June 27, 2018 Show with Dr. Owen Strachan on “The Essential Jonathan Edwards”

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 27th day of June 2018.

I'm so delighted to have on the program for the very first time ever, Dr. Owen Stran. He is

Associate Professor of Christian Theology, Director of the Center for Public Theology, and Director of the

Residency PhD Program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Today we are going to be addressing his book,

The Essential Jonathan Edwards, and we're also going to be announcing the upcoming 2019

G3 conference where Iron Sharpens Iron Radio will have an exhibitor's booth for the third time in a row.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Owen Stran. Thank you so much,

Chris. It's great to be with you. I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away in the event that they have a question that they would like to ask you on The Essential Jonathan Edwards, which is our topic today.

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

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

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

First of all, before we go into your personal testimony of salvation, which is something that we always do on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, or we try to remember to do when we have a very first time guest on the program,

I'd like to know something more about Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary before we have you do that.

Yeah, Midwestern is in Kansas City, Missouri, and it's been in existence for about 60 years as a

Southern Baptist Seminary, one of the six. For a long time it's been basically the smallest of the six

Southern Baptist Seminaries, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where I did my MDiv being the largest.

But Midwestern in the last five years has seen a major turnaround happen under our President Jason Allen, and so we're brimming with hope, and we got students pouring in from all over America and the world.

Most importantly, we have a humble, God -loving campus, and so, man,

I never imagined that I would be in Kansas City, Missouri, coming from small -town, coastal

Maine, Chris, but here I am, making it go, teaching systematic theology at the

MDiv and PhD level, and just loving every minute of it. Oh, praise God. And of course, if anybody wants to get more information, and we'll be repeating this information later, but the website for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is mbts .edu,

that's M for Midwestern, B for Baptist, T for Theological, S for Seminary .edu,

and as I said, we'll be repeating that later on, God willing, during the broadcast. Well, now

I would like to hear something about your upbringing as a child, what religion you were raised in, if any, and what providential circumstances did our

Sovereign Lord bring about in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you? Yeah, I love that question,

Chris, thank you for it. I was raised actually in a Bible -loving,

Christ -exalting home in small -town Maine, Machias, Maine to be specific, it's about an hour away from Bar Harbor, which a lot of folks will know in Maine, and so even though I was in this very small little

Baptist church on the coast of Maine, I was hearing the Gospel from a young age,

I knew I was a sinner, I knew I was in danger of hell because of my sin, that I would surely go there based on what

I deserved for my sin. I went to a child evangelism fellowship summer camp for many years growing up and met some

Christian peers there, that was a great blessing to me, and again, I think the Lord was further working through those means.

The Lord often doesn't use just one means in our salvation, though He surely does for some people, but for many of us,

He uses a multiplicity of influences, and that was true for me. I had godly parents,

I had a godly church, I had a few godly friends, and I had this godly summer camp as an influence, and so when

I was, I don't know, eight, nine, or ten, I realized that I needed to close with Christ. In truth, as I later learned,

God was drawing me to Himself, convicting me of my sin, and especially giving me a sense of the loveliness of Jesus Christ, what

He did to wash my sins away through His death on the cross and His resurrection from the tomb.

And so at an early age, I trusted in Christ and never had any kind of Hollywood testimony, really, in that sort of sense, but have been, you know, more or less walking with the

Lord now for, I don't know, almost three decades, and within a very secular context in Maine.

Maine is really post -Christian, just about 1 .6 percent of people in New England, more broadly, even profess to be a

Christian, let alone are a Christian, and so I had very few peers who knew the Lord. It was a tough environment, honestly, to be raised in as a believer.

It was excellent training for me, seeing where America now is in 2018 in terms of encroaching secularization of the culture.

So it was really good training for me, even though it was kind of lonely at times, and then I went to a really secular private college, liberal arts college in Maine called

Bowdoin College, very tough academically, and again was one of just a handful of Christians there, but was involved with a vibrant on -campus group, and so the

Lord has done a lot in His grace to grow me despite being in very tough environments, and that's a major part of my testimony and my story.

Well, praise God. What were the circumstances in your life that led you to know that God was calling you to be a seminary professor?

I had absolutely no idea, really, that you even could be a seminary professor.

I mean, honestly, Chris, you're in the Northeast, I think we have some overlap, you know, here,

I don't know what your experience is, but I mean, man, I didn't even know seminary existed growing up. When my pastor in college at Berean Baptist in Brunswick, Maine, when

I learned that he had something called a Master of Divinity from Westminster Seminary, he was a

Baptist, but he had gone to Westminster, I was blown away. I thought, man, that must be insane to get enough training so that somebody called you a

Master of Divinity. So I ended up embarking on my own course of study.

I did an internship with Mark Dever at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and then from there in 2004 went to Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, interned and worked for Dr.

Al Mohler in his office, and so even at that point, though, Chris, I was still thinking

I was going to be a pastor -theologian, that's what I had trained to be, that's what Dever encouraged me to be, that's what I wanted to be, but in his mysterious providence and the way that God does this, he simply did not open those doors in those years.

In 2010, I got a call to be a professor of theology and church history at Boyce College, the undergraduate school of Southern, and also to teach at Southern as well, and so I just sensed that God was leading my family there.

My wife and I had a young child I needed to provide for my family as a man, a godly man, and so that's what we did, and I've been doing it ever since, but truthfully, brother, a lot of my students, you know, at Midwestern and at Southern before it were kind of, you know, really wanting to be a professor.

I can honestly say I'm a bit of a reluctant professor. I love doing it,

I just didn't even know this job existed. I was trained to zero in on the local church, and so now

I'm a professor who seeks really to try to build up and bless the local church as much as I can with my humble little ministry.

Amen. Well, I hope if you still have family, friends, and loved ones in Maine that you let them know about an event that I am promoting featuring some very dear friends of mine, the

Fellowship Conference New England that's being held August 2nd through the 4th at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, and that is featuring speakers including

Pastor Tim Conway of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas, Pastor Mac Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, Pastor Jesse Barrington of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, and Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmonton Ironworks, New Hampshire.

They're all speaking there, and so I hope that you spread the word up there to your folks and to your family and friends and loved ones about the

Fellowship Conference New England. In fact, the website for those of you listening, and we'll hopefully be repeating this later, is fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, and maybe one day you'll be speaking there as well.

