gospel.

01:52:43

So you could all connect it back to that one great stand, you know, that, of course, publicly, literally, he did make on April the 18th, 1521 at the

01:52:57

Diet of Worms, and he just kept making that stand, you know, till his dying day.

01:53:03

And Rowland Bainton was not writing as a

01:53:09

Lutheran who had a reason other than the reason and purpose of truthfulness from a historian.

01:53:20

He was a liberal universalist of some kind, wasn't he? I mean, he was just writing purely to uphold the truth of history in regard to Martin Luther.

01:53:30

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, he was the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School, and he held that chair for 42 years, but he was regarded as an authority in Reformation history.

01:53:49

But yeah, I mean, he was just, you know, he was not writing as a

01:53:54

Lutheran. You know, he was writing as an academic historian. Right. But yeah, but he's giving the facts.

01:54:02

Yeah, I said Unitarian. It might have been Universalist, but I know that those denominations combined, so it could have been either one.

01:54:09

I don't remember specifically what Bainton was, but it was somewhere in that sphere of theology.

01:54:19

And of course, also in that time of Luther, in that day of Luther, members of all religions were writing polemically in that harsh way.

01:54:30

Even Jewish clerics were. In fact, you know, the Talmudic writings in regard to Jesus Christ, some of them are horrific the way that they spoke about Jesus Christ specifically.

01:54:42

So a lot of this was just the nature of religious polemics and had nothing to do with racism.

01:54:49

Yeah, that is correct. I mean, the 16th century, medieval Europe, I mean, it was a very violent time, religiously speaking.

01:55:00

And of course, you know, just, well, look at what happened, you know, once the

01:55:06

Protestant Reformation erupted, and how the Roman Catholic Church reacted, and how many

01:55:12

Protestant Christians would lose their lives for the faith. It was a very violent time.

01:55:20

Well, we're going to have you back to continue this topic. I don't have my calendar right in front of me.

01:55:26

Do you have the date that we are having you return to Irontown? Yeah, that's right. I'm coming back September the 25th.

01:55:33

September the 25th, and that will be for a full two hours. That's correct. Yeah. All right.

01:55:39

And so we will have, for those of you who have written in questions for Kurt today, we cannot get to them now because we need to conclude the program with his final thoughts.

01:55:50

But if you could remember to resend your question on that date when

01:55:57

Kurt returns. For the full two hours, and we will have much more time to address your questions.

01:56:02

But I want you to conclude the program with about three uninterrupted minutes of summary for our listeners regarding Luther's fight.

01:56:12

Yeah, well, you know, as I've said already, what's most important to remember in regards to Martin Luther is what he chiefly stood for, and that was the recovery of the

01:56:28

Gospel. And he fought for its recovery on several different fronts. But what it says, of course, to us today, which is one of my lessons at the very end, and that is that when the

01:56:45

Gospel is being sabotaged, we must fight for its recovery and renew its clarity. You know, that's what

01:56:52

Luther did, and that's where we, even as Baptists, can stand with our brother Martin Luther and fight for the same thing.

01:57:00

And so that's what I hope and pray that this little booklet will do to ignite and awaken that kind of zeal and passion in standing for the

01:57:09

Gospel. And wouldn't you agree, and I know that you would agree, that Luther did not invent any novel ideas in the 16th century that his

01:57:22

Reformation was based upon? The Reformation was a recovery and restoration of beliefs, not only contained within the

01:57:33

Scriptures, the inerrant Word of God, but also in the writings of the patristics, which is why during the debates of the

01:57:39

Reformation, the Reformers made use of the Church Fathers to dumbfound their

01:57:46

Roman Catholic opponents. Am I right? Yeah, absolutely, they did. In fact, well, when

01:57:51

Martin Luther himself discovered, by the grace of God, justification by faith alone, Luther wanted to query, has anybody else before me seen this, or am

01:58:02

I the only one? And so he went back into the

01:58:07

Church Fathers and looked, and of course that's where he was taken to Augustine, and saw in the writings of Augustine that, okay, well,

01:58:15

Saint Augustine saw this, and he saw it in the writings of others. So that was very important to Luther, because if it was new, it wasn't true.

01:58:25

And so Luther wanted to make sure that, you know, am I seeing the right thing? Have others seen this before me?

01:58:32

Praise God. And repeat one more time that date that you are returning to on Interpretation Radio.

01:58:39

You've got me scheduled for September the 25th, and we will take this subject back up again of Remembering Luther's Fight.

01:58:47

So if you could, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, mark your calendars for September 25th for our next interview on Remembering Luther's Fight by Kurt M.

01:58:59

Smith, our guest today, and send in your questions, and resend your questions if you submitted them today and we ran out of time and were unable to address them.

01:59:08

Well, I want you to know that you can get this booklet, Remembering Luther's Fight by Kurt M. Smith, by going to solid -ground -books .com,

01:59:17

solid -ground -books .com. You can also go to cvbbs .com, C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com.

01:59:26

And I want you to know that the Providence Reformed Baptist Church, where our guest pastors in Pine Mountain, Alabama, you can go to prbc1689 .org,

01:59:39

prbc1689 .org. Thank you so much, Kurt Smith. I look forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion on September 25th.

01:59:47

Thanks, Brother Chris. I look forward to it. And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

01:59:53

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.