Classic Friday: You Say You Want A Reformation? With Dr. R. Scott Clark (Session two: Q & A 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.

Legalism Without Gospel Comfort

And it says this, quote, �It is hardly necessary to say that Christianity undistorted and preached in its just proportions, think law gospel, is calculated to prevent, not cause insanity. The exciting cause of religious melancholy is sometimes to be traced to fiery denunciations of a well-meaning but injudicious preacher.

Oh, interesting. In other words, he�s a legal preacher and he�s always giving people the law all the time and no comfort in the gospel, and so it causes a melancholy.

Absolutely, I�ve seen it. I�ve experienced it. There was a period of time where I was under legal preaching. It was well-meaning, but the tenor of the preaching was legal, and I found myself feeling more and more depressed and really almost desperate to hear good news.

And I remember when we found a place where we were hearing good news, and it really was like, you know, water in the desert, what a relief.

Big Evangelicalism and Institutional Drift

Okay, next question. What is it like to be an A-list Christian celebrity?

I don�t know, you�ll have to ask Carl Truman. Carl and Mike are the only A-listers I know.

I�m on the Z-list.

All right, next question. What�s the future of Together for the Gospel, the Gospel Coalition, big evangelicalism?

Oh, you�re going to get me in trouble.

That�s the idea.

Well, without mentioning organizations, we can talk about Big Eva generally.

Okay, sure.

Big Eva. This is Carl Truman�s term, Big Eva. She�s a hefty gal who likes to throw her weight around. She�s influential. Yeah, you know, what�s the future? I don�t know. I�m a historian. I get paid to look at the past.

The past tells us that these organizations tend to lose their focus and to become something other than what they were originally set out to be and do. And so the touchstone is, right, so we�re Together for the Gospel.

If you have people in your Together for the Gospel or the Gospel Coalition, right, so there were people at different points in TGC, and I�ve said this publicly so I can say it here, if you�ve got people participating in TGC who are openly denying the gospel, that�s highly problematic since you�re, right, it�s the Gospel Coalition.

So you have to get that first term right. So if you�ve got a federal visionist or somebody advocating the new perspective, which is a�quickly, it�s a way of reading Paul that says that his message was you get in by grace and you stay in by works, which is bad news, right?

And the federal vision says you get in by baptism and you stay in by works, basically, to boil it down to a very thumbnail sketch. All of that�s bad news. So those organizations take on their own life and they tend to lose sight of their original mission, and institutional survival is the impetus of most organizations, right, having forgotten their purpose, they redouble their efforts.

So if history is any guide, that�s what often happens. We�ve had meetings where I work at our school to make sure that we�re being faithful to our institutional purpose and make sure that we�re on track and that we�re not drifting from that because that�s a constant danger.

Listen, at one of the preeminent conservative Presbyterian seminaries in North America in 1974, one of the principal teachers of systematic theology announced in the course that deals with the doctrine of salvation that sinners are justified with God through faith and works, and he did it in those words.

So if that can happen at one of the preeminent conservative Presbyterian institutions, not a liberal institution, a conservative, the institution that was founded to react to liberalism, it was founded by a man who was absolutely crystal clear about the gospel and in the original faculty, crystal clear, and by 1974, and there was an eight-year controversy over whether he was right or within his rights to say that.

He wasn�t. Westminster Confession Chapter 11 says we�re not justified by anything done by us or in us, but only by faith alone. Westminster larger catechism, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, very, very couldn�t be clearer about the doctrine of justification.

Heidelberg Catechism, 21, 56, 60, crystal clear, unambiguous, but we�d lost track.

Of that.

They had lost track of that. So it happens. And just look at the great old churches, right, where once upon a time there were great gospel preachers, and today, just nonsense.

Sanctification as God’s Free Grace

Thank you. In my world, in kind of the Bible church world, many people would think that sanctification is synergistic.

Oh, we�ve got plenty of folks in the PNR world that say the same thing.

Right, and so you�re working progressively in holy living, and you say you work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Yeah.