I know that you are speaking at the January event that I will be,

God willing, in attendance there manning an

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth. This will be my third year in a row, and I thank God for Pastor Josh Bice who has invited me every year to represent

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio there, and I know that they're expecting 4 ,000 people or more there this year.

Tell us about how you got involved with the G3 conference at the

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, and if you have any idea what you'll be speaking on specifically.

I know that the overall umbrella theme is on missions, but if you could tell us about how you got involved in that and what you'll be speaking on.

Well, first of all, Chris, the Fellowship Conference that you just mentioned sounds terrific. I know those names you mentioned, and especially know

Nate and think he's the cat's pajamas to use a theological term. Well, I've had

Nate on many times. In fact, Nate is on tomorrow. Nate is my guest for the last 90 minutes of the show.

For the first half hour, we have Dr. Stephen Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College in the

Orlando area of Sanford, Florida, the college that was founded by R .C.

Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and then following Dr. Nichols, Nate Pickowitz is on for the remaining 90 minutes, so I will definitely extend your regards to him.

Yeah, well, this is very nearly eschatological because it will only get better from here. Yes, you're a post -millennialist.

I am today. So yeah, that Fellowship Conference sounds terrific, and I will pass word on.

In terms of G3, the mighty G3 conference, man, I am so excited to be speaking at it.

My father -in -law, Bruce Ware, has spoken there a few times, and so it's such an honor to be invited by Josh Bice, another outstanding pastor, theologian, and friend of mine.

I actually think I heard about G3 first through Dr. Ware because he was a plenary speaker there and thought it sounded really outstanding.

I mean, that's my thing, you know, lots and lots of people savoring, you know, the doctrines of grace and the

Word of God, sound doctrine together. So Josh and I have known each other for some time through here at Southern Seminary, and Josh reached out to me not long ago and asked if I would be interested in coming, especially in speaking on the theme of missions, and a theme has been brewing in my heart for some time, the need to unapologetically call hearers to Christ.

In other words, there's a lot of focus today in terms of missions engagement on building bridges and being friends with people and gaining an audience and these kind of terms, and if I'm evangelizing someone or if I'm on a missions team or something like this,

I'm going to, of course, try to do those things. It's a World Cup season. Right now, you better believe if I'm in a soccer -playing country, you know,

I'll get out there on a dusty soccer field or some nice grass or whatever it may be, and I'll play some soccer. In other words,

I'll try to be friendly and a nice witness for Christ as best

I can be. But here's the deal. There's no mission if there is no unapologetic throwing down of exclusivity in Christ.

In other words, it's the announcement that there is salvation in one name and one name only, and so I think we could stand to return to the

Book of Acts and maybe a few other places. We'll go in my own address and probe that theme together.

Yes, we should be gracious. Yes, we should exhibit the fruits of the Spirit in any conversation with any person we're talking with.

But missions is premised upon the bold declaration of salvation in the name of Christ alone, so we can't lose that element, that absolutely vital element of missions.

I fear that we're losing track of that a little bit. A lot of discussion of contextualization and other themes, some things that we need to discuss and think about and even do, but the core of missions work is simply announcing

Christ. Well, you know, since you mentioned soccer, I'll drop another name for you who's a friend of mine.

If you don't know him already, you should get to know him. Jeremy Volo. You know Jeremy? I know the name.

I've seen that name. Jeremy Volo is currently the pastor of Grace Community Church in Laredo, Texas, and he is a former pro soccer player for both the

San Antonio Scorpions and the New York Red Bulls. Wow, okay, that's pretty cool.

And he's been on the show a number of times. In fact, he is on the speaking roster with you again.

Not that you were there the last time. I should say that he's on the speaking roster again at G3 Conference.

This is his second year in a row, and so this time will be the first time that you're together on the speaking roster at G3.

Sure. And I had the opportunity to interview him and his wife, Ginger Duggar.

She's one of the Duggar girls, one of the 19 siblings in the

Duggar family, and he is a believer and lover of the doctrines of sovereign grace, and he is a

Baptist, and his dad, Chuck Volo, is a dear friend who is an evangelist of the

Amish and has been used by God to lead a number of Amish folk to the true gospel of Christ.

But anyway, I digress. I just thought that you needed to know Jeremy Volo, not only because of your love for soccer, but also because you're going to be speaking together at the

G3 Conference. Well, I love that, and I hope to sideline him at least for a few minutes at the conference and talk to him.

I am something of a collector of famous soccer -playing friends.

One of my closest friends is Gavin Peacock, who you may know. He'd be a terrific guest on this program.

He formerly captained Chelsea, scored against Beckham and Man U, won the game with his goal

Gavin Peacock did, and he's now a pastor in Canada and a great, great friend and champion of God's Word.

I have actually interviewed Gavin Peacock. Love it.

Yes, he has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I look forward to having him back on the program.

It's been quite a while since Gavin has been on the show, but hopefully we'll have him back in the near future.

Well, he has a much cooler voice than I do. He has that going for him, that English brogue, you know.

Yeah. Do they call it a brogue when somebody's from England? Well, I may be fudging.

British. Can I say British? I don't know. He's actually got some poshness in his voice, too, if I'm being honest, so yeah.

Yeah, but it's funny. Even the people in England who are cockney and are not known for being the most sophisticated of the elite over there, they even sound some way superior to us here in the

United States for some reason. Yeah. But anyway, how did you become so intrigued and enthusiastic and fascinated by the life, legacy, and teaching of Jonathan Edwards that you said, you know, even though there's probably 500 books at least written about Jonathan Edwards, and there's a lot of things in print by Jonathan Edwards, I'm going to add another one because I think there's something missing in the others that I want to address.

What was the driving force behind Jonathan Edwards that led you to write about him?

And also, how did you first become familiar with him and his writings and his history and so on?

Yes, we can amend the famous saying of the writing of books about Jonathan Edwards, there is truly no end.

It really is accurate. There's a bibliography produced by a guy named

M .F. Lesser on Edwards, an academic bibliography, and it's like 700 pages long.

In other words, what I'm saying is there is a book about books on Jonathan Edwards that is itself a massive tome.

I mean, to illustrate your point, there is no shortage of reflection on Edwards, but in all seriousness,

I grew up in New England. I did not know very much about Edwards growing up, because he's not much discussed there or elsewhere in America today.

