Rochadd Hendrix Interview: Why Should Lay People Study Theology? (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Theology, the Triune God, and the Gap Between Creator and Creature

Welcome to No Compromise Radio. My name is Steve Cooley. Mike has foolishly left me in control, and so I�ve got the dials and the board and all that stuff, and I asked my good friend, Roshad Hendricks, to call me, and I�ve been grilling him steadily, trying to pick his brain, figure out what really motivates, I mean, think about it.

The quintessential church person, and hi, Roshad, by the way, the quintessential American Christian goes to church, you know, maybe on the way they stop off and pick up some coffee and they come in and they expect, you know, to be greeted warmly, they expect to have a nice seat, they expect to be seated in an air-conditioned place and listen to, you know, some fine music and hear a sermon, and then they get up and they go out in the parking lot and they leave and they come back next week and do the same thing.

And you don�t do that. You�re engaged, you know, on a daily basis learning about our triune God, learning really what some people might call esoteric bits of, you know, data, esoteric bits of theology.

But you seem to love it. Roshad Hendricks. Yeah, it�s just, you know, amazing, looking and reading about the great God of the universe. It seems as though the more you read, the more that you think you�re coming to know it, it�s almost as if he continues to get further from you, and it�s like, oh my goodness, do I even know you?

Pete. Let me interrupt for a second. Would you say that this is right? That, you know, while maybe some cults and maybe even some Christians like to bring God down to our level, what the Bible actually does is it creates that space and reminds us how incredible the gap is between the creation, us, and the Creator, right?

Roshad Hendricks. Yeah. Pete. And the more you learn, you know, the more you recognize. When Isaiah said, holy, holy, holy, you know, and I�m undone, he wasn�t kidding around, right? He understood.

Roshad Hendricks Yeah, but that�s what makes Christ so great.

Pete. Amen. Well, let me ask you, I got a few, several more questions for you. Um, when you, how does your study of theology, how does it impact how you listen to sermons on a weekly basis? Do you just, do you just find yourself like, picking at things, or what do you think?

How do you kind of filter, you know, sermons now?

Roshad Hendricks. Yeah, thank you for asking that. That is something that I�ve actually, you know, many times I don�t mind sharing it. You know, the thing that I have to guard against, personally, is to not do that.

Not to listen to every sermon, whether it be from my pastor or anybody that I�m listening to on the internet. You know, I just look to nitpick everything. Now, there�s a difference between nitpicking and, you know, as people would say, being a Berean, you know, versus, again, just looking to find something that you can, you know, he�s wrong there because of something else.

So, that�s something that I need to be very careful of as I continue on, you know, being able to listen to sermons, as long as God gives me my hearing, you know, versus, you know, listening and just hearing something just outright, completely outlandish.

Pete Right. You know, it�s actually four persons in the Trinity, you know, okay, now we can get outraged. Yes, let�s all get outraged on that part, but, you know, if someone, look, far be it for me to look down on somebody, you can see as much as some of us may know about archaism.

I�ve said to anybody that I�ve spoken to, you know, I want to deal gracefully on these matters, especially because of the substance. That�s something that I do have to guard against, you know, especially, you know, your ears perk up when you hear someone say God is like something.

You know, and our ears should be open to not just explicit purpose of finding something to nitpick about. Pete Right.

Yeah, you don�t want to be raising your hand and go, well, actually, you know, that�s, that�s not what so-and-so said, or that�s not what, yeah. No, and So, I guess, would you agree with this statement, then, that it�s a matter of theology�s great and good and helpful and, you know, it really helps us inform our thinking.

When I�m listening to the Word, if I hear something wrong, okay, fine. But otherwise, I need to just let the Spirit and the Word work on me, right? That�s why I�m there. Would you agree with that?

Pete Yeah, gonna continue to refine that man, and he�s gonna continue to grow that man, and then that�ll trickle down to how you treat one.

Another. And so Pete. That�s right.

Pete That�s right. Pete I know God is infinite. He is just full of wisdom. Post my brother, let me post my sister, and with that at the forefront of my mind in the right way.

Pete I was, before you called, I was just looking through Mike�s, he has an open ESV study Bible here, and I was just kind of flipping through it and looking at the pastoral epistles and just the importance that 1 Timothy places on the gospel, you know, and the different places where it talks about the gospel or sound doctrine or refuting false teachers, you know, and all these things.

And I thought, well, how do you do those things if you don�t understand sound doctrine, if you don�t study sound doctrine? And so, again, I just thought, as I was thinking about you, I just go, it�s such an encouragement, you know, to meet somebody who hasn�t yet been to seminary, hasn�t yet been called to the ministry, and you know, and is such a fervent studier of these things.