Can the answer be found in the confessions where there�s a section on sanctification and then a section that follows of good works? Or would you tell us a little bit about sanctification and the process?

Who is the sanctifier?

Yeah, the Holy Spirit is the sanctifier. I�m just trying to pull up a question from the Westminster Shorter Catechism with one hand here. Is the�yeah, I�m looking Trying to get to 35 here.

Is that Bob?

Thank you, Bob.

35, okay. Pardon me?

Yeah, here we go. Westminster Shorter Catechism, 35. What is sanctification? Here�s the question, the answer. Sanctification is the work of God�s free grace. You have to weigh that. The work of what? Whose?

God�s. He�s the subject of the verb. The what? Free grace. Not just grace, free grace, just in case we weren�t sure. Because grace by definition is free, but they added free just so that nobody would be confused.

Not conditional grace, that would be an oxymoron. Free grace is redundant, but they wanted you to be sure. Whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled�watch this�more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.

There you go. That�s everything you need to know about the Christian life. I could write a large book or I could just have you memorize Westminster Shorter Catechism, save us all a lot of time and money.

Leviticus 28, I am Yahweh who sanctifies you. Hebrews 2 .11, for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. So then how do we work Monergistic. Synergistic isn�t a good way to talk about it.

No, it�s a great way to talk about it.

So define those two terms.

We just need to pitch synergism. I used to think and people often think, well, justification is monergistic. God by himself, one mon, one ergist is working, one working. So people say, well, justification is monergistic and sanctification is synergistic.

It�s with working. In other words, God and I cooperating together are going to sanctify me. No, that�s not what we say. It�s not what Scripture says. Sanctification is the work of God�s free grace whereby.

Sanctification is the work of God�s free grace, not God�s free grace and my cooperation.

So then how do I work up my salvation with fear and trembling where it says I�m supposed to do that?

As a consequence. So good works and our struggle against sin is a product of God�s sanctifying grace. So we really do effort, to use the way�that�s sports talk language. We�re going to effort. Frank Solitz used to say they moved around real well.

So we have to work and struggle and strive against sin as a consequence of sanctification. But our struggling and striving isn�t sanctification. It�s the fruit of sanctification. It�s the evidence of sanctification.

It�s the result of sanctification. And if we get that right, we understand that sanctification, properly understood, is monergistic. So remember, salvation has three aspects. Justification, progressive sanctification, and final glorification.

And those are all the sovereign monergistic work of God. Period. Full stop. And my struggle against sin and my dying is a consequence of all that. And it is really happening. And it is being enabled by the Holy Spirit.

But it�s the consequence of the Holy Spirit. So the great news is, God the Holy Spirit is at work in you right now sanctifying you. Even though you don�t feel like it. I don�t feel very sanctified. And maybe I wasn�t.

I�m not very sanctified. Or I didn�t act very sanctified. That�s why it�s called progressive. You�re not there yet. You�re on the way. And by the way, in this life you aren�t going to make it. There�s no such thing as entire perfection.

It�s not going to happen in this life. Ask the Apostle Paul. Read Romans 7.

Puritans, English Reformed Theology, and Richard Baxter

I was talking to my friends from Salem. What�s your name again? Greg. Greg. And Greg and I were talking about Puritans and Puritanism. And I was discussing with them about the wide variety of different kinds of Puritans.

So if I say Puritan to you, you don�t think, oh, they all line up with this particular theology. Because we have from Richard Baxter to John Owen overseas in England to Puritans here. What�s the best way the congregation should think about Puritans and then how to study them in light of that?

Yeah, I have given up on the category �the Puritans. There was a movement, self-conscious movement, in the late 16th century, into the 17th century, where people thought of themselves as Puritans. And they did write about it.

There�s an early treatise where one of them actually, a Presbyterian, wrote about being Puritan. What does it really mean? The problem as a historical category is that it includes so much diversity. Almost like the category evangelical, it almost doesn�t mean anything.