I did read his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in 11th grade English, like so many public school kids do.

Really? Really? I never was taught anything about Edwards in my public high school.

Yeah, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God has endured, at least in some circles, as this work of the wacky, fire -breathing

Puritans and how they used to talk about God, and this is how people used to think about their standing before a

Holy Lord and these sorts of things. It's kind of held up as a curious artifact of history. I'm sure in days to come,

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God will be excised from most remaining anthologies. Yeah, if they excised

Little House on the Prairie recently, it's amazing that Sinners in the

Hands of an Angry God would be found anywhere in a secular institution for learning.

Yeah, exactly. Literature is increasingly going to be taking a mirror, burning your books, and looking at the mirror for a couple hours, but I digress.

Anyway, I encountered Edwards there, but it wasn't until college when

I had some friends who had gotten Reformed out of their Baptist backgrounds, and they started reading

Edwards. One of my buddies at Bowdoin, a brilliant guy, now a professor at Duke, he read Freedom of the

Will one summer because he was challenged to by a friend who was trying to draw him out of Arminian convictions, and so he read

Freedom of the Will and it turned him upside down. So a bunch of us in my school, a bunch of my friends at Bowdoin, we started reading

Edwards, a little splinter cell of Edwards' devotees at a very secular

New England college, and I started to get a taste for this material. I never read anything like it, because if you actually start reading

Edwards' sermons, you realize that they are something akin to Ph .D.

level seminar disquisitions on his themes. In other words, he is such a brilliant man, and he pours so deeply into biblical texts, and the

God he preaches is so irresistibly large and grand and loving and awesome and holy.

Again, Chris, I've never read anything like this. Like, I didn't know God was allowed to be this great and grand and majestic, and so it gripped me, and I started reading more and more of Edwards.

I remember I was an intern at the U .S. Department of State in 2004, right after I interned at Capitol Hill Baptist Church under Deborah, and on my lunch break,

I had this job that a lot of young people in D .C. would kill for. I was an interning on the 7th floor of State for the

White House. But honestly, my passion was Edwards. In other words, the point of the day

I was most looking forward to was my lunch break, because I had printed out The Excellency of Christ, and I was reading like a page of it.

I was going line by line marking it up, and it was absolutely Copernican for my spiritual wife to see just how glorious Jesus Christ was.

So I could go on and on, as you can clearly tell here, but that's where I really got a passion for Edwards, and when

I got to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where I did my PhD in 2008, Doug Sweeney, who's an

Edwards scholar, was then and is now, was my supervisor. I got to know

Doug. He got to read some of my papers. I took his class on Edwards. He liked what he read, apparently, in my paper

I wrote for him. Moody Publishers, Moody Press, approached Doug about a one -volume biography of Edwards.

This is in 2008. Doug said, I can't do it myself, but I could do it with a co -author. So we bought into the project, and then we went to the meeting to sign the contract with Moody in Chicago, Chicagoland, north of the city, and they actually had changed the project to be five volumes on Jonathan Edwards.

So I'm really condensing here, but long story short, in 2009, Doug and I wrote five 30 ,000 -word books, 150 ,000 words total, on different themes of Edwards.

The books have sold pretty well over the years, to the point that this past year,

Moody approached us again and asked us not for five volumes. That was a relief, but asked us to see if we wanted to edit those five volumes called

The Essential Edwards Collection and release a new book entitled The Essential Jonathan Edwards.

How was that for a long -winded answer? Well, it was as detailed as they wanted it to be, and one thing that I have to ask you,

I'm assuming, and I might be wrong, I'm assuming Moody Publishers chose the title because, forgive me for saying this, it sounds a bit arrogant to write a book and call it

The Essential Jonathan Edwards. Yes, it's so fun when you're, like, reviewing a book, because you can always critique an author for the title, and, you know, like the jacket copy on a book or something.

I had a guy come after me a few years ago for another book I wrote, Awakening the

Evangelical Mind on Herald. John Ocken gave it to a famous pastor at Boston's Park Street Church, and he said, look, look at what this jacket copy says.

It says it's the first book to have essential material on Billy Graham, but it's so insane and so silly, and, you know,

I just had to kind of take it in truth because, frankly, the author, yes, Chris, you're right.

You more or less, you know, have your publisher dictate both title and jacket copies, promos, so your arrows, your fiery arrows may land, but they do not land with me.

I didn't mean anything harsh by it. I just thought it was kind of funny. It is funny.

In fact, I couldn't help but chuckle. In fact, I always chuckle whenever I see a booklet that was written by Al Martin, the very famous Reformed Baptist, now -retired pastor.

The publisher, I don't think that they really thought thoroughly about how they laid out the cover.

The cover says, Albert N. Martin, a bad record and a bad heart.

Oh, that's good. That's good.

But anyway, we're going to our first station break right now, and if anybody wants to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

That's c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Owen Strand and more on the essential

Jonathan Edwards. Copy of R .C.

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Solid Rock Remodeling, bringing new life to your home. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

.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.

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

Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Owen Strand, who is

Associate Professor of Christian Theology, Director of the Center for Public Theology, and Director of the

Residency PhD Program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Today we are addressing the essential

Jonathan Edwards, and we're also announcing the 2019 G3 conference that we hope that you will attend.

Dr. Strand is on the very long roster of speakers there, and I will have an exhibitor's booth there for the third year in a row, and I do hope that you come from wherever you live, anywhere in the world.

You have plenty of advance notice, so if you do attend, please visit me at the Iron Sherpins Iron Exhibitor's booth.

Make your way through the crowd of over 4 ,000 people and say hello to me. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

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

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And I just had something to say.

I know that some of my listeners have heard me repeat this before, and they might be rolling their eyes when I repeat stories, but it's such a fascinating story, in my opinion anyway, that I have to repeat it.

My dear friend Pastor Ed Moore of the North Shore Baptist Church in Bayside, Queens, he was born and raised in an

Armenian home, and he discovered and embraced the doctrines of sovereign grace when he was in a secular college, and his unbelieving non -Christian college professor started to teach about Jonathan Edwards and the history of Edwards and his legacy because of the fact that he is obviously such a central figure in American history, especially

New England, and when this unsaved, unregenerate man described what

Edwards believed, the Lord used that description in Ed Moore's heart to lead him to embrace and fall in love with Reform Theology.