The Trinity, Christology, and the Wonder of Christ's Two Natures

So, I want to give you another easy one. You know, as you�ve been studying over the last, studying more deeply over the last, let�s say, six, seven years, what would you say was the most, you know, surprising thing that you�ve learned, you know, just when you read it or you understood it for the first time, you just thought, you know, mind-blown.

I can�t believe that. I mean, I believe it, but I can�t believe it.

Yeah, I mean, mind-blowing and up of the tone, you know. And so, you�re studying the Trinity, and of course, by you studying theology proper, that�s going to go into Christology. I mean, there�s no way that you can get around, you know, if you�re studying theology proper.

And in that Christology, I think, it�s been, and this is, of course, no knock against just the amazement that the Trinity is. I mean, it�s all mind-blowing anyway. But just looking at the person of Christ, I mean, really considering, he says in the New Testament, to consider him, you see these dual accounts of Christ from the gospel.

And on one hand, you see him sleeping and tired and hungry and astonished and amazed at things. The second person of the Trinity that it�s talking about. Well, how is he eating? Why is he eating? How is he thirsty?

How is he amazed? How could he grow in wisdom, stature, and knowledge? You know, then on the other hand, you see him, you know, reading someone�s thoughts who were not even there, you know, and knowing what�s in a man�s heart, you know, and healing people in sight of the blind, forgiving sin.

Well, wait a minute, wasn�t he just sleeping? You know, wasn�t he just eating? You know, so just looking at the person of Christ, mind-blowing. The Scriptures declare it so it�s true. You know, no matter how much I study, I�m distilled at a loss at how amazing one person, two natures, each nature does what�s appropriate to itself.

And you can rightly say that that was the Son of God. The Son of God slept. The Son of God died. You know, the Son of God had to grow in wisdom and knowledge and understanding. How? You know, so to your question, I think Christology, to me, brother, and like I said, the Trinity, I mean, it�s all up there.

But man, just Christology, you know, just reading about Christ in the New Testament, I�m flabbergasted and amazed at how those things can be true of the same person.

15 It is. It is amazing. Let me kind of shift gears a little bit and ask you to, you know, let�s go back into the pew for a moment. What would you say to a pastor to kind of get pastors to encourage their congregants, and maybe especially men, because I mean, sometimes I just, well, I�ll just say, I mean, I know it�s true of me.

I think it�s true of many men. You know, we�re a little bit lazy. And so, I think it�s a little harder sometimes to motivate the guys to learn this stuff. But what would you say to your pastor? How would you just kind of, and I don�t mean your pastor, but a pastor in particular, to just kind of say, you know, I guess what I�m asking is, how would you encourage them to sort of light a fire under their people?

What can they do to sort of encourage that?

The Pastor as Theologian and the Problem of Outsourcing Theology

16 I thought about, I think with, and again, with no specific reference to any pastor, I think a lot of pastors in our American context will kind of view the doctrines and the things that we�re talking about as academic.

There�s a really good book that I read, The Pastor Theologian by Highstanding Wills. Really good book, and it talks historically about how the pastor was a theologian. The pastor was in the academy. The pastor was the one teaching his school.

So anyway, I think what has happened to us here in America over the, a lot of pastors have started outsourcing theological things to the academy or seminaries, however you want to. Hey, so this man is called to be a pastor, this man is called to be an elder, you know, this man is called to be whatever, a preacher, a teacher.

Listen to the academy. That�s where you go and learn the theological things. And then as far as in the church and the pulpit, we�ll just kind of keep everything at not such a deep theological level. And so now I�m going to start, you know, making apologies for saying certain things in the pulpit because I don�t want to make congregants think I�m trying to get too deep on them.

I�m going to try to keep things at a certain level. Because the deep belongs to the academy. But it wasn�t always like that.

So, I�m just going to kind of dumb it down from the pulpit, right?

Yeah, yeah. And it wasn�t always like that. So, with the Stone Campbell movement, you know, the No Creed but Christ movement, that whole thing just kind of really just fit off a negative chain of events for us here these days.

But I won�t go there too much, unless you want to. But yeah, I think a lot of pastors are just content to level things and understand it. You know, it made me think about, and I was thinking about this earlier before I called you, more than you.

You should be teachers by now. Like, what�s going on with you guys? Here I am again explaining the same thing to you. And it wasn�t a condemnation of them, but they�ve been doing more, learning more, understanding more, understanding the scriptures more.

They should have been going, quote unquote, deeper.

And that�s so good. I mean, well, I mean, just think about today with the resources and everything we have, especially in the United States. We have more resources. I mean, Martin Luther, Calvin, any of those guys, any of the Reformers would have killed to have, I mean, not really killed, but you know what I mean.

They would have loved to have had, I�ll put it Christianly, they would have loved to have had the resources that we have. I mean, and we can bring them up, we�ve got more online for free than they would have, you know, they couldn�t have afforded all the books that we can, you know, access online.