So whenever anybody talks to me about the fathers, the ancient fathers, the Puritans, the evangelicals, I�m guilty of doing that sometimes. I suspect they probably don�t know what they�re talking about.

Because there�s no such thing as �the Puritans. Any category that has John Owen on the one side and Richard Baxter on the other and William Perkins and William Ames, there�s just so much diversity within that body of literature and those personalities that I just don�t think it�s very helpful.

So I would rather talk about English Reformed theology. So you have Orthodox English Reformed, or British Reformed, if you want to say it that way. Include the Welsh and the Scots. And heterodox. Richard Baxter was heterodox on the doctrine of justification and on the doctrine of sanctification.

He, frankly, wasn�t satisfied with the Reformation. And he published a work, Aphorisms of Justification, that are absolutely appalling. So one of my regrets about what�s happened in the modern period, so there�s the Puritan reprint series, or whatever it�s called, published by a well-known, wonderful publisher.

And they�ve published Baxter along with lots of Orthodox people. And so people not knowing any better read Baxter and think, �Well, there�s Richard Baxter, and there�s John Owen, and there�s Thomas Watson, and there�s this one and that one.

And they wouldn�t publish it if it wasn�t good. Well, no. Frankly, that doesn�t follow. And, in fact, his ministry was devastating for his people because he was a legal preacher. He put his people under the covenant of works and he never let them out of the covenant of works.

The covenant of works is simply a shorthand for do this and live. And the covenant of grace is a shorthand for Christ shall do for you or Christ has done for you. And you�re freely accepted for Christ�s sake.

That�s all the covenant of grace means. I will be your God, you will be my people, by grace. So, yeah, you need to be discerning about English Reformed or British Reformed theologians from the 17th century, just like anybody else.

Some of them are better, some of them are worse. Some of them are really good on the gospel and some of them have a more legal tenor. Some of them affirmed the imputation of active obedience, some of them denied it.

So, in that sense, you want to be suspicious of people talking about the Puritans.

Jonathan Edwards, Creator-Creature Distinction, and Religious Experience

So, today we went to Northampton and I took you to the step where it still exists for Edwards Church, and we asked the homeless people to just scoot over a little so we could have a picture or two.

Which they did.

They were kind, weren�t they? The one guy said, �I�ve been sitting here for 15 years and I didn�t know this was Jonathan Edwards Church. Then I took him to the homestead of Edwards where the house was and now there�s a Polish Catholic church sitting there.

And we saw Solomon Stoddard�s house, who was the father-in-law of Edwards. And then how dare you have the audacity here during your last message to say something negative about Edwards. How does that all work out?

Help us with that. I mean, I know the answer, but when people maybe hear he criticized Edwards.

You come to Edwards� home and criticize the hometown hero. I guess it�s in bad taste, but it wouldn�t be the first time I�ve been accused of doing things in bad taste. I mean, Edwards was a great mind, and he�s a very important figure.

But he�s a very complicated figure and we can�t just assume that he got everything right. In fact, even those who favor him and who wanted to receive him in a friendly way admitted Charles Hodge very plainly said Edwards was a pantheist.

That�s not an orthodox view of the doctrine of God, that everything is God. It violates a fundamental Christian tenet that is the creator-creator distinction. There�s God. He belongs to one category.

Anselm taught the creator-creator distinction in a formula that has come to be known as the ontological argument. God is that in which nothing greater can be conceived, the point of which is simply to say God is one thing and we are another.

And the simplest way to put it is to say in the beginning God, and where are we? Nowhere. We don�t exist. Then God made dirt and he made us out of dirt. He animated some dirt. There we are. Creatures animated dirt.

To dust you came and to dust you shall return. That�s the creator-creator distinction. Because of philosophical influences, Cambridge Platonism, namely, I�m not an Edwards scholar but I do know this, he was deeply influenced by Platonism and that corrupted his theology in a variety of ways.

One way was this pantheism. Another way ultimately was he was, at best you can say he was muddy on the doctrine of justification. And that�s a problem. There�s no reason for any Orthodox minister to be muddy on the doctrine of justification.