Well, I thought that you'd be interested in that, but maybe you fell asleep. Are you there? Oh, I'm here.

Well, anyway, I just thought I'd mention that. Before we go to any of our - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I'm sorry. I thought the story was going to continue. I was looking forward to when he said that he entered ministry because of Edwards, because, you know, that's really the

Edwards trifecta. I'm joking. I know Ed Moore in all seriousness.

Yes, I had his son Charlie at Boyce College when I was a professor there for several classes.

Charlie was a great student, had a great spirit. I've known Charlie since he was an infant. I've known

Charlie since - Yeah, well, he was a real testament to the strength of that ministry there in Queens, and now one of my students

I mentored at Southern, a guy named Alex Duke, is linked up with that ministry as well.

So I'm very thankful for that strong doctrinal ministry there in Queens, and it's really neat.

I actually didn't know of the Edwards link there, so praise God for that. And, you know, the thing that amazes me about Ed Moore is that he had two sons that he named

Charlie and Parker, and he had never heard of this great saxophonist

Charlie Parker. He never heard of Charlie Byrd Parker before, and yet he named two of his sons Charlie and Parker.

If I'm not mistaken, I think Charlie Parker has some kind of Kansas City connection. I can't confirm that, but Kansas City, just so you know, is kind of a jazz city.

So anyway, that's pretty hilarious about Charlie Parker. My son,

I have three children, girl, boy, girl, nine, seven, and four. And so the son is the middle child.

And just so you know, Chris, I'll put this on record, public record. I try to be very careful what I share about my children in public.

But his middle name is Edwards, just so you know. Well, that's great.

I love that. Well, I am going to go to a couple of our listener questions before we continue with anything that you have further to say about the topic today.

We have Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, if you had to define

Jonathan Edwards' legacy in one or two sentences, what would it be? One or two sentences, that's cruel.

No, that's a great question. I would define his legacy as, and this is very carefully phrased, because it's not going to be what some would say.

Define Edwards as a pastor -theologian who faithfully preached the whole counsel of God and oversaw, really, the first Great Awakening in the

American colonies, such that the spiritual fiber of America was very much influenced in that period.

That's the first sentence. That was all one sentence. Second sentence, Edwards is really the greatest theologian of the

American tradition, with a particular emphasis on the glorification of God in all things, and is, in my view, one of the top five theologians in church history, and I think is the greatest theologian in church history, with apologies to Augustine.

Well, thank you very much, Gordy, and because of the fact that you submitted a question today, you have won a free copy of The Essential Jonathan Edwards, compliments of Moody Publishers, and compliments of our friends at CVBBS .com

and its Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. They will have those books, God willing, by the end of the week.

I just wanted to let you know that they have not received them yet from Moody, because Moody only sent them yesterday,

I think. So just keep patient and keep calling CVBBS .com,

because I know that you live close by to CVBBS .com on North Hanover Street in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, so rather than trouble them with a mailing fee, why don't you just stop by there, perhaps even by next week, and it should be there by then, waiting for you.

We have someone who, I don't usually give the full names of my listeners out when they send in questions, but when they're a pastor, especially if I know that they happen to be a pastor of a sound church that I'd like to give a shout out to,

I do mention them typically by their full name, and I'm speaking specifically of Jeffrey Waddington, the pastor of Knox Presbyterian Church in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, which is an

OPC church, or should I say an OP church? OPC church is kind of a redundancy.

Church church. Yeah, right. And he also has written on Jonathan Edwards himself.

He, in fact, contributed to the Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia that is available.

And he has two questions, and when I first saw the first question, he said, did

Edwards fudge on justification? When he said that, I thought he was asking a question about Edward Fudge, who was the author of The God Who Consumes, or The Father Who Consumes, but did

Edwards, meaning Jonathan Edwards, fudge on justification? That's his first question, if you wouldn't mind answering that. Well, Jeffrey Waddington is known to me.

He's a very sharp guy, talked about the pastor -theologian theme with him on the air before, and appreciate his ministry.

I would say that with a thinker and a writer like Jonathan Edwards, he produced so much that there are going to be some trails in his thoughts that go some interesting places, and that's true on the

Doctrine of Justification. There's a whole volume that Doug Sweeney recently edited about Edwards and justification, and so we can consult that.

I would encourage that to listeners as a source. I would also say that Edwards does have a stronger understanding of the role works play in the justification than some would formulate.

You mean as fruits of justification, as evidence? Absolutely, absolutely.

So a lot of, and this is actually kind of a point that I think Edwards brings out that is lost in a lot of our circles today, namely that our good works, which are only produced, hear me very clearly, only produced by divine grace, by the aid of the

Spirit, actually do matter at the end of all things when we are either sent to everlasting damnation or summoned to everlasting life with God.

So Edwards has a strong place for the Christian in an ongoing way, living in such a way that pleases

God, that produces fruit before the Lord. All of that is ultimately produced by divine grace, by the

Spirit's power, but Edwards believes those works, those godly works, spirit -wrought works, you could even say, are going to acquit us on the last day.

I think you can trace that out biblically. I think it's a faithful theme that Edwards expounds in Scripture, but some have read

Edwards as if he is a Roman Catholic on the doctrine of justification. I don't think that's fair.

There are some confusing passages in his material, so I'll concede that, but I don't think Edwards in any way held to a

Roman Catholic understanding of justification such that we produce works in and of ourselves that acquit us in the courtroom of God at the end of all things.

Now you're telling me something that I have never heard before. Can you cite any,

I'm assuming you mean Protestant scholars, or at least Protestant figures, authors, and so on, and also are these typically those outside of the

Reformed camp, or are they well within the Reformed camp? There's a debate among scholars, honestly across denominations, over what exactly

Edwards's understanding of justification is. Some, like my friend

Michael McClenaghan, a Presbyterian pastor, have written extensively on Edwards and justification, and have,

I think, rightly understood that works acquit us on the last day, but only because saving faith produces works, if you understand that.

So we're saved by faith alone, but the faith alone that saves is never alone. It's always accompanied by works.

There are volumes around this theme that you can investigate.