Pete Yeah, God has given us teachers. Pete Yeah, but now we just act like, you know, theology isn�t even a thing. And you know what, I will let you go off on a little tangent here because we, you know, we talked a little bit about this too, but the whole idea of, you know, the Campbellites, the no creed but Christ, you know, this idea basically, wouldn�t you say that it just involves reinventing the theological wheel?

In other words, it doesn�t matter what came before us. That stuff is, it�s just all dead letters. We got to, you know, we got to do our own thing now.

The Good Brothers made very strong regard for history, and that�s what the Campbellites were. They were saying that they were trying to get closer to the apostolic church for the beginning, but they moved further and further away from it.

So, their cry was the no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no law but love, all Bible things by Bible name. And like, I don�t know, maybe Mike stated, it may have been his brother stated on the Pactum, well, you know, every heritage has their favorite Bible.

Do you really want to detach yourself from our rich theological heritage? It talks about how God has gifted teachers, and it wasn�t just limited to that current generation.

Passing the Baton to the Next Generation

Petey. That�s right. Yeah. I mean, the first The verse that comes in mind, you know, as I think about this, I just think 2 Timothy 2 verse 2, �And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

So, there�s this picture to me and exactly what we�re talking about, you know, of previous generations, when they wrote these things down, when they spoke these things and they were recorded, they were essentially holding out the baton to us, right?

And we take the baton and then we hand it on to the next generation, right? If anybody completely dropped the baton, of course, that can�t happen, you know, then Christianity would cease. But this idea of kind of restarting the race or, you know, reinventing the wheel over and over and over again, well, what does that lead to?

That�s going to lead to revisiting old heresies over and over and over again. Our brothers in the past have already fought these fights, right? We need to stand on their shoulders. We need to essentially, as I was saying, take that baton, be faithful to what they�ve given us, and avoid the errors that others committed.

Well, we got about five minutes left here, so I want to get another question or two, but what would you, well, let me, I�ll ask this one. This is easy. What are, who are some of the dead theologians that you like the most?

9.

But it�s not, I�ll just give you maybe three. Pete. Okay. The Dutch Reform guys, all those guys in there, then Bobbick, of course, you know, everybody loves Bobbick. And then I love the Scholastic guys too, like Van Maastricht, Puritan, as I mentioned before.

And then, of course, the Puritans. You just throw all of them in a bag. I count them as one. You can put the Watsons, and the Flavals, and the Charnocks, and the Owens, put them all in a bag. I count that as one.

And then the Cappadocians. I really like the Cappadocians as well. But yeah, kind of got guys in there from a lot of different generations by design.

Pete Sounds like you need to be writing books. That�s what I think. 9 All right. Okay. I�m continuing to read it. Pete. Okay. Well, let�s take a slightly different bend on that. If you could encourage people to read the works of any theologian, living or dead, who would it be?

If you were to just say, brother, read this guy. Read this guy.

Because of what we�re talking about, because of what our main subject of discussion has been about God and nature and who he is. Charnocks attributes. You can get that, whether it�s the condensed one or the two raw, read Charnock.

Now, Charnock is tough in there, reading. Maybe not as tough as an unabridged Owen, but it gets. And you don�t need to be in a race to try to get it done just to say you got it done. But his knowledge and insight is tremendous as far as attributes of God.

I would say Charnock if you press me against the wall.

The Hypostatic Union and the Mystery of Christology

Okay. I�m pressing you. Okay, Roshad. On no compromise radio, let me ask you this. What, another easy one for you, what doctrine do you think is most often misunderstood by Christians? If you had to pick one and just say, I think this is the one.

Well, that�s kind of a layup.

Right, right. But now, what aspect of Christology would you say?

Well, you know, what I�ve been coming to learn is kind of this really sharp distinction between the natures of Christ. Now, the natures aren�t united. I mean, excuse me, I�m sorry to express that. The natures are united in the person of Christ, but it�s not such a sharp distinction to where you would actually have two persons.

And that was the problem with the story. They had such a sharp division between the natures. It was Christ, the man doing this, and this was Christ the God doing this. Christ God doing this. So just that aspect of Christology, I think is what I�ve at least been noticing for the last couple of years, which is, that may be, I don�t know, too...

No, I get it. And you know, we only have a few seconds left, but I, you know, it sounds to me, and you can just say yes or no, it sounds to me like what you�re saying is Christians often are trying to reduce this mystery of Christ into an easy, crunchable thing to understand, and it�s not that easy.

Yeah. I mean... It takes work. Yeah, it takes a lot of work. Well, thank you so much, Rashad, for being on No Compromise Radio today. I�ve really appreciated it. I look forward to the issue. Me too.