A congregationalist who believes the Savoy Declaration should be very clear about the doctrine of justification. It�s crystal clear in Savoy. Crystal clear in the Westminster Standards. Crystal clear in the Heidelberg Catechism, Belgian Confession, Augsburg, whatever you want.

Any of the Orthodox Protestant Confessions, crystal clear. And Edwards wasn�t. Well, why wasn�t he? Because he came to really believe in the necessity of a certain quality of faith. We�re going to talk about this tomorrow.

He wanted you to have a certain quality of religious experience. So he set up a system to help facilitate a certain quality of religious experience. And absent that, well, maybe you really don�t have a sufficient sanctification.

He wanted you to be good. He wanted you to be holy. He was facing lots of what he perceived to be antinomianism in his church, a disobedience. This is what some of the English did during the English Civil War.

There�s lots of wartime antinomianism and theological antinomianism, practical antinomianism. Some people tried to fix that by turning around and turning the screws on the law, which of course didn�t work.

And Edwards, in a sense, turns the screws on experience and the law.

Yeah, Baxter was the chaplain for Cromwell�s New Model Army. He saw all the licentious soldiers, and so he has to add extra law.

Exactly.

And anybody who�s been around the military knows you get a bunch of men together, right, drinking beer and shooting guns, things are going to happen, right? It�s a bad combination, by the way. If you go shooting, leave your booze at home.

Piety, Pietism, and the Quest for Religious Experience

All right, just a couple more. What is the difference between piety and pietism?

Yeah, we�re going to talk about this tomorrow. This is really important. So I�m going to criticize pietism, which I call the quest for illegitimate religious experience. Pietism is a mistake that sets you on the path to try to have a certain quality of religious experience.

It sets you to chasing a certain quality of religious experience.

Just private or corporate or either?

Either way.

Okay.

The pietist ultimately, he�s mostly, as they say in England and now everywhere, at the end of the day, he wants you to have the right quality of religious experience. And if you�re Orthodox, that�s great, but if he has to weigh Orthodoxy versus your quality of your religious experience, he wants you to have the right kind of religious experience.

And again, Edward�s religious affections is a symptom of that movement. So that�s pietism. The Reform were always about piety, and that�s just another word for godliness, for sanctification, for dying to self, dying to sin, mortification, vivification, living to Christ, living to God, being conformed, and acts of piety, attending worship, reading your Bible, praying, right, but not to get on the quest.

It�s almost like a drug addiction. All right, here�s an analogy. Years ago, I used to be a runner, and I was trying to.

Did you play basketball?

I did.

Not very well, but I loved it. And I used to run, and I was training to join the cross-country team and to be a long-distance runner, and the first time I ever ran any significant distance. You�ll appreciate this.

I was over� I lived on the south end of town, and I went for a run, and I got lost, and I ended up over by the state penitentiary. It was kind of a dark and rainy day, and I was next to this 19th century, very scary penitentiary.

Most of that, the old pen is gone, but you�ll remember it was a scary place. And we used to have old Sparky. We used to have the electric chair, and there were bad guys in there, and I had actually visited some really bad guys in prison, one of whom they brought up out of the hole with two guards on either side and chains on his hands and feet.

There were bad dudes in there, and I thought, just my luck. While I�m out running around by the prison, one of them will get out, and I�m going to get killed. So I got scared, and I just kept running, and as I ran, I didn�t� All of a sudden, I had, for the one time that I think I ever had it, I got the runner�s high.

I got that shot of endorphins, and I felt fantastic.

I mean, it was great.

It was the greatest feeling. I�ve never had it before or since. It was like, I think heroin must be why people get addicted to heroin, that first rush. I didn�t. Whatever pain I felt from running, I didn�t feel anymore, and I just ran, and I was like Forrest Gump.

Run, Forrest, run!

I just kept running. And it was raining, and it was cool, and I probably ran five or six miles, and I had not set out to run five or six miles. Then I got to running 10 miles a day, and I kept running.