The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards includes material along these lines, debate along these lines. This is the

Yale volume on Edwards. So those are places you can go. But yes, different scholars across the spectrum have tried to claim

Edwards for their own view. Catholic scholars would love to have

Edwards on this point, but I don't think that that's an accurate assessment. Now what I have heard, in fact, since you are a

Calvinistic Baptist, I'm sure that you are very familiar with Walt Chantry, who once pastored, in fact he pastored the church where I am now a member, for 40 years before I got there.

And I've had the honor and privilege of interviewing Walt right here in the studio, face to face, and I really enjoy him and his fellowship very much.

But he actually surprised me the last time I interviewed him by saying that he believed that what

Edwards taught was very central in the departure of Calvinism amongst evangelicals in the

United States and abroad. I was surprised to hear him say that it had to do with Edwards' concept of the will.

Do you know what what Walt was talking about? Yes, and I do think that Edwards' theological descendants, often called the

New Divinity, did depart from Calvinist teaching. I don't think that Jonathan Edwards did.

Edwards taught that when it comes to the sinner, the sinner has the natural ability to come to God, by which he basically meant that the sinner has a mind, the sinner has affections, the sinner has a will, none of these things have been lost in the fall.

In other words, when you and I are talking to an unbeliever today, Chris, there's nothing naturally, meaning their basic human composition, that prevents them from coming to Christ.

But Edwards did teach that the sinner is morally unable, has total moral inability to come to Christ.

And so in this way, Edwards understood that it was right to address, to preach to, the heart, the mind, the affections, and so on in Christian proclamation of the

Gospel. Edwards' view can be summed up as akin to a prisoner.

The natural, unregenerate man is akin to a prisoner in a cell. The door of the cell is open.

In other words, there's nothing that God has barred the prisoner from, in terms of understanding the

Gospel, in terms of curing the Gospel physically, even in terms of, you know, closing off their emotions.

But what the sinner will only do, tragically, because of Adam's real historical fall,

Genesis 3 is actual history, let's put that on record, they will never come out of the cell.

In fact, they don't want to come out of the cell. In fact, they wouldn't, they would hate everyone else because they love their sin.

The new divinity will take that fine distinction, which you can debate, I'm not saying everybody has to formulate it exactly as Edwards formulated it, but I think it's basically sound.

The new divinity will take that formulation, though, and they will over time refine it and weaken it, such that, basically, the sinner has both natural ability and, in the hands of Finney and some others, moral ability, such that, you know, we've landed at, basically, a classical

Arminian position, almost a Pelagian position, really. So I wouldn't attribute that to Edwards.

That's debated in Edwardsian circles. That's my best shot at explaining that.

By the way, I think you were being too charitable to Charles Finney when you said almost

Pelagian. I think that he was a glaringly full -blown Pelagianist, according to his own writings.

Yeah, and there's actually really interesting material you can find in Finney's writings, The Systematic Theology, for example, two volumes, where he says that he deplores

Edwards' blunders on this very point. That's really important to the matter that Walt Chandria is raising.

Finney himself did not understand Edwards to be his friend when it came to the fallen will.

He understood Edwards to be his enemy, because Edwards is teaching that the will is absolutely fallen, and cannot, the sinner thus, cannot, you know, effectively regenerate himself, almost, which is essentially what

Finney has to tell us. Yeah, one thing that, obviously, we who are Calvinists or Reformed Christians or believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace, we have to make it clear repeatedly to our non -Calvinist friends that we do not believe that God forces morally neutral or spiritually neutral men to sin, or to believe.

We believe that all men are deserving of hell and are, by nature, children of wrath who need to have a heart transplant, and before regeneration, men sin because they want to sin.

It gives them pleasure to sin, and they reject Christ, or even if they accept

Christ in a nominal way or in a way that they think they're getting some kind of religious benefit from him, it's still not a saving faith, but they do so just because it pleases them in some way.

It has nothing to do with God's forcing their hand or mind in any way. That's exactly right, and this is actually directly relevant to Edwards.

Now we're jumping tracks a little bit, although it's very related to what we were just discussing, but Edwards in Freedom of the

Will is going to make the argument that, contra what people thought in his day, and especially what people think in the 21st century, your will is not free when you are lost.

Your will is bound when you are lost. You are only free when you are able to choose the greatest good, and that's what takes place through conversion.

That's what will be true of us in Heaven, in line with what you just said. Heaven... I actually think

Christians who have a mangled understanding of the will, often not through their own fault but through what they've been taught by preachers,

I actually think that Christians think that Heaven is not going to be that great because all you can do is obey

God. We have such a malnourished, deficient understanding of obedience, honestly.

What Edwards promotes in his book Freedom of the Will, that's a shortened title, but what he promotes in that book is that you are actually free when you can choose that which is the highest good in your thinking.

You cannot do that in your natural state as a child of Adam, a son of Adam. You can only do that through Christ, only do that through regeneration, and so Heaven is not in any way going to be dull, bad, boring, you know, sitting on clouds, humming the same hymns.

Heaven is where we are free. Our secularized culture today in 21st century America, or the West beyond it, thinks that we're free and we're happy if we can accept that as humanity we're a blank slate and we can do whatever we want.

The Bible has the opposite perspective, that we are free and happy and flourishing when we can obey

God. We have to really dynamite the common cultural, and even as you're pointing out, even

Christian, that's an air quote, conception of the will in order to understand happiness and freedom.

And even though we are slaves of Christ, we are rejoicing in that fact.

And wouldn't you say that although we have perfect freedom in Christ, being slaves to Christ or of Christ, there is still a restriction in our freedom because being

Calvinists, we do not believe that truly regenerate people can remain in apostasy.

I mean, there is something that is preventing our wills, in a good way, from becoming atheists or Mormons or Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims.

Yes, that is entirely correct, and it is one of the greatest gifts of God to his people.

The redeemed. Sometimes you hear people talk about whether we can lose our salvation.

Look, if God is not sovereign, it's not a question of whether, it's not a question of if, it's a question of how long will it take.

Will it take one second, five seconds, 10 seconds, or 30 seconds? But the good news is, salvation is not dependent upon us in any way.

In any way. There's no stage of the Ordo Serutis where we take over from God. God surely involves our will, praise

God for that, but God saves us from first to last. Amen. And that is a beautiful thing.

Amen. In fact, I shared a meme, and I hope it was accurate. I hope it was truly the words of one of my modern -day heroes,

John MacArthur. But the meme was John MacArthur's quote, if I could lose my salvation,

I would. Totally. And I'm going to read a question to you now from our listener in Ashboro, North Carolina, and you could answer it when we return.

And by the way, Grady in Ashboro, North Carolina, we want to thank you so much for being a regular financial supporter of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and we want to thank you for submitting questions, but I have a favor to ask.

Please don't send your question again in an attachment. For some reason you sent your question in an attachment, and I it's microscopic, and I can't enlarge it for some reason because it's in an attachment.

But anyway, Grady asks, I have heard that Jonathan Edwards' family tree has been traced, and most of them became

Christians and outstanding citizens. Is this true? And you can answer that when we come back from our break.

By the way, please, we're going to a elongated break, as many of you know, since Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida airs this program every day in a repeated form in their morning and evening drive time.

They require of us a 12 -minute break between our two major segments because they have their own advertisements and public service announcements that they air.

So please be patient as we take this elongated break. Use this time to write down questions for our guest,

Owen Strand, and also use this time to write down information provided by our advertisers so that you can properly patronize them.

Our email address for questions to our guest, Owen Strand, is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

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Before I return to my guest Owen Strand, I just have some upcoming events that we need to let you know about.

First of all, my dear friend Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary is going to be speaking at the

Sunday morning worship service at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York, and that's

Sunday, July 1st. If you want more information about that, you can go to hopereformedli .net,

hopereformedli .net, and li stands for Long Island, hopereformedli .net.

You can also call them at 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

Then the following Friday, Friday, July 6th, from 630 to 10 p .m.,

Dr. Tony Costa, who I just mentioned, is also going to be speaking at an event that I am orchestrating, an

Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio event that I am conducting in cooperation with Pastor Andy Woodard and the

New Covenant Church NYC. This is going to be held at the historic

First Baptist Church of New York City on 265 West 79th

Street and Broadway in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Dr. Costa will be speaking on defending the faith in a postmodern society, and he will also be addressing the dangers of cultural

Marxism's impact on society and the church, and he will have a Q &A with the audience.

We are also having a smaller gathering that afternoon at 12 featuring local pastors who are going to be gathered with Dr.

Costa for an informal time of fellowship and the ability to ask Dr. Costa questions over lunch, and you can let me know if you'd like to be a part of that gathering as well.

For more details on both the small lunch gathering and also the bigger event, the seminar, the free

New York City seminar featuring Dr. Tony Costa at First Baptist Church of New York City on Friday, July 6th, 630 p .m.,

you can email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and you could put in the subject line

Tony Costa event, C -O -S -T -A, or New York City event. You can also call the

New Covenant Church NYC at 646 -770 -2282, 646 -770 -2282, and you can email

Andy Woodard, the pastor of New Covenant Church NYC, at nccnycinfo at gmail .com.

That's N -C -C for New Covenant Church, N -Y -C for New York City, info at gmail .com.

Then coming up in November, our friends at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals are having their annual

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology, not to be confused with the Reform Town Conference on Quaker Theology.

It's being held at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania, and the speakers include

David Garner, Ray Ortland, and Richard Phillips, and Timothy Gibson and Carlton Winn.

That's November 9th through the 10th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

The theme is The Glory of the Cross. If you'd like to register, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

click on events, then scroll down to The Glory of the Cross, the Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology.

Please let the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals know that you heard about this event from Chris Arnsen of Alliance Sharpens Iron Radio.

I will be there as well, manning an exhibitor's booth, God willing, so I hope to see you there. Then coming up in January, the event that we mentioned earlier that's going to be featuring our guest today,

Owen Strand, amongst many others, that is the G3 Conference, which stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory.

I just love this event. I'm excited about it every year. This is the third year that I will be there,

God willing, manning an exhibitor's booth. This is going to be held in January from Thursday the night,

I'm sorry, Thursday the 17th of January through Saturday the 19th of January 2019 at the

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, and they are expecting over 4 ,000 people.

The theme is The Mission of God, A Biblical Understanding of Missions, and the speakers include not only

Owen Strand, our guest today, but Paul Washer, John Piper, Stephen J. Lawson, Vody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, who

I think is the most powerful preacher on the planet Earth, pastor of Kabwatha Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and chancellor of the

African Christian University. Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, executive director of John MacArthur's ministry.

Grace to you. Josh Bice, who is the director of G3, and Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, the aforementioned

Jeremy Volo, former soccer player with the San Antonio Scorpions and the

New York Red Bulls, who is currently pastoring in Laredo, Texas. Stephen Nichols, who's my guest tomorrow for the first half hour.

He is the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and there are many more on this roster.

If you'd like to register, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com, and you can not only register for attendance, but you could register for an exhibitor's booth, just as I am going to be manning there, and they are expecting over 4 ,000 people, so an exhibitor's booth for your ministry, church, or business would be very valuable there, and I hope to see you there manning an exhibitor's booth near mine.

Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com, and please tell them that you heard about the G3 Conference from Chris Arns and on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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If you'd like to send in an email to our guest Owen Strand for our show today on Jonathan Edwards, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and we would love to hear from you.

Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if you have a personal and private question, and as I said before our break,

Dr. Strand, a Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina, wants to know if it's true that Jonathan Edwards' family tree has produced a very large quantity of Christians and outstanding citizens, as our listener puts it.

Grady is exactly right. It has. Jonathan Edwards' family has had an unusual impact on American culture.

He's produced numerous public leaders, college presidents, all sorts of public servants.

Interestingly, this touches on my own life even a little bit of what I was sharing earlier. When I got to Bowdoin College in Maine, I had a very tall, abnormally tall college president who had a, you know, that kind of lofty air that you sometimes get in a

New England school. Turns out President Edwards, his name, was a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards.

Wow. Yes. Isn't that fascinating? Jonathan Edwards' own family ministry was a really rich one, which

I think is a little bit of what Grady's probably getting at with his question. Edwards is a very busy man, so let's not forget that.

He worked for about 13 hours a day in his study. So, you know, we might class him today as a workaholic, but at the same time,

I can definitely tell when I read about Edwards and study him that he fought, as we all must fight as fathers, husbands and fathers, the heads of our home,

Christ -like shepherds of our home. He definitely fought to love his children and to lead his wife and his children spiritually, to instruct them in the things of God.

He would gather them on a regular basis throughout the week, often at meals, to read a chapter of scripture and then pray over it.