Well, I got to have this again. I wanted that runner�s high, so you keep running. Maybe if I run six miles, seven miles, maybe 10 miles, I�ll get it. Somewhere, it�s going to kick in, because it�s like a drug addiction.

This is what people mean when they say.

We really worship.

What they mean is somebody played the right chord progression, and I got that release of endorphins, or whatever it was, the brain chemicals that gave me that high, made my arms go up. So that�s the quest for illegitimate religious experience.

It�s the quest for that exquisite high.

It�s like a runner�s high.

Americans, Romans, and the Market for Law-Light Religion

Relate that to what you said at dinner.

About we�re basically Romans. Not the book of Romans, but one of the reasons why we do this is we�re basically Romans. I don�t know why you said it, but I want you to explain it to them.

What did I say at dinner?

You said, �Pass the salt. We want other people to do the work for us.

Oh, yeah. Americans, we�re industrial people. Industrious people is what I mean to say.

We�re busy.

We�re the busiest people in the world. There�s nobody as busy as we are. And we work hard. We don�t read a lot. We don�t think a lot. And we like lists. We like accomplishment.

We�re great builders.

Romans are not known for their philosophers. Not even really known for their art. But they are known for what? Plumbing? They�re great plumbers. We forgot all about Roman plumbing through the Middle Ages.

The Romans didn�t throw their waste out the window. We did that for a thousand years. The Romans actually had plumbing that worked. It�s phenomenal. In fact, if the English hadn�t goofed it up, the ancient plumbing would still work.

But they goofed it up.

Roy, let�s fix it.

No, it didn�t work. And they�re great at roads. Roman roads, some of them still exist. Roman wall, Hadrian�s Wall, still stands.

It�s remarkable.

But not for thinking. Not known for thinking. Well, Americans are Romans more than Greeks. And we�re doers. We�re builders. We�re goers. But we�re not thinkers. And we�re not reflective. And so we�re susceptible to a lot of this because we want the preacher to facilitate our busy lives, our busy, happy lives in this blessed land.

And so the preacher becomes a therapist to facilitate our busy, successful lives. And frankly, that�s just not the� It�s fine to be busy. It�s fine to be an American. But just recognize where we are, what we are, and how the culture influences us and changes us and how that culture causes us to ask the preacher not to preach the gospel but to preach the law so that we can be busy, happy, successful people.

So we�re criticizing listicles, you know, seven steps, three steps, whatever, four steps. Well, one of the reasons preachers do that is because you pay for it. And I�m pointing at you people now, you in the pews.

You pay for it. You want it.

And they give it to you because you ask for it. There�s a market economy in American religion. And the market responds to demand. And if you demanded gospel, you�d get more gospel. But if you demand law light, how is it that there are 45 ,000 people every Sunday going to hear a vacuous windbag like Joel Osteen in Lakewood Church in Houston?

He is a vacuous windbag. There�s not a shred of gospel in that nonsense. Forty-five thousand people go every week because he makes them feel good. And he gives them a path for happiness, prosperity, and success.

It is, as my friend Mike Horton says, it�s Christless Christianity. But it�s popular, it�s successful, and he gives them what they pay for. And who knows how many poor souls are watching that schmuck on TV and all his blow-dried beauty.

That�s your problem, Mike. You just don�t have enough hair. He could have 45 ,000 people if he had that hair. Maybe you could get an Osteen wig.

I think of pot and kettle and black.

Yeah, but I�m not looking for 45 ,000 people.

Alcoholics Anonymous, Confession, and the Church as Hospital for Sinners

Okay, last question. I think many people recognize that you�re a scholar in Reformed theology. I think the first thing, though, I ever read of yours, and I didn�t know who you were at the time, was about AA.

Just in a few minutes, tell the folks here, especially some of them probably have family members that could use that, and why did you write that article about Alcoholics Anonymous?

That started out as a seminary paper, and it just kind of grew from there. So I learned the Lord�s Prayer in Alateen, and I was raised in AA. I�m a family member to three substance abusers, all sober, and so I learned the 12 steps and the 12 traditions.