From what I can pick up, he didn't do anything particularly fancy with family devotions or family worship, as they're often called.

He simply read his family the Bible and took oversight of that and then prayed with them.

And when he was in his study, Edwards was known, according to his protégé Samuel Hopkins, for interrupting his work and allowing his children to come in and talking with them and laughing with them, giving them a hug, that sort of thing.

He was known as a tender father. Edwards was not a perfect man, certainly not holding him up as that in the book that we're discussing today,

The Essential Jonathan Edwards. Doug Sweeney and I make clear in this text that Edwards had real failings, as every one of us does.

But Edwards sought all his days to be a godly husband and a father, and he is an example for us today.

You know, Chris, just a quick word here. There are so many young men in particular, young men and women both, but I'm thinking of the heads of a home who have absolutely no training in what it means to be a godly man, what it means to be a godly husband, what it means to be a godly father.

One reason why you should study Jonathan Edwards is because he strived to be that.

He wanted to be that. He wanted to be a Christ -like head of his home, and in a culture in 2018 that is ravaged by divorce.

And even in intact homes, many children have very little connection with their parents.

Many parents, you know, barely see their kids today. We almost expect that we won't be the ones raising our children, whether it's schooling or after -school hours or summer camp or whatever it may be.

I'm not against these things necessarily, but it's almost just in the air in America today that we're not going to be the ones who raise our kids.

And man, I'm so heartened and challenged when I see Edwards, a very busy man to be sure, but a man who saw it as his

God -given duty to love his wife and love his children and raise them to know

God. So he is a model for that, and the care and investment you and I put in on a daily basis to raise our kids well.

In Edwards' case, we see that it pays off in the terms that we were talking about earlier, especially because many of his children became

Christians, and then successive generations, you know, were Christians and that sort of thing. That's the most important thing beyond any impressive profession.

That's what I pray for for my kids. It's not easy. It's 100 degrees here in Missouri. It's not easy.

The hours can be long as a husband and a father, in particular as a mother. Stay -at -home mom, my goodness, what a tough profession.

But I hope listeners will hear in our secularizing, family -deploring age that every single minute of investment counts.

Edwards' life teaches me that, and certainly the Bible teaches me that. Well, thank you very much,

Grady. Please give us your full mailing address in Asheboro, North Carolina, so that we can have

CVBBS .com ship you a free copy of The Essential Jonathan Edwards as soon as they get it in their hands from our friends at Moody Publishers.

Thank you for contributing another excellent question to our guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

We have Joey in Clifton, New Jersey, who says, Dear Owen, can you please elaborate on your point about Edwards' prominence in the

First Great Awakening? It would be good to hear the salient points you would make that highlight

Edwards' specific contributions. Well, I love that question.

I was constrained by one or two sentences, so now the chains have burst asunder.

In terms of Edwards' more localized effect in the First Great Awakening, well, in point of fact,

Jonathan Edwards kicks off the First Great Awakening, because the First Great Awakening is dated to 1734 and 1735, when

Edwards preaches a series of sermons in his Northampton, Massachusetts, pulpit. Of course, this is when

Massachusetts is not a freestanding state. It's the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but I digress. So Edwards preaches a series of sermons in Northampton, a city

I would encourage you to go to today. Interestingly, Northampton, now, has the highest concentration of Wiccan priestesses in America, at least it did a few years ago.

So there is definitely a need for Gospel work in Northampton and beyond, but that's a second digression.

Edwards preaches on this doctrinal theme, and shockingly, and this really matters for the broader theme of our conversation,

Chris, and your radio show and my ministry, people tell us today if we preach doctrinally, if we preach expositorily, if we teach the

Bible, it won't connect with people. It won't have any practical effect on the spiritual life of our listeners.

Nothing could be further from the truth. When Edwards preaches on justification by faith alone, a number of people in his congregation are cut to the quick, and they are saved.

These are people who have listened to him preach for years. They are born again, and so there's this cascading series of conversions that takes place under Edwards' ministry in those mid -1730s years that continues as George Whitefield comes to the

American colonies, preaches the Gospel all over the place, and many are converted, and it picks up further steam in 1741 when

Edwards preaches sinners in the hands of an angry God, which he had preached previously in his church in Northampton to basically zero effect.

Uh, somebody might have coughed. That was about the effect of his preaching in the sermon. When he preaches the sermon a second time in tiny

Enfield, he's just a supply preacher. Literally, he cannot finish the sermon because people are screaming with terror as they hear about the consequences of their sin, namely eternal punishment for sin by Almighty God.

They cry out, in other words, for divine grace. So there are other contributors to what we call the

First Great Awakening. The Davenport's, the Tenon's are key names to know there, and you can study those, for example, in Thomas Kidd's book,

The Great Awakening, George Marsden's book, Jonathan Edwards' A Life Magisterial Overview of Edwards.

Both of those volumes cover just how wide -ranging the First Great Awakening was, but make no mistake, my dear friends, for our purposes today,

Jonathan Edwards kicks off the First Great Awakening and sees not one but two major seasons of revival, not because he chose his topics to tickle the ears of his hearers, but because he preached the whole counsel of God, and people were saved, gloriously saved.

Praise God. Well, thank you, Joey, and please give us your full mailing address in Clifton, New Jersey, so that you can have the book that we are addressing,

The Essential Jonathan Edwards, shipped out to you at no charge to you or to us by cvbbs .com,

and we thank Moody Publishers once again for providing us with these free books, and we thank cvbbs .com

for shipping it out. We have a listener in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Ted.

We can always count on Ted to add controversy to our show. Ted says,

In the wake of yesterday's program on Christian unity, I thought it might be useful to exploit our current guest's familiarity with Christian controversy, given last year's kerfuffle over the eternal subordination of the

Son, Dr. Strand's work with the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and simply being the son of Bruce Ware.

Well, that's a lot of controversy. Without asking him to revisit any particular controversy,

I'm wondering if he can speak on what he's learned about dealing with controversy that he might be willing to share with the listening audience.

Christian disputation, for lack of a better term, has changed enormously in the Internet age, though I doubt he is old enough to remember what it was like before there was an

Internet. Nonetheless, he's put in a lot of time in the trenches. And that's Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Any comments? Wow. That's a direct and interesting question.