I later on, for my research, read the big book and the history of AA and Bill W. and Akron, Ohio, and all of that. And I figured out�what I think I figured out is that AA�in fact, as I say, I learned the Lord�s Prayer.

I did not know it was a biblical prayer. I didn�t know it was a Christian prayer. It just came to me. It was in the big book, and we said it in the meetings. And what I ended up trying to do in this paper was to argue, you know, it�s a shame that people have to go to AA to confess their sins and to be accepted.

They ought to be able to come to church and say, you know what? Not, I�m an alcoholic, because in every AA meeting, you know, when you�re a new person, you stand up and you say, Hi, my name�s Scott. I�m an alcoholic.

And everybody says, Hi, Scott. Welcome. Keep coming back. It works. Well, it may or may not, but that�s what they say. That�s the liturgy. And I wish, you know, part of what I was saying is the church is that place that Jesus established where drunks and sinners and prostitutes and drug addicts and miscreants of all kinds can gather and hear the law and hear the gospel and be received and receive forgiveness and where we can be sinners together.

I regret that we�ve made our churches into houses of the holy where we aren�t allowed to be sinners. We have to pretend to be something other than we are. But I really wanted to say to the church, quit sending your people who are struggling with booze, quit sending them to AA.

And Bill W. was wrong. Bill said you can�t talk to drunks about Jesus and sin and forgiveness, because drunks will never hear it, as if drunks are special. Drunks aren�t special. People become drunks because they got a problem and they start self-medicating.

Well, it wasn�t like walking along.

And all of a sudden a bottle of bourbon jumped up and forced itself down your throat. You started drinking booze because you were miserable. Why were you miserable? Because you�re unhappy. Something bad happened.

You did something bad.

You�re guilty.

You�re sad. You�re angry. You�re unhappy. Whatever it was, you started medicating yourself and you got hooked. It�s not magic. It�s not a disease. It�s not an allergy. They just made up this category.

It�s an allergy. It�s like eat graham crackers. It�ll save your life. Rinse and repeat. It�s all nonsense. You�re just making stuff up. You only need to wash your hair once. You don�t need to repeat. They just said repeat so they would sell more shampoo.

They literally just made it up so they�d sell more shampoo. I asked the optometrist, �Can I wear these contacts for more than a month? Is this like rinse and repeat She said, �No, you can only. I thought, �No, you�re just making.

I thought they�re just making stuff up. Well, you can only use these for a month. Anyway, so people just make stuff up and Bill W. was making things up about alcoholics. It�s a disease.

Yeah, really?

Where was the evidence in 1935 when you said that? Nowhere. Where�s the evidence in 2019? Nowhere. We�ve had decades to find the evidence that alcoholism is a disease.

It�s not a disease.

Cancer is a disease. Diabetes is a disease. Alcoholism is a self-inflicted addiction. The church is the place where alcoholics and drug addicts and sex addicts and porn addicts, that�s where they all ought to go.

We don�t need.

We�re all sinners.

You�ve got your sins.

I�ve got my sins.

That was my point. I want the church to do her job and to be the place, the hospital for sinners. As if the church is the place where the good people go. Because where we come from, that�s what people think.

The church, oh, you go to church. You�re a good person. You�re a nice person.

Oh, I�m a drunk. I go to AA. Because if you�re in AA and you�ve been in for like the time, you know what you are. They tell you you�re a drunk. You�re an addict. If you�re an NA, you�re an addict.

You�re a user. You�re sober.

So the sinners go to NA, AA, whatever. No, the sinners go to church.

That was my point.

Well, thank you very much. That article is online, right?

Yeah, it�s at rscottclark .org.

Our people can go to the Heidel blog as well.

Heidelblog .net.

Before our final prayer, I just want to say on behalf of the congregation, thanks, Scott, for being here today. And thinking of Romans, I leave the people with the blessing, the doxology from Romans. And it talks about the gospel that strengthens.

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages. But has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God�s Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.