I appreciate it, Ted, so thank you for that. I would say that I have definitely learned that controversy is going to hit whenever we preach and teach.

People are going to like and dislike what we preach and teach. So I've now experienced that personally in a way

I had not before. I've been initiated, if you will, into, I guess, true theological disputation now.

My father -in -law Bruce Ware had already experienced that, of course, with the open theism controversy which he performed heroically in, and other matters that he's debated over the years.

Yeah, I'm assuming he was opposing open theism, of course. Oh, yes, yes, yes, very much so.

His books, God's Lesser Glory and God's Greater Glory, really nicely handle that theme from a conservative, reformed, evangelical viewpoint, so I would commend those to listeners.

Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting that we're discussing Jonathan Edwards, because Jonathan Edwards held very similar views to what

Dr. Ware and I would hold on this matter. What we're seeing today, and I definitely learned this in terms of what

Ted is asking, what we're seeing today is that complementarity, shockingly, is not a popular matter.

And it was interesting to see Amy Byrd and others say that even as they were concerned about these views on the

Trinity, they were really concerned about kind of a more maximalist complementarity that they saw reaching into the

Church. So I really learned that. You know, androgyny is everywhere around us.

Go to your local YMCA and you see boys dressing like girls and girls dressing like boys. Turn on the

TV and you see frequent inversion of gender roles, you know, men being dad -moms and women being providers.

It's just in every, most every way you can chart, our culture is encouraging us to go against God -made order.

Our culture is encouraging us to rebel against divine authority and most any other form of authority.

Our culture teaches us now today that any form of hierarchy, basically, is inherently wrong.

And so, you know, I don't think I myself knew just how strong the backlash to those different ideas, whether culturally or theologically, was going to be.

I also have learned just how essential it is to continue teaching as best I can the things of God.

So being a theologian, like being a pastor, being a ministry worker, more broadly, is a humbling vocation because you realize that you don't teach perfectly, you don't communicate as well as you should, there are things that you need to rework, there are things that need to be rethought, these sorts of things.

It's a continual process. None of us has arrived. But I do also realize that I've actually seen my commitment to biblical complementarity and to the biblical doctrine of the

Trinity actually double down, and my need to instruct students who are pouring onto the campus, for example, of Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City, my commitment to those students in terms of these very contested matters has to actually increase.

So some might have seen some of the blaze surrounding the

Trinity debate a couple years ago and thought, oh my goodness, those guys are surely going to trim their sails.

Well, I can say this, God has taught us all a great deal, but the sails are not tripped.

And I am going to stand for what I understand to be biblical teaching on the doctrine of the

Trinity until God takes me from this earth. So a text like 1 Corinthians 11 3 is causing a lot of controversy.

Personally, I believe that complementarians can understand the headship of the Father over the

Son in a couple ways. Some complementarians believe that this refers only to economic submission of the

Son, economic and then eternal following that. Other complementarians do not see a qualifier in 1

Corinthians 11 3, and so are going to say the Son has always been under the Father's headship, the

Son has always submitted to the Father. Hebrews 1 has the Father appointing the Son as heir of all things and Redeemer, sending him into the earth, and so that and other texts are going to factor in there.

I don't want to split complementarians over these matters. I have no desire to cause a massive feud over these issues.

When I was president of CBMW, we didn't force these issues, but they were brought out into the open for various reasons, for good and ill, and here we are.

You know, one last comment here, Chris, is that this whole debate has forced us all to think a lot more about what the

Bible actually teaches about the Trinity. And, you know, I might not have chosen this particular field on which to discuss these things.

I prefer not to accuse people of heresy if I can help it, but hey, you know, it happened, and so we've had a very fascinating and hopefully, in the end, profitable debate about the

Godhead. What's better to talk about than the Godhead? So there you go. Amen. Well, thank you,

Ted, for always adding more controversy to Iron Sherman's Iron Radio than it already has.

And keep, or should I say, please send in your full mailing address in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, so that's cvbbs .com,

and ship out to you the final copy that we have available of The Essential Jonathan Edwards, and that is compliments, once again, of our friends at Moody Publishers and cvbbs .com.

And by the way, I don't know if you know him personally, Owen, but Pastor Ray Rhodes of Grace Community Church in Dawsonville, Georgia, says that he is thrilled that you are on the program today, and he just thinks you're the bomb.

You know Ray? I've heard the name, I cannot claim to be the bomb, but I really, if someone's going to label me the bomb,

I appreciate it, so thank you very much for that kind word. He's also the founder of Nourished in the

Word, which is a ministry, he's an author, and we've had him on the program many times.

I might as well give out his church website, it's gracechurchdawsonville .org, gracechurchdawsonville .org,

and that's Grace Community Church of Dawsonville, Georgia. Thanks so much, Ray, for listening and for giving a word of encouragement to our guest,

Owen Strand. And by the way, folks, if you're ever trying to Google Owen Strand, you will never find him by Googling it the way it's phonetically spelled.

His actual spelling is S -T -R -A -C -H -A -N. I just thought I'd throw that in there. How on earth did it become

Strand with that spelling? This is the true controversy that we need to learn from.

No, my name is actually a Scottish last name, and to further complicate matters in America, it's a

Gaelic pronunciation. The Gaels somewhere decided down the line that when a

C -H occurred concurrently in a name or in a word, they would not pronounce it in traditional ways.

So yes, the C -H is silent. It's S -T -R -A -C -H -A -N. And Chris, anytime

I'm on the phone with, you know, customer support or whatever, I literally have to spell it four times.

So all this to say, your kind helpfulness here is greatly appreciated.

Well, I appreciate that very much. In fact, a new co -pastor, assistant pastor at the church where I am a member,

Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Simon O'Manny, who is my co -host this

Friday when we interview Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. Simon O'Manny, if you were to Google his name, you would never find it if you were spelling it phonetically, because it's actually spelled as if it were

Simon O'Mahony, but it's pronounced Simon O'Manny. There you go. And he is from the

Republic of Ireland, actually. Ah. And you will immediately detect that if you listen on Friday because he's got a thick

Irish brogue or burr or whatever they call it. But anyway, we're going to our final break right now.

It's a briefer than normal break. If you'd like to join us on the air, this is your last opportunity. So write in a question quickly before we run out of time if you intend to do so.

It's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with more of Owen Strand and the essential